Rizkaland Readalong: Water Princess, Fire Prince Part 4 - The Kastle

 

First off, if you missed part 1, you can check it out here.

Second off, if you don't have your own copy of Water Princess, Fire Prince, you can nab it today only free on Kindle!

Third off, there's a giveaway at the end, so do stick around!

Let's get into it.

Summary:
They are now in the Kastle where they meet up with the Wind Prince and Leaf Princess, who turns out to be Kath and Rich. Clara is not impressed. Then, the next night, they have a ceremony where Clara and Andrew are knighted, crowned, and Tied. I.e. Rizkan equivalent of married. She is even more not impressed. They spend the night together on the Hill, get a tour of the Kastle the next day while their hands continue to be stuck together, and then the next day get shipped off to Rizkaland proper. There they recruit allies, mostly in the form of the energetic Queen Kiona and her quiet husband, King Stephan. They then go have a ball, where Clara and Andrew are kidnapped by the Dragon.

Things of note:
This section covers the least amount of time of the book (about three and a half days), but it's also the longest section of the book!
We finally find out why Kath was teasing Clara about redheads in the beginning! And singling out Andrew in particular!
Laura the Doorkeeper finally joins the party to stay in this section, and offers her help on condition. In the original published version of the book, we didn't find out what the condition was, but when I I rereleased a revised version in 2017, I was able to add it in: basically, she wants Clara and Andrew to name a kid after her.
Other thing that I added in the revision: Expanded end to the last chapter. It's still a nasty cliffhanger, but it used to end with Amber merely snatching them off the balcony. Now she deposits them in their prison and has a bit of a chat with Andrew.
Kath and Rich came to Rizkaland in a hang glider crash about a year before the opening of the book. Said hang glider crash is one of the things that aggravated Clara's fear of falling.
Clara spends most of this section at war with herself. As we'll recall, she'd been on the brink of accepting the situation with Andrew, but with Rich and Kath's appearance as the Wind Prince and Leaf Princess, it's a sudden, blatant reminder that she's been railroaded into the relationship and her inclination is to rebel. Except that he's won her trust and became her safe zone, and ... well, she's in a state of imminent implosion.
Kiona and Stephan are of the line of Violet, her gift is excellent aim, and his is commanding speech, and that's why he's so quiet. Because what he does say has power.
Jill Anna meets up with the Bugslayers in the castle and she's promoted to third-in-command of the company.
Them getting Tied meant that Kath and Rich bound their upper arms from fist to elbow in a special cord that their arms absorbed over the course of the next ten to eighteen hours. 

Favorite scenes/other stuff in this part:
Ugh! All the flirting! Having seen her at her most vulnerable, Andrew's growing more comfortable with Clara in this section, and she, well ... since she's Tied to the guy, she may as well have some fun with it. I especially enjoyed the scene where they're duling in chapter 9, and then her coaching him in how to ask her to dance.

Clara's chat first with Jill Anna and then with Kath, in chapter 8. All the feels. Kath just wants her best friend back, but Clara feels that Kath snatched away her last bit of control in her life, and !!! 

TBH, all of chapter 10 was gold. It was such a teetering, trembling bubble of tension to write. Andrew's speech, then their talk in the stairwell, then the dancing, then the balcony!!!

I also freakin' love the encounter Andrew has with Amber in the hallway. It's a fun testament to the fact that no one actually knows what Amber looks like that she's able to wander through the halls with no one noticing her. (Though, I think she might have been invisible for a good chunk of the time). And then Clara sees them and she's all like "BACK OFF, THAT'S MY MAAAAAAN." And it's such a turning point, and my heart!!!!

While we're at it, her crying herself to sleep in his arms after they're Tied, 'cause that's her last remnant of control gone, and he's just determined to be there for her as much as he can, even as he knows that it's his very existence that's her problem. 

Am I a flaming bundle of fangirl over my own characters in this part of the book? Why yes! Yes, I am!

Favorite Quotes:

  “So, this is your boyfriend?” Rich asked.
  “Ah, no,” said the Fire Prince, immediately dropping his hand.
  “He’s just the Fire Prince,” said Clara.
  “And you’re the Water Princess.” As though that meant anything. Which it did, but Clara wanted to conveniently forget that part.

  Andrew knew the question was a dangerous one, but he couldn’t help but ask it, and hope she wouldn’t react too … violently. “I’m a … match for you?”
  She stiffened, and almost pulled her hand from his arm – but his hand was over hers. He wasn’t trying to restrain her hand, and she could have gotten free if she fought, but the fight went out the moment she hit resistance. “Well, I had to say something to her to shut her up,” she countered, stiffly. “Besides, if she is working for Amber, it wouldn’t be good for her to take back a report that we stand divided.
  Andrew found he had no answer for that, but instead found himself falling, drowning in that pair of blue, blue eyes that stared up at him. It was a strange sensation, one he found he didn’t mind.

Behind the Scenes:

Parts two and three were written together in about seventeen days during NaNo. Then, right as I was getting into this meaty section of the book, our whole household got hit by a naaaaasty cold. I'm talking, lungs full of crud, every nerve of my body on fire, what is breathing anymore???? type of cold. As a result, the Tying/crowning/knighting ceremony wound up lifted pretty much wholesale from the original notebook (the words of it, the surrounding actions were rewritten), 'cause I had no energy whatsoever to do anything creative for a good solid week. (Actually, the fact that I was able to rebound so quickly and still had the book finished by the end of December was legit amazing.)

I channeled Clara hard while writing this book, and I believe it was in the middle of this section that my aunt was like "I get being upset over a book you're reading, but when you're writing it??? Aren't you the one in control???" and I was just like noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. My feels were all over the place.

As stated, there were portions added to this part's last chapter in the revised edition. The convo between Amber and Andrew in the village after their capture wasn't written until after the book was initially released, and I wrote it in back drive thru in a fit of inspiration, then posted it to the AA blog. If you'd like access to the AA blog, all you have to do is sign up for my newsletter! (points to blog sidebar) But yeah, I posted it, and the AA readers were like "this should have been in the boooook," and I was like, yeah, you're right, it should have been, so when I had a chance in the rerelease, I added it.

Rich actually has a crush on Clara! This is actually one of the things that tilts her over the edge once they get into the Kastle, because it's something she's aware of, even if neither of them had ever discussed it, and she was just starting to consider reciprocating when he pulled back after the hang glider crash. Now she knows why he pulled back and she's just ... not having it. (And, yes, fun fact, had Andrew not entered the picture, she and Rich would have probably wound up together, though it wouldn't have worked out as well. She needed Andrew's quiet stability and Rich ... well, you'll see when you meet his lovely lady ... eventually.)

I made the mistake of letting Laura mention parents in this part, which was kiiiinda a Doctor Who/River Song reference (As Laura exists as a Doctor Who/River Song reference, though her initial concept predates my knowledge of the show), and now all my readers are obsessed with figuring out who those parents are. *tsktsk* 

Discussion Questions

(Every question you answer in the comments below is an entry to win one of the Rizkaland Legends in paperback, or all four - for a total of five winners. Giveaway is U.S. only. Don't forget, you could also win a copy of LaM by preordering the kindle edition!)

1. How would you react to finding out that your best friend is suddenly thirty years older than you thought?

2. So, did you catch that the mystery girl was Amber? What do you think she wants Andrew for?

3. What are your favorite romance tropes?

4. If you were to attend a fancy ball, what dress would you wear?

5. Any favorite quotes?