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The Lion's Roar (ao3)
Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
Summary: A slightly tongue-in-cheek look at the early days of Lebannen & Seserakh's marriage. Part of 'The Lion & the Rowan' series

The feasting was over, the last of the wedding guests had set sail and Lebannen felt a weight lift from his heart that he’d hardly known was there. The wedding of king and princess lay behind them: the joys of marriage, of being man and wife, stretched ahead. And joyful it was—for the first month or so. When his wife began to look tired in the mornings, and her cream skin faded to the colour of clouds, Lebannen put it down to her being with child. He waited for her to say something, and felt hurt, just a little, as the days passed and she said nothing. Not for the first time, he wished for the council of his mother, dead these two years now. Then he remembered the last piece of advice Tenar had given him before she’d gone back to Gont. ‘Never let shame spoil your happiness,’ she’d said.
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The Boy with Wolf's Eyes (ao3)
The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff
Summary: She'd moulded the boy from a snowdrift, so they said, with a wolf's eyes and three drops of bull's blood. Written for [community profile] sutcliff_swap 2015

Gault was a late fruit from his father's tree: a frost-blighted plum barely worth the plucking. That was what the boy thought sometimes, beside the sun-gold giants that were his elder brothers. His father had been the old King’s general, back in the days when the skies shook with Lugh's laughter and his war cries echoed from the mountains to the sea; back in the days when their enemies fled before them, and the Tribe prospered in all their doings. And when the greybeard set his heart on a woman young enough to be his daughter's daughter, there was none who would gainsay him, not even though she were the sister-daughter of the new King himself.
Fiction in a range of rare fandoms

January 2021

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