hello everyone! this is my (belated) @d20exchange gift for @/itsbeepbeep on twitter! if there are any d20 people still following me on here i hope you enjoy! (and for my new friends, i'll be back to bob's burgers posting soon)
my @d20exchange gifts for alex @devotedlytender on twitter! thanks for letting me draw my favourite tragic acoc ships again <3
[ID: Three GIF animation fanart of Dimension 20′s A Crown of Candy. The first the backs of Amethar and a humanised Calroy. The animation fades between two stills, one with Calroy’s hand at Amethar’s back, and that same hand clutching a water-steel dagger. The second GIF is of Belizabeth from the knees up, her hand held out. The animation fades between her holding the Book of Leaves, and her holding Citrina’s hand in death, fallen and bleeding. The final GIF is of the back of Amanda Maillard as she kneels. Behind her, the animation fades between Caramelinda and Donetta, in the same pose and with their hands outstretched for Amanda to kiss. End ID.]
A/N: wrote this really fast for @kindlespark because she was so nice about my calmethar fic and *sobs* i hope you like it!!
Caramelinda’s lips are dark and wine stained, her mouth tasting of fizzing cola and chocolate. Amanda thinks she could get drunk on this, on the soft feeling of golden hair in her hand and breath ghosting out across her cheek. On the way the queen smiles against her skin.
“My Queen,” Amanda says, voice low and rumbling, catching in the very bottom of her chest as Caramelinda turns those warm eyes on her.
“Darling.”
Amanda burns.
-
The sky is blue and glassy as the bulb buzzes above. Amanda’s hand wraps around the hilt of her sword, squeezing the leather out of habit, slotting her fingers against the worn grip.
“We’re having trouble to the north,” her knight, a Sir Dots of House Dippin, says, neither of them looking at each other, instead facing the sky above.
“The Sundae Sorceress?”
“Maybe. All we know for sure is trouble.”
Amanda cuts Sir Dots a look, and finds xem already smirking at her. “Informative.”
“Amethar’s always had the best spies,” xe says and looks back out at the horizon.
“You just mean Lord Cruller.”
Dots snorts, “Speaking ill of our marquis?”
“Oh, never.”
They laugh together, for a moment, in the bulb’s light. It pales in comparison to the memory of Caramelinda’s soft, perfect hands, dancing above hers against cream sheets.
“We’re a long way from home,” Dots says.
“Yes, we are.”
The bulbs blazes on.
-
The milk silk ribbons tangle in her hands, too slippery for Amanda to thread through the dress’s loops. “Just give me a moment, I almost have it.”
Laughter, the kind Amanda only ever hears when they’re alone, bubbles up from in front of her, dripping and smooth like sweet sugar sizzling on a stovetop. “It’s alright, Amanda, I can do it myself.”
Amanda huffs. “They’re behind you, m’lady. How could you ever hope to even find them?”
“Well, usually I don’t take them out all the way,” Caramelinda says, smile clear in her voice.
Amanda blushes, tries once again to thread the ribbon through its loop, and gives up. One of her hands finds the curve of the queen’s waist, the other going to brush her hair from her neck, which she presses a kiss to, right atop a freckle.
“Amanda,” Caramelinda murmurs, a soft exhale.
“Mmh,” Amanda hums into her skin, combing a hand through her hair.
“I need to go to court, my love.”
“Court can wait.” Amanda mouths at her neck, tightens the grip on her waist.
“Amanda.”
“Mmh.”
“Are you doing this so you don’t have to fix my dress?”
Amanda smiles and pushes her hands into said dress, pulling it from Caramelinda’s shoulders. “Only a little.”
Caramelinda laughs as Amanda pushes her down onto the bed.
-
“Sir Maillard.”
“My King.”
Amethar smiles from beneath his crown, and claps Amanda on the shoulder. A part of Amanda threatens to do something rash, like break his hand.
“How’re you doing?”
Amanda nods, perfunctorily. “Well.”
“Not one for conversation. That’s fine, that’s fine,” Amethar’s smiling dumbly. Amanda wants to ask him if he understands what Caramelinda gives up for this kingdom every day while he sits with that crown on his head.
“What do you want? My King,” she tacks on at the end.
“Just wanted to, eh, congratulate you for your win, out on the Sucrosi Road.”
Amanda attempts at a smile, it probably looks more like a grimace. “Thank you.”
Amethar takes a step closer to her, still grinning, “Jet would love you. She’d like to train with you sometime, maybe as a present for her eighteenth Saint’s Day?”
“It would be an honor, My King.”
Amethar claps her on the shoulder again. Amanda remembers the way she found Caramelinda, crying over a dress of blue cloth, Caramelinda, asleep atop a pile of work, Caramelinda, deep circles under her eyes and a defeated slump to her shoulders. Caramelinda, barely holding on.
Amanda does not hate Amethar. She just doesn’t like him all that much.
-
A flash of s’mores steel catches the air before sinking into the chest of the popcorn warrior before her. He falls, crumbles into pieces of kernel, and Amanda is already twisting, slamming her sword into the opponent behind her.
She’s always come alive in battle, in a way she doesn’t anywhere but with Caramelinda. It’s a mix of both the rush and the wait—each swing of her sword is practiced, watchful. She does not strike recklessly like the King she serves, her strategy more like the words from her Queen’s lips.
Battle is where she feels the closest to home, while she is away from it. Battle and war and violence and peace and sweetness and strength, creating a web of spun sugar in her head. As her sword fells another opponent, her hand raises Caramelinda’s fingers to her lips. She trips a celery stalk into the praline ground, and she presses kisses to Caramelinda’s calves, the skin behind her knees, the freckles on her thighs. She watches the light leave the eyes of those who seek to hurt her Queen, and she stares into Caramelinda’s eyes as she stands by her side in the throne room, their hands not touching but close, the space of a breath between them.
Amanda lost her helmet two opponents ago, and she whips her hair back from her face where it has fallen from her bun. Her hand comes away sticky with sweat and blood—both Vegetanian and her own—and she uses that hand to slam Sir Chocolat’s combatant down to the ground so she can drive her javelin into their chest.
Amanda misses the battlefield when she is home, and she misses home when she is battling. She hopes that the two never meet.
-
“It’s too dangerous,” Amanda says, and she has never seen Caramelinda truly angry with her, but she sees that fire now, her eyes burning and blazing. Amanda tries not to take a step back.
“You will do as I command, Sir Maillard.” This is not her Caramelinda speaking, this is the Queen of Candia, whose life is spiralling from her fingers and whose daughters do not and have never listened to her and whose closest companions are all her husband’s allies.
“Please, Cara. I can’t leave you. Uvano is—”
“He is dying, and Amethar will become emperor.” Caramelinda’s chin is turned up, but she manages to look down her nose at Amanda even though she towers over her. “Now, the Sucrosi Road requires your knights’ attention.”
“Please,” Amanda says, her voice breaking around the world.
She sinks to her knees there, in Caramelinda’s study as her Queen orders her to leave when she needs her most. It is easy, so easy, to catch Caramelinda’s hand where it is fisted at her side and press her forehead against it.
“Sir Maillard…”
“Cara, I can’t.”
Caramelinda snatches her hand away. “You must. I order it of you, I am your Queen.”
Amanda rides from the castle at sunrise, armor and heraldic flag gleaming, as the Queen of Candia swallows her heart back into her chest and watches with barely hidden rage and pain as she sends her protection away.
Amanda will never get to train Jet Rocks.
-
The war is over. The battle is not.
She holds Caramelinda where she has collapsed at the statue of her fallen daughter, fifty paces from the statue of her fallen wife. She holds Caramelinda, buries her face in her hair, breathes in her caramel and sweet sugar smell.
Amanda wishes that this fight would end, but she knows it never will. So, she will remain by her Queen’s side. She is not leaving her home again.
