“Lies,” she said, more to herself than me. “Lies, all lies. From the very beginning. I was so stupid. If a man hits you once, he’ll hit you again, they say. And the same is true for lying. But I stayed, and I listened and I believed. What a fool I’ve been!” This last, so savagely that I recoiled from it as from a blow. She stood clear of me. “Thank you, FitzChivalry,” she said coldly, formally. “You’ve made this so much easier for me.” She turned away from me.

“Molly,” I begged. I reached to take her arm, but she spun about, her hand raised to slap me.

“Don’t touch me,” she warned in a low voice. “Don’t you ever dare to touch me again!”

She left.

After a time I remembered I was standing under Burrich’s stairs in the dark. I shivered with cold and something more. No. Something less. My lips drew back from my teeth in something neither a smile nor a snarl. I had always feared that my lies would make me lose Molly. But the truth had severed in an instant what my lies had held together for a year. What must I learn from that? I wondered. Very slowly I climbed up the steps. I knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Burrich’s voice.

“Me.” He unlatched the door and I came into the room. “What was Molly doing here?” I asked him, not caring how it might sound, not caring that the bandaged Fool sat still at Burrich’s table. “Did she need help?”

Burrich cleared his throat. “She came for herbs,” he said uneasily. “I could not help her, I did not have what she wanted. Then the Fool came, and she stayed to help me with him.”

“Patience and Lacey have herbs. Lots of them,” I pointed out.

“That is what I told her.” He turned away from me, and began clearing away the things he had used to work on the Fool. “She did not wish to go to them.” There was something in his voice, almost prodding, pushing me to the next question.

“She’s going away,” I said in a small voice. “She’s going away.” I sat down on a chair before Burrich’s fire and clenched my hands between my knees. I became aware I was rocking back and forth, tried to stop.

“Did you succeed?” the Fool asked quietly.

I stopped rocking. I swear that for an instant I had no idea what he was talking about. “Yes,” I said quietly. “Yes, I think I did.” I had succeeded at losing Molly, too. Succeeded at wearing away her loyalty and her love, taking her for granted, succeeded at being so logical and practical and loyal to my king that I had just lost any chance of ever having a life of my own. I looked at Burrich. “Did you love Patience?” I asked suddenly. “When you decided to leave?”

The Fool started, then visibly goggled. So there were some secrets even he did not know. Burrich’s face went as dark as I had ever seen it. He crossed his arms on his chest, as if to restrain himself. He might kill me, I thought. Or maybe he sought only to hold some pain inside himself. “Please,” I added, “I have to know.”

He glared at me, then spoke carefully. “I am not a changeable man,” he told me. “If I had loved her, I would love her still.”

So. It would never go away. “But, still, you decided—”

“Someone had to decide. Patience would not see it could not be. Someone had to end the torment for us both.”

As Molly had decided for us. I tried to think just what I should do next. Nothing came to me. I looked at the Fool. “Are you all right?” I asked him.

“I’m better off than you are,” he replied sincerely.

“I meant, your shoulder. I had thought …”

“Wrenched, but not broken. Much better than your heart.”

A quick bantering of witty words. I had not known he could weight a jest with so much sympathy. The kindness pushed me to the edge of breaking. “I don’t know what to do,” I said brokenly. “How can I live with this?”

The brandy bottle made a very small thud as Burrich set it in the center of the table. He put out three cups around it. “We will have a drink,” he said. “To Molly finding happiness somewhere. We will wish it for her with all our hearts.”

We drank a round and Burrich refilled the cups.

The Fool swirled the brandy in his cup. “Is this wise, just now?” he asked.

“Just now, I am done with being wise,” I told him. “I would rather be a fool.”

“You do not know of what you speak,” he told me. All the same, he raised his glass alongside mine. To fools of all kinds. And a third time, to our king.