Thirty-Five: Kettle’s Secrets

At dawn, Verity rushes back to carving his dragon, ignoring Kettricken. The camp is tense. Fitz and the Fool inspect the statue of a girl on a dragon; the Fool touches her with a silvered fingertip, triggering a quarry-shaking Skill-scream that hurls him senseless and leaves a silver print on the statue. Kettle scolds their ignorance and pain caused.

Fitz tenders a full report to Verity, laying bare his deeds, fears, and Wit. Verity, diminished, confirms he killed Carrod with the Skill and fears his power has fled. He warns that Regal’s coterie spoke through the Fool to ask Molly’s whereabouts; the Fool collapses as the tenuous hold withdraws. Shattered, the Fool recognizes his own prophecy of betrayal fulfilled. Fitz begs Verity to warn Molly and Burrich, but Verity admits he is too drained and cannot access the pillar.

Kettle intervenes, revealing she is Kestrel of Buck, once of Stanchion’s coterie under Queen Diligence, Skill-burned and banished centuries ago for killing her coterie-sister Gull in jealous rage. She asserts Six Duchies dragons were made by coteries, offers to serve if Verity reopens her Skill, and explains their mutual wounds. Verity, wavering, consents and tasks Fitz—the Catalyst—to attempt it.

Fitz first fails to reach Kestrel. The guilt-stricken Fool returns; Fitz has the Fool touch his wrist with silvered fingers, linking Fitz, the Fool, and then Nighteyes in a surge of shared knowing and trust. With their pooled strength, Fitz slips past Kestrel’s burned walls, reveals her self-forged barriers of shame over killing Gull, and guides her to forgiveness by reclaiming loving memories of their twin bond.

Kestrel’s Skill floods back; she and Verity privately reconnect through the Talent, weeping and then rejoicing as they discover a way to proceed together. They attack the stone in a frenzy of purposeful work, while Kettricken, excluded, suffers quiet jealousy. Starling composes by the fire; the Fool, relieved of the false coterie, experiments with his silvered fingertips on wood. Fitz wakes restored and resolves to aid the dragon’s making.