“Are you the healer here?”

Raeca stilled her spinning wheel with a careful hand and looked up to see a beautiful, stately woman before her. Gold embroidery gleamed on her hems, throat, and ears, and her silken dress was perfectly fitted.

It wasn’t until she saw the slim coronet, that was almost the same color as the woman’s hair, that Raeca realized who this must be.

Calliope Ro Fatine, Queen of the Golden Citadel, and all of Dehelm.

Raeca tried to stand, and curtsey, but instead, the queen raised an elegant hand and took a seat on the bench across from her.

“I hear it is bad luck to interrupt a spinner at her task,” the queen said gently. Her eyes were very wise. “Please, I only wish a few words, and we can certainly share those while you work.”

“I couldn’t,” Raeca protested shyly, and only now did she notice the pair of armored soldiers who lingered almost out of sight, protecting their queen. “How can I serve you, Majesty?”

“By not letting me interrupt,” Queen Calliope said, and proved her words by stealing Raeca’s carding brushes. Raeca blinked, but the queen seemed to know what she was doing, and began smoothing the wool into usable little clouds. “You saved Brendis a few weeks ago. I wanted to thank you myself.”

“He needed help, Majesty,” Raeca replied. When the queen gave no sign of stopping, she got her spinning wheel moving again and resumed the careful work of spinning thread fine enough to sew wounds. “It’s a miracle he made it to us at all.”

“Brendis has always been surprising,” the queen said, and caught Raeca watching her out of the corner of her eye. “And please, my name is Calliope. Anyone who saved my love has more than earned the right to use it.”

Raeca almost lost her grip on the thread, and scrambled to keep it smooth. “I couldn’t.”

“You could, and I hope you will. Now tell me, how did he seem to you while he was here?” The queen set another bit of wool in the basket and helped herself to more. Her blue eyes drifted between her work and the spinning wheel. “He said he stayed with you a bit while he healed.”

“He’s the worst patient I’ve ever had,” Raeca admitted with a hesitant smile. The queen burst out laughing. Heartened by the reaction, Raeca began to relax. “Does he ever sit still? I caught him outside trying to chop wood for us with a half-healed chest wound.”

“I wish I could say I’m surprised,” Calliope laughed with an air of one who had seen that very behavior for herself. “He loves to help people. I think it was written on his soul, even before the prophesy turned us into what we are now.”

Right. The queen was tied into the same prophesy that kept Brendis, and his ancient enemy, locked into reincarnation. Her eyes were wise because she had a dozen lifetimes or more to learn.

“Has he always been like that?” Raeca couldn’t help the question. Calliope finished another few bits of wool before she answered.

“He was less serious, in the beginning,” she said softly, and tangled a hank of creamy white wool around her fingers. “Oh, he was always driven, but he took the time to laugh. Once the Dark Sword turned on us… well, there just wasn’t time anymore.”

“Brendis didn’t tell us much about that,” Raeca said, the healer in her pushing to help ease the old pain that lingered around her queen. “About the Dark Sword, or how everything started.”

Calliope smiled sadly and kept her hands busy. Raeca approved. She was doing a decent job with the wool, but more importantly, sometimes it helped to have something to fidget with.

“I was a princess, when we first met,” she said at last. “Brendis and the Dark Sword were… Brendis was a squire. The son of a duke, and a likely candidate to wed me. The Dark Sword, he was a mage-student from the desert, and a prince in his own right.”

“How did you all meet?” Raeca couldn’t help her curiosity. There were a few songs around about the fated Three, but not much of that was reliable, and her little village wasn’t home to a great store of knowledge.

“Brendis and the Dark Sword were friends from childhood,” Calliope explained, and shifted in her seat. “I met them on the same day, when they were presented at court. Brendis was so quiet, but they brought me into their circle, and suddenly we were three.”

“And then there was a prophesy?”

That part was easy enough to figure out from the clues here and there.

“Three Stand Always as Three,” Calliope murmured, the words so familiar that she could have said them in her sleep. “One shall turn, and Two will Stand Together to face the One, and the Darkness will break against their Will, and the Circle will finally be Broken.”

Well, that was clear as mud. Prophesy was always tricky, but they weren’t usually that bad.

“What does it mean?”

“As near as we can tell,” she queen finished with Raeca’s wool and tucked the brushes back into the basket out of the way. Tears pooled in the corner of her eyes and she held them back with masterful control. “The three of us are tied together until the prophesy is completed. Until the Darkness is broken. Brendis and I have fought him. Some lives, he wins, and others, no one does, but it is never enough.”

The hopelessness in her eyes broke Raeca’s heart, and she stopped her spinning wheel so she could give her queen a tight hug. The soldiers took a step towards them, and seemed to realize what was happening before they stepped back again.

Raeca ignored them as Calliope’s arms came around her hesitantly.

“Everyone needs a hug sometimes, Majesty,” Raeca said into her ear, and felt Calliope laugh wetly into her shoulder. “And it’s alright to cry when things are bad.”

They stayed like that for a while until Calliope pulled away and pulled a plane cotton kerchief out of her pocket to dry her eyes.

“I see now why Brendis spoke so highly of you,” she said when she had herself under control again. “And why, after so long, he seemed just a little better for the first time in years.”

“Healing is what we do here,” Raeca said gently, and watched her queen with a knowing gaze. “Majesty, you asked me to call you by your name.”

“I did,” Calliope said, and tilted her head. “You aren’t trying to bargain with me, are you ?”

“I certainly am,” Raeca told her brightly. “I’ll tell you what. I will use your name, as long as you make time to come here and find some quiet every now and then.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Calliope said, but she was smiling, and offered a hand across the wool and spinning wheel. “But it’s a deal… and thank you.”

“Thank you,” Race said, and started up her wheel again. “Now, I won’t understand most of it, but tell me about whatever bothers you most at Court.”

“Why?”

“because friends listen to friends when they are frustrated,” Raeca said firmly, with a smile and a wink. “Now, do you know how to spin, and if you don’t, do you want to learn?”