Kitabare redeemed points for a story about the "juvenile attachment" of Ansella and Jenks, from either perspective. Set 23 years ago, when Ansella was 16.

"Let me have the letter!"

"Ansella, we've been through all this," sighed the Duchess of Whithorse. She examined her daughter's drawn face. Ansella had promised she'd make an effort to be cheerful and good, and her mother saw she had been trying. But the roses had faded from her cheeks and her eyes had dulled. Today, though, the light in her eyes was back, a fierce blaze and not the gentle sun her mother loved; such fire in those gentle blue eyes was alarming. "You promised there would be no further connection between the two of you."

"I said nothing about letters! Mama," Ansella said, working hard to control her voice, "we have done everything we have been asked to do. We have--we have broken with each other, and he has gone far, far away with Patrin." Tears were in her voice but she refused to let them fall from her eyes. "I have agreed to marry Prince Harsin, and have attended all the court functions I've been dragged to. I dance attendance on the Queen and I go out to parties on the Heir's arm and I pretend to be charmed when the King pinches my cheek and tells me what pretty grandchildren I'll give him. I have even left Whithorse and come to this--this--place."

She looked wildly around her. The apartment was pretty, and richly appointed in exactly the sort of old-fashioned style Ansella loved, but the view from the windows was the gloom of a winter in the capital, not the rolling grasslands of Whithorse. "I have done everything you asked, Mama. I'm marrying a man I don't love and who doesn't love me, and I will give him sons and I will smile and I will ignore his mistresses and I will play the gracious princess and be just what everyone expects me to be, but Mama!" Ansella stepped forward and held out her hand, and the tears finally fell. "I will have my letter!"

Lady Whithorse held the letter in her hand, uncertain. "You must never let anyone know, my dear. I shall let your brother know that further letters must not be written, at all costs."

"I will make sure there is no hint of scandal, Mama, I promise, now please!" She entreated with her outstretched hand again, and her mother gave in. Ansella snatched the letter up and turned away to her bedchamber.

"Ansella, burn it when you're done, please, I beg you," her mother called after her.

"If I feel the need to burn it afterward, Mama, you can be sure that I will. I understand my position." Ansella shut the door and fell on the letter greedily, nearly tearing it in her haste to pry off the seal and see more of the beloved hand.

Ansella read it over and over again, read it until it was quite dark out and she had to lean close to the fire to see. Parts of the writing had smudged so badly from her tears that they were illegible. When she was sure she knew every word, she knelt down on the little hearth and tossed the letter in among the coals. Ansella watched the fire flare up around the paper. The little flame was all the light in the room, and then it fell back, subsided, and died out completely, and she was left alone in the dark.