Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the UK by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Tessa Gratton 2018

Tessa Gratton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008281878

Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780008281892

Version: 2018-03-09

Dedication

To Laura Rennert,

who believed in this book even more than I did.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

The Fox

Elia

Regan

Gaela

The Fox

Elia

AEFA

Gaela

Mars

Elia

Five Years Ago, Astora

Regan

Elia

The Fox

Eleven Years Ago, Innis Lear

Aefa

Elia

The Fox

Nine Years Ago, West Coast of Innis Lear

Elia

The Fox

Part Two

Five Years Ago, Eastern Border of Aremoria

Elia

Gaela

Seven Years Ago, Hartfare

The Fox

Elia

Aefa

Morimaros

Five Years Ago, Hartfare

Gaela

The Fox

Elia

Regan

The Fox

Gaela

Elia

Six Years Ago, Innis Lear

Part Three

The Fox

Twenty-One Years Ago, Hartfare

Morimaros

The Fox

Six Years Ago, Innis Lear

Elia

Gaela

Ten Years Ago, Innis Lear

Regan

Elia

Ten Years Ago, Hartfare

The Fox

Five Years Ago, Dondubhan

Part Four

Elia

The Fox

Elia

Regan

Eleven Years Ago, Dondubhan Castle

The Fox

Elia

The Fox

Regan

Elia

The Fox

Gaela

Seven Years Ago, Astora

Aefa

The Fox

Elia

Part Five

Rory

The Fox

Elia

Aefa

Morimaros

Five Years Ago, Eastern Border of Aremoria

Gaela

Elia

Eleven Years Ago, Near Dondubhan

The Fox

Morimaros

Aefa

Regan

Gaela

Twelve Years Ago, Dondubhan

Elia

The Fox

Regan

Twenty Years Ago, The Summer Seat

Elia

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Part
ONE

IT BEGINS WHEN a wizard cleaves an island from the mainland, because the king destroyed her temple.

The island is raw and steeped in her rage, making the people who grow there strong, and sharp, and ever quick to fight. Mountains claw upward in the north, and a black river gushes south and west, spreading fingers east into smaller streams that trip through the center of the island. The rush of water gathers up all the trees and flowers, giving them the blood to grow wild and tall, feeding the roots until they dig through the rock itself. Where roots merge with stone, new clear springs are born.

The people build stone shrines around these rootwaters, making holy wells in which to bless themselves, their life rituals, and their intentions. Soon these wells are the centers of towns and at the heart of every fortress or castle, connecting the people always to the blood of the island. Lords from each quarter of the land come together to build a cathedral in the White Forest, where their four domains kiss. That is the heart of the island.

Every generation a child from each quarter kingdom is given to the wild forest for dedication or sacrifice. One lord offers his firstborn, and that is a beginning, too: the beginning of a line of wizards so strong, the other lords rise up together and bury the ashes of the unruly family in saltwater sand.

But the magic survives.

For centuries after, the island bristles and growls, all wind and scoured moors, valleys of pasture lined with protective oak forests, and the jagged north mountains break for rubies and the western cliffs gleam with copper. There is iron in the southern marshes, too, raw mineral that whispers to those who can hear, and when it is forged with magic, it never cracks. The rootwells run strong, and the thin earth is more fertile than it should be, and so the island thrives, fed on the blessing of star prophecies and the teeming love of the roots.

IT BEGINS WHEN a lord of the island reads ambition’s reward in his stars, and rallies the strength of iron and wind to defeat his rivals, uniting all under one crown. He calls himself Lear, after the wizard who cleaved the island. In her honor, he raises a great fortress in the north, along the shores of a black lake so deep many call it the island’s navel. He crowns himself on the longest night, the holiest time for star prophecy; offers his blood and spit to the island’s roots, his breath to the birds and the wind, his seed to the iron, and his faith to the stars.

IT BEGINS FAR away from the furious island, in a place so different in name and air that the one could not recognize the other as being born both of the same earth. There, a young woman asks her grandmother for a ship with which to sail out past the edges of their empire, for she has a hunger to understand the world, to experience something not more broadly but more deeply, until that one thing becomes an entire universe. She says her curiosity is like sand in a storm, scouring bones smooth as glass. Her grandmother agrees, though suspects she’ll never see this daughter of her line again. “God will bring us back together,” the young woman says, and her grandmother replies to her with only an old desert prayer:

“Do not forget: you will be air, and you will be rain, and you will be dust, and you will be free.”

Perhaps that is an ending, too.

IT BEGINS ON the day two bright hearts are born to the island, one just past dawn as a crescent moon rises, and the other when the sun is brightest, obscuring the glow of stars. Their mothers knew they would be born together, as witches and best friends often do, and though it is the first child for one and the last for the other, such does not come between them. They sit beside each other, arms stretched to touch the other’s swollen belly as they grit their teeth and tell stories of what might become of their children.

IT BEGINS WHEN a queen sits in a pool of stars.

IT BEGINS WITH seven words with which to bind a crown, whispered in the language of trees: eat of our flower, and drink of your roots.

IT BEGINS AS the sun sets, the last time the final king of Innis Lear enters the cathedral at the heart of the island. This Lear has never been devoted to the roots, or paid much mind to well or wind. He is a man driven by the stars, by their motions and patterns, their singular purity and steadfastness, bold against the black reaches of night. To him, the cathedral is redundant; a person devoted to star prophecy has no need of rootwater or navel wells.

Two vast halls of carved limestone and blue-gray granite cross in the middle of the holy place, east-west arms aligned with the sky to trace the path of the sun at the summer solstice, so the Day Star rises precisely over the eastern spire; the other hall aims as true north as the ever-constant star Calpurlugh, the Eye of the Lion. In the center point where the halls cross, a well sinks deep into the core of the island, fresh and mossy, a dark channel from the womb of the earth. No ceiling caps the edifice, for what would the purpose be in closing away the sky?

When it rains, water scours the stone floor and soaks the wooden benches. It cleanses the quarter altars and fills tiny copper bowls, making simple music with only the natural touch of water to metal. On sunny days, shadows caress living vines and the poetry and icons etched into the walls, counting seasons and time of day. Clouds lower themselves in the spring to nest around the highest spires, curling soft and dewy and cool. Nothing separates sky from land here at the heart of Innis Lear.

Now it is night, and a heavy moon tips against that eastern spire. Another beginning, ready to burst.

The king walks on the soles of thin slippers, his embroidered robe dragging off his shoulders. He is old, though not old enough to look as ravaged as he does, his hair wild and damp, his eyes tight from grief. An undyed tunic falls to his knees, nearly the same pale gray as his lined face and those long fingers. Straight to the well goes this royal wraith, and he presses his hands to its stones, breathing deep of the moss, the metallic smell of the earth’s blood water. A shudder wrenches down his spine, and he grimaces.

“Now,” he commands, turning away.

Seven strong men come forward with a flat, round piece of granite. Carved off one of the massive standing stones that once marked this holy well, before the cathedral was erected around it, the granite glimmers bluish in the moonlight. The retainers roll and twist it awkwardly, straining against the ropes that bind it. Slowly they walk, turning it up the aisle. One of them is glad of this mission, two unmoved by the significance of their actions, three too worried to be quite as indifferent as they would prefer to be, and the last one alone wishing, with every ounce of his heart, that he’d been strong enough to stand against his king, to protest that this was wrong and unholy.

The men position the stone, and in a moment of desperate hesitation, the last retainer looks fearfully at the king’s expression, hoping for a reprieve. But the king’s brows are drawn as he glares at the well, as if the well itself is responsible for everything. The retainer lifts his eyes instead to the open sky above, consoling himself with the reminder that his king does nothing without permission from the stars. And so this must be fated. It must be.

Tears glimmer in the king’s lashes when the granite slab falls forward, the sound of stone on stone filling the sanctuary. With a final pull of ropes, the navel is eclipsed.

The smell of rootwater vanishes, as does a slight echo that the king had not even noticed, until it was silenced. He puts his hand atop the stone cover, caressing its roughness, and smiles grimly. With his fingers, he makes the shape of the tree of worms, a sorrowful, dangerous constellation.

IT BEGINS, TOO, with a star prophecy.

But there are so many prophecies read on the island of Lear that to say so is as good as saying it begins with every breath.

THE FOX

IN A QUIET, cool grove of chestnut trees, heart-leafed lindens, and straight-backed Aremore oaks, a fox knelt at the edge of a shallow spring.

Scars and fresh scratches marred the rich tan of his back and arms and thighs. He had already removed his uniform, weapons, and boots, piling them on a wide oak root. The Fox—who was also a man—poured clear water over himself, bathing and whispering a cleansing song that married well with the babble of spring water. He’d traced this source at the first light of dawn, glad for a forest heart from which to ask his questions.

A breeze came, tightening his skin with cold breath, and the canopy of leaves chattered welcome. Ban the Fox replied, That’s encouraging, in their tongue, shifting his vowels to match the cadence of this Aremore forest. The trees spoke wider and more graciously here than on the rocky island where he’d been born. On Innis Lear the trees tended toward hard and hearty, shaped by ocean winds and the challenge of growing against the bedrock; not green and radiant so much as gray and blue with the coolest brown barks, lush moss creeping around in hollows, and thin leaves and needles. They spoke softly, the spreading low mother oaks and thorned hedges, weaving their words into the wind so their king could not hear.

But in Aremoria there was room and soil, enough for loud trees more concerned with bearing fruit than surviving winter storms or heartless kings. They conversed with each other, sighing and singing to please themselves, to taunt colorful birds, to toy with the people’s dreams. It had taken Ban months to win the trust of the Aremore trees, for he’d arrived angry and corded over by bitter flavors, far too spicy at such a young age. They’d not welcomed an invading thistle, but eventually he charmed them, grew to be as familiar as if he’d been rooted here.

Slipping deeper into the spring now, Ban untied the tiny braids patched through his thick, dark hair. His toes sank into silt as water curled about his ankles; he kept up his idle banter with the nearby linden trees, who had a vibrant sense of humor. Finally, with his hair loose and falling stiffly at his ears and neck, Ban ducked himself entirely into the spring water.

All conversation dulled. Ban held his breath, waiting to hear the pulse of this forest heart. A deep well might serve better, but the spring was natural, built only of the earth. He needed the rhythm under his skin to properly connect, to find the paths of magic he could use to track the loathsome Burgun army and certify their retreat.

Peace and cold solitude surrounded Ban. He parted his lips to allow in a mouthful of water and swallowed it, drinking in the tranquility. He slowly stood up.

Water streamed off his rising form. A small man, with not a strip of comfortable fat, Ban was all tawny muscles and sharp edges. Dark hair blackened by water hung heavy around large eyes, the brown and dark shadow green of forests. He blinked and droplets of water like tiny crystals clung to his spiky lashes. Had anyone witnessed his emergence, it would’ve been easy to think Ban a thorn of magic, grown straight from the spring.

Refreshed and blessed, he crouched at the shore to dig his hands into the mud. He spread it up his wrists like gauntlets, smoothing the gray-brown mud into a second skin over his own. With it he painted streaks across his chest, down his stomach, around his genitals, and in spirals down his thighs. He slapped handprints over his shoulders, splattering them down his back as far as he could reach.

Now, fully a creature of this specific earth, adopted child of these balmy trees, Ban the Fox picked his way back into the forest. Every footstep brought him words whispered up his legs: starwise, starwise, forward, this way, turn here, this way, starwise again, and nightwise now! The trees directed him toward the goal he’d requested, and finally Ban reached the tallest of them, at the edge of the forest, where he might best catch hold of a wind willing to report on Burgun.

A spreading, ropey old chestnut waited, roots buried several horse lengths off the line of trees. Ban glanced all around, at the churned earth of the valley, where days ago the Burgun army had camped. No grass still lived except in scattered clusters, the rest trampled and flattened and gone dry. Abandoned fire pits were scorched scars, and he could see the heaped dirt of covered privy lines.

No men or women remained, and so Ban dashed across the narrow strip of open land, using the speed to launch himself up the trunk of the chestnut. He caught the lowest branch with a grunt, swung up, and climbed high. The tree was sturdy enough that it never shivered with his weight, merely chuckled at his tickling grip.

Three small birds burst away from his intrusion, and the chestnut warned him to mind the eastern circle of limbs, where he’d already angered some brown squirrels.

Ban climbed along the ladder of boughs, up and out, toward the highest northwestern branch. There, a line of charred lightning strike allowed him a perch with a view of the valley for miles ahead of him, and of the rolling green forest canopy behind. He pushed aside long, serrated leaves and gripped a branch at his shoulder, only as wide as his wrist, to steady himself.

Ban stood, balanced carefully.

Wind caught his hair, pulling it out of his face. He asked the tree to warn him if anything approached, animal or person, then opened his mouth to taste the flavors of the air.

Smoke, old death, and the dusty musk of crows.

Ban lifted onto his toes to reach into the air. He caught a feather, black and smooth. In the inky color he saw shifting waves of men and horses; he saw a cliffside and clouds of reddish smoke, sparkling rocks, rotten flowers, and an empty white hand.

He slid the edge of the feather along his tongue, spat onto the back of his hand, and rubbed it against the chestnut bark hard enough to score the skin bloody. The language of birds was full of dreams, and impossible for men to interpret, it was said. But Ban had learned otherwise, these six years in Aremoria, at least if he could use pain, or blood, to facilitate the translation.

His hand throbbed now, and Ban closed his eyes to recall the pulse of the tranquil spring water. Slowing his breath, he brought his heart into alignment with the forest heart, through this focus of tender skin.

The crow’s many images became one: an army dressed in maroon limped far from here, a full day and night’s ride, backs to him and Aremoria, facing the north cliffs of Burgun.

Thank you, Ban said in the language of trees, and tucked the feather into the crook of leaves where it became a gift for the chestnut. He offered to trim the dead branch, but the chestnut was pleased with its storm-gifted scar. Ban rather liked his own scars, too, for how they proved his experiences and belonged to none but him, and he told the tree as much as he returned to the ground.

Ban landed in a crouch, cold suddenly in the shade. The sun sank over the far mountains bordering the edge of Burgun lands, and Ban wished his clothes were nearer. He’d return to camp, report to Morimaros, and then eat, drink, sleep the short summer night away, not once looking up at the glinting stars.

The evening forest whistled and hummed. The trees observed the usual yawning transition to twilight: they watched animals wake for the hunt, wondered if the king of deer would drive off a lone wolf trapped here, apart from her pack, by the armies, or if that most gentle rabbit would neglect to avoid the oak full of owls. Hungry himself, Ban considered joining the fray, stalking that wolf to try his own hand at her. He smelled like the mud of the forest now, and just a slight trail of his dried blood. It would keep their advantages even.

But if he did not return to camp before darkness set in full, the king would worry, though Ban had tried for years to teach him that there was no need to be concerned with the Fox’s safety in a forest.

It made his lips curl in a small, involuntary smile to think on: a man as good and bold as Morimaros of Aremoria concerned for a bastard like Ban.

So distracted was Ban, it took a scream from three young linden trees to alert him to the man who had invaded the heart spring grove.

Immediately alert, Ban crouched low to make his way around from the south, where the canopy was thickest and more shadows would hide him. Listening to the gentle prodding of trees, Ban crawled along, only his eyes gleaming.

At the edge of the grove, he lowered himself onto his stomach and slipped under a rose vine, enjoying the delicate perfume even as the hooked thorns brushed the dry mud on his shoulders.

Seated on the very root where Ban had left his belongings was none other than King Morimaros. A midsize, handsome man with short, practical dark hair and a matching beard, in the regular uniform of the army except for the long orange leather coat and the royal ring on his forefinger. Ban looked about everywhere, confirming with the trees that Morimaros was alone. Casually reading a letter.

Exasperation and a shot of fear made Ban grit his teeth and creep backward. He’d show Morimaros how stupid it was to be alone, even with the war over, even with Burgun fled.

He climbed up an oak, whispering a request that the tree hold still, and then the next, too, as he stepped across to it, so that they would not shake their leaves and reveal to the king his location. Thus, Ban walked gently from tree to tree, like an earth saint, and sank finally into the embrace of the oak under which Morimaros sat. Ban climbed down, and even when the king looked suddenly out at a cracked branch in the west, Ban was invisible to him, directly above.

In one swift motion, Ban dropped onto the king’s back, threw an arm around his neck, and pulled. But Morimaros grasped his arm and bent, flinging Ban heels over head, hard onto the muddy shore of the spring. Ban rolled onto his hands and the balls of his feet, and glared at the king, eyes and teeth bright in his muddy, wild face.

Morimaros had his sword free, knees bent, ready to defend himself again. “Ban?” he said after a slow moment.

Ban stood. “You were very vulnerable, Your Majesty.”

“Not so, it seems.” The king smiled. He sheathed his sword and picked up the fallen letter.

“Why come out alone? I was on my way to returning.” Ban crossed his arms over his bare chest, suddenly too aware he was naked but for mud-scrawled magic.

“I’m not allowed much solitude, and this evening is perfect for it,” Morimaros said. He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair, a sign of slight embarrassment. “And I would speak with you privately on a certain matter, ah, pertaining to this letter.” He brandished it, and Ban could see the deep blue wax of Lear still clinging to one edge.

All his skin went cold with dread, but Ban nodded because he had to: this was his king, his commander, no matter what else they might be to each other.

The Fox strode into the water and ducked down fully into it, allowing his entire body to be enveloped. It was not peace and cool calm he felt as the water brushed away mud, tickled his spine and the backs of his knees. No, it was a roar of suppressed memories: clenched fists and dismissive words; sheer peaks, crashing waves, and a howling, powerful wind; haunting sweet laughter and black eyes with short, curled lashes; tiny iridescent beetles.

Ban, the bastard of Errigal, scrubbed his skin clean and turned over in the spring, spinning once, twice, and a third time. Rising, he wiped his face, spat water, shook his head like a dog.

When he emerged, he desperately thought of his Aremore name, the one he’d earned, trying to will himself back to center.

The Fox. Ban the Fox.

His eyes opened to see that Morimaros offered him trousers. Ban muttered thanks and dragged them on, tied the waist up and used the plain wool shirt to wipe drips of water from his face and neck, chest and arms.

“Now,” Morimaros said, clasping his shoulder, “I have wine in the crook of that root. Read this letter.”

Ban followed the king, reminding himself he was trusted here, he was honored by the grand crown of Aremoria. Whatever Lear wanted, Ban would attack it from Morimaros’s side. Together, the men sat.

Morimaros gave over the letter and uncorked the brown glass bottle of wine with his teeth. The writing was roughly scratched into the parchment. Ban read:

To the honored King Morimaros of Aremoria,

We of Innis Lear invite you to join us at our Summer Seat for a rare celestial occasion. The Zenith Court will commence some two weeks from the writing of this note, on the full moon after the Throne rises completely to mark the ascent of the Queens of Autumn. The greatest of our island shall attend, and we look forward to introducing you to our youngest, with whom you have corresponded these last months, with hope I am certain in your heart. We are eager to set our daughters onto their star paths, and know your attendance will aid us in that desire.

With the blessings of the stars in our words,

Lear

Ban managed to remain calm, despite the implications involving Elia Lear. He read through the letter again, and Morimaros swung the bottle of wine toward him.

Trading his thirst for the burn of memory, Ban took a long drink. It was sweet and crisp, very easy to swallow. Not like the wine and ale of Innis Lear. Not like the hard yearning that tugged at him even now to go back. To touch the iron magic of Errigal again. To set things right and show his father and that king what he’d become. A confidant of this king, a renowned soldier and spy. Important. Necessary. Honored.

Wanted.

“Did you know her?” Morimaros asked, interrupting Ban’s sputtering thoughts.

“The youngest princess?” Ban lightly avoided her name.

But the king did not.

“Elia,” he said simply, and then easily continued. “She is the star priest, we hear, preferring this to her title. Though I met her as such, once, a long while ago. When her mother died, I traveled to Innis Lear for the year ceremony. Princess Elia was only nine. It was my first time in another country, acting as Aremoria. Though my father lived still, of course. He didn’t die until I was twenty.” Morimaros took back the wine and sipped at it. Ban studied the king, trying not to imagine him speaking with Elia, touching her fingers. Morimaros was gilded and handsome, a strong man, and one of the only good ones Ban had ever known. Elia deserved such a husband, and yet, he could not imagine her living here, in Aremoria, away from the twisted island trees, the harsh moors, the skies overwhelmed with stars.

Ban shook his head before he could stop himself. He’d thought of her, though he’d tried to forget those years before he’d been the Fox. Thought of the smooth brown planes of her cheeks, her black as well-water eyes, the streaks of improbable copper in her cloud of dark brown spiral curls. Her warm mouth and eager young hands, her giggle, the wonder with which she dug into tree hollows with him, whispering to the heart oaks, to the roots, to the sparrows and worms and butterflies. He’d thought of her most when he was alone in enemy camps, or washing blood off his knife, or cramped and stinking for days in the hiding holes the roots made for him. She saved him, kept him quiet, kept him sane. His memories of her made him remember to stay alive.

“Did you know her?” Morimaros asked again.

“Barely, sir.” And yet more entirely than Ban had known anyone in his life. She once was the person who’d known him best, but Ban wondered what her reply would be, if asked the same question today. In five lonely, bloody years, she’d not written to him, and so Ban had never sent word to her on the wings of these Aremore birds. Why would she want to hear from a bastard now, if she hadn’t before? And now they were grown.

The king said, “I’ll leave next week. Sail around the south cape to the Summer Seat.”

Ban nodded absently, staring down at the dirt beside his toes.

“Return to Innis Lear with me, my Fox.”

His head snapped up. Yes, he thought, so viciously he surprised himself.

King Morimaros watched Ban with clear blue eyes. His mouth was relaxed, revealing nothing—a special skill of this king’s, to present a plain mask to the world, holding his true opinions and heart close.

Home.

“I … I would not be a good man at your side, Majesty.”

“Ban, here and now call me Mars. Novanos would.”

“When we discuss Lear it reminds me too keenly of my place, sir.”

Morimaros grimaced. “Your place is at my side, Ban, or wherever I put you. But I know how that old king thinks of you. Is his daughter cut of same cloth?”

“As a girl, Elia was kind,” Ban said. “But I do not know how I can serve you there.”

The king of Aremoria drank another portion of wine and then set the bottle firmly in Ban’s hand. The Fox recognized the low ambition in Morimaros’s voice when he said, “Ban Errigal, Fox of Aremoria, I have a game for you to play.”

ELIA

THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER of Lear threw herself up the mountainside, gasping air cold enough to cut her throat. She hitched her heavy leather bag higher on her shoulder, taking the steeper path in order to reach the top on time. Her fingers scrabbled at the rough yellow grass, and her boots skidded on protruding limestone. She stumbled and ground her skirts into the earth, then dragged herself up to the wide pinnacle, finally reaching her goal.

Elia Lear lay flat, rolling onto her back, and sighed happily despite her raw throat and the dirt under her fingernails. Above, the sky tilted toward night, edged in gentle pink clouds and the indigo silhouettes of the mountains cradling these moors. She shivered and hugged her arms close to her chest. This far north on Innis Lear, even summer breathed a frosty air.

But the solitude here, as near to the sky as she could hope to reach, was Elia’s greatest bliss. Here, it was only her spirit and the stars, in a silent, magnificent conversation.

The stars never made her feel angry, guilty, or forlorn. The stars danced exactly where they should. The stars asked her for nothing.

Elia glanced up at the purple sky. From here she had a clear view of the western horizon, where at any moment the Star of First Birds would appear and hang like a diamond at the tip of the Mountain of Teeth.

All around her, the golden moor swept down and away in rolled peaks and valleys, marred by jutting boulders like fallen chunks of the moon. Wind scoured the air, hissing an upland song from the northwestern edge of the mountains, heading south toward the inner White Forest and east toward the salty channel waters. The princess could have felt quite abandoned out here, but the shadowed valleys hid roads and some tiny clusters of homes; it was where the families lived, those who cared for the sheep and goats grazing this land—some of which could be seen freckling the hills with gray and white.

If Elia looked down to the south, she would see the star tower clinging to a limestone outcrop, built centuries ago by an old lord before the island was united, for a military stronghold. The first King Lear had confiscated it for the star priests, opened up the fortified walls and left them to crumble, but with elegant wood and slate from the south he had lifted the tower itself taller, until it was the perfect vantage point for making accurate star charts and reading the signs on every point of the horizon. Elia had lived and studied there since she turned nineteen last year, and every morning she dotted white star-marks onto her forehead to prove her skills as a priest and prophet. She did not yet consider herself a master, but hoped one day she might.

This morning’s marks had smeared slightly, as they often did, for Elia spent much of her time brushing errant, wind-tossed curls away from her face. Her companion, Aefa, often made sure to wrap a veil or scarf about Elia’s hair, or insisted on using ribbons or at least braids to keep her hair in place, as befit a princess, if not a prophet. Elia could not help preferring to leave it free, tended by nothing but bergamot oil from the Third Kingdom, and perhaps a few begrudged decorations near her face. It put her in contrast to her sisters, neither of whom would leave their bedrooms without their costumes fixed and perfect.

Aefa was ever despairing that Elia made her worst choices whenever she did so with her sisters in mind. Such fussing was what a lady’s companion was for, and as her father, Lear’s truth-telling Fool, was always willing to argue, so did Aefa uphold the family tradition. It was enough to make the princess grateful for these stolen moments alone.

Sitting, the princess hauled the leather bag into her lap and unknotted the thong holding it shut. She pulled out a folded wooden frame and a roll of parchment to fix to it so she could mark the progress of star appearances onto a simple chart.

Elia’d wagered this morning with the men in the Dondubhan barracks that it would be tonight the Star of First Birds finally moved into position to sparkle exactly over the distant peak. Danna, the star priest mentoring her, had disagreed when she told him, so he watched from the roof of the star tower at this very moment, while Elia had climbed here, even higher, to see first. The dignity of winning mattered more to her than the handful of coins she had bet.

Oh, how shocked her father would be at such a wager.

For a moment, she wished he was here with her.

Her smile reappeared as she imagined refitting the tale into a shape palatable for Lear. Assuming she won, of course. If she lost, she’d never confess it to her father.

This youngest princess favored her late mother in most ways, being small and sweetly round, and warm brown all over: skin and eyes and hair that spiraled in ecstatic curls. Her father was tall and pale as limestone, with the straightest brown hair in the world. What she lacked in his looks, she made up for by sharing his vocation to the stars.

Lear would say, The Star of First Birds is brighter than other stars, and she moves unlike any other. Out of their fixed pattern, and yet with her five sisters. The Stars of Birds fly through all the rest, influencing the shapes and constellations. When you were born, my star, the First and Third Bird stars crowned your Calpurlugh.

She knew the patterns of her birth chart by heart, and the brilliant star at its center; Calpurlugh, the Child Star, symbolic of strong-heartedness and loyalty. The Star of First Birds was purity of intention and the Third flew near to the roots of the Tree of the Worm, so her Child Star attributes were affected—or distracted—by holy thoughts just as much as unseen decay. Her father said the influence of the Worm in this case meant Elia would always be changing others or the world in ways she could not see or predict. Elia wondered if holy bones or some other wormwork might have a different answer, but Lear refused to taint his royal star readings with such base matters, so she couldn’t say. To him, the stars were beyond reproach, disconnected from death, filth, animal lust, or instinct. All the magic of the world existed beneath the stars, and beneath them magic should remain.

Ban would know which tree to ask, Elia thought, then covered her lips with her fingers as if she’d spoken aloud. That name needed be banished from her heart forever, as the boy himself had been banished years ago.

Disloyalty and longing twisted together in the back of her throat. It went against her instincts to deny herself even the memory of him, yet for so long, she’d done exactly that. She breathed deeply and imagined the feelings diffuse out of her with every breath, making her cool and calm as a star. Singular. Pure. Apart. She had learned long ago that stray passions needed to be leashed.

It was difficult, for Elia was a daughter of Lear. All her family were born of the same material, and all tended toward high emotions: Gaela, the eldest, wore her anger and disdain like armor; Regan was a skillful manipulator of her own heart as well as the hearts of others; and the king caught his grief and leftover love up in layers of rigid rules, though they never quite contained him. Elia, unfortunately, had loved too easily as a child: the island, her family, and him, the wind and roots and stars. But love was messy. Only the stars were constant, and so it was better to be exactly what her father wanted: loyal, strong, pure starlight. A saint for Innis Lear, rather than a third princess.

Thus was she able to bear the weight of Gaela’s disappointed glares, and answer Regan’s sly mocking with simple courtesy. She was able to swallow her longings and her worries and any joy, too, as well as the enduring sorrow that her sisters did not care for her at all. She was able to bear up under the weight of Lear’s rages and soothe him instead of lashing out to make things worse as Gaela and Regan did. Able to expel any strong emotion by scattering it in the sunlight like fog off a lake, until everything she felt was naught but starry reflections.

“There,” Elia whispered to herself now, as between one blink and the next, she caught the sparkle of the distant Star of First Birds. It was only a shimmer of light, and Elia stopped breathing to steady her gaze, wishing she could still the tremble of her heart, too, for one perfect moment.

“Elia!”

Twisting to peer down toward the steep southern road and the call of her name, Elia at first saw nothing but a distant flock of tiny swifts, darting close to the ground. Then she spied her companion Aefa waving at her with both arms, and beyond, a rider leaning over his saddle to press onward for the star tower’s courtyard. A star-shaped breastplate gleamed in the final evening light, belted across his dark blue gambeson to mark him a soldier of the king. From the back of his saddle rose a trio of flags: one the white swan of Lear, one the maroon crown of Burgun, and one the plain orange field that belonged to the king of Aremoria.

Letters.

Elia touched a hand to the undyed collar of her dress, the space just over her heart. The last letter from her father was folded there, hidden between seam and skin. It had arrived the day before yesterday; the words he had written were not worrisome in themselves, as they were but the usual, dear ramblings he sent and had always sent. Filled with his own star chart calculations, gossip from the Summer Seat, irritation at his first daughter’s martial interests, and sneers at the temper of his second son-in-law; and yet this one was far different from any that had come before.

Dalat, my dear, he had scrawled in his swooping, casual hand.

Elia’s mother, who had been dead these twelve years.

The shape of the name remained, sharp enough to break a daughter’s heart.

Getting to her feet and stuffing the parchment back into her bag of charts, Elia reluctantly turned south, picking her way down to the road. She’d much rather have remained and done her work, but knowing a new letter waited would distract her and she’d lose count, lose the patterns threaded across the sky even as she dutifully wrote them down. Never mind the letters from those other kings, Burgun and Aremoria, courting her for their politics and war. Such things did not concern her: Elia would never wed, she’d long ago determined. Both her sisters had contentious marriages: Gaela because her husband was a beast, though one Gaela had chosen for herself, and Regan because her lord’s family was a generations-old enemy of the house of Lear, a threat Regan would gladly lose herself inside.

No, Elia would marry only the stars, live her life as a solitary priest, and care for her ailing father, never in danger from too much earthly love.

This latest deluded salutation from Lear was even more proof of that danger. When their mother had died, their father lost his heart, and with it everything that kept his mind at ease and actions in balance. Her sisters had turned ever more inward, away from both Lear and Elia. The island, too, seemed to have withdrawn, offering less abundant harvests and giving more weight to the cold, cutting wind. All in mourning for the lost, much-loved queen.

Dalat, my dear.

The star signs these past nights had offered Elia no comfort, no guidance, though Elia had charted every corner of the sky. Can I save my Lear? she had asked again and again.

No answer had emerged, though she wrote down and dismissed a dozen smaller prophecies: the storm is coming; a lion will not eat your heart; you will give birth to the children of saints; the rose of choice will bloom with ice and rage. They meant nothing. There was no star called the Rose of Choice, only a Rose of Decay and a Rose of Light. Lions had never lived on Innis Lear. Earth saints had long ago left the world. And there were always, always storms at the end of summer.

The only way to piece out the true answer was to ask the trees, listen to the voices in the wind, or sip of rootwater. This was the wisdom of Innis Lear.

Elia stopped, recalling the feel of her bare toes digging into the rough grass, sliding her fingers over the ground to hunt up crickets or fat iridescent beetles.

She remembered once Ban had taken her hand in his own and then placed a brilliant green beetle onto her finger like an emerald ring. She’d giggled at the tickling insect legs, but not let go, looking up into his eyes: green and brown and shining just like the beetle’s shell. A pearl of the earth for a star of the sky, he’d said in the language of trees.

In truth, she hardly remembered how to whisper words the earth could understand. It had been so long since she’d shut herself off, swearing to never speak their language again.

So long since he’d been gone.

Darkness veiled the dusty white road as Elia finally arrived: the sun was entirely vanished and no moon risen, and the star tower did not light torches that would ruin the night-sight of their priests.

Aefa stood at the shoulder of the messenger’s horse, arguing to be given the letters. But the soldier said, clearly not for the first time, “I will give these only to the priest Danna or the princess herself.”

“And so here I am,” Elia said. She need prove herself in no way other than her presence; there were no other women who looked like her and her sisters, not across all of Innis Lear. Not any longer. Not for half her life.

“Lady.” The messenger bowed. He began to unseat himself, but Elia shook her head.

“No need, sir, if you’d like to ride on. I’ll take my letters, and you’re welcome at the tower for simple food and simpler accommodations, or you have just enough light to return to Dondubhan and sleep in those barracks. Only wait there for my responses in the morning before you depart.”

“I thank you, princess,” he said, taking the letters from the saddle box.

She reached up to accept and asked his name, a habit from her youth in the castles. He told her and thanked her, and she and Aefa backed out of his way as he turned his horse and nudged it quicker on the road to the barracks.

Elia wandered toward the star tower with her letters, studying the three seals. The leather bag carrying her charts and frame, candle-mirrors and charcoal sticks, pressed heavily on her shoulder, and she finally slumped it off, settling herself down on the slope of moor beside it.

“Did you spy your star?” Aefa asked, herself gangly and pretty, like a fresh hunting hound, with plain white skin tending toward rose under heightened emotion and chestnut hair bound up in curling ribbons. Unlike Elia’s gray wool dress, the uniform of a star priest, Aefa wore bright yellow and an overdress in the dark blue of Lear’s household.

“Yes,” Elia murmured, still staring at the letters.

A long moment passed. She could not choose one to open.

“Elia! Let me have them.” She held out her hand, and Elia gave over the letters from Burgun and Aremoria.

Clearing her throat, Aefa tore through the Burgun seal, unfolded the letter, and then sneezed. “There’s—there’s perfume on it, oh stars.”

Elia rolled her eyes, as Aefa clearly wished her to, and then the Fool’s daughter held the letter to the last of the twilight and began to read.

“My dear, I hope, Princess of Lear— Elia, he is so forward! And trying not to be by acknowledging it, so you must in some way give permission or not! —I confess I have had report from an agent of mine as to your gentle, elegant beauty— What is elegant beauty, do you think? A deer, or a reaching willow tree? Really, I wonder that he does not provide some poetic comparison. Burgun has no imagination—your gentle, elegant beauty, and I cannot wait many more months to witness it myself. I have recently been defeated in battle, but thoughts of you hold my body and my honor upright though all else should weigh upon my heart— His body upright, indeed; I know what part of his body he means, and it’s very indelicate of him!”

“Aefa!” The princess laughed, smothering it with her hands.

Aefa quirked her mouth and wrinkled her nose, skimming the letter silently. “Burgun is all flattery, and then, despite telling you he’s been trumped on the battlefield, he still finds ways to suggest he is handsome and virile, and perhaps a wifely partner would complete his heart enough to … well to make him a better soldier. Affectionately, passionately yours, Ullo of Burgun. Worms of earth, I don’t like him. So on to the king of Aremoria. I wonder if Ullo knows the general who defeated him also pays court to you.”

Elia drew her knees near to her chest and tilted her head to listen better. The letter from Lear pressed between her two hands, trapped.

“Lady Elia, writes Morimaros, which I approve of much better. Simple. An elegantly beautiful salutation, if I may say so. Lady Elia, In my last letter I made it known I was nearing the end of my campaign against the claim of Burgun— This king refuses to even give Burgun the title kingdom! What a pretty slight. Certainly this king knows who his rival is—against the claim of Burgun and can report now on the eve of what I believe to be our final confrontation that I will win, and am sure this shift in political lines will too shift the direction of your thoughts. In Aremoria’s favor, I expect, but if not, let me add we have a nearly unprecedented harvest this year, in the south of barley and— Elia! My stars! There is now a list of Aremore crops! He says nothing of his hopes for you, nothing about himself! Do we even know what sort of books he enjoys or philosophies he holds? At least Burgun treats you like a woman, not a writing exercise.”

“Are you swinging toward favoring Burgun, then?” Elia asked lightly.

Turning her back to the silver light still clinging to the mountains in the west, Aefa shot her princess a narrow look and held the letter toward her. Elia could see it consisted of three perfectly lined paragraphs. Aefa pulled the paper right to her face and read, “I have petitioned to your father that I be welcomed in Innis Lear in the near future, that you might look upon me and perhaps tell me something of my stars. Oh. Oh, Elia, well there. That is his final line, and perhaps he is not so dry as everything. His signature is the same as before. Yours, Aremoria King. I dislike that so very vehemently. Not his name, even, but his grand old title. It’s like your sister refusing to call Connley anything but Connley, when everyone knows he has a name his mother gave him.”

Elia closed her eyes. “It is not a letter from a man to a woman, but from a crown to the daughter of a crown. It stirs me not at all, but it is at least honest.”

The huff of Aefa’s skirts as she plopped to the earth beside her princess spoke all the volumes necessary.

“And your father’s letter?” Aefa asked quietly.

“You might as well light a candle. I’m done star gazing tonight.” Elia danced her fingers along the edge of the letter; it was so thin, one parchment page only, when it was not unusual for her father’s letters to be five or six pages, thickly folded. From the leather bag, Aefa dug out a thin candle and a candle-cradle attached to a small, bent mirror. She whispered a word in the language of trees, snapped her fingers, and a tiny flame appeared. Elia pressed her lips in disapproval as she snapped the letter’s wax seal in two, cracking the midnight blue swan through the wings. Aefa set the candle into its cradle so that the flame lit the mirror. This device was meant to illuminate star charts while keeping brightness from the eyes of the priests who needed to stare high and higher into the darkest heavens. In Aefa’s hands, it angled all the light onto the letter and Lear’s scrawl of writing.

Elia, my star—

For a moment the youngest princess could not continue, overwhelmed with her relief. The words shook before her eyes. Elia took a fortifying breath and charged on. She murmured the contents of the letter aloud to Aefa: “Our long summer’s absence is at an end. Come home for the Zenith Court, this third noontime after the Throne rises clear. The moon is full then, and will bless my actions. I shall do for my daughters what the stars have described, finally, and all beings shall in their proper places be set. Your suitors are invited, too, for we would meet them and judge them. Your beloved father and king.”

“That’s all?” Aefa said, rather incredulous. She pressed her face to Elia’s cheek, to get a look at the letter. “When is that? The Throne is part of the Royal sequence, and they began a month ago … it’s the … second? After the Hound of Summer? So …”

“Six days,” Elia said. “The Zenith Court will be six days from now, when the moon is full.”

“Why can’t he just say, come on the Threesday of next week? And what does he mean? All beings in their proper place? Will he finally name Gaela his heir? That’ll set the island off, though it’s inevitable. She has to be crowned someday.”

Elia folded the letter. “I hope so. Then in the winter we can have a new queen. Before Father loses his faculties, before his continued hesitation breeds more intrigue and plotting.” She turned her eyes toward the west again, where the vibrant diamond of the Star of First Birds should gleam.

But the star was shrouded by a single long strip of black cloud cutting across the sky like a sword.

REGAN

IN THE EMERALD east of Innis Lear lounged the family seat of the Dukes Connley, a castle of local white limestone and blue slate imported from Aremoria. At only a hundred years old, it was the youngest of the castle seats, built around the old black keep from which Connley lords of old once ruled. No city filled the space between its walls, nor abutted the sides, though the next valley south flourished with people devoted to the duke, as did the valleys to the north and west. None could deny the Connley line was expert at inspiring loyalty.

Perhaps because the Connleys were defiantly and fixedly loyal to themselves. Perhaps because they continued to study wormwork and respect the language of trees, despite the king’s decrees. Or perhaps only because they were so beautiful, and strove to reflect such personal attributes in their castles and roads and local tax policies.

Connley Castle itself consisted of three concentric, towered walls, each higher and lovelier than the last, and in the center a new, white keep faced the old, black one, matching it stone for stone. At least externally, as the guts of the black keep had long since crumbled. Trees grew up from its center; vines and creeping flowers had taken over arrow slits and arched doorways. The cobbles had cracked, surrendered to the earth more than a generation ago. One ancient oak flourished at the very heart of the keep. It had been planted by one of the lords for the pillar of his throne room, back in the days when baser magic topped the island, and few cared for the path of stars. There, the wife of the current Duke Connley kept her shrines and working altars. And it was there she now knelt, stricken, among those winding old roots, surrounded by a bright pool of her own blood.

Regan, the second daughter of Lear, had come to the shady courtyard to listen to the whispers of the island trees and to recast the quarter blessings that rooted her magic to Innis Lear. Each altar was created with a slab of rock—carried by her own hands from a corner of the island in the four great directions—settled against the crumbling stone walls with permission from the oak, tied down through three seasons of growth and decay. Their lines of magic crossed through the heart of the oak tree, and its roots dove deep enough into the bedrock of the island to hear the other powerful trees, to pass Regan’s words, and to collect for her the concerns, complaints, and hopes of all who still spoke through the wind.

These days there were many complaints, and while her altar blessings should have lasted a full year, the island’s magic had become so withdrawn she had to bless the altars at the turn of every season. She needed living rootwater, but such holy wells were forbidden and Regan had to rely upon the witch of the White Forest for a steady supply.

Recasting and blessing the altars was the work of an afternoon, and Regan had just moved on to the final altar in the east when she felt the first twinge at the small of her back.

She paused, telling herself she’d imagined it, and had remained kneeling before the eastern altar. But the language of trees would not spring to her lips easily; Regan’s attention was all for her womb, waiting, hardly able to breathe.

The delicate thread of nausea might’ve been overlooked by one unused to such things. But Regan had been through this before, and so followed the nausea as it turned over into a knot between her hips, then pulled tight.

The princess’s cool brown hands began to tremble. She knew this pain well, and how to hold rigid until it passed.

And pass it did, but not without leaving that ache behind, an echo of itself that radiated down the backs of her thighs and up her spine, hot and cold and hot again.

“No,” Regan hissed, scraping her nails too hard on the stone altar. One cracked, and that pain she welcomed. Her breath caught like a broken necklace, dragging up, up, up, and chattering her teeth. She bared them in rage and forced her breathing into long, slow rolls.

Was it her? Was this failure some greater symptom of the island cracking?

Any beast could be a mother—there were babes in nests and hovels and barnyards. It was only Regan who seemed unable to join them.

When the next cramp caught her, she cried out, shoved away from the altar, and curled tightly over her knees. She whispered to herself that she was healthy and well and most of all strong, as if she could change what happened next by ordering her body to obey her.

A pause in the pain left her panting, but Regan ground her teeth and stood up on her bare feet. Though preferring quite formal attire, even in her husband’s castle, Regan had come to the altars today in only the thinnest red wool dress and no underthings. She’d left her slippers outside the arched gate and untied the ribbons from her wavy brown hair, allowing it to spill past her waist. Hers was the longest, straightest hair of her sisters, and her skin the lightest, though still a very cool brown. There was the most of their father, Lear, in her looks: the shape of his knifelike lips, and flecks of Lear’s blue lightened his daughter’s chestnut eyes.

Regan walked carefully to the ropey old oak tree to pray, her hands on two thick roots. I am as strong as you, she said in the language of trees. I will not break. Help me now, mother, help me. I am strong.

The tree sighed, its bulk shivering so that the high, wide leaves cast dappled shadows about like rain in a storm.

Regan went to the northern altar and cut the back of her wrist with a stone dagger, bleeding into a shallow bowl of wine. Take this blood from me instead, she whispered, pouring the bloody wine over the altar, where north root was etched in the language of trees. The maroon liquid slid into the rough grooves, turning the words dark. Take this, and let me get to my room where my mothers’ milk tonic is, where my husband—

The princess’s voice cut away at the sensation of blood slipping out of her, tickling her inner thighs with dishonest tenderness.

She returned to the grand oak tree on slow legs, sat on the earth between two roots, and slumped over herself. Despair overwhelmed her every thought, as hope and strength dripped out of her on the heels of this treacherous blood.

The sun lowered itself in the sky until only the very crown of the oak was gilded. The courtyard below was a cold mess of shadows and silver twilight. Regan shivered, despite tears hot in her eyes. In these slow hours she allowed herself a grief she would deny if confronted by any but her elder sister. Grief, and shame, and a cord of longing for her mother who died when she was fourteen. Dalat had birthed three healthy girls, had done it as far away from her own land and god and people as a woman could get. And Regan was here among the roots and rocks of her home. She should have been—should have been able.

The earth whispered quiet, harsh sighs; Regan heard the rush of blood in her ears and through the veins of the tree. She saw only the darkness of her own closed eyes, and smelled only the thick, musty scent of her womb blood.

“Regan, are you near?”

It was the sharp voice of her husband. She put her hands on her head and dug her nails in, gripped her hair and tore until it hurt.

His boots crunched through the scattered grasses, over fallen twigs and chunks of stone broken off the walls.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, wife,” he said, in a tone more irritable than he usually directed at her. “There’s a summons from your … Regan.” Connley said her name in a hush of horror.

She could not look up at him, even as she sensed him bend beside her, too close, and grasp her shoulders to lift her up off her knees. “Regan,” he said again, all tenderness and tight fear.

Her eyes opened slowly, sticky with half-dried tears, and she allowed him to straighten her. She leaned into him, and suddenly her ankles were cold where air caressed streaks of dark red and brown, left from her long immersion in blood and earth.

“Oh no,” Connley said. “No.”

The daughter of the king drew herself up, for she was empty again now, and without pain. She was cold and hungry and appreciated the temporary bliss of detachment. “I am well, Connley,” she said, using him as a prop to stand. Her toes squished in the bloody earth. Regan shuddered but spoke true:

“It is over.”

Connley stood with her, blood on the knee of his fine trousers, the letter from her father crushed against the oak tree’s root, forgotten. He was a handsome, sun-gilded man, with copper in his short blond hair. His chin was beardless, for he had nothing to hide and charm enough in his smile for a dozen wives. But now Connley had gone sallow and rigid from upset, his smile sheathed. He put his hands on Regan’s face, touched thumbs to old tears just where her skin was the most delicate purple, beneath her eyes. “Regan,” he whispered again, disappointed. Not with her, never with her, but still, that was how it sounded to her ears.

She tore free of him, storming toward the eastern altar that had not been blessed this afternoon. With one bare foot, she shoved and kicked at it, jaw clenched, hands in fists, hair wild and the tips of it tinged with blood. What was wrong with her? In the language of trees, she cried, What is wrong with all of us?

It was her father’s fault. When he’d killed Dalat, he’d killed their entire line.

“Stop, stop!” Connley ordered, grabbing her from behind. He grasped her wrists and crossed them over her chest. He held her tightly, his cheek to her hair. She felt his hard breath blowing past her ear, ragged and unchecked. His chest against her back heaved once, and twice, then his arms jerked tighter before he released his stranglehold, but did not quite let her go. They slumped together.

“I cannot see what’s wrong with me,” Regan said, her head hanging. She turned her hands to hold his. All her hair fell around her face, tangling with their clasped hands. She gazed at the altar, which she had only shifted slightly askew. “I have tried potions and begged the trees; I have done everything that every mother and grandmother of the island would tell me. Three months ago I visited Brona Hartfare and I thought—” She sobbed pure air, letting it out rough and raw. “I thought this time we would catch, we would hold on, but it will never now. My thighs are sticky with the brains of our babe, Connley, and I want to rip out my insides and bury it all here. I am nothing but bones and desperation.”

He unlatched his hands and turned her toward him, gathering her hair in one fist. “This is the only thing that makes you speak in poetry, my heart. If it were not so terrible, I would call it endearing.”

“I must find a way to see inside myself! To find the core of what curses me.”

“It might be a thing wrong with me. More than a mother is required to get a strong child.”

Regan scratched her fingers down the fine scarlet of his jacket, tearing at the wool, the velvet lining the edge. “It is me. You know the stars I was born under; you know my empty fate.” When she said it, her father’s voice echoed in her memory.

“That is your father talking, Regan.”

She reeled back and slapped him for daring to notice. The edge of his high cheek turned pink as he studied her with narrowed, blue-green eyes. Regan knew the look in them: the desire, the scrutiny. She touched his lips and met his gaze. He was a year younger than her, ambitious and lacking kindness, and Regan loved him wildly. Every sign she could read in those damnable stars, every voice in the wind and along the great web of island roots had cried yes when she asked if Connley was for her. But this was her fourth miscarriage in nearly five years of marriage. Plus the one before they’d been married at all.

Connley drew her hair over one shoulder, kissed her finger as it lingered on his bottom lip.

“I don’t know what to do,” the princess said.

“What we always do,” her lover replied. “Come inside and bathe, drink a bit of wine, and fight on. We will achieve what we desire, Regan, make no mistake. Your father’s reign will end, and we will return Innis Lear to glory. We will open the navel wells and invite the trees to sing, and we will be blessed for it. Our children will be the next kings of Innis Lear. I swear it to you, Regan.” Connley turned, his eyes scouring the darkening courtyard. Though Regan did not wish to release him, she did. She stared as he picked his way back to the oak tree and lifted up the letter. It was crumpled now, torn at one corner. He offered it to her.

Regan smoothed the paper between her hands and lifted it to the bare, hanging light of dusk.

Daughter,

Come to the Summer Seat for a Zenith Court, this third noontime after the Throne rises clear, when the moon is full. As the stars describe now, I shall set all my daughters in their places.

Your father and king,

Lear

“Would I could arrive heavy with child,” Regan murmured, touching her belly. Connley put his hand over the top of hers and moved it lower to the bloody stain. He cupped her hand gently around herself.

“We will go heavy with other things,” he said. “Power, wit, righteousness.”

“Love,” she whispered.

“Love,” he repeated, and kissed her mouth.

As Regan returned her husband’s kiss, she thought she heard a whisper from the oak tree: blood, it said, again and again. She could not tell if the tree thanked her for the grave sustenance she’d fed its roots, or offered the word as warning of things to come.

Perhaps, as was often the case with the language of trees, the word held both meanings—and more too unknowable to hear.

GAELA

THE CREAK OF the war tower was like thunder in her blood. Gaela Lear ground her teeth against too-wide a grin, feeling like a child, gleeful and alive as she played with her toys.

But these were not a child’s trinkets, they were dangerous siege weapons, marring the valley with their mechanical violence. To this eldest daughter of the king, commander of Astora’s forces, they were more than mere tools: they were her treasures.

Gaela raised her gauntleted hand in a fist, then swung it down hard. Archers clinging to the inner scaffolds of the war tower loosed arrows at the targets set atop the ruined castle wall ahead, while the men hidden at the base pushed it inexorably nearer, crushing soft green grass and stinging thistles beneath its huge wheels. Wood and taut wet wool protected the soldiers from any retaliation, or it would have, if the ruined castle were in truth alive with enemy archers and men throwing rocks and flaming spears.

When the tower landed against the ruined old wall, archers covered soldiers as they leapt out to secure it in place, so a horde of miners could then rush in and use the shelter to dig beneath the twelve-foot-thick wall, until the earth was weak enough to collapse under the weight of it.

Gaela raised her hand again, signaling the nearest block of her retainers to charge, with ladders and shields high. Their screams filled the summer air like a storm. Gaela allowed herself to smile proudly as they slammed into the ruins, climbing up and pouring over the crumbled ramparts, never flagging in their enthusiastic cries.

She gritted her teeth then, wishing this were real battle, not mere posturing and practice. At her back, a ballista was mounted to the platform of a cart, capable of swinging in any direction to aim its heavy bolts. She had six of them ready, and a half dozen more were being fitted with wheels for enhanced mobility. In addition to the fifty who charged the wall, three hundred soldiers and retainers stood in rank surrounding her, in the dark pink of the Duke Astore, their mail bright as moonlight and their bucklers polished, their swords naked and pointed at the sky like the teeth of a massive sea snake. It was an impressive force, and only a fraction of the army she’d command under the crown of Innis Lear. These men all wore her husband’s colors, but their loyalty belonged to her.

She did not turn her head toward the east, where folk from the nearest town had come to see the ruckus. That town sat across the border of Astore lands, on the Connley side, and Gaela hoped the people crouched behind rough limestone boulders and shuddering with the skinny trees of the ridge would spread tales of this afternoon. The moment Gaela was king, they should be prepared to submit to her, or face these very men and these very war machines.

She’d chosen this location not only for the nearness of Brideton and the border, but for the ruin specifically. It had been a Glennadoer castle stronghold three hundred years ago, before the island united under the Learish dynasty. The Glennadoers had promoted so much magic in their bloodline all others had joined together to defeat them. Glennadoers still lived now, but confined in the far north, and powerful in name only. Though they leaned toward Connley in loyalty, they were earls under the banner of Astora. This ruined castle symbolized the strength they’d lost, both by opposing a united island and by thinking magic could protect them.

Gaela’s smile turned scornful. Look at this beautiful valley, rough and growing lush despite the holy well capped off just to the north. It was only superstition that had sent the island folk scrambling in a panic when the king ordered all such wells closed ten years ago. When she was king, she would allow towns to open their wells again if they liked, but keep the castle wells closed except on holidays, a sign of her generosity to an easily awed populace. She did not need the rootwaters, but neither did she fear them as her father did. Neither wormwork nor star prophecy made Gaela strong: she did that all herself.

“Withdraw!” she yelled to her soldiers who’d cleared the wall, knocking down targets and hanging the Astore banner: a dark pink field with a white salmon leaping over a trio of four-point stars. “Solin, you and your men reset the tower; the rest of you form up for a melee. I want to see broken shields, and for everyone in Brideton across that hill to hear your roar!”

The soldiers cried and growled, banging their bucklers against hard leather chest pieces to cause a swell of noise. She laughed, and they jumped into action at her signal.

The broad blue sky glinted off Gaela’s chainmail hood, pulled up over the tighter linen hood that protected her twists of thick black hair from the shifting metal. Her dark brown eyes narrowed as that same sun glared off the sea of blades and bucklers turning the valley into a meadow of steel. Gaela posed for a moment at the edge of it, hands at her hips, boot heels dug into the damp earth. She was tall but not broad, though she’d spent her life encouraging muscles where few women wanted them. Her posture could have her mistaken for a man from behind, a resemblance Gaela appreciated.

Gaela had been anxious as a child about how different she looked from all the people of Innis Lear: her deep brown skin and thick black curls made her too easy to identify. Everywhere she went, she was not only the heir to the throne, the black princess, but that dreaded first daughter prophesied by the unrelenting stars to be her mother’s death. A son would not have born such a burden. But Gaela could not escape her body, her stars, or the prophecy.

When she was six years old, she’d destroyed a stack of thin songbooks imported from Aremoria. All the beautiful ladies in the songs were pale as the moon or soft as cream or sunlight on sand. Dalat and the Fool had been learning them together, a favored pastime while the king himself focused on the alliances necessary to open the docks at Port Comlack to wider trade. Gaela had told the Fool that if he did not compose a song about the queen’s dark beauty, she would gut him with his flute. So the queen and the Fool had taken Gaela and her younger sister Regan on a long walk, cataloguing all the pieces of the natural world he might put in his poem for Dalat.

The Fool was an imbecile, bringing pink flowers and bright yellow butterfly wings to little Regan, teasing her and trying to tease Gaela, too. She remembered it still, always with a scowl. Are there green undertones in your mother, do you think? Let’s compare … Dalat smiled and tilted her head to allow the young man to brush a leaf to her cheek until Regan declared a babyish yay or nay. Gaela had been more determined, more precise. She had gathered walnut bark and a deep purple flower, smooth black river rocks, gleaming acorns, a shining crow feather, and a feather mottled rich brown from an eagle’s wing. The last her mother had accepted like riches, and woven the quill into the tight knot of braids at the base of her neck. Like my grandmother’s imperial crest, Dalat smilingly declared. It stood out like a horn, or a slender, delicate wing all its own. It’s still not right, Gaela had said angrily. The Fool sang, Poetry is about perception, little princess, not accuracy. It is about what it means to compare the Queen’s dark and curving mouth to a powerful eagle’s wing. Then her mother took Gaela’s hand, spread it out against her own, and said, This is the only match that matters.

But Dalat was dead, the Fool attached like a wart to the king, and Gaela had no use for poems. Poems did not create power, and Gaela intended to be king when her terrible father died, or sooner. Nothing would stop her.

The urgency of the soldiers now thrummed in Gaela’s bones, lending satisfaction to her resolve. She wished she could march with her army to the Summer Seat, drag her father to his knees, and take the crown. How her satisfaction would grow at the sight of him bowed before her, trembling and afraid. Did my mother die on her knees? Gaela would ask. Did you touch poison to her lips with a kiss, or put it in her nightly mug of warm honeyed milk? Did you ever trust me as she trusted you? Of course, he never trusted anyone or anything except the vicious stars. And so Gaela would thrust her sword into his neck, and watch as he gasped and gargled, as he sank into an undignified pool of blood at her feet.

But no matter how she longed to take the crown in such a way, it was not the most direct, most efficient, or even most secure path. No, the people of Lear took their king-making seriously, claiming them fast and hewing hard to the anointment and the secret, specific traditions of the island’s roots. Gaela would have to bide her time, wait for the king to name her his heir, and then give the island her blood and spit on the longest night of the year. As was right.

To do it by any other method would invite Connley to challenge her—curse him, his ancestors, and his perfect stars, and curse Regan for marrying into that line and giving the dog a stronger claim. Though Gaela wanted war, wanted a chance to release all the fury and aggression inside her heart more than most anything, she did not want a war with her sister on the opposite side.

So here Gaela Lear stood, amidst her personal army, performing for the folk on Connley’s border, sending a brutal message without quite making a firm challenge.

The soldiers had formed up for the melee. With a ferocious smile, Gaela abandoned her perch and ran to join them. Her movement served as signal, and the two sides slammed together, all yelling and chaos, with some few laughing as Gaela laughed. She drew her sword and aimed for the nearest soldier; he had plenty of time to block with his buckler and sword, but the force of her charge shoved him back. She bared her teeth and twisted, shoving at him with all her might. He spun, and Gaela dove farther into the battle.

A flash of light to her left had Gaela turning hard, lifting her own buckler as she dodged under the attack and slammed the edge into her attacker’s face. It caught his helmet with a clang, and he stumbled back, falling hard. Gaela swung around, just in time to see the next attack.

She lost herself in the frenzy of danger, in the cuts and blocks, in the fight to prove herself. She kept on as the battle raged, her teeth clenched, alert, pounding again and again toward the center of the horde. Pain jolted through Gaela’s body with most blocks; she cried out; she screamed. She reveled. This was the nearest she’d come to war, to the desperation and danger: some men would die in this game, and some would be injured too badly to fight again for a long while. Their swords should be blunted, or wrapped. This should be less deadly, but Gaela did not care. She would survive, and she would win, today and tomorrow. It was not reckless. It was vital. Her husband could never understand how this brought her to life as nothing else did, how she needed the immediacy of this danger. This—this—brought her to the edge of her strength, made her feel the mettle she possessed in the very core of her bones. When she fought, Gaela knew she did not need any root blessing or star prophecy.

She was born to be king.

Suddenly, Gaela found herself in a break of soldiers, facing one man. This soldier was huge, blond-bearded with pocked scars on his young pink cheeks, and clearly he had built his uniform from castoffs that did not quite fit. His sword and buckler were borrowed from the Astore armory, and they were stamped as such. But he did not take his eyes from hers, even when she lifted her chin so the sun caught the red blood at the corner of her mouth. She smiled, and it smeared her teeth.

He planted his feet in a very strong defensive pose.

Gaela dropped her buckler and attacked.

Her two-handed grip gave her strength and leverage, which mattered as his size negated any reach advantage she’d have gained by fighting with her shield.

Blood roared in her ears, and she shouldered in past his block, nearly bashing his cheek with her pommel before he twisted and shoved her back hard enough she stumbled. With a spin from the inertia, she drove hard again, hacking at his sword, each clang of metal filling her heart with joy. He was good, using his weight, but still slower than she was. Soon they were the only fighters, all others watching the show.

It was brief but glorious, and Gaela risked a low cut up under his reach, so enthralled she was with the rhythm of their game. He blocked it, chopping with his buckler so the reinforced edge caught her upper arm, numbing the entire limb. She cried out, shocked, and dropped her sword from that hand. It swung off-balance in her other and the man pressed his advantage as she valiantly blocked again, again, and then with his boot he stomped on her thigh.

Gaela went down.

The soldier dropped everything to catch her arm, lifting her to her feet again in a smooth gesture.

He did not hold on when she was steady, and the entire movement appeared so natural, so easy, the gathered soldiers cheered.

Gaela liked a soldier who would win and still save her face. The fingers of her shield arm tingled as blood rushed back into them. Gaela sheathed her sword and rubbed her hands together, smiling for her opponent and all the soldiers. “Well fought, man. Give me your name, that I might invoke it when I speak with my husband.”

“Dig,” the large young man replied.

She lifted her thin eyebrows. “No other?”

“None, lady.”

“Then, Dig of Astora, welcome to my army.”

Just then, a horn sounded from the ridge to the west. Gaela clasped Dig’s wrist, then released him and strode heavily toward the camp. Her body ached with weariness, but she was glad of it.

Osli jogged up, chainmail ringing with the movement. The captain pushed her hair out of her face, dragging it through sweat, and said, “Lady, should I order the end of the games today, or do you want them to run the tower drill again?”

“Drill once more, then have the beer shared out here on the field before everyone returns to camp.” The princess smiled at her young captain, a girl of only nineteen with nearly as much ambition as Gaela herself. “Then you should join me for whatever news comes with this horn, and we’ll share wine while we plan tomorrow’s games. Bring that Dig soldier, and choose two more exemplary men to reward.”

Osli nodded sharply and darted off as Gaela climbed the steeper section of the hill, reaching the long flat plain on the crest where her army had set up camp. Most tents were simple single-pole shelters or lean-tos, ringed wide about fire pits. The supply wagons made a crescent at the south end, and smoke rose there as folk cooked a hearty meal. Fifty men and women and ten wagons to keep her three hundred soldiers tended and fed for this weeklong campaign. She’d ordered them to act as though the supply from Astora City had been cut off, as it might be in real war.

Her eye caught the trio of horses stamping near her tent, a much larger canvas shelter with seven poles and crowned by the Astore banner. One of the horses was her own, its head lowered and rear hoof up in relaxation, but the other two were still dressed and saddled, eagerly drinking from the trough set before them. They were Astore’s horse and one of his stewards’.

Gaela looked all around, and spied him there, a good distance from her, atop a promontory where he’d have a good view of the valley below. Likely he’d witnessed only the final moments of the melee, and now was eying her towers and bastilla.

She made for her tent to divest herself of mail and gauntlets with one of the apprentices, denying her husband the pleasure. A boy in a pink tabard waited at the entrance, and she dragged him in so he could undo the buckles under her left arm that held her small chest plate over the mail.

It was not quick work, and Astore slapped open the tent just as the heavy mail shirt finally slipped off her head and into the waiting arms of the apprentice boy.

“Get out,” Astore said fondly, filling the front of the tent. Fifteen years older than his wife, he was blond and wore it long, in a plain, straight tail. Though he was certainly not ugly, Gaela found it difficult to judge his attractiveness, as she found such things difficult with all people. He was fit and strong, a good war leader, which had brought him to her notice in the first place. He wore a trim blond beard, his light brown eyes were edged in wrinkles, and his skin was as white as hers was black. Save the pink patches from staying too long on the sunny castle ramparts with his retainers.

Gaela stripped the linen hood off her hair as he stared at her. She then went to pour them wine from the low table beside her bed. He always was struck by Gaela when she was disheveled from battle, wearing men’s trousers and a soldier’s quilted gambeson, with only a smear of dark paint around her eyes. It amused her that he strove to hide the visibility of his sexual interest as best he was able, lest it cause her to turn cold. Gaela could always see it. She knew the signs, and she pushed at them when she was feeling mean. Their marriage bed was a contentious one.

“Wife,” he said, accepting the clay cup of wine. She saw a letter with the swan of Lear waiting unopened in his other hand, and she sipped her wine in silence. Her heart still thrummed with the energy and joy of battle.

Astore moved around her to sit in the only chair, a heavy armchair rather like a throne that Gaela brought with her always. He watched her carefully as he drank nearly all his wine. She did not move, waiting. Finally, Astore said, “You’re reckless, setting your men against each other with sharp blades.”

“Those who are harmed in such games are hardly worthy of riding at my side, nor would I be worthy of the crown, to die so easily.”

His grim smile twisted. “I need you alive.”

Gaela sniffed, imagining the release she’d feel if she punched him until that smile broke. But she still needed him, too. The Star of the Consort dominated her birth chart, and to those men of Innis Lear she needed on her council and in her pocket, that meant coming to the throne with a husband. Though Gaela longed for war, she was enough of a strategist to know it was better that the island fight outward, not among themselves. For now, she used Astore, though her sister Regan would always be her true consort. “What does Lear want?”

“He wrote to both of us; to me he still refuses to allow reconstruction on the coastal road.”

“It isn’t in the stars?” she guessed, restraining the roll of her eyes.

“But it is—I commissioned a chart by my own priests. He twists his reasoning around and dismisses what seems to be obvious necessity. Possibly Connley has been whispering in his ear.”

“He hates Connley more than you, usually.” She sank onto the thick arm of the chair and leaned across Astore’s chest for the unopened letter.

Placing his arm just below her elbow in case she needed steadying, but not quite touching her, Astore did not disagree. “I might write to your little sister and ask her for a prophecy regarding the coastal road. Lear has never yet argued with one of hers.”

Gaela drank the rest of her wine and set the cup on the rug before cracking the dark blue wax of Lear’s seal.

Eldest,

Come to the Summer Seat for a Zenith Court, this third noontime after the Throne rises clear, when the moon is full. As the stars describe now, I shall set all my daughters in their places.

Your father and king,

Lear

Grimacing, Gaela dropped the message into Astore’s lap. She touched the tip of her tongue to her front teeth, running it hard against their edges. Then she bit down, stoking the anger that always accompanied her father’s name. Now it partnered with a thrill that hummed under her skin. She knew her place already: beneath the crown of Lear. But did this mean he would finally agree? Finally begin the process of her ascension?

“Is he ready to take off the crown? And will he see finally fit to hand it to you, as is right?” Astore’s hand found her knee, and Gaela stared down at it, hard and unflinching, but her husband only tightened his grip. The three silver rings on his first three fingers flashed: yellow topaz and pink sapphires set bold and bare. They matched Gaela’s thumb ring.

She methodically pried his hand off her knee and met his intense gaze. “I will be the next queen of Innis Lear, husband. Never mistake that.”

“I never have,” he replied. He lifted his hand to grasp her jaw, and Gaela fell still as glass. His fingers pressed hard, daring her to pull away. Instead she pushed nearer, daring him in return to try for a kiss.

Tension strained between them. Astore’s breath flew harsher; he wanted her, violently, and for a moment she saw in his eyes the depth of his fury, a rage usually concealed by a benevolent veneer, that his wife constantly and consistently denied his desire. Gaela did not care that he hated her as often as he loved her, but she did care that his priorities always aligned with her own.

Gaela put her hand on Astore’s throat and squeezed until he released her. She kissed him hard, then, sliding her knee onto his lap until it forced his thighs apart. Scraping her teeth on his bottom lip, she pulled back, not bothering to hide that the only desire she felt now was to wash off the taint of his longing.

“My queen,” the duke of Astore said.

Gaela Lear smiled at his surrender.

THE FOX

BAN THE FOX arrived at the Summer Seat of Innis Lear for the first time in six years just as he’d left it. Alone.

The sea crashed far below at the base of the cliffs, rough and growling with a hunger Ban had always understood. From this vantage, facing the castle from the sloping village road, he couldn’t see the white-capped waves, just the distant stretch of sky-kissed green water toward the western horizon. The Summer Seat perched on a promontory nearly cut off from the rest of Innis Lear, its own island of black stone and clinging weeds connected only by a narrow bridge of land, one that seemed too delicate to take a man safely across. Ban recalled racing over it as a boy, unconcerned with the nauseating death drop to either side, trusting his own steps and the precariously hammered wooden rail. Here, at the landside, a post stone had been dug into the field and in the language of trees it read: The stars watch your steps.

Ban’s mouth curled into a bitter smile. He placed his first step firmly on the bridge, boots crushing some early seeds and late summer flower petals blown here by the vibrant wind. He crossed, his gloved hand sliding along the oiled-smooth rail.

The wind’s whisperings were rough and harsh, difficult for Ban to tease into words. He needed more practice with the dialect, a turn of the moon to bury himself in the moors and remind himself how the trees spoke here, but he’d only arrived back on Innis Lear two days ago. Ban had made his way to Errigal Keep to find his father gone, summoned here to the Summer Seat, and his brother, Rory, away, settled with the king’s retainers at Dondubhan. After food and a bath, he’d had a horse saddled from his father’s stable. To arrive in time for the Zenith Court, Ban hadn’t had the luxury to ride slowly and reacquaint himself with the stones and roots of Innis Lear, nor they with his blood. The horse was now stabled behind him in Sunton, for horses were not allowed to make the passage on this ancient bridge to the Summer Seat.

At the far end, two soldiers waited with unsharpened halberds. They could use the long axes to nudge any newcomer off the bridge if they chose. When Ban was within five paces, one of them pushed his helmet up off his forehead enough to reveal dark eyes and a straight nose. “Your name, stranger?”

Ban gripped the rail and resisted the urge to settle his right fist on the pommel of the sword sheathed at his belt. “Ban Errigal,” he returned, hating that his access would be determined by his family name, not his deeds.

The soldiers waved him through, stepping back from the brick landing that spread welcomingly off the bridge.

A blast of wind shoved Ban forward, and he nearly stumbled. Using the motion to turn, he asked the guard, “Do you know where I might find the Earl Errigal?”

“In the guest tower.”

Ban nodded his thanks, glancing at the scathing sun. He did not relish this meeting with his father. Errigal traveled to Aremoria every late spring to visit the Alsax cousins and to be Lear’s ambassador. He’d always lavished praise on Ban in front of others, awkwardly labeling his son a bastard at the same time.

Perhaps Ban could eschew the proper order of greeting, and ask instead where the ladies Lear would be this time of day. Six years ago he’d have found Elia with the goats. But it was impossible to imagine she hadn’t shifted her routine since childhood. He had changed; so must she have. Grown tall and bright as a daffodil, or worn and weathered like standing stones.

Ban squashed the thought of her hair and eyes, of her hands covered in green beetles. He suspected most of his memories were sweetened by time and brightened with longing, not accurate to what their relationship had truly been. She, the daughter of the king, and he, the bastard son of an earl, could not have been so close as he remembered. Probably the struggle and weariness of being fostered to a foreign army, the homesickness, the dread, the years of uncertainty, had built her into a shining memory no real girl could live up to. Especially one raised by a man like Lear. In his earliest years at war, Ban had thought of Elia to get himself through fear, but it had been a weakness, like the straw doll a baby clings to against nightmares.

Surely she would disdain him now because of the stars at his birth, just as the king had. If she remembered him at all. One more thing to lay at the feet of Lear.

Ban settled his hand on the pommel of his sword. He’d earned himself his own singular epithet. He was here at the Summer Seat not as a cast-off bastard, but as a man in his own right.

Turning a slow circle, Ban made himself change his eyes, to observe the Seat as the Fox.

Men, women, soldiers, and ladies swarmed in what he guessed was an unusual amount of activity. The castle itself was a fortress of rough black stones quarried centuries ago, when the bridge was less crumbled, less tenuous. It rose in a barbican here, spreading into the first wall, then an inner second wall taller than this first, with three central towers, one built against the inner keep. The king’s family and his retainers could fit inside for weeks, as well as his servants and the animals necessary to live: goats, pigs, poultry. Barracks, laundry, cliff-hanging privies, the yard, the armory, and the towers: Ban remembered it all from childhood. But it was ugly, old and black and asymmetrical. Built over generations instead of with a singular purpose in mind.

The Fox was impressed with how naturally fortified the promontory was, how difficult it would be to attack. But as he studied his environs, the Fox knew it would be easy to starve out. Surround it landside with an enemy camp, and seaside with boats, and it could be held under siege indefinitely with no more than, say, fifty men.

If one could locate the ancient channel through which spring water flowed onto the promontory, the siege would be mercifully brief. Were he the king of this castle, he’d order a fort built landside, to protect the approach, and use the promontory as a final stand only once all other hope had been lost.

Unless, perhaps, there were caves or unseen ways from the cliffs below where food could be brought in—and there must be. But an enemy could poison the water in the channel, instead of stopping it up. The besieged could not drink seawater. Was there a well inside? Not that Ban could recall from his youth, and it was surely less likely now. This place was a siege death trap, though winning such a battle would be symbolic only: if the Seat were under siege, the rest of the kingdom should already have fallen, and so what would the Seat be against all that?

Ban felt a twisted thrill at the idea of the king of Innis Lear having to make such choices. Better yet if his course here led directly to it.

He went along the main path through the open iron gates and into the inner yard where soldiers clustered and the squawking of chickens warred with hearty conversation, with the cries of gulls hunting for dropped food, the crackle of the yard-hearth where a slew of bakers and maids prepared a feast for the evening. Ban’s stomach reacted to the rich smell, but he didn’t stop. He strode quickly toward the inner keep, one hand on the pommel of his sword to balance it against his hip. Ban wondered if he could greet his father (he was fairly certain he remembered which was the guest tower) and then find a place to wash, in order to present himself in a fitter state than this: hair tangled from wind, horse-smelling jacket, worn britches, and muddy boots. He’d dumped his mail and armor in Errigal to make a faster showing astride the horse.

A familiar orange flag caught his attention: the royal insignia of Aremoria.

There was a good king. The sort of soldier who took his turn watching for signal lights all night long, digging his own privy pits and rotting his toes off. Who had suffered alongside his men and took his turn in the slops and at the dangerous front. Morimaros of Aremoria did not make choices based on nothing but prophecy.

Across the yard a maroon pennant flapped: the flag of the kingdom of Burgun. Ullo the Pretty. Also come to court Elia Lear, despite, or maybe because of, being trounced in battle.

Ban wondered what she thought of the two kings.

Beyond the second wall, the smell of people, sweat, and animals was crushing. The lower walls had no slits or windows, nothing to move air, and Ban longed to climb onto the parapets, or into the upper rooms built with cross-breezes in mind, because this was where court spent the months warm enough for it. From the parapets he’d be able to see the island’s trees, at least, if not hear them: the moss and skinny vines growing on this rock had not the will for speaking. Ban made for a stairway cut along the outside of the first, only to freeze at the base when his father appeared in the dark archway above.

Ban waited to be noticed.

Errigal had long mottled blond and brown hair, a rough dark beard, and the face of a handsome bull he used to his full advantage. His thick braids were wound with dark ribbons, and a fresh-looking blue tunic pulled across wide shoulders that his older son had not inherited. The earl’s boots were polished, his trousers new, his belt buckle dangling with carved bone and amber beads. Errigal stomped down the steps, a smile pulling at his teeth as he spoke to his companion, an almost-familiar man, also wearing the beaten copper chain of a Learish earl.

The other man was speaking, soft but clear, as they drew near. “He has always loved Astore rather more than Connley.” A worn, knowing fatigue had settled in the lines about the man’s clear-shaven mouth, though he was not old, yet. His black hair curled tight and short-cut, and his eyes were gray as river rocks against dark brown skin. That recalled his name to Ban: Kayo, the Oak Earl, whose family had been related to the late queen.

“So it always seemed, and rightly so in Connley’s father’s time,” Errigal agreed, coming to ground level with Ban. “But his growing unpredictability this last year has made it rather impossible to tell which he’ll prefer in dividing out his land when he finally names his heir. There is much to favor Connley and Regan now. Including my iron.”

Though the matter of their talk intrigued Ban, he kept his face neutral with the ease of years’ practice hiding thoughts.

Errigal clapped a heavy hand on Ban’s shoulder. “Son,” he said warmly, and Ban was relieved.

His companion lifted thin eyebrows. “This lad cannot be your son, too? He’s nothing like his brother.”

“Indeed!” Errigal said, shrugging and offering a conspiratorial smile. “This one was got in such a way I blushed to admit it in the past, but I’ve grown used to it by now. You know my legitimate son, Rory, just younger, born truly of my house and stars. But this one, Ban, has no less iron Errigal blood in his veins. Have you heard the name of the Oak Earl, Ban?”

“Yes, my lord,” Ban said quietly, familiar with his father’s abrupt conversational shifts.

“Well then, look on him as a friend.” Errigal grinned, turning his body and clasping his other hand upon Kayo, forming himself into a bridge between them.

“I shall, Father,” Ban murmured, turning his own eyes back to the Oak Earl. They had met before, a long time ago. In the White Forest, high to the north, before Ban’s mother had shooed him away.

“I’m glad to see you again, Ban,” Kayo said, offering his arm. Ban stripped off his glove quickly and took Kayo’s bare hand. Kayo continued, “I’d like to hear more about the exploits of the Fox of Aremoria.”

“That I can do, my lord,” Ban said, letting a smile of pride creep over his face. The Oak Earl had heard of him. Not as the bastard, but as the Fox.

“The Fox of Lear,” Errigal protested.

In their youth, Ban had once bested Rory and all the other boys their age at a racing contest, because Ban dared to leap across a neck-breaking gully instead of scrambling down and up again. The king of Innis Lear had tossed the prize of woven flowers at him as Errigal had said, “So much more willing to risk his life for the win than the others,” as if he approved. It was heard by Lear, who scoffed and said Ban’s life was worth less than the other boys’, so he should of course be more willing to risk it.

Ban opened his eyes and jerked off his other glove. His father was weak for never standing up to Lear on his own son’s behalf, but the king was the true enemy.

Unwilling to retreat, and thinking of how best to play the fox in this squalid henhouse, Ban slid his gaze toward the inner keep again. “Why are the kings of Aremoria and Burgun here?”

“Vying for Elia’s dowry,” Kayo said, leaning his shoulder against the black stone wall. “Though not so much for herself, it seems to me.”

Errigal barked a laugh. “So it should be, for a third daughter.”

Ban had heard as much from Morimaros weeks ago, but standing here now, so near her, the thought of her being wed made his tongue go dry. He had no right to care on her behalf.

“It will all be done tomorrow,” Kayo told him. “At the Zenith Court. Lear will choose between Aremoria and Burgun.”

“Tomorrow,” Ban said, too hushed to sound uncaring. His father didn’t notice, instead studying a party of soldiers and ladies in bright wool hurrying around behind them toward the third tower. But Kayo heard Ban’s echo, and peered at him.

“Six years it’s been since you saw her?” Kayo prodded gently.

Ban nodded.

“Come on,” Errigal said, clapping both their shoulders again. “I want a word with Bracoch, to see the lay of alliance and whether he’ll stand with Connley.”

The Oak Earl nodded, but because Ban had been looking, he saw dislike move swiftly through Kayo’s eyes. Interesting.

“You clean yourself up and join us, my boy,” his father ordered Ban. “We’ve rooms up there, can’t miss the Errigal banner. Be at dinner in the hall, too, if you want to see the princess before she’s a wife. This one,” he said to Kayo, “used to trail behind Elia, all devotion and round eyes. Now I remember it, the king even called him her dog—a tamer sort of fox he used to be, I guess!” Errigal laughed at his own joke.

“Not tame anymore, Father,” Ban said.

“Ha! So like your mother! Stars, I miss her.”

It was on his tongue to remind his father that his mother was easily found, but curse him if Ban would aim Errigal back in her direction.

“Farewell for now, Ban the Fox,” Kayo said gently, as if he knew the storm brewing inside Ban’s chest.

Clenching his fist, Ban closed his eyes and withdrew. It was appalling how easily his father set his teeth on edge, made him want to scrub his face and strip the black from his hair, be as gold-speckled as Rory. But it wouldn’t have mattered: the king, and therefore Errigal, cared only for birth stars and the orders of privilege that came with title and marriage. Ban could have been more handsome and sandy and gilded than Rory, and they would still have scorned him. One truth Ban had always understood about his father: Errigal swung to the winning side, or the loudest side, or the most passionate side, but he was rarely static. As a child Ban had struggled to follow him, to stand next to him, and win some approval. It took years in Aremoria to realize he and his father stood opposite each other across a dark and vicious chasm called legitimacy, and nothing would bridge the gap.

A figure half the yard away caught his attention.

It was her.

Elia Lear, slipping quietly along the inside of the curtain wall, toward the royal tower. She wore the dull regalia of a star priest, gray skirts snapping around her ankles, and worn boots caked with mud. She kept her chin tucked down and her hood held low, as if avoiding attention, but a warm band tightened around his chest. It was her.

She was small, though she had to be twenty, as Ban was. As he stared, her hood slipped back in a gust of wind and her hair fell free in spiral curls, dark brown and copper, shining as if spun from the very metal itself. She gathered it in her hand and tugged the hood back up. Even from this distance her eyes were wide, bright, and black as polished horn beads.

He knew he stood like a dullard, or like useless statuary, and when she did glance his way, her eyes passed over him on their way to the tower. No more than he expected, for though she had grown only more lovely, Ban knew he was harder and sharper than the mischievous slip of a child he’d been. She’d never seen him with a sword before, or with his hair so short and greased, spiked with a few tiny braids. Why would she remember Errigal’s bastard at all, or if she did, give him a second glance?

This sulking was not why he was here.

Ban gritted his teeth and turned away.

ELIA

IT WAS EASY for the youngest princess to make her quick way beneath the arching iron gate of the outer wall and across the muddy inner ward, full of people going about their day. Head ducked to hide her face and hair beneath the undyed gray wool of her cloak, and otherwise unremarkable in the drab dress of a star priest, she ignored the new construction on the north wall and avoided the maids and retainers she knew, so as not to be stopped. It was overcrowded, and smelled it, for the high keep walls blocked most fresh air from the ocean, and the number of people was nearly double that of the Summer Seat’s usual residents, thanks to the kings of Aremoria and Burgun.

She’d seen their banners from the high coast road as she and Aefa and a trio of soldiers from Dondubhan approached. Dreading meeting any other king before she’d reconnected with her father, Elia had abandoned Aefa and the soldiers to sneak alone into the keep, safely incognito in her priest robes. The retainers she could not avoid at the gate nodded solemnly when she bade them keep her secret.

The narrow passages of the inner keep had been built of rough black rock generations ago, tight for security and lacking windows but for regular arrow slits. Golden hay covered the stone floor of the family hall, rather more dusty than usual. Elia climbed the curling staircase up the first tower, hood falling entirely off her curls. She passed retainers lounging lazily in a guard hole, sharing a meat pie between them; one even had a smear of gravy marring the star on his blue tabard. They sprung to attention at her judgmental glance, muttering fast apologies, but Elia did not stay to chide them or make them glad it was not her sisters who’d caught them relaxing. The corridor near her father’s chamber widened, and a sharp ocean breeze pushed through the arched windows cut wide enough for a face to peer out. Several dogs piled in a corner, stinking of mud and meat. They wagged their tails at her as she passed.

Wishing she’d paid more heed to the state of the keep as she snuck in, Elia frowned. Her father had kept a clean home all Elia’s life. Smelly dogs had been roped in the kennels, near the goat pens, and retainers ate in the retainers’ hall on the eastern edge of the yard. She resisted the temptation to veer off into the guest tower or the great hall to make certain they were still presentable for the visiting kings. Or presentable at all! Her own people deserved a Summer Seat well-tended and bright.

Worry dragged her heels and she scuffed the thin soles of her boots on the stone floor, shoving aside seeds and dirt. Ahead, at her father’s chambers, two more retainers stood, these at least upright, beards braided and belts polished. She approached with her chin up, recognizing one, but not the other. “Seban, is my father fit for me?”

“He is, Lady Elia,” the older retainer said, though some sadness put hesitation in his answer. “Preparing for his next audience, but I’m sure you’ll be more welcome yet.”

Instead of questioning him further, she pushed straight through the door and into the chamber.

Incense sharp and thick greeted her, a familiar sticky scent from the star towers, much too cloudy here. Waving a hand before her face, Elia peered around at the trappings of her father’s anteroom: the hearth burned hot, and incense spirals created the smoke that filled the air, not enough of it fleeing up the chimney. Rugs sprawled over the floor, piled in thick layers. Pillows were strewn about, along with charcoal sticks and flapping star charts. Elia picked a path through them to the arch that led into Lear’s bedroom.

The king of Innis Lear stood before a tall window where the incense cleared, as a maid restitched the cuff on his outstretched arm. His dark blue robe fell from bony shoulders, a heavy hem of velvet and black fur holding the folds in place. Lear murmured to himself, a recitation of star signs in the shape of a child’s poem he’d taught Elia ages ago. The princess mouthed the words with him, not interrupting lest she startle the maid with her needle, or ruin Lear’s patience to let the girl finish her repairs.

This room was less familiar to Elia, though she knew the high oak bed had been there, just so since her mother lived, near the line of three tall, narrow windows overlooking the sheer cliff drop and crashing ocean to the north. A good view for the first evening stars; Lear always preferred to stand there watching and waiting for them, alone, after the queen had died. The rugs here were vibrant teals and blues and oranges, even one impossibly rich black, from the Third Kingdom; the dyes had been imported at great expense for the queen’s pleasure, and though most of the rugs were threadbare now, Lear refused new ones. Only the wall tapestries were woven in styles of Innis Lear, with star-spotted trees and rampant swans. Lear’s desk pushed unused against the far stone wall, covered in letters and ink pots. There the curtained door led to his private privy down three stairs, hanging over the cliffs.

“Are you nearly finished?” The king broke halfway through a verse of his poem, testy and wrinkling his long nose.

“Yes, sir,” the girl replied, tying off her thread as quickly as her fingers could manage.

Elia smiled and stepped farther in, inviting her father’s irritated “What now?” and the sewing girl’s obvious relief.

“Hello, Father.”

“Elia!”

The king regularly wore his age-spotted brow in furrowed gloom, melancholy drawing dark lines about his thin mouth and lengthening his already long, rectangular face. But now Lear smiled so brightly that his lost handsomeness shone through for a brief moment. He held out large white hands, entirely consuming Elia’s small brown ones, and drew her in for an extended embrace, tucking her head beneath his chin. Elia could feel his ribs through the layers he wore, and while he’d always been thin, this was excessive. She pressed her nose into his collarbone hard for a moment, squeezing away her concern. Her father was old, that was all.

He stroked her hair. “You smell like your mother.”

“It’s the same oil she used,” Elia said, pulling away enough to speak. She tilted her head back. Lear’s own hair was flung high in a mane of brown and wiry silver. A few streaks of almost-beard marred his jaw, though he’d shaved clean all her life. “Seban outside said you’re readying for a meeting? Shall I comb your hair?”

The king studied her smartly. “You are the one in need of grooming if you are to join me at this meeting. It’s with your courting kings.”

Elia winced. “They should meet me thus, Father, plain and myself.”

“If either of them thinks you plain I’ll drive them off the cliff!” Lear kissed his daughter’s forehead and released her. “Tell me of your studies, my star, while this girl …” The king eyed the room, but the girl who’d mended his cuff had vanished. “Stars and …!”

Laughing softly, Elia led the king by his hand to sit upon a chair with a simple, sturdy back. “I’m glad to attend you, Father.”

“My loyal Calpurlugh,” he said, sighing as Elia gathered a horn comb off the narrow table along the wall that was covered in odds and ends: combs and rings, a beaten copper chain, tiny crystals arrayed like constellations, ribbons and buttons and a hood missing the loops to tie it to a tunic.

Elia told her father then the story she’d perfected on the journey south: her wager with Danna her tutor, the win, the twist—that most of the retainers at Dondubhan had sided with her despite her comparative inexperience. Lear slapped his knee, pleased, and his still-bright blue eyes closed as Elia’s fingers and the comb pulled his thick hair back from his forehead and drooping ears. She wound it into a single braid and twisted it into a knot, pinning it with the same horn comb. Several of the rings on the table belonged on his fingers, especially the sapphires, and she dropped them into his palm.

“Your turn,” he said, trading places with her. “I’ve a winning idea, Calpurlugh.”

Obediently, Elia sat, hands folded in her lap.

“We shall leave you clad in this plain star priest gown, and bring you with me to this meeting with Aremoria and Burgun. Will they see their sought princess, or only a servant of heaven?”

Though her father’s smile was large and infecting, Elia was not enthusiastic. “Should we play games, Father? They might be offended.” Her thoughts drifted to those last letters she’d received, and she wondered if Ullo was capable of seeing past an unadorned dress, or if Morimaros of Aremoria had been honest when he said he wished for a star reading.

“And what should happen then?” Lear raised spiky brows. “A retreat? If either king is so easily put off of you, then now is the time to discover it. They will not attack us; they will not risk their trade with the Third Kingdom, nor the access to our rubies and gold and iron.”

It was true Innis Lear was rich in resources and minerals, and their location put them between sea trade and Aremoria, though Aremoria could always trade overland with the vast desert kingdoms to their south and east. It was also true Aremoria would risk any trade they established with the Third Kingdom if they consumed Lear, dethroning Dalat’s line, which was also the line of the empress. And Burgun couldn’t defeat Lear if they tried. Alliances mattered much more to their small country. But Elia had no intention of marrying either king, and so she supposed she could play along.

“Very well, Father,” Elia said, and Lear’s smile spread into a wicked old grin. With a groan he knelt, reaching under the low oak frame of his bed. Before she could offer aid, he made a sound of triumph and dragged out a small clay pot.

“Is that oil? It must be rancid now.” Elia leaned away.

Her father started to stand, then shook his head and gave up without much effort. He handed the pot to her. “Open it.”

The orange glaze and black rim proved the pot to be from the Third Kingdom, but it was small enough to fit easily in her hands. She pried off the lid, where wax still clung from an old seal. The lingering perfume of bergamot oranges brought tears to her eyes. She was used to the smell, for her uncle the Oak Earl bought copious amounts in trades on her behalf, just as he had for Dalat over the years. But this, surely, had been a pot touched and admired by her mother. Those gentle hands had caressed this smooth glaze, cupped the base as gently as Elia did now.

Inside curled a thin chain of silver woven into a delicate net, and studded with tiny diamonds—no, merely island crystals, but in Elia’s palm they glinted like shards of fallen stars. “Father,” she whispered, just barely remembering Dalat’s hair bound tight in a thick roll that curved from ear to ear, along her nape, and dotted with the same tiny sparkling lights.

“This will be enough of a crown, my little love, my favorite.” Lear stood very slowly, but Elia was too stunned, admiring the sleek dripping silver, to notice in time that he needed aid to rise. The king moved behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I remember how to do it, though it has been so many … long years.”

Elia closed her eyes, flattening her hands on her stomach. This would infuriate her sisters when they saw, for both would demand this artifact of their mother for themselves. Gaela because she felt she deserved all Dalat’s mementos, because they’d been the closest, because she was the eldest and would be queen; Regan because she liked to deny Elia small things, and as ever would support Gaela’s claim.

No doubt Lear had hidden it in the tiny clay jar in order to keep it to himself. And now, he set it where he willed it, upon his favorite daughter’s head. All beings shall in their proper places be set, he’d written in his letter. A sliver of worry slid coldly through Elia’s heart. But Lear’s slow, steady hands soothed her, as he twisted her hair into a long smiling roll, and her shoulders relaxed. His tugs were more tentative than Aefa’s, and the story he told as he worked was a story Elia had heard before: the first time Dalat had agreed to allow her husband to braid her hair, and the terrible time they’d both had of it, neither giving up for hours and hours, until Lear had made such an utter mess Dalat had burst into tears.

“I was devastated, of course,” Lear said, as he always did, “but not nearly so much as your mother. When Gaela was born, we learned together, though Gaela declined to sit still, and then Regan’s hair was easy. By the time you were born, I was nearly an expert, even Satiri said so.”

As always, Elia wished to ask him: if he’d been an expert, why had he never taught Aefa, or Elia, or anyone, after he sent all Dalat’s attendants away, letting Elia’s own hair go dry as gorse in the summer?

But she knew the answer, though her father would never agree: it was the depth of his grief. And she knew, too, that sometimes Lear’s version of the past was woven equally of truth and pleasant fabrication. So long as the stories harmed none, she could not bring herself to challenge them. Especially when they involved Dalat.

“There,” the king said, caressing Elia’s neck and squeezing her shoulders.

Elia lifted her hands to carefully explore the silver and crystals in her hair; Lear had set them in carefully, a web of starlight, she imagined, with a few tiny pins. Simple and elegant. A starry crown for a star-blessed princess.

AEFA

SOMETIMES AEFA OF Thornhill thought she was not hard enough to survive Innis Lear, but when such doubts plagued her, she remembered what her mother would call her, and take heart.

My little mushroom.

Mushrooms weren’t generally thought to be pretty or resilient, but they appeared overnight, kissed into being by the sweet lips of earth saints who returned to the island only for secret dancing. Or so her mother had liked to whisper when Aefa climbed into bed with her, nose wrinkled and begging for a new nickname. Mushrooms are born of the damp earth, fed by starlight instead of the sun. They are both stars and roots, and they are never alone. When have you come across a single mushroom? Never! What a lovely thing to be, my little mushroom: never alone.

Aefa missed her mother.

At least Alis was alive, though hidden deep in the White Forest. She’d railed against Lear three summers ago, calling him foolish and dangerous, mad in his obdurate grief and old age. Only the king’s love for his Fool had saved Alis, buying her the opportunity to flee. And only the star prophecy that the sanctity of the White Forest itself must be maintained saved it from the king’s soldiers. There was a refuge at its heart now, held by the witch Brona, and Alis was there, safe but unable to leave lest she be caught and imprisoned, or worse, exiled forever from the island.

That was how Aefa’s clandestine meetings with the witch had begun: to pass letters for her mother. It was just as well Elia had abandoned her companion to sneak into the Summer Seat alone, for it left Aefa free to go where she wished, unseen.

The town of Sunton was a collection of stone cottages arrayed about a square and surrounded by portioned fields and shared grazing meadows. It clung in a raindrop shape along the low, sloping moors. The tip pointed toward the standing stones perched at the northernmost bluff overlooking the Summer Seat promontory, then curved against the King’s Road that led all along this southern cliff coast toward Port Comlack and Errigal Keep at the far eastern edge of the island. Aefa made her way along the road openly under the sun, swinging a basket in her hand and humming one of her father’s more ridiculous songs about kings and snails. She skipped across the muddy furrows in the dirt. Villagers smiled at her from their yards, women mostly, hanging laundry and sewing in the bright daylight while children dashed here and there, chasing goats and chickens. It was exactly like the village in which Aefa had been born, down to the capped well in the town square, to which she headed directly. Her memories of Firstday blessings at the holy well of Thornhill were dim, as it had been twelve years since she’d attended, and nearly ten since the wells were capped all across Innis Lear, but she remembered the scent—the dank, stony smell of moss and rootwater, and the shiver as a star priest flicked drops onto her face. She’d sneezed once, and it made her mother scowl, but her father had laughed.

The cap on the Sunton well was an old wagon wheel covered with lime wash and set with small gray river stones in a spiral pattern. Lovely and simple, and no doubt those still devout considered it a symbol of the path down and down and down to the water, as if they could still touch it. At the south rim, where the spiral began, Aefa crouched. In the cap’s shadow, there ought to be a box tucked against the foot of the well. But only a small lizard darted away at Aefa’s seeking touch.

With a huff, she stood. She supposed she could circle around town once or twice, or return tomorrow and hope Brona had found a chance to come.

“Aefa.”

It was the witch, her deep voice fond and laughing.

“Ah!” Aefa gasped, twirling with a delighted smile. “I didn’t miss you after all.”

The two women ducked together, embracing. The witch of the White Forest handed Aefa a small stoppered vial before they parted. She was a powerfully built woman with strong hands and a lovely tan face; loose black curls bound under a hood of vibrant red that matched the paint touched to lips as plump as her thighs.

Tucking the vial into a pocket of her skirts, Aefa said, “The princess is already inside the keep. I wish I could have brought her here to see you. She never speaks of you anymore, or her own mother, or truly much of anything but the stars. I’ve not caught her whispering to any flowers or wind in two entire years, Brona.”

The witch’s dark brow bent with sorrow, and she gazed toward the Summer Seat. “Be sure to put the rootwater in her mouth.”

“I slip it into her wine, or sometimes her breakfast. Shouldn’t she notice?”

Brona shrugged one shoulder. “She likely does, she only refuses to admit so, for many, many reasons.”

“Is she afraid?”

“No doubt.”

“I want to tell her,” Aefa said ferociously.

“And if you did, what would she say?”

Aefa imagined Elia’s face, her bright, black eyes. You have to listen to the island, Elia, Aefa would say, and those careful eyes would lower, perhaps flick up to the sky, or to the horizon, and the princess would take one of the great, deep breaths she used to quash the overwhelming song in her heart. But then Elia would make a sad, pretty smile, and move to some other conversation, some other answer, as if Aefa had said nothing at all.

The witch touched Aefa’s knuckles, and said, “She’ll ask you, when she’s ready. You’ll make sure she knows you have the answers?”

“I snap fire sometimes, out of air, to remind her.” Aefa pursed her lips. “She disapproves.”

Brona’s eyebrows lifted.

“She is afraid,” Aefa corrected herself, barely whispering.

“That’s good, little mushroom.” Brona smiled at Aefa’s darting glance. “Alis is well. She’s cultivating a long vine of sweet peas with charming purple flowers and a tendency to giggle at bluebirds.”

“Father wants to see her.”

There Brona’s expression closed off. “Then he should come see her. Nothing to stop him.”

After a pause, the women shared a knowing grimace. There was everything to stop the King’s Fool from a visit to Hartfare. The witch sighed. “But listen, Aefa, he will see her soon enough. All who were riven will soon return to their center.”

Aefa’s lips parted in wonder, for though the witch’s tone did not alter, the words held the weight of magic. “Is that a star prophecy?”

“I do not read stars,” Brona said with delicate distaste. “It is only the gossip of trees.”

But the witch turned her head east, and all her body followed, until Brona faced the rising land, staring as if she could see beyond it to the ocean channel, and past even that, to Aremoria.

“Even …?” Aefa whispered.

“Yes.”

A thrill straightened Aefa’s spine, and she danced a little in place. This would delight the princess, make the fire she was so afraid of flicker again and burn. “She’ll be so happy!”

“No,” Brona said suddenly, grabbing Aefa’s wrist. “She won’t be. But she will survive.”

GAELA

IN INNIS LEAR it was believed that the reign of the last queen had been predicted by the stars—and had ended, too, because of them.

Lear had been middle-aged when his father and brothers died: too old to have planned for ruling, too old to easily let go of his priestly calling, his years of sanctuary in the star towers. So the first thing the new king ordered was a star-casting to point him in the direction of a bride. He needed a queen, after all, as he needed heirs of his own to ensure the survival of his line. Every star-reader on the island joined together and offered their new king a sole prophecy: the first woman to set foot on the docks of Port Comlack at the dawn of the third dark moon after the Longest Night would be his true queen. She would give him strong children and rule justly beside him, then die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.

Lear arranged to be there, ready to greet this star-promised woman, and waited all night long under the third dark moon, despite icy winds so early in the year. As the first sunlight broke through thin clouds a ship came limping to port, too many of their rowers weak from struggling against the roiling ocean. It was a trader’s ship from the Third Kingdom, an ocean and half a continent away, where an inland sea and great river met in a gulf of sand and stone. First to emerge were the dark-skinned captain and five dark soldiers; they were royal guards along to protect a granddaughter of the empress, who’d traveled north searching for adventure. Lear welcomed them, inviting the princess to come forward. She descended like a slip of night, it was said, black-skinned and robed in bright layers of wool and silk against the cold ocean. Glass beads glinted from her roped black hair like ice or tears or—like stars.

Lear married her, though she was less than half his age, and loved her deeply.

She died at dawn on her first daughter’s sixteenth birthday, twelve years ago this winter.

The pain was as fresh to Gaela as every morning’s sunrise.

Anytime she was at the Summer Seat, Gaela would make this pilgrimage, down to the caves pocking the cliffs below the keep. Dalat had brought her here at least once a year, for all of Gaela’s childhood. At first only the two of them, then when Regan was old enough they were three, and finally in the last few years even baby Elia tagged along. They’d descended to the sea farther to the southeast, where the cliffs became beaches and bluffs with more ready, safe access to the hungry waves, and with an escort of heavily armed retainers in separate boats, they rowed back up the rocky coast here to the caves. Gaela remembered especially when she’d been eleven, and Elia only three years old, wrapped up against Gaela’s chest so she could protect her baby sister while Dalat held nine-year-old Regan’s hand. Elia had danced with all her limbs, excited and gleefully singing a childish rhyme, clutching at the collar of Gaela’s tunic and at one of her braids.

Dalat had dragged the boat as high onto the beach as she could, then smiled like a young girl and dashed with her daughters to the largest cave. She laughed at the spray of salt water that splattered her cheeks, and then when they were far inside the cave, knelt upon the wet stone, disregarding the algae and saltwater staining her skirt. “Here, Gaela,” she said, patting the earth beside her, “and here, Regan. Give me my littlest in my lap.” When all were situated, Dalat taught them a soft prayer in the language of the Third Kingdom. It was a layered, complex language filled with triple meanings depending on forms of address, and to Gaela it always sounded like a song. She fought hard, scowling, to remember the prayer after only one recitation. Regan repeated the final word of every phrase, planting the rhythm on her tongue. Elia mouthed along with their mother, saying nothing with any meaning, but seeming the most natural speaker of them all.

Today the tide was out, and Gaela was strong enough she didn’t need to row up from a beach or bring retainers to assist.

The emerald grass capping the cliffs bent in the sea wind, and she unerringly located the slip of rock that cut down at an angle, crossing the sheer face of the cliff at a manageable slant. She’d left off any armor and all fancy attire, put on dull brown trousers and a soldier’s linen shirt, wrapped her twists up in a knot, and tied on soft leather shoes. Carefully, Gaela made her way along the first section, forward looking but leaned back with one hand skimming the steep rocks for balance.

As Gaela climbed down, she muttered her mother’s prayer to herself. She didn’t believe in Dalat’s god, but it was the only piece of the language she remembered fluently, having stopped speaking it three days after the queen died.

Sun glared off the water, flashing in her eyes. Gaela turned her back to the sea, placing toes where they would not slip, and gripped the ridge in her strong hands. Wind flattened her to the cliff, tugging at her shirt. She glanced down at the steep gray-and-black precipice, toward the clear green water and rolling whitecaps. Her stomach dropped, and she smiled. The rock was rough under the pads of her fingers, scraping her palms; her knees pressed hard, she climbed down, and down, until she could hop the final few feet to land in a crouch on the slick, sandy shore.

Her shoulders rose as she took a huge breath, filling her lungs with salty air. She blew it out like a saint of the ocean, summoning a storm.

Walking along the beach, Gaela eyed the mouth of the cave: a slanted oval, wider at the base and twice taller than her. At high tide the ocean swallowed this whole beach, and only tiny boats could row in, though there was danger of becoming trapped. This cave that Gaela had climbed to was directly below the Summer Seat, but unfortunately too wet for storing castle goods, and there were times smugglers would need to be cleared out. Gaela glanced up the cliff toward the black walls of the castle, high above and leaning over in places. She thought perhaps to install stairs, or some system of ladders, and wondered, too, if the cave could be transformed into cold storage, if they could put in high shelving to keep the water off. But it seemed too complicated to be practical.

She reached the mouth of the cave and paused, one hand on the rough edge of the mouth, her lips curled in a frown. For five years now she’d only come alone, since Regan had married. Elia hadn’t been welcome in the caves, not since she chose Lear over her sisters, damn her. Today, Gaela would’ve preferred to have Regan with her again, but her sister had kept herself away in Connley unexpectedly, even since their summons.

On her own these two days, Gaela had been assessing the state of her kingdom behind her father’s back, first meeting with the strongest earls, Glennadoer and Rosrua and Errigal, and discussing a tax for the repair of that blasted coastal road, if her father did refuse funds from the treasury. It was necessary, especially that the worst erosion be bolstered before the fierce winter storms. She and Astore had been appalled at the state of Lear’s accounting records in the past three years, demanding Lear’s stewards find a path through the mess. The earls had promised records from their own holdings that would make up for some of the confusion. When Gaela took the throne, she’d be ready to put resources exactly where she wanted them: trade and a stronger standing army. Her grandmother was an empress, and Gaela would transform Innis Lear into a jewel worthy of such a relationship. By the time she died, no longer would this land be a blight clinging to the sea, its inner woods a mystery of ghosts and hidden villages, the people known for superstition and old magic. Kay Oak had told Gaela that Lear’s star prophecies were considered an artful, childlike folly in the Third Kingdom, where the study of stars was a science. Even in Aremoria the king was building great schools, and his father had turned his people away from magic. Innis Lear was a backward holdout.

Gaela would change it all. She would not be remembered only as the prophesied daughter who killed a beloved mother, but as the king who dragged Innis Lear away from venal superstition and filthy wormwork.

She entered the cave. The floor was sand; her boots sank into watery puddles and the meager warmth of the sun vanished. Layers of rock, slick with algae and striped gray with pale green stratification, cut away, curving deeper. Salty, wet stone-smell filled her nose, and she even tasted the delicate flavor of dark earth on her tongue. The air seeped with it. A drip like a pretty chime echoed farther back, where she could not see.

It was like standing in a frozen moment of rain, surrounded by a refreshing, cool breeze and droplets of water that never quite touched her. Gaela’s mother had said there was nothing like this in the desert. And that standing here, breathing, was as near to sharing God’s breath as Dalat had found since leaving her old home.

Gaela often wished she could visit the Third Kingdom, but Innis Lear was her birthright. In Dalat’s home, Gaela might be allowed to govern a city, or work her way up in the ranks of the armies to general. But here she would rule over all. If she had a god, it was this island. She would make her name, and the name of Innis Lear, so strong and great that the words and spirit of them would travel to the desert in her place.

“I am so close, Mother.”

Her voice remained low, but Gaela had no need to be heard. It was the memory of her mother to whom she spoke, no ghost. She had not brought a candle to light; a thousand candles burned for Dalat every night in the north. Nor did Gaela bring mementos: eagle feathers pinched her heart, but what good were they buried in this sand or tossed into the ocean? Gaela was unsentimental, and her mother was gone. Taken from her by Lear, by the reign of his stars. Nothing could bring Dalat back, no rootwater nor blood, no star prophecy nor faith in even the great god of her mother’s people.

When Gaela spoke to her mother’s memory, she really was talking to herself and the island.

“There are things I’ve done you would not approve of,” Gaela said, crouching. Her bottom leaned on the craggy wall for balance, and she rested her wrists on her knees. “My barren body, my loveless marriage. You were so happy when I was young, because you loved him, and you had us, and I remember you found so much joy in so many mundane things I still don’t understand. But I did what I had to do, and I’m not sorry, Dalat. I will rule Innis Lear, and Regan’s children will be my heirs.”

Gaela pictured her mother’s face, though Dalat looked rather more like Gaela herself than she truly had; it was the best a daughter could do so many years later. Kayo had brought a small bust of Dalat-as-a-girl from the desert, and her orange clay face at fifteen was so much like Elia’s instead: round and sweet and smiling. Gaela had rejected it.

“Mother,” Gaela said, “I miss you. You wanted me, despite everything, but he never did. You gave me the ambitions to rule this island. You taught me I could, encouraged me to find my own way to strength, because our ancestors are queens and empresses. He pretended I was nothing, tolerating me despite the prophecy, because he loved you. When Elia was born, and her … her stars were perfect, he’d have named her heir if she’d been a boy. If I wasn’t married to Astore and hadn’t made myself into a dangerous prince, he’d try it now. Fortunately for all of us she has no ambition of her own, or I’d have to kill her. He and his stars would necessitate it.” Gaela closed her eyes. The ocean outside matched the roar of her blood. Sometimes she thought that men had created star prophecies solely to benefit themselves.

“I don’t understand how you loved him, Mother. He used you, and me, to prove the truth of the stars, and I will never let that happen again. My kingdom will not be defined as yours was, and I will not let him, or any of them, trap me as you were trapped. I love you, but I will not be like you.”

She spat on the ground, leaving that piece of herself there, her body and water, for the sand and tide and Innis Lear.

MARS

MORIMAROS, THE KING of Aremoria, was annoyed.

He’d been directed outside to a nearly empty garden, along with his personal escort of five polished soldiers, to await a second audience with King Lear. Mars had assumed that meant an immediate audience, an intimate discussion of his matrimonial goals, but instead he’d been waiting long enough for the shadow of the stone table at the center of the yard to shift a hand-span. The walls of the courtyard reached high, lime-washed and painted with gray trees, star shapes, and graceful flying swans, the art faded now and in need of retouching. Pine boughs and sweet-smelling lavender littered the earthen ground. Deep wooden boxes in the four corners grew with emerald moss and creeping rose vines that bloomed bloodred and creamy orange.

Though it was altogether a lovely atmosphere, something tugged at Mars’s awareness, as if invisible cracks had formed in the very air. As if the roses wanted his attention.

Mars was not practiced at idleness. It led him to imagine fantasies.

He wondered if his Fox had arrived yet.

I have a game for you to play, Mars had said, the afternoon he’d received his invitation to this Zenith Court. Did you know her, Elia Lear? His Fox had lied when he answered, Barely, sir, with something of shuttered grief in the tremble of his words.

The Fox had served Mars passionately and well for years, discovering secrets no other spy even thought to look for, slipping into fortresses and enemy camps as if he could spin himself invisible or as quick as the wind with which he spoke. Yet that always hidden thread of angst was too easy for Mars to pluck and set against Innis Lear. Until now, Mars had held back from doing so. Things built so easily tended to be just as easily broken.

But it was time. Mars was here for one thing: Innis Lear itself, and he stood at the center of several paths to claim it. The Fox was one. The princess was another.

Waiting in this empty, albeit lovely, courtyard was not.

The king’s eyes returned to the central stone table.

It was only a man’s length across, and circular, cut of the same or similar hard black rock that this entire castle was made of. Mars was reminded of the stone circles that clung to this island, or the ancient dolmen to be found in the less civilized parts of Aremoria. Remnants of the oldest cults of earth and root.

That was it.

Mars, though he’d been still and standing beside one of the walls this entire time, strode suddenly to the table and crouched. He put one hand to the rough edge and peered beneath it.

The wide foot of the table was like the stump of a mushroom, built of small black rocks held together with mortar. He smelled damp moss, and despite the shadows that must perpetually cling to this underside, he saw glinting water, trickles that had seeped through the mortar. The tabletop had been set upon the foot, but not plastered in place. Like a heavy, precarious lid.

This had been a well once.

Sucking in a breath, the king of Aremoria realized he was not only surprised, but shocked in the way of a man confronting some desperate heresy.

Clutching the edge of the table, Mars stood carefully and looked around the rose courtyard again. The vines themselves, at every corner, and the lack of ceiling, should have been enough of a hint: this courtyard had been a chapel.

In Aremoria, long ago, the people had worshipped the earth, made their temples in the river caves and around natural springs. As the country grew, they built churches and cathedrals of earth, wood, and stone, always with the central well that dove deep into the heart of the world. Passages to life and death. When the worship of stars spread, Aremoria came entirely out of caves and knocked the roofs off their churches, marrying wells and starlight.

Mars remembered it being similar on Innis Lear. Their star towers rose high, but at Dondubhan where he’d once been a guest, eleven years ago, the black lake Tarinnish had been called the Well of Lear. He knew from his Fox that the White Forest was pocked with springs and wells, and the Fox’s own witchcraft came from the rootwaters and worms.

But this well, in the heart of the Summer Seat of Innis Lear, had been capped off.

It shook him, though Mars could only guess at why. He had no religion himself, nor trust in prophecy and magic.

And yet.

Yesterday, Lear himself had greeted Mars outside the Summer Seat, waiting across the land bridge, seeming modest, clad in only a finely made robe, his hair unbound, and without the impressive regalia of armored retainers and cavalry that Mars himself had brought. Then, Mars thought Lear had wished to create a welcome that put little pressure on Mars to be formal, and Mars had hoped it meant the king of Innis Lear and his youngest looked kindly on Mars’s intentions, to receive him so casually, as if already they were family. Then dinner had come, and Ullo of Burgun arrived, too, and Mars had gritted his teeth, holding his expression blank the entire time. Lear had behaved just as informally, giving no clear preference to either king.

Though Mars understood politically why Lear entertained Ullo of Burgun as another suitor to his daughter, it rankled nonetheless to be set on an equal footing with such a buffoon. Either it was a purposeful affront to the obviously greater alliance with Aremoria, or Lear was no statesman. Mars had taken every opportunity to remind Ullo of the folly of going against him. Ullo’s response had been to flirt his way through every conversation, making Mars almost hope Elia Lear never arrived at all, to be subjected to the attentions of this featherbrained flatterer-king. Lear himself either did not mind Ullo’s flavor, or did not notice. Then Lear had commented to Mars in such a way that made it sound as if they’d never before met, when they had, though briefly and now over a decade prior.

Last night it had merely irritated Mars, but now, it unsettled him.

Was the king of Innis Lear capricious, or losing his mind to his age? Something was out of balance on the island, Mars could feel it, and more than any conversation he’d overheard or participated in, this diminished holy well was proof. There’d been reports that the king of Innis Lear had shut down the wells, but in Aremoria they’d moved their folk away from holy wells and cave worship a generation ago. To the betterment of the country, and to its strength.

The difference, Mars thought, was Lear had not offered anything to replace rootwater and faith in the hearts and minds of his people. No wonder there was imbalance and unease threaded through everything. When Mars had returned home after his long-ago visit, curious and fascinated by the tightly knit faith of the Learish people, his father had, with little fanfare, dispelled his son’s awe:

That place is haunted, Morimaros, and you’d do well not to admire whatever magic granted it such power. Here in Aremoria we’ve given the people something better than ghosts and stars and trees to believe in: they have us. And if you’re ever to retake that island and rule it, as is your birthright, you need to recognize credulity when you see it, and accept that superstition is a tool, not a guarantee. Magic is untrustworthy; only loyalty matters to kings.

A soft breeze kissed Mars’s cheek, turning his attention to the open arched gate of the rose courtyard, just as Ullo of Burgun walked through. Though a warm afternoon, the king wore heavy fur to compliment his thick head of hair and full beard, both no doubt intended to make him appear more mature. Mars suddenly wished he’d managed to confront Ullo directly on the battlefield last month, and had captured him against a ransom, which he could then have denied, keeping Ullo locked in a fine room in the Lionis Palace and far away from Innis Lear.

Burgun chatted with the King’s Fool, whose name Mars never had caught. The Fool wore ridiculous stripes and a toy sword in a sheath on his back; his hair was dyed unnatural red and he had paint on his lower lip and at the corners of his eyes. He clapped his hands and bowed extravagantly toward Mars. “Your bright Majesty, we’ve come to entertain you until the king arrives.”

Mars nodded, unwilling to address the man simply as Fool, and then said, “Ullo,” to the king of Burgun. If this invitation to Innis Lear had not come when it did, Burgun would be annexed to Aremoria by now, and in a different sort of political mess.

“Morimaros,” Ullo replied, wearing a vapid smile. Behind him came ten men in the maroon regalia of Burgun, all trimmed with fur or elaborate golden embroidery. They wore long knives, but no mail or armor or swords. It wasn’t from politeness, Mars was certain, but the belief that finery was more impressive than military accouterment would’ve been.

The Fool made directly for the only seat in the yard that was not a bench, and thrust himself into it with the urgency of a child. He draped across the arms, and said, “Wine not far behind, good fellows, would you like a song?”

Before Ullo could speak, Mars said, “I’d like the history of the table here.”

Ullo laughed, but the Fool’s smile was tinged with mystery. He said, “Only a table, great king, and a grave.”

“A grave?” Ullo said, recoiling.

To keep from rolling his eyes, Mars refused to make any expression at all. The imbecile still had not determined that the Fool spoke only in riddles. “For whom?” Mars asked. He folded his arms across his chest, knowing it broadened his shoulders, and glad to be taller than Ullo of Burgun.

“Or what?” asked the Fool.

Mars nodded. He understood: this was the effect of the ascendancy of stars. A grave for rootwater.

“So serious,” Ullo declared, patting his hand along the black stone table. He wore rings on all but one finger, weighing down his pale hand. “This is a celebration! We’re here to celebrate … one of us.”

Mars did not accept the volley. It was a weak charge, which would not even reach his defenses.

The Fool began to sing, and Mars considered departing. Surely it was not worth another meeting with the king of Innis Lear if Ullo was to be here as well. Perhaps courting her at all was a mistake. There were other ways to retake the island, other ways to secure better sea trade. But his father had insisted one of Lear’s daughters should be the next queen of Aremoria. It might’ve been the first or second daughter, and then with nothing more than a marriage, Mars could have reunited the island to Aremoria. But now that he was at last prepared to wed, the only unmarried daughter was a star priest, and likely too steeped in her father’s way.

He remembered Princess Elia only as a quiet girl who clutched her father’s hand as if nothing else kept her tethered to this world. In eleven years could she have changed so much? Her replies to his letters had been simple and brief, speculating upon the upcoming seasons and suggesting several small prophecies for his use. Ban had described to him a young girl of vivid personality, of curiosity and an earthly beauty. Such personality had not been present in her correspondence, though when he glanced over the letters again during the ocean crossing, he’d found some hints of humor he had overlooked before. But that might only have been wishful thinking. After all, he’d been forced to idleness on the ship, too, with nothing but the gray sea and unclear paths ahead of him. Too many possibilities, not enough information.

Mars reminded himself to be patient. The worst Ullo could do was irritate him, and young Elia Lear would be here at the Summer Seat soon. One of his men had been tasked since yesterday with alerting him immediately when her entourage arrived. It was Elia he needed to win over, not her father or this Fool, nor anyone else on Innis Lear.

He remained in the Rose Courtyard, taking position with his men. With one ear he listened to Burgun and the Fool chatter and flirt, to their rather inappropriate jokes—leave it to Ullo to understand nuance only if it was sexual in nature—and songs. The rest of Mars’s mind turned toward the future, and the variety of possibilities he foresaw, depending on what occurred at tomorrow’s Zenith Court.

He’d been promised an answer to his courtship, and all believed the king would finally name his eldest, Gaela, as his official heir, perhaps even step down immediately. But anything could happen, and Mars would do best to have thought through any number of outcomes and actions, so that when the moment arrived, he’d have a plan, and multiple backup plans.

So the Aremore king remained, a spider carefully poised, spinning several days of the future out again and again, asking himself silent questions and answering them, busy with webs of strategy.

Then Lear entered, with his youngest daughter at his side, her chin tucked down, a small, curious smile on her lovely face, an old leather book in her arms, and stars in her hair.

Mars forgot every single thread of his thoughts in an instant.

ELIA

ELIA WAS PLEASED to discover that her father was leading her toward the Rose Courtyard for their meeting; it had always been one of her favorite places at the Summer Seat, even since the well had been closed. She felt safe there, understood. It was a good sign for the introduction about to take place. Elia breathed carefully, practicing a cool expression, practicing being a star.

When she entered, the wind was tense, whispering little cries without words. She held tight against her chest the large tome of star charts she’d carried from her father’s rooms, and glanced up, curious.

Each king had, of course, claimed a side.

To the east Ullo of Burgun waited surrounded by his own retainers in bright maroon and gold, jeweled sheaths for long knives hung from leather belts. They clustered in a friendly group, and though a few eyed the Aremores, most chatted with each other and Ullo. Just as Lear and Elia entered, the king laughed, tossing back a head of thick brown hair so his teeth glinted whitely and well. He clapped a pale hand on the chest of the Burgundian lord beside him. Sweat glistened at the temples of both Ullo and this man, laden as they were with velvet and fur-lined finery. But Ullo was pretty, and his beard seemed soft around his full, smiling mouth.

Across from him, only six Aremores presented, each of them in quilted orange gambesons, with pauldrons fixed to their shield shoulders by a red leather strap diagonal across the chest. The steel pauldrons were round as a moon reflecting sunlight. One Aremore man stood out at the fore, though he held himself exactly as the soldiers did and his costume was the same but for a heavy ring of garnet and pearls on his thumb and a simple crown etched into the surface of his pauldron. This king’s head was shorn nearly bare, and a perfectly trimmed brown beard to match it spread over his hard jaw. He had blue eyes, and their long dark lashes were the only promise of softness from the king of Aremoria. And he had no love for Burgun; that was obvious from the analytic stare he cast toward the more relaxed Ullo.

With a pleased start, Elia recognized the final man in the courtyard, lounging in a chair with his leg tossed up over the arm, wearing a striped coat of several bright colors: Aefa’s father, Lear’s Fool. She smiled and nearly broke Lear’s game by calling out to him. But she remembered that this was a volatile moment, and she needed to maintain poised calm for her father’s sake—and for her own. Her smile stopped at slight.

The moment king and daughter entered, Ullo snapped to attention, and Morimaros of Aremoria bowed his head respectfully.

“Your Majesty of Innis Lear,” said Burgun, stepping forward. “What a charming garden this is, and a surprise on this cold, sharp cliff. It seems roses are a perfect flower for your island, as beautiful and hearty as they are.”

“And tangled,” Lear said, amused. “And sharp and treacherous.”

Ullo blinked, then smiled as if it were the only reaction he could think to have.

“Lear,” the king of Aremoria said only.

“Aremoria,” Lear returned.

Retaking attention, Ullo swept his hand toward the Fool. “Your Fool has kept us well entertained, sir, as we awaited you.”

“And you”—the Fool stood to offer an elaborate bow—“entertained me beyond well, king, verging toward ill, if all things are circles.” Taller and lankier than the king had ever been, he kept his hair short and spiky, dyed henna red, and dots of red painted the outer corners of his eyes and bottom lip, like a woman.

Lear embraced his Fool fondly, saying, “Your wit rarely comes full circle, friend.”

“More of a spiral, I’d say, beginning and ending only in your ability to comprehend.”

Lear laughed, and so did his Fool, their heads knocking together as if they were alone in all the world. Though Elia understood the joking, or so she thought, there seemed something still she could not catch.

“You’ve brought a star priest with you,” said the king of Aremoria lightly.

Elia met his gaze: Morimaros watched her dispassionately.

“Ah, no.” Ullo of Burgun bounded forward, his hand out to Elia. “This is the princess Elia of Lear. My lady, only a dullard could mistake your unique beauty for anyone else.”

Morimaros’s lips pulled into a line Elia could not read. She gave the charts over to one of Lear’s retainers and allowed Ullo her hand, saying, “But I am a star priest, my lord, and so it was no mistake.”

Ullo touched her fingers to his lips and smiled. “I am rather overwhelmed at meeting you, and apologize for any misspeaking.”

She squeezed his fingers, and he released her. His eyes trailed down her neck and across her breasts with open intimacy. As her flesh went cold, she turned her face to Morimaros. “My father did bring a star priest with him. You wished your birth chart analyzed.”

“We are to be honored by your very own prophecies?” Ullo said, hand over his heart.

The king of Aremoria did not react but to flick his eyes at Ullo. Elia hid another smile, believing Morimaros had stronger feelings for Burgun than for her. That should make remaining detached easier.

It was Lear who said, one arm about his Fool, the other waving at the retainers, “Here are the charts, if my dearest daughter obliges, and perhaps in your stars she’ll find some preference for her favors.”

“I would petition the jewels of heaven to tilt in their courses toward me,” Ullo said prettily.

Elia wished Morimaros would say, I need rely on no such petitioning, or some such, that might put the king of Burgun down, but Morimaros was silent.

She gestured for the charts to be placed upon the well’s tabletop and glanced between the two kings. “I must begin with knowing your times of birth, so we might choose the correct charts.”

Morimaros paused in consideration.

“Do you know it?” she prompted gently.

“I do, lady,” he said just as gently. “I only would not want to remove from Ullo the chance to be first.”

“Sporting of you,” Ullo snapped. “Perhaps there is some star sign now which of us should be preferred.”

Casting her gaze up at the blue sky, Elia said, “I’m afraid the afternoon stars have no signs for us, influencing instead beyond our means to see.”

“Perhaps a worm sign, then?”

She looked sharply to the speaker: it had been Morimaros.

“Do you listen to the language of trees?” the king of Aremoria continued. He held his expression as cool as ever, but Elia warmed at the question.

“Worm signs!” Lear cried, scrubbing the air with his arms. “None such in my court.”

Elia’s pulse jumped, and she forced her pleasure hard away. “Of course not, Father,” she soothed.

Ullo frowned sympathetically. “Only the purest prophecy for such as ourselves.”

“Indeed,” Lear said. “I will be the star of this afternoon and say Ullo will have his reading first.”

Elia glanced at Morimaros with slight apology, wishing she might say something to him, but in the end these kings mattered little to her.

Ullo was twenty-four years old, born under the Violet Moon of the Year of Past Shadows. Elia paged through the proper charts while Ullo leaned over her shoulder, smiling prettily in the corner of her eye, but not pressing near enough to touch or overwhelm her. He smelled of properly burnt sugar and a current of sweat, but not unpleasantly so.

The Year of Past Shadows had been full of repeating patterns in the dawn clouds, tied back to the year before, and thus given its name. Elia kept that in mind as she carefully marked a blank sky map with stars from the night of Ullo’s birth, counting everything forward, wishing she knew the clouds and very worm signs Morimaros had asked after. Or had a handful of holy bones to cast. But her father did not allow bones, or any such earthly predictions, in his records. Unlike bones and earth, Lear said, the stars see all, from their greater vantage point, and are not marred by subjectivity.

The king of Burgun’s birth star was the Rabbit’s Heart, rising under a crescent moon to inflict sharpness on an otherwise generous spirit. Perhaps the sharpness of a crown, she assured him, so long as he did not allow it to make him bitter.

“With so sweet a lady as you beside me, bitterness would be impossible,” he replied.

Elia demurred, but her father laughed approvingly, and the Fool pointed out that some bittersweet flavors remained longest in memory.

Morimaros of Aremoria would turn thirty in just over a month, several days before this year’s equinox. “But it was the equinox itself the night I was born,” he offered.

“Ah,” King Lear intoned excitedly, putting a sour tilt to Ullo of Burgun’s smile.

“That is helpful,” Elia said, repeating her charge of marking down stars and counting forward as she’d done first for Ullo. The Aremore king had been born in the Year of the Sixth Birds, and on that autumnal equinox, an hour before dawn in Aremoria, it was the Lion of War that crowned the sky. Elia glanced at her father, whose eyes narrowed on the chart. “That constellation holds your counter star, Elia,” he said testily.

“It is, my lord,” she agreed. “The Lion of War, rampant and constant as Calpurlugh, but instead of a stationary constant, it circles the same piece of sky, protecting or confining.”

Morimaros cleared his throat. He had not moved nearer to her for his reading, but maintained his stance at the fore of his retainers, shoulders back and hands folded behind him. “Is Calpurlugh not the Eye of the Lion? It has been years since my astronomy lessons, but I thought they were pieces of each other.”

“Pieces that never see one another, yes,” Elia said. “They are not in sequence together, but only one or the other. Depending on the stars around them, it is either Calpurlugh or the Lion that shines, never both.”

“Alas,” Ullo of Burgun said.

“But the Lion is bold, and on an equinox dawn as this is, he is isolated but surrounded by … possibility.” Elia felt an unusual urge to couch her reading, for this was a lonely one, and she could imagine it heartbreaking for a man already isolated within a crown. It was not a future she would choose for herself.

Morimaros did not seem affected, though, or particularly invested in the reading. His blue eyes remained calm, and he showed neither disappointment nor pleasure, as if none of this mattered at all.

Irritated to feel she’d wasted her time, when he had requested this reading in his letter—had it been his only way of flirtation? Appealing to her interest though he shared it not at all?—Elia straightened. “I am weary, sirs,” she said, “and my companion must have arrived by now. I must see her and rest after my travel down from the north.”

Immediately, Morimaros bowed, accepting her withdrawal.

The Fool clapped his hands. “I would go with you, to see Aefa.”

“Please,” Elia said.

Lear put a hand on Ullo’s shoulder, but said to both kings, “You will see my Elia again at tomorrow’s Zenith Court, where all I have promised will be decided.”

The king of Aremoria said, “I hope I may speak with you, Lear, further?”

Truly, Elia thought as she kissed her father’s cheek, it was her father that Morimaros had come to treat with, not her. He obviously wished alliance and dowry; not a queen, not herself.

Ullo offered his hand, and she took it, glad he at least bothered to pay her personal attention, even if his eyes lingered too long on her neck, on her wrists and the line from breast to waist. Tomorrow she would be rid of both these kings.

The king of Burgun escorted her out of the courtyard, the Fool following behind with a weird, affected gate. When they emerged into the inner yard, Elia angled toward the family keep. “Thank you,” she said.

“I hope we can continue our courtship, even beyond tomorrow.”

“I have … enjoyed your letters,” she acknowledged, thinking of Aefa’s recitations.

Drawing her nearer, Ullo said, “I would rather your good opinion than your father’s. Aremoria may be a great commander, but I rule from the heart, and I want only what is best for my people. I think you are it, and beautiful.”

Though uncomfortable at the touch of his hip to hers, Elia appreciated the honesty. “I will not favor Aremoria over Burgun based on these stars.”

His smile was radiant.

The Fool’s face appeared between hers and Ullo’s. He smiled madly, showing all his teeth. “I was born under a grinning moon, see?”

“I do,” Ullo said, laughing as though charmed. He took the hint, and stepped back from Elia, bowing over her hand. “Until tomorrow, princess.”

The king of Burgun and his maroon retinue passed beyond her, marching at a leisurely pace toward the guest tower. Elia wondered at the wisdom or folly of putting both kings in the same place. They clearly did not get on, and they had been at war for two consecutive summers. Had it been her father’s decision, and had he done so with a mischievous mind? Or merely at the suggestion of the stars?

“I think you would make a great queen,” the Fool said, touching her hair. She suspected he’d found one of the crystals pinned with the silver web. Elia turned her head. The Fool’s eyes were so like Aefa’s, though the white lids drooped heavier with age despite his being nearly two decades younger than Lear. She smelled spiced meat on his breath, and the earthy fresh henna in his hair.

Elia put her fingers on his red-stained bottom lip. She did not want to be any queen, nor did she feel suited to the job. “Hush, before the stars hear.”

“The vault of heaven does not listen to fools,” he said brightly, and danced her across the yard.

FIVE YEARS AGO,
ASTORA

THE STAR CHAPEL of Astora was built into the surrounding mountains, formed of heavy limestone and plaster, painted generations ago with gold flake and indigo to make the first chamber like the vault of heaven. Regan Lear passed through it, unconcerned with the public sanctuary. Heads turned as star-kissed priests and the prayerful noted the middle daughter of their king gliding through sharp and smooth as a galley in calm waters. Not since her elder sister’s wedding to their duke two years ago had Regan come into this chapel, but she was immediately recognizable. Against the martial Gaela Astore, who covered herself most days in armor and the raiment of men, it was perhaps a surprise to gaze upon such a sleek, feminine princess. Regan’s gown was voluminous and pale as the sky at dawn, dragging behind her in a perfect half-circle of oystered layers. She wore a veil of thin silver chains woven through her curls, and looped beneath her chin from delicate brooches at her temples. A dripping crown of rain.

And most startling of all, this princess smiled.

Today was the first day Regan had been truly happy since her mother died.

She reached the arched doorway leading to the Chapel of the Navel and heaved it open. The staircase was narrow and cold, and instantly she was assaulted by the damp air blowing down from the chapel above. This was the oldest chamber in the church, carved high into the side of the mountain long before any dukedoms, when the island welcomed people into its bleeding heart.

Regan lit no candles from the small storage alcoves. In violet darkness, she steadily ascended. Her thin-soled slippers tip-tapped against the stone, echoing forward like a gentle warning. She paused to toe them off at the top of the stairs, proceeding forward in bare feet. The passage was not long, but it narrowed in the center before widening again, like a birthing canal. Or that was how Regan imagined it, her smile brightening.

The Navel itself was merely a stone rectangle cut into the mountain, with a ledge carved along the walls for sitting. The entrance through which Regan had arrived looked directly across the twenty-foot length and through two narrow stone columns, outside into the dark valley below. Astora City was a warm glow, and beyond, velvet hills lifted gently away, before the stretch of purple sky.

A six-pointed star had been carved through the roof, allowing moonlight and starlight to shine dimly in. It was not the proper time of year or night to serve its greatest function, at the apex of the Longest Night Moon.

Regan moved directly below the skylight, where the slate floor had cracked with age, and knelt beside the only adornment: a stone water basin carved beside a deep, narrow well. The well was covered with a wooden lid, so Regan shoved it aside. She dipped her fingers into the stale, tired water, ruining the dull reflection of the night sky, and touched the wet blessing to her cheeks, her lips, and then the linen over her belly. Her hand remained there, cupping the only star Regan cared for: the new pinprick of light in the deep recess of her body.

She bowed her head, a smile continuing to play at her lips, and thought of the life in her, the dynamic, dangerous spark. Her breath was low and long, deep and content. Not a feeling Regan was accustomed to, being a woman of sharp, fierce ambition. She rarely experienced anything like peace in her heart. Satisfaction, however, was a thing she’d recently come to know quite intimately, and she was pleased to discover how the one could lead to the other.

The stars grew bolder as she waited, and color fled the sky until it was black as black could be.

Regan imagined the moments approaching again and again: her stern sister’s mouth falling open in surprise; their embrace; the tense, rough argument, followed by renewed dedication to each other. It was a thrill to anticipate the special, unique pleasure of being of one mind with Gaela, the most ferocious, the great pillar of her heart.

Of course she heard her sister approach.

A clatter and grunt, the oddly gentle ringing of metal, like a song.

Regan straightened her shoulders, held her penitent pose.

Behind her, Gaela burst into the room with a quiet curse.

“Sister,” Gaela said harshly. Not from anger or irritation, but for herself. Gaela wielded her words and movements like armor and war hammers. Regan preferred her own thorns to be small and precise and subtle, though no less deadly.

Settling back onto her heels, Regan sang out in the language of trees. Sister! One of the only such words Gaela understood.

Gaela Astore fumed out of the shadows, stomped to Regan’s side, and fell hard to her knees. She wore leather and wool, an empty sword belt and a skirt of mail. Her hair was twisted back like the roots of an oak, pulling her forehead wide. She was a beauty, despite herself, Regan had always thought: a slice of moon, magnificent and dangerous.

“This should be filled in,” Gaela said, gesturing at the old well. “Why did you wish to meet here? After all these months.”

Regan waited, patient with Gaela as with no other.

Gaela’s eyes roamed her sister’s face and body, coming to rest on the hand still curled at Regan’s belly. “Yes,” Gaela whispered. And her mouth broadened into a toothy smile.

Regan grasped Gaela’s hand and flattened it against her belly, pressing their hands together there. “The future queen.”

“Or king,” Gaela answered, fisting her hand in the layers of Regan’s skirt, and dragged her sister toward her. They embraced. For so many years this had been a piece of their goal: Gaela on the throne of Innis Lear, with Regan’s children for her heirs. Gaela had been sixteen when she swore to her sister, fast and secretly, that no child would lock into her womb, she would make sure of it. We will be king and queen of Lear, iron-strong Gaela had promised her willow-thin fourteen-year-old sister. No matter husbands or rivals, it will be you and me, our bodies and our blood. Regan had kissed her cheek and promised.

Regan kissed her again now, and touched their cheeks together. She braced for the next step.

The lady-warrior took Regan’s shoulders in demanding hands and said, “How long?”

“I only was certain five days ago, and so it will come in the earliest weeks of spring. You are the first to know.”

“You must marry, and fast.”

“We’ll say we eloped already, and everyone will believe it.”

Gaela’s brows lifted. “Of the neat, passionless Regan Lear? I have my doubts.”

“But, sister”—Regan’s lips pressed a secretive smile—“they will believe it of me with this man. That we were forced to hide our passion from the king.”

“Who is the father?” Gaela growled.

This sparked a brilliant fire in Regan’s eyes: shards of brown and tan and a blue just like their father’s, tossed together in a tempest that seemed a gentle brown when beheld from the distance most gave between themselves and the sly middle daughter. Only a handful of people stood close enough to know Regan had slices of her father inside her eyes. “Lear will be so furious, Gaela,” she whispered, glee and cruelty warring in the thin tone. “And Astore, too. It is the worst and the best I could do.”

Understanding passed swiftly to Gaela. “Oh, Regan, my love, you did not.”

“Connley, Connley, Connley,” Regan said, differently each time. First casual, then wicked, then deep in her mouth, as if she could taste him buried there.

Gaela thrust herself to her feet. “His grandfather despised our mother! His mother sought for years to marry our father! You give Connley the hope of the crown now?”

“His children only.” Regan slid to stand as well. “And a knife in our father’s heart.”

“So, too, it will divide us, all the more because my husband and your lover are chiefest of rivals.”

“It is done.”

“You should have discussed it with me!”

“You did not ask my advice when you chose Astore!”

“Ah! But Astore was the obvious, only choice! He is fierce and, by our father’s and other men’s reckoning, worthy of the crown. The anticipated alternate, should the line of Lear fall, because of his proven strength and his blasted stars. I chose him to play the part I want him to play. He thinks already to have a crown from me. Connley will not rest with that. Does he fear you? I will not believe if you say he does.”

Regan touched her tongue to her bottom lip, uncontrolled before her sister as she was before no other. “He does not fear me, no, nor I him. But Connley feels a more possessive thing for me, one that will not drive him away as fear or pity or sorrow might drive yours.”

“Surely you do not speak of love,” Gaela scoffed. “Love is no strength.”

“Not even between us?”

Gaela scoffed. “This is not love between us, we are one. We are beyond love!”

“Are we?” Regan touched her sister’s earlobe, tugged gently. She knew Gaela had a heart of iron in her chest and cared only slightly for anything she did not feel in her very bones. Worse yet was Gaela at expressing emotions that were not the fiery sort, were not those powerful feelings allowed to great warriors and kings; she disdained all things considered womanly as she disdained her own womb. Regan could not remember if Gaela had been born so, or learned it from their father, his stars, and Dalat’s death. All Regan knew was that her sister had the stars of conquerors in her sky, and such men did not love well. Gaela thought she was beyond love’s reach, while Regan believed herself to be composed of nothing but love. Terrible, devastating, insatiable love.

“So.” Gaela sighed gruffly and put her hands on Regan’s hips. “This is the child of two royal lines, then.”

“Three, sister. Lear and Connley and the Third Kingdom.”

“Connley’s grandfather said it was a taint in the blood of the island, that Dalat was here.”

“My Connley is proud of it,” Regan said.

“Connley. Connley.” Gaela narrowed dark eyes. “You have laid yourself with him, you bear his child, and yet do not call him the name his mother gave him?”

Regan forced herself not to lower her lashes, angry at how difficult it was to hold her sister’s gaze in this moment. The union with Connley would be a wedge between them; Gaela was unfairly correct. But she still protested, “Connley is himself, and so too is he his land, his title, his own ferocious crown, sister. Connley is all the crags and peaks, the rushing waters and moors of the eastern coast.” Regan’s voice lowered again, memories of skin and cries and a bed of earth quieting her. “Connley is so many things more than his person.”

Gaela sucked in a shocked breath. “You spoke of love, but it is your love. You love him.”

Regan shuddered, skin tightening around the dangerous expansion of her heart as something quickened, much lower.

“Regan.”

“Gaela.” Regan sighed. “Don’t you see how this is our best result? Who better to father your heirs than our father’s least favored duke, one sure never to align on his side? Lear will have to swallow it, he must, because here, listen: Connley’s stars predict it! I’ve seen his birth chart, and the trees are adamant. The rest of the island will rejoice at the wisdom of it. Better than marrying me to Morimaros of Aremoria! Even you see the folly in allowing talks of such nature. Connley is already ours; he is entrenched in Innis Lear, sprung from our storm-wracked waves and rooted in iron. And, Gaela, his land is wild and his keep strong; his wells are far better than this one beside us. Deep and rich and flowing. They did not give up on the rootwaters as Father ordered. Do you see? Together you and I bring the two greatest dukedoms under the line of Lear. Through your rightful crown, and my growing child. We will make this island ours, the opposite of our father’s foolish skyward devotions and heartless intentions!”

“Maybe,” Gaela said, unusually thoughtful. Gaela, who had always favored more direct responses. At seventeen she’d bargained with Astore directly, demanding military training for herself. At nineteen she’d plotted to poison their father, and only Regan had convinced her sister of the folly of losing the king before he—or the island—blessed Gaela’s inheritance. Love him, or pretend to; let his throne be a rock of strength and a known position, while we shore up the rest of the island for ourselves, until we are ready and our methods are impenetrable.

“I promised you years ago,” Regan soothed. “I promised you that we—that I—would be his downfall. Do you remember the star under which I was born?”

“None.”

Regan swallowed the bitter word. “None. I was born under an empty sky, a sliver of blackness our father cannot bring himself to love. You were born under the Star of the Consort, with the Throne on the rise. Double stars, which Father claimed negated each other for how they were webbed that night by the sheer, high clouds. But you and I know my star was already with you. The Throne and the Consort, you and me. Father could never understand, but we do. We understand, Gaela.” She clutched at her belly, the tiny star she couldn’t yet feel, but already burned in her heart. Regan would destroy the world for this singular star of hers, this helpless, sparking thing. When she told Connley she was pregnant, if he hesitated for even a moment, the man—no matter how passionate, how glorious—would be sliced from her life. Regan stared at her sister, willing Gaela to agree, to accept Regan’s word.

She did. Of course she did. Gaela twisted around to dip her whole hand into the well. She splashed the holy water against Regan’s neck.

With the sky as witness overhead, and the sleeping city of Astora below, the sisters made new promises to each other, against their father, and toward the future of Innis Lear.

REGAN

REGAN KNEW THAT when in residence at the Summer Seat, her sister Gaela did not share chambers with the Duke Astore, but chose instead to occupy the rooms that had been hers as a child, when this castle was Gaela’s favorite for its nearness to the rocky cliffs and caves their mother had loved.

Immediately upon arriving at the keep, Regan left Connley to find his supper and knocked gently at Gaela’s chamber door. “It’s me, sister.”

The door was thrown open and there Gaela stood, regal and tall in a dark red robe fastened with a sash, thick twists of black hair loose around her shoulders. Regan slipped inside and nudged the door shut again before putting her arms around Gaela’s neck and touching their cheeks together.

Gaela kissed Regan’s temple and cupped her sister’s face. “Your eyes are pink.”

Regan, who had only just divested herself of her cloak and muddy travel boots, pushed away and wiped her hands down the front of her bodice, as if her palms were filthy. They were not. Her hands paused for a breath just over her belly, and her face lowered.

“No!” cried Gaela, whipping around to swipe a clay jar of wine off the near table with her fist. It broke against the floor. The wine splashed, staining the wooden slats.

Starting at the streams and tiny reddish puddles, at the shards of clay, Regan saw flashes of hardened brown flesh, pieces of herself sprawled broken there. She clenched her fingers into fists, bruising her palms with her nails. The hurt relieved her.

“Why?” Gaela asked in a low, dangerous tone. She leaned back against the table, gripping its edge.

“I don’t know, Gaela,” Regan snarled.

“Is it Connley?”

“No.”

The eldest sister stared unblinking, waiting with the gathered fury of an army.

Regan refused to be cowed, returning the gaze, cool and still.

Silence stretched between them.

The very moment sorrow slipped in to replace anger in Gaela’s eyes, Regan spoke again. “I consulted with Brona Hartfare at the start of the summer, and have done all I know to do, but there is …”

Her sister stepped forward and embraced Regan again, tighter and with a shaking intensity.

She wept, with a weariness that dragged her toward the floor. But her sister, as always, held her upright. A tower, the strongest oak, the true root of Regan’s heart.

“I won’t give up,” Regan said, leaning her cheek against Gaela’s shoulder. She drew a deep breath, awash in the familiar scent of iron, clay, and rich evergreen that clouded Gaela. A fire crackled in the small round hearth that split the wall between the rooms they’d shared as girls: the one full of weapons and cast-off leather armor, bits of steel and pots of the soft, scented clay Gaela used to shape her hair at court; the other near empty, as Regan chose to sleep with her husband now. Though there still was a trunk left behind, filled with girlish dresses and flower dolls and Regan’s first recipe of herbal secrets she’d saved for her own daughters. Uselessly, it seemed.

“Sit at the fire,” Gaela ordered, with her Regan-reserved tenderness.

Regan removed her slippers and lifted a wool blanket from the hearth, gathering it about her shoulders as she sank into a low chair. “I will find a way to look inside myself, Sister. To find the cause of my … difficulties. There must be some magic raw and strong enough to speak with my body, to demand conversation with my womb.”

Gaela dropped herself into the chair opposite Regan. “If not, we must consider Elia,” she said bitterly. “Those kings courting her would not work, for they would want her issue for their own people, but perhaps … perhaps she could marry that bold boy, Errigal.”

“Rory,” Regan said. “It would be a strong match, her blood and his iron magic, though the boy himself has little power, or never developed it much, thanks to his milky mother.”

“I cannot confide in Elia,” Gaela said suddenly, vehemently, protesting her own suggestion. “Our baby sister is too like Lear. Takes his side, always. Would she want the crown herself, instead of making her children my heirs? Or fill their heads with starry nonsense? Would her ways weaken the children? She gave up your wormwork, too, after all. Is there any of Dalat in her? Any fire of adventure or conquest?”

“And what of my Connley, should Elia’s children inherit your crown? What of him, and us?”

Gaela snorted. “I care not for Connley’s prospects.”

Regan bit the inside of her lips to hold her expression cool and unconcerned. This was an old ritual, and she no longer argued on Connley’s behalf to her sister. Connley’s future was up to Regan alone. She said, “Elia can never threaten us for the crown. She has kept herself too hidden in the star towers, as our father’s starry shadow and acolyte. Some will love her for it, but not enough to follow her against us. Connley would swallow her up if she tried, even with Errigal her husband.”

“On that Astore will agree.”

“Let us eat, then, Gaela, and have this mess cleared.”

After marching to the door, Gaela flung it open, half calling already for a servant, but there stood Elia instead.

Their youngest sister froze, startled, a hand poised to knock. She wore the drab robes of a star priest, but her hair was rolled up and decorated with a net of crystals.

Gaela’s fury at the sight of Dalat’s jewelry flashed in the sudden tightening of her mouth, and Elia put her hands protectively up to her hair. She said, “Father put it in this afternoon, before I went to meet the kings.”

Silence stuck between them, the muscles of Gaela’s jaw shifting as she controlled her anger and instincts. Regan knew that set of her sister’s shoulders, and she joined Gaela in standing. Regan did not hate Elia as Gaela did, but pitied her. She touched a hand to the back of Gaela’s neck. “Did you choose one king or the other?” she asked Elia coolly, as if she cared not at all.

Elia shook her head. “I came to see if you had eaten.”

“We’re about to,” Gaela said, and stepped closer to Elia, blocking her entrance.

Though occasionally Regan thought of their mother and how Dalat would prefer her three daughters united, she remembered keenly enough that Elia forever refused to believe Lear had taken part in their mother’s death. She had betrayed Dalat, and her sisters. And yet she dared arrive wearing Dalat’s starry accessory. Besides, Regan’s womb ached, her joints throbbed, and she could not fathom allowing the cherished, naïve Elia to see such weakness. So Regan did not protest Gaela’s obvious denial of their youngest sister’s overture.

For her part, Elia only frowned gently; surely she’d expected this response, if even she’d hoped for better. “I’ll … see you in the morning, then. I wish …” Elia lifted her black eyes and made a determined expression she could not possibly know was reminiscent of Dalat. “When you’re queen, Gaela, you must let me take care of him.”

Gaela breathed sharply. “If he needs to be taken care of.”

Elia nodded, glanced at Regan with a tiny sliver of unforgiveable sympathy, and left.

After a moment, Gaela called in a girl to clean up the broken pot and bring them more wine, and supper. They waited in silence, until every spilled puddle was mopped up, and each sister held a fresh clay cup full of wine.

Regan sighed. “Was she right, Gaela? Will our father name you heir tomorrow? Is that what your summons said?”

Drinking deep, Gaela glanced into the fire. Her pink tongue caught a drip of wine in the corner of her mouth. “That is what we will make happen, no matter what Lear says. I shall set all my daughters in their places.”

“Whatever game he plays, we will stand together and win.”

Together, they raised their glasses.

ELIA

ELIA WAS LATE to dinner.

The great hall of the Summer Seat had been built into the keep’s rear wall so that nothing but sky and cliffs and sea appeared through the tall, slim windows behind the throne. The low ceiling was hung with dark blue banners embroidered with silver stars shaped like the Swan constellation, Lear’s crest. Rushes and rugs covered the entire beaten earth floor, adding warmth and comfort as winds howled for most of the year, even in the height of summer. Long tables spread in two rows off the king’s table at the west end, and benches were full of earls and their retainers, the companions of the visiting kings, and all the resident families. A small side door to the north of the throne, hidden behind a wool tapestry of a rowan tree, led through a narrow corridor to the guardhouse and beyond to the royal tower so that the king and his family did not ever need travel outside from their rooms to the court. Everyone else was expected to enter through the heavy double doors far across from the throne. It was through the small door that Elia arrived, alone.

It was no way for a princess to make an entrance. She lacked companion or escort, had been been denied her sisters’ company, and Lear himself refused to leave his chambers, trapped in a sudden fit of starry obsession he would not share with her. There’d been a time Lear loved entertaining, loved the swell of noise that signaled a well-shared feast, Elia was certain of it, though the memories were dull with age. She’d been so small, delighted at every chance to sit on her father’s knee and listen to the songs and poetry, to eat strips of meat from Lear’s hand. He’d liked to dot cream and fruit syrup onto her face like constellations, sometimes daring to do the same to Dalat.

Elia paused in the arch of the doorway, carefully reeling in the far-flung line of her heart. She breathed slowly, banishing memories in favor of the cool responsibility of representing her family.

She could hardly believe Lear had abandoned her tonight, when the kings he himself had invited were waiting, expecting to be fed and flattered. It spoke to the changes in him, his most capricious stars winning whatever battle raged in his mind.

Food had already been served, for which Elia was grateful; there was no need to make an announcement now, or put herself at the center of attention. She stared out at the chaos of people, the laughing and low conversations, the men and women of the kitchens moving skillfully about with full jugs of wine and trenchers of stewed meat. There were the kings of Aremoria and Burgun, seated at the high table with Connley and Astore at either end. Aremoria spoke evenly in response to Astore’s boisterous laughter, while Burgun and Connley seemed to grit their teeth behind smiles. Elia could not be sure if Connley’s dislike of Burgun aligned her with him for the first time.

She should go direct to the high table, she knew, and reminded herself firmly. She should be gracious and calm, perhaps tell the story of her wager with Danna, or ask after the kings’ own families. Though that would invite questions in return about her sisters and father. No, she could not lead them so easily into uncertain territory. Just as she took a step, a beloved voice called, “Starling!”

Spinning, Elia held out her arms in preparation for her mother’s half-brother to pick her up in an eager hug. The Oak Earl had always been a brightness in her life, rather a rarity after Dalat died. But Kayo could not help making a bold impression, with his stories from the Third Kingdom, from trading caravans and merchant fleets, deserts and inland seas the likes of which few in Innis Lear could truly imagine. He ventured westward every two or three years, carrying trade agreements for Lear while growing his own riches, but for the most part, he lived here on the island, where his favorite sister had been so happy. He had never taken a wife, instead latching on to Lear’s family like a cousin. Kayo was perhaps the only person in the world all three Lear girls admired: Gaela for his adventures, Regan for his penetrating insight, and Elia because he came home.

“Uncle,” she said now, carefully, as she was always careful when performing emotions in public.

“Elia.” The Oak Earl leaned away, gray eyes full of gladness. He lowered his voice, bending to knock their foreheads together affectionately. “How are you?”

“Nervous, I admit,” she said, breathing in the sea-blasted smell of him.

“So would I be. Do you have a favorite between your suitors?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Aremoria, then,” Kayo said.

“Burgun has been more interested in me,” she murmured. “Courted and flirted and given me gifts.”

“Is that the sort of husband you want? The sort who buys you?”

She angled her head to meet his gaze. “I don’t know Aremoria at all.”

“He has the more certain reputation.”

“But certain of what?” she asked, almost to herself.

Kayo smiled grimly and offered his arm. She took it, and together they went to the high table. Elia introduced Kayo to Aremoria and Burgun, and her uncle effortlessly launched into a tale of the last time he’d passed through the south of Aremoria, on his way home from the Third Kingdom.

Able to relax somewhat, Elia picked at the meat and baked fruit in the shared platter before her, sipping pale, tart wine. She listened to the conversation of the surrounding men, smiling and occasionally adding a word. But her gaze tripped away, to the people arrayed before her, who seemed boisterous and happy.

The Earls Errigal, Glennadoer, and Bracoch sat together, the latter two both with their wives, and Bracoch’s young son gulping his drink. A familiar head leaned out of her line of sight behind Errigal, just before she could identify him.

It might’ve been the drink, but Elia felt overwhelmingly as though this bubble of friendliness would burst soon, bleeding all over her island.

Or it might have been that she herself would burst, from striving to contain her worries and loneliness, from longing for inner tranquility in the face of roiling, wild emotions. How did her sisters do it, maintain their granite poise and elegant strength? Was it because they had each other, always?

Elia had never known her sisters not to present a united front. Gaela had been deathly ill for three whole weeks just before she married, and Regan had nursed her alone through the worst of it. When Regan had lost her only child as a tiny month-old baby, Gaela had broken horses to get to her, and let no one blame Regan, let no one say a word against her sister. Elia remembered being pushed from the room, not out of anger or cruelty, but because Gaela and Regan forgot her so completely in their grief and intimacy. There was simply no place for her. Though, like tonight, they did sometimes push her out on purpose.

The first time had been the morning their mother died.

After being refused by her sisters tonight, Elia had gone to Lear. He’d opened the barred door to the sound of her voice, only to stare in horror and confusion. “Who are you?” he’d hissed, before shutting the door again. Right in her face.

Who are you?

Elia wanted to scream that she did not know.

She lifted her wine and used the goblet to cover the deep, shaking breath she took, full of the tart smell of grapes.

This was worse, more uncertain, than she’d ever seen her father. Perhaps if she’d not decided to continue her studies this spring at the north star tower, and instead had remained at his side after the winter at Dondubhan, he would not be so troubled. Perhaps if her sisters bothered to care, they could help. Or at least listen to her!

Dalat, my dear.

Had Lear expected his wife tonight, not his youngest daughter? Was he completely mad?

She should ask the stars, or even—perhaps—slip out to the Rose Courtyard again, and try to touch a smear of rootwater from the well to her lips. Would the wind have any answers?

The Earl Errigal slammed his fist on the table just below Elia, jolting her out of her traitorous thoughts. Errigal was arguing ferociously with the lady Bracoch, and then Elia’s eyes found the person she’d missed in her earlier agitation.

Older, stronger, different, but that bright gaze held the same intense promise. It was him.

Ban.

Ban Errigal.

An answer from the island to her unasked questions.

He was dressed like a soldier, in worn leather and breeches and boots, quilted blue gambeson, a sword hanging in a tired sheath. Taller than her, she was certain, despite his seat on the low bench. He never had been tall, before. His black hair, once long enough to braid thickly back, was short, slicked with water that dripped onto his collar. His tan skin was roughened by sun, and stars knew what else, from five years away in a foreign war, his brow pinched and his countenance stormy.

How could his return not have been in her star-patterns? They must have been screaming it, surely—or had it been there, hiding behind some other prophecy? Twined through the roots of the Tree of Birds? Had she missed it because all her focus had been on Lear and the impending choices about her family’s future? Had she refused to see?

Over the years she’d forcibly rejected even Ban’s name from her thoughts. Easy to imagine she’d missed some sign of his homecoming.

What else had she missed?

Elia was staring, and she realized with an embarrassed shock that he was very attractive. Not like his brother, Rory, who took after their blocky, striking father, but like his mother. There was a feral glint to his eyes, like fine steel or a cat in the nighttime. She wanted to know everything behind that look, everything about where he’d been, what he’d done. His adventures, or his crimes. Either way, she wanted to know him as he was now.

Ban Errigal noticed her looking, and he smiled.

Light flickered in Elia’s heart, and she wondered if he still talked to trees.

Her breath rushed out, nearly forming whispered words that only he would understand, of all the folk in this hot, bright hall.

But she did not know him, not anymore. They were grown and distant as stars from wells. And Elia had her place under her father’s rule; she understood her role, and how to play it. So she averted her gaze and sipped her wine, reveling silently in the feel of sunshine inside her for the first time in a long while:

Ban was home.

THE FOX

AT THE HIGHEST rampart of the Summer Seat, a wizard listened to the wind. He sighed whispered words of his own, in the language of trees, but the salt wind did not reply.

He ought to have remembered the cadence here, the slight trick of air against air, of hissing wind through stone, skittering through leaves, but it was difficult to concentrate.

All he could think was Elia.

ELEVEN YEARS AGO,
INNIS LEAR

THE QUEEN WAS dead.

And dead a whole year tonight.

Kayo had not slept in three days, determined to arrive at the memorial ground for the anniversary. He’d traveled nearly four months from the craggy, stubbled mountains beyond the far eastern steppe, over rushing rivers to the flat desert and inland sea of the Third Kingdom, past lush forests and billowing farmland, through the bright expanse of Aremoria, across the salty channel, and finally returned to this island Lear. The coat on his back, the worn leather shoes, the headscarf and tunic, woolen pants, wide sack of food, his knife, and the rolled blanket were all he had come with, but for a small clay jar of oil. This last he would burn for the granddaughter of the empress.

Dalat.

Her name was strong in his mind as he pushed aside branches and shoved through the terrible shadows of the White Forest of Innis Lear, but her voice … that he could not remember. He’d not heard it in five years, since he left to join his father’s cousins on a trade route that spanned east as far as the Kingdom knew. Dalat had been his favorite sister, who’d raised him from a boy, and he’d promised to come back to her when he finished his travels.

He’d kept his promise, but Dalat would never know it.

Wind blew, shaking pine needles down upon him; each breath was crisp and evergreen in his throat. Every step ached; the line of muscles between his shoulders ached; his thighs and cracking knees ached; his temples and burning eyes, too. He was so tired, but he was nearly there. To the Star Field, they called it, the royal memorial ground of Innis Lear, in the north of the island near the king’s winter residence.

First Kayo had to get through the forest. God bless the fat, holy moon, nearly full and bright enough to pierce the nightly canopy and show him the way.

It seemed he had stumbled onto a wild path: wide enough for a mounted rider, and Kayo recalled the deer of the island being sturdier than the scrawny, fast desert breeds. He’d hunted them, riding with a young earl named Errigal and an unpleasant old man named Connley. They’d used dogs. His sister had loved the dogs here.

Dalat, he thought again, picturing her slow smile, her spiky eyelashes. She’d been the center of his world when Kayo was here, adrift in this land where the people were as pale as their sky. Dalat had made him belong, or made him feel so at least, when their mother sent him here because she had no use for boys, especially ones planted by a second husband. Dalat had smelled like oranges, the bergamot kind. He always bought orange-flower liqueur when he found it now, to drink in her honor.

His sister was dead!

And dead an entire year. He’d laughed and sung around bright fires; he’d slept curled in camp beside his cousins during the hottest hours of the day, when the sun colored the sky with sheer, rippling illusions. His heart had been satisfied, if not quite full, even though she’d been dead already, buried on this faraway rock.

Kayo stopped walking. The edge of the forest was near, making its presence known by a bluish glow: moonlight on the rocky moor beyond. Behind and around him the forest sighed, swelling with a warm, wet breeze that nudged the trees into whispered conversation.

“Who are you?” a high voice asked.

A boy stood just out of his reach, but Kayo already had his curved knife drawn, a leg thrown back to brace for attack. In the dark, shadows shifted and danced, and the boy stood near a wide oak tree, against its dark side, hidden from stray moonlight.

“Kayo of Taria Queen,” he said, sheathing his knife back in the sash where it belonged. He pulled his scarf off his head, letting it pool around his neck and shoulders. This made his gray eyes clearer, and he hoped friendly to the boy, even with his foreign clothes and skin.

“I don’t know you.” The boy said it with finality, despite being very small, no older than ten years, skinny, and with a snarl of dark hair. He was not pale, though his features were narrow like those of the islanders. Except the strong nose and gremlin-round eyes. Southern Ispanian, Kayo thought: those refugee tribes roaming and homeless, pushed out by the Second Kingdom’s wars.

Kayo nodded his head in a polite bow. “You know of me, boy. My sister was the queen, and I’ve come for the year memorial.”

“The princess is there already.”

This information was useful, though strangely offered. Lear had three princesses, after all, though the youngest must be this boy’s age. Perhaps the boy only cared about the child he knew best. Such was the way of youth. “Do you know how the queen died?” Kayo asked. He’d heard rumors of misdeeds, of suspicion, of mystery, and perhaps the child could give him the unvarnished truth to point him the way of revenge.

The boy tilted his face up to put narrowed eyes on the sky. “The stars.”

“The stars killed her?” What nonsense was this?

“She died when the stars said she would.” The boy shrugged, a jolting, angry gesture. “They control everything here.”

The prophecy. Kayo felt a worm of discomfort in his stomach. “What’s your name?”

The boy startled and glanced past Kayo as if hearing something Kayo was not attuned to. But Kayo trusted it, and turned to look behind himself.

A woman appeared out of the trees. She said in a honeyed tone, “Ban, leave me to speak with this man.”

The boy dashed off.

Kayo waited, oddly reeling, his instincts rumbling trouble.

The woman stepped silently, dressed in island clothes: a cinched tunic over a woolen shirt and layered skirts, hard boots. Her hair fell in heavy black curls around her lovely tan face: a woodwoman, a spirit of this White Forest. When she gestured for him to join her on the final part of the path, so they would come out at the edge of the woods together, Kayo found himself unable to resist.

They stopped at the opening of the trees, looking down upon the Star Field. It was a shallow valley of rugged grass, covered with towers of stones and columns of seashells stacked by human hands to waist- or knee-height. Long slabs of gray rock rested as altars, etched with the uncivilized scratches of the language of trees. Candles were stuck to the stone piles, to the slabs, some fat and well made, some skinny and poor, others in clusters and still more lonely and reaching. As Kayo watched, two priests in white clothes walked through with long torches, lighting each and every candle.

Behind the two priests came a silent procession.

“It is the king,” the woman said. “Lear and his court, his daughters, and some foreign guests, come to light a new year-candle at the fallen queen’s celestial bed.”

Kayo’s brow pinched and his jaw tightened with grief. Every candle flame was a star, wavering and flickering across the valley. Though other memorial fields dotted Innis Lear, this was the grandest. The loved ones of the dead needed only supply a candle, and the star priests would light it every night. King Lear provided gifts of candles for any who asked, Kayo had heard, so that the Star Field was always aglow, always twinkling its own heaven back to the sky. A fitting memorial for a woman like Dalat.

“Come,” the woman said.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice rough with sorrow.

“Brona Hartfare, and I was a friend to your sister the queen. I remember you, when you were more of a boy, solemn and secure at her side, far south of here at the Summer Seat.”

“Brona,” he said. It was a name that expanded to fit every nook of his mouth.

They walked carefully down into the Star Field, circling wide so as to join the rear of the congregation as it wove through the candles and standing stones to a broad slab of limestone that shone under the full moon. Brona took Kayo’s hand, holding him apart from the crowd.

King Lear looked as Kayo remembered, though perhaps with more wrinkles at his pink mouth. Maybe that was the result of so many separate candles pressing together with their competing lights. His hair was brown and thick, woven into a single braid and pinned in an infinity loop. A white robe hung from his tall frame, over white trousers and a white shirt and white boots. All the royalty and many of the rest wore white, too, or unbleached wool and linen. Very little jewelry adorned them, but for simple pearls or silver chains. Moon- and candlelight turned all their eyes dark against pink and cream and sometimes sandy skins.

The king held the hand of a small girl whose curls were big around her head, some copper-brown strands flaring in the candlelight. Her focus was on her father and the monument slab they approached. Behind her came the two older sisters, arms around each other, leaning together as if a single body: one barely a woman, soft and graceful; one strong and dark as Dalat. Kayo caught his breath at her—the eldest, Gaela—whose face was so like her mother’s had been. He remembered Gaela as a whip-strong child, competing with the sons of retainers and lords in races and strength, wearing pants and her hair cut short to flare exactly like his own had done. He’d enjoyed teaching her wrestling holds and a better grip for her dagger, but the girl had taken it all seriously, no games or teasing allowed. Now her hair was longer and braided into a grand crown, and though she wore white, her clothes were a warrior’s white gambeson and pants and boots, and a long coat decorated with plates of steel too far apart to be useful. Her sister Regan dressed like a fine lady, despite being only a slender slip of womanhood. Kayo’s memories of her were so much gentler; Regan had been ten years old when he left, though already reading and writing as well as a scholar. She had the least of Dalat in her, outwardly: the palest brown of the girls, with brown hair thick and smoothly waved.

And the little one, whom Kayo had hardly known: her small round face pulled into sadness, her tiny fingers caught in Lear’s as the king knelt at the memorial slab, tears obvious on his cheeks and chin, glittering in his dark beard.

Kayo felt tears pinch his own throat, crawling up into his nose. He clenched his jaw, and Brona leaned into him, her shoulder against his chest. She smelled like fire and rich moss. What a comfort to breathe her in, her hair brushing his mouth, though how weak of him to let her feel his trembling.

A star priest with a flickering torch lifted his arms and called out a prayer. Kayo could only just hear the sounds, not comprehend the words: he was unpracticed these days. The rhythm, though, was familiar, the crying, sharp intonation the priests of the island used to speak with the stars. All the gathered company murmured and mouthed along with the priest, except for one young man several steps back from the king’s daughters. This was a prince in the burnt orange of the kingdom of Aremoria, the coat sleeves wrapped with white in deference to the mourning traditions of Innis Lear. He wore a solemn expression and a heavy, jeweled sword, a simple band of gold at his brow. No older than Gaela Lear.

As the prayer lifted, Kayo pictured Dalat, imagined her here in a dress of the finest red cloth, spiked through with orange thread and a brilliant turquoise like the surf of the inland sea. Red and black paint on her eyes and mouth, streaked into her hair. Her eyes were stars, and the hundreds of candles here glowed only to reflect her glory.

Kayo looked to see the king bow his head and clutch at his youngest daughter’s hand. The little girl’s brow furrowed in pain. Her fingers were squeezed too hard, but she said nothing, and did not pull away.

AEFA

AEFA WAS INORDINATELY anxious as she entered the great hall of the Summer Seat the morning of the Zenith Court. She’d left Elia with her father, despite arguing hard for several long moments in the corner of the king’s chamber. But Elia insisted upon arriving with Lear, unconcerned by the visual it would create, and the statement it would make, particularly to Gaela and Regan. “My sisters have already made up their minds,” Elia insisted, which was true. “I will stay at my father’s side, because he needs me.” Which was also true, no matter how Aefa wished otherwise.

At least Elia had allowed herself to be laced into a new, bright yellow overdress, one that pulled at her hips and breasts pleasingly, because, Aefa said, “You have a much better set of both than either Gaela or Regan.” Elia had pursed her lips, embarrassed, but it was also true. And Aefa had spent over an hour with the princess’s hair, creating an elaborate braided knot at Elia’s nape, twisted with purple ribbons and the net of crystals. She’d smeared red paint on Elia’s bottom lip and dotted it at the corner of each eye, and insisted upon a silver ring for every finger and both sapphires for the thumbs. Aefa lost the shoe debate, but Elia’s reliance on her old thick-soled leather boots was at least practical. Though Aefa thought she should look into several more pairs, just as sturdily made, but perhaps dyed gray and black to better compliment a variety of gowns, or even plain priestly robes and stubbornness.

It was ridiculous how focused Aefa allowed herself to be on such matters, but better this than spinning her mind tighter and tighter around all the dreadful gossip she’d gathered last night. The rumors about the king and his temper were terrible: he frequently lost his way in conversations, or would say one thing and then directly do the opposite. Not in any way that seemed politically motivated, or even with the casual carelessness of men, but more like he’d asked for roasted bird only to rage at its presence, insisting he’d always preferred venison and to say otherwise was treason. Lear had punished two reeves last month for skimming profits, but there’d been no hearing: the stars alone had cast judgment, via a single prophecy the king himself charted. Most of the court thought the reeves guilty, but so too did most think that wasn’t exactly the point. The clerks were afraid, and admitted drunkenly to a steward, who told Jen in the kitchen, that they’d been working with Gaela and Astore on the island’s finances without the king’s permission. But what else should they do, when the king did nothing? Retainers were enjoying themselves, for the most part, secure in Lear’s goodwill. So the king had a happy army, at least, if a lazy one. Then Aefa’d heard all the crows were gone from the Summer Seat and Sunton, and honestly she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard one. It shouldn’t have been the worst of the news, yet she couldn’t shake the eerie nature of it.

Aefa had longed to sit Elia down and unload all the anxiety that had built up in the people of the Summer Seat, and in Aefa’s own heart, but Elia’s eyes had never once welcomed honesty this morning, instead tripping again and again out the window, toward the horizon, distant and cool. So Aefa kept her mouth shut, though she did not hesitate to touch Elia’s wrist, or linger gently with her hands on the princess’s shoulders. That was how it always was between them: a silent promise, evidence that sharing comfort could be a strength, when Elia was ready to see it.

She’d also poured every drop of Brona Hartfare’s rootwater into Elia’s morning milk.

Because without Elia, Aefa was not part of the family enough to use the private doors, she let herself in to the great hall by the much heavier forward doors. Dragging one open, she was glad enough at the retainer in dark blue who held it while she slipped quietly in, that Aefa winked at him in her more usual manner.

The Fool sat in the king’s throne, far across the hall from Aefa, wearing a tattered blue dress with trousers beneath, rings in his ears and paint on his lip and eyes. He cradled a shallow bowl in his lap, in which Lear’s tall bronze and ruby crown sat like stiff porridge.

If she’d not already been walking on edge, the sight would’ve cut her feet to ribbons.

Aefa mirrored her princess by taking a deep breath, pasting on a bright but neutral smile, and so made her way down the central aisle to her father.

The courtiers and guests had arrayed themselves throughout the hall in the patterns and pieces of their island and alliances: Dukes, earls, and ladies, the alders and reeves from nearby towns, and further representatives of all the king’s retainers, too. They divided into groups of friends and cousins, to either side of the throne dais, depending on if they favored Astore or Connley. All the feasting tables were gone, and benches lined the long walls, pressing the thick tapestries back. Light blazed in, white and salty, from the tall windows along the west and south walls.

Of great interest to Aefa were the kings of Aremoria and Burgun, waiting separate here by the far end with the door, their retainers and escorts in clusters five men thick. Ullo of Burgun gleamed in ermine and leather heavy enough to add a glisten of sweat to the overall shine of his smile and bright teeth and slick long hair. He caught her eye, and before Aefa could so much as raise a brow, his glance fell to her breasts. She scowled and thought to herself that he wouldn’t recognize elegant beauty if it landed him on his ass.

Across from Ullo, firmly set among his men, Morimaros of Aremoria flicked his eyes over Aefa, too, information gathering and nothing else. As if she were a strip of land that he must face his enemy upon, and he would quickly sum up its boundaries and flaws. Just like his letters. She let her smile quirk up on one side, recalling his dry descriptions of Aremore agriculture. Unlike Ullo, he did not flaunt his crown, but matched his retainers in leather armor, just lacking their orange tabard with its lion crest. The only sign of richness were the heavy rings on his strong hands.

“Aefa!” called the Fool from the throne. She bowed elaborately at her father, and skipped a step or two, before slowing to a more respectful pace: Near the throne dais stood the eldest daughters, Gaela and Regan, shoulder to shoulder.

They were terrifying.

It galled Aefa to be afraid of them, but she’d never shaken it.

Strong in body and tongue, Gaela had spent her earliest years with soldiers, driving herself hard enough to grow wide through her shoulders and solid flank, to hold her own against nearly any warrior. Even now, in a gown of blood red and purple, the oldest princess wore a bright silver pauldron over her shield shoulder, made of chain mail and steel plates. Her black hair was molded into a crown with streaks of white clay, and laced with dark purple ribbons. Aefa needed to talk with Gaela’s girls about the styling. Earrings shaped like knives hung from her lobes, tiny little threats.

Beside her, Regan was rather like a knife herself: pointed and sharp. Regan’s brown waves fell under a cascade of glass beads and pearls. She wore a high-waisted gown with layers and layers of cream and violet velvet that would be impossible to keep so pristine. Her slippers had tiny heels, and her girdle was woven of silk and lace. Keys and coins and an amethyst the size of her fist hung from it. Regan wore a ring on every finger, and her nails were colored crimson. She was jarringly beautiful, like jagged crystal or vengeful ghosts.

Aefa managed a moment of steady pleasure that she’d inadvertently put Elia in complimentary colors. It would anger the sisters, but be just as much a statement as Elia arriving on her father’s arm.

The sisters’ husbands waited to either side of the dais, and there was not enough space between them given the depth of their rivalry. Astore loomed to the right, grinning and loudly conversing with a handful of men out of the Glennadoer earldom, and their retainers in attendance, too. Across the other side of the dais were the Earl Errigal and a dark, quiet slip of a man in the sky blue of Errigal’s banners. With them was the Earl Rosrua. With Astore, the Earl Bracoch.

Oh, stars and worms. Aefa paused in place, realizing the man with Errigal had to be that son she’d heard so much about—the bastard. Brona had been correct in her warning of his return. Elia never spoke of him directly, but everyone in the king’s service Aefa had ever met during her time with the princess was more than happy to do so. Before she could say—she wasn’t quite sure, but something—a hand caught gently under her elbow.

“Aefa Thornhill,” said the Duke of Connley, “allow my escort to your place.”

He was six or seven years her elder, and as handsome as his wife Regan was beautiful, but in a fully Learish way: sharp white cheeks and coppery-blond hair slicked back from his face, pink lips that might’ve just been kissed, and eyes as blue-green as the ocean around Port Comlack, steady under a serious brow. Someday his face would be cragged and rough, but now it was perfect. His blood red tunic fit the sort of shoulders a girl longed to climb. Too bad he always gave Aefa a shudder; she couldn’t help but imagine him stripping her down, past clothes and even skin, to her very bones, if she ever said the wrong thing.

“Thank you,” she said, with no hint of a flirt.

“Elia hasn’t arrived with you,” he said, solicitous but quick, for it was a brief walk to the throne.

Aefa smiled like it meant nothing. “She attended the king all this morning, so presumably will come with him.”

“Presumably.” Connley smiled back at her, a charming wolf in the woods.

Yes, there it was, the shudder. Aefa disguised it with a curtsey, relieved to be already at the dais. “Lord,” she said steadily.

“We hope your lady proves as considerate of your father’s needs after this morning, and into the future,” Connley said, gently squeezing her elbow. He stepped back and nodded in a way that was not quite a bow, but managed to suggested such. “And her own.”

“I’m sure she will be,” Aefa said, mildly irritated through the general chill of his presence.

“Someone will make sure of it,” he said quietly, and she had no chance to react, for there was her father, leaning off the throne.

“My girl!” the Fool crowed. “Tell me: what is this crown in my lap made of?”

“Love,” she called back. “Love and rubies.”

“The bronze is for the love, then?”

“The bronze is the island metal, the rubies its blood. What else is love but mettle and blood?” Aefa grinned.

The Fool lifted the crown, as if to offer it to his daughter.

“The crown of Innis Lear is not made of love,” said Gaela Lear, soft and challenging. “It is made of dying stars, and lying mouths.”

Just then a great triple knock sounded throughout the hall, echoing through the wooden north wall. A signal that the king approached.

“Not for long,” Regan answered her sister. “Get up, Fool, and make way for the king.”

THIS IS WHAT they say of the last King of Innis Lear’s Zenith Court:

The day held itself bright and bold, a brisk wind rising off the sea in fragile anticipation. All had assembled by the noon hour, but the king arrived late. He shoved in through the slender private entrance with his youngest, favored daughter at his side. They swept directly to the throne, and few noticed Kayo, the Oak Earl, brother of the fallen queen, follow behind and settle himself at the rear of the dais.

Lear wore ceremonial robes crusted with deep blue and star-white embroidery, brushed and glistening. His gray-and-brown hair shocked away from his face, hanging down his back, and his scraggly beard had been shaved. Kingly gold and silver rings weighed down his gnarled fingers, and a sword with a great round pommel carved into a rampant swan hung from a jeweled belt at his hip. The youngest princess was a delicate slip of daylight as she took her place beside the throne, across from her two vibrant sisters.

The king smiled. “Welcome.”

Courtiers returned the greeting loudly, with calls and cheering. They expected great things from the next hour: a future queen, and a resettling of alliances. And hope. For far too long Innis Lear had faltered and run dry; for far too long there was no named successor; for far too long privilege and fate had danced unfettered as the king drifted further and further into the sky.

Lear called out, “Today is an auspicious day, friends. As my father obeyed the stars, and his father before him, so I bow to them now by offering this announcement: The stars have aligned to provide your king the understanding that his reign comes to a swift end. It is time for me to divest myself of cares and responsibilities, to pass them on, as time passes, to younger and stronger persons.”

Murmurs of general accord and interest skittered about the hall, but no one interrupted as Lear continued, “Therefore we must see our daughters settled before the end, which comes at Midwinter.”

Yes, here was the moment of destiny:

“Astore, our beloved son.” Lear turned to his eldest daughter’s husband, who nodded firmly.

The king then looked to the middle husband. “And you, our son Connley.” The Duke Connley murmured, “My king,” and nothing else, for all knew the lie of any love between them.

The king continued grandly, “You have long held discord between you, and we know that when we die very likely war and strife would erupt between you as you each would try to claim more of the other’s.”

“Father,” said Gaela, “there is a single sure way to stop such an outcome.”

He held up his hand. “To stop this, we will divide our lands now between your wives, according to the stars, and our youngest daughter, Elia, whose suitors have waited patiently to hear her choice.”

“And would wait longer still, good Lear, for the chance,” called the king of Burgun with a smile in his voice.

Lear returned it. “Indeed.”

The king of Aremoria said nothing.

Kay Oak stepped forward, a hand hovering protectively near the youngest daughter’s shoulder. “Lord,” he said, going briefly to his knee. “Your kingdom wants for a single crown. Why—”

Lear cut him off. “Worry not! We will name our heir now, as the stars have prophesied. And our heir will be crowned at dawn after the Longest Night, as has been since the first king of our line.” Lear looked at Gaela, his ferocious and tall eldest, then cool Regan, the middle child, then Elia, his precious star, finally in her turn. That youngest stared rigidly at her father. She did not even seem to breathe.

Did she suspect what was to come?

The king spread his hands again, chest puffed and proud. “The stars of heaven proclaim the next queen of Innis Lear shall be the daughter who loves us best.”

In the silence, nearly everyone looked at Elia, for all knew she was the king’s favorite. But Lear had not said, the daughter I love best.

Though all three women were practiced at projecting to the world the face they chose, each gave something away in that moment: Gaela her hunger, Regan her pleasure, and Elia her utter disgust.

“Eldest,” the king said, “it is your right to speak first.”

Gaela laughed once, loud as a man. “My father, my king,” she called, moving before the throne to perform for the entire court. “I love you more than the word itself can bear.” Her voice made the phrase into a growling threat. “My devotion to the crown of Lear is as great as any child ever bore for her father, more than life and breath, and I will defend my love with all the strength and power of Lear and Astore behind me. The truth of my words is in my stars: I am the Consort Star; I rise to the Throne of Innis Lear.”

Nodding with elaborate satisfaction, Lear said, “And you, Regan? How do you answer?”

Regan did not immediately move to join Gaela before the throne, but her husband put his hand on her back and gently pushed. She spread her hands in a simple gesture of supplication. “I love you, Father, as my sister does, for we share a heart and we share stars. I ask that you appraise me at her same worth.” For a moment, her words hung in the air. Connley’s hand slid up the brown arch of her neck, and Regan frowned, then smiled up at her father as if she had only just now realized some vital truth: “Yet, Father, in my deepest heart I find that although Gaela names my love, she stops short, for there is no other love that moves me so much as my love for you.”

The king smiled magnanimously at Regan, then Gaela. The sisters glanced at each other, as if they could sharpen their smiles against each other’s teeth.

“Well said, daughters,” said the king of Innis Lear, before looking to his youngest.

She stared back.

“Elia, our joy?” the king said tenderly. “What will you say?”

Silence thundered throughout the great hall.

Courtiers leaned in, to hear the first breath she took in answer. All she had to do was be honest, and the island would be hers. All she had to do was tell the world what it already knew: she loved her father, and always had.

But when Elia Lear spoke, she said, “Nothing, my lord.”

“What?”

Lear’s calm demand echoed in the mouths of others. What had the princess said? Why? What was this game? Did the king and his daughter play it together, or was it a trap?

Elia spoke up. “Nothing, my lord.”

Lear smiled as to an errant puppy. “Nothing will come from nothing. Try again, daughter.”

“I cannot heave my heart into my mouth, Father. I love you … as I should love you, being your daughter, and always have. You know this.” Elia’s voice shook.

“If you do not mend your speech, Elia,” the king said, glowering, “you will mar your fortunes.”

Swallowing, Elia finally took a very deep breath. She smoothed hands down her skirts, and said, “If I speak, I will mar everything else.”

Lear leaned toward her. A wild thing scattered in his usually warm blue eyes. Wild and terrifying. “So untender?”

“So true,” she whispered.

“Then let truth be your only dowry, ungrateful girl,” he rasped.

Elia stepped away in shock.

The king’s demeanor transformed like a rising phoenix, hot and blasting and fast. He pointed at Elia, finger shaking as if she were a terrible specter or spirit to be feared. “You false child. You said you understood me, you saw the stars with me …” Lear threw his arms up, catching fingers in his silver-striped hair. “This is not Elia! Where is my daughter, for you are not she. No princess, no daughter! Replaced by earth saints, cursed creatures!” He shook his head as if appalled, eyes wide and spooked.

“Father,” Elia said, but before anyone else could react, the king cried out:

“Where are Aremoria and Burgun? Come forward, kings!”

Elia did not move, rooted to the rushes and rugs, trembling, as if holding back something so great, that to move would be to unleash it.

“Here, sir,” spoke Ullo of Burgun. “What now?”

Lear smiled into the stunned silence, and it was clear where Regan had gotten her dangerous expressions. “My good king Burgun, you have been on a quest for this once-daughter of mine’s love, and you now see the course of it. Would you have her still?”

Ullo stood to one side of Elia. He bowed and glanced at her. She gave nothing in return; her specialty today. When Ullo straightened he said, “Your Highness, I crave only what was promised to me: your daughter and the price of her dowry.”

“My daughter came with that dowry. This girl is … not she.” The last was said in a hush of awe or fear; it was impossible for any to tell.

Ullo took the princess’s rigid hand in his, drawing her attention up to his overly sad expression. “I am sorry, lovely Elia, that in losing a father today you also lose a husband.”

Elia choked on a laugh, and the great hall finally saw anger press through the cracks of her composure: “Be at peace with it, and not sorry, Ullo of Burgun. Since fortune and dowry are what you love, ours would not have been a good union anyway.”

Far to the left, the Earl Errigal sputtered to hide a great laugh.

Ullo snatched his hand away and, with a pinched face, snapped for his retainers and took his leave.

A half-emptier great hall remained.

“And you, Aremoria?” Lear intoned with all the drama he was able. “Would you have her? As I’ve nothing but honor and respect for you, great king, I advise you against it. I could not tell you to partake of a thing I hate.”

The youngest princess faltered back from the vitriol, knocking into a wall of leather and muscle: the king of Aremoria. His even, shrewd gaze leveled over her head and landed fully on her father.

“It seems, Lear,” Morimaros said, calm and clear, “Quite strange that this girl to whom you previously vowed the greatest of affections should in the course of not even an hour strip away every layer of love you once felt. What incredible power she has to erase a lifetime of feeling in one rather quiet moment.”

“When she was my daughter, I thought her power was that of the moon when it darkens the sun, as her mother’s was,” Lear said, sour and sad. “I thought she would be my comfort and queen, as her mother was. Now she is nothing, worth nothing.”

Morimaros turned his gaze off the king and put the full weight of it onto the daughter. “This woman is her own dowry.”

“Take her, then,” Lear said nastily. “She is yours, mine no longer or ever again.”

“Father,” said Elia.

“No!” The king covered his eyes, clawed his face. “No father to you, for you cannot be my daughter Elia. My daughter Elia should have been queen, but she is nothing!”

“No!” Elia cried. It was the loudest she had ever been.

Even Gaela and Regan seemed surprised: the one grimacing, the other with her lips coolly parted.

Kayo said, “Lear, you cannot be—”

“Silence, Oak Earl. I loved her most, yet when I need her, she turns on me. She should have been queen!” Lear flung himself back onto his throne so hard it shifted with a groan.

Kayo strode forward and went to his knees before the throne. “My king, whom I have ever loved and respected as both my liege and my brother, do not be hasty.”

“Would you put yourself in my furious sights now, Kayo?” demanded Lear. He turned to Connley and Astore. “You two, divide this island between yourselves, in equal parts. All of it to you and your issue with my daughters. Gaela and Regan both be all the queens of Lear! There are no others!”

“Lear!” yelled the Oak Earl, slowly stretching to his feet. “I will challenge this, I will speak. Even if you tear at my heart, too. I chose this island and your family—our family!—long ago. I have defended your countenance against rumors and detractors, but now you are acting the madman all say you’ve become. My service to you—and to Dalat—insists I speak against this wildness. You are rash! Giving two crowns will destroy this island, and for God’s sake, Elia does not love you least.”

“On your life, be quiet.” The king closed his eyes as if in pain.

“My life is meant to be used against your enemies, Lear, and right now you are your own enemy.” Kayo ground out the last between his teeth.

“Get out of my sight, both of you—go together if you must, but do not be here.”

“Let me remain, Brother Lear.”

“By the stars—”

“The stars are false gods if they tell you to do this thing!”

Lear leapt to his feet again with a cry of rage.

Astore dove between the king and Kayo. “Be careful,” he said to the Oak Earl.

But Kayo shoved him away, angry as the king. He cried, “My sister, your wife, would hate you for this, Lear. She died for your stars, man! Was that not enough? And now you give over your kindest, best daughter? How can you? How dare you? And divide your island? Do this and you undercut everything wise and good you have ever done! One heir is all! Make one of them the queen, or this island will tear apart, and do not abandon Elia, who loves you best!”

Lear put his nose to Kayo’s, making them two sides of a raging coin. “You say you chose us, but you do not act it. You do not believe in my stars, you do not cleave to my will, and despite always saying otherwise, you have taken no wife or rooted in your lands here. Always half here and half away, Kayo! You said you were mine, but you never were. You never were!” The king’s mouth trembled. “Go to the god of your Third Kingdom, Kayo. You have the week to be gone, and if you are seen in Lear after that, you will die for heresy.”

The king’s shoulders heaved and pink blotches marred his cheeks. Before him Kayo bowed his head.

Silence dropped like rain, scattered and in pieces all around, smothering everything.

None in the great hall moved, horror and shock rippling throughout. Gaela bared her teeth until Astore put his hand to her shoulder and squeezed, his eyes wide; Regan had bitten her bottom lip until blood darkened the paint smeared there already. Connley put a hand to his sword, though whether to defend the panting Oak Earl or the wild king it was impossible to say. Beyond them, the Earl Errigal’s face was red, and he held a young man tightly by the arm. That young man stared at Elia, fury alive in the press of his mouth. Retainers gripped weapons; the creak of leather, and gasps and whispers skidded through the air.

It was all a trembling mountain ready to erupt.

They say Elia alone remained calm. The calm of the sun, it seemed, that need do nothing but silently stand. She reached out and put her trembling hand against Kayo’s arm. “Father, stop this,” she said.

“I do not see you,” Lear snarled.

She closed her eyes.

Kayo said, hard and firm, “See better, Lear.”

Then the Oak Earl turned and swiftly hugged Elia again. He cupped her head and said, “Stand firm, starling. You are right.”

Again, Elia Lear remained silent.

Before going, Kayo said to Gaela and Regan, “May you both act as though everything you’ve said today were true, if you have any respect for your mother’s heart.”

The entire court watched him stride away from the throne. At the rear he paused, turned, and flung a final word at the king: “Dalat would be ashamed of you today, Lear.”

With a flourish, he departed, and his going burst open the threads of tension that had held the Zenith Court together: it erupted into noise and fury.

ELIA

ELIA STOOD ALONE in the center of chaos: she was as still as the Child Star, fixed in the north. All around her men and women moved and argued, swelled and pressed, pushing and pulling and departing in snaps of motion.

Pressure throbbed in her skull; her heart was a dull, fading drumbeat. Sweat tingled against her spine, beneath her breasts, flushed on her cheeks. Emptiness roared in her ears, shoving everything back—back—back.

Her stomach and lungs had always served her well—breathed for her, turned her food into spirit, given her song against fluttering nerves—and now, now they betrayed her.

As her father had.

Suddenly Elia bent at the waist, clutching at the empty pain in her stomach. She opened her mouth, but there was no cry. Only a silent gasp. Her eyes were not even wet.

She turned and ran, brushing past the king of Aremoria, ignoring the call of her name from too many familiar voices.

She had done nothing wrong!

In her hurry, she took the long way out the main doors and across the yard, stumbling toward the family tower. She clutched at the retainer stationed at the entrance but said nothing as she passed, up the stairs, up and up, one hand hitting hard against the black stone wall. She did not pause, blinded by shock, until she reached her room.

Rushing to the window, Elia stared out at the cold ocean and panted. The wind slipped in and tickled her skin, scouring her with unease. She closed her eyes and listened to the warning—too late! The voices obscured themselves in her ears; she was too out of practice with the language of trees.

The old magic of Innis Lear, bleeding through its roots, carved into the bedrock of the very island, a language of the hunt and fluttering leaves, a magic Elia had abandoned. She’d cut herself off from that comfort long ago, choosing instead the stars and her father. Choosing the cold, lovely heavens and those constant, promising stars.

The earth changed, human hearts changed, but the stars never did. Everyone Elia had known who listened to the trees and leaned in to the roots of magic had left her.

She had thought it was enough to be her father’s truest star.

She’d thought it was a test, and if she remained that true star, all would be well. She’d thought her father understood her, that they knew each other better than anyone else.

And, a voice whispered from deep in her heart, she’d thought she was better than her sisters. Pride had kept her from breaking in the Zenith Court. Pride had kept her from saying something ridiculous to placate her father. From simply opening her mouth and playing the game.

“Love shouldn’t have to be a game,” she whispered to herself, and to the uneasy ocean.

“Elia.”

She spun, stumbling in surprise. The king of Aremoria had followed her.

“Your—Your Highness.” Her voice seemed foreign, a raw rasp emerging from her throat. As if she’d been screaming for hours.

He frowned, though it barely shifted his stolid face. “Your distress is understandable.”

Elia did not know how to reply without shrieking.

The king took a deep breath. When he sighed, his broad shoulders relaxed under the orange leather of his coat. “I am sorry for what your father has done. We will leave in the morning. Pack only what is personal. When we arrive in Aremoria, my sister and mother will have you supplied with any needs.”

She opened her mouth but said nothing. The king waited, watching her with steady blue eyes. She looked away, at the walls and furnishings of her room. It was perhaps smaller than a king might expect. But it was warm and bright from the cream-and-yellow blankets and tapestries she and her mother had chosen, embroidered with spring green vines and pastel wildflowers like a woven spring day. Elia could see Dalat here still, a ghost smoothing her hand along the pillows, telling a story as she tucked Elia into the bed. The wooden ceiling was crudely painted with star patterns against a day-blue sky, a gift from her father so she could recite their names as she fell into sleep. Light and ocean breeze slipped through a single window. No glass panes had been put in, for Elia preferred a heavy shutter she could open when she wished. She’d been so happy in this room, and then so alone.

Finally, she glanced back to the king. She thought of what he’d said in her defense, and was grateful. “Thank you, Your—Morimaros. I am grateful for your—your aid. But I cannot marry you or go with you.”

Surprise actually found a long pause on his face. It parted his lips and lifted his brows. Both bare hands opened, and he twitched his wrists as if to reach out. “But, Lady Elia—”

Elia shook her head, distant from her own body. “I cannot—cannot even think of it.”

“Ah,” Morimaros breathed. Understanding smoothed away his surprise. “You are grieving. But go with me, in the morning, to Aremoria. You need time and distance from Lear’s terrible judgment, and I would give it to you.”

She had no idea how to tell him this did not feel like grief. She hardly felt at all. This nothing inside her was like a windless, dead ocean. Where was the crashing? Where were the waves and whitecaps, the rolling anger and spitting sorrow she should be feeling?

“I …” Elia removed her hands from her stomach and spread them, elbows tight to her ribs. “I don’t know.”

Morimaros took one step: long, for his legs were long. He was so imposing Elia had to hold herself still so as not to move away. A soldier and a king, a handsome man ten years older than her. This woman is her own dowry. At least it sped her heart up from the dull, slow shock.

“Go with me, Elia Lear,” Morimaros said gently. “What might I say to reassure you? I promise to welcome your mother’s brother Kay Oak if he desires.”

“Why?” Elia leaned her hand on the windowsill, not facing Morimaros, but not giving him her back either. Was Elia Lear even her name anymore? “Why do you still want me, Your Highness? I bring nothing with me, none of the things you would have gained. No throne, no power here. And perhaps this madness runs in my family and I’ll lose myself with no warning someday.”

“I intended to gain a wife, Elia, and that is still my intention. I do not need your father’s riches, and if I wished more land I could take it. What I want is a queen, and you were a queen today.”

The compliment forced her head away; she looked outside at the rolling blue ocean where it blended into the hazy sky at the horizon. Why was he so kind? She longed to believe him, and yet found it nearly impossible. Was that her father’s legacy? “I wasn’t a queen,” she whispered.

Morimaros grunted.

She said, “Queens mediate, they solve problems and make people feel better. I did none of those things, sir.”

“I would prefer a queen who tells me what she believes to be true.”

This time Elia smiled, but not happily. It was a smile of knowing better. Until this afternoon she would have sworn that was her father’s preference, too. Did all men know themselves so poorly? “So you say until I contradict you.”

He smiled, too, and she recalled thinking before that only his eyes made him seem softer. She’d been wrong; a smile did it as well. “Perhaps you are right, Elia, and all kings prefer to be pandered to.”

She began to apologize but stopped herself. He made the distinction himself: he was not a man, but a king. What other option did she have but to go with him in the morning? She was lucky he claimed to understand and was willing to give her some time at least. To overcome this grief, as he called it. She’d been disinherited, her titles and name stripped away. She was not Lear’s youngest daughter.

Her lungs contracted.

Where else could she go besides with Aremoria? Her mother’s people? Was that where Kayo would choose? Despite growing up with stories from her mother and uncle, from Satiri and Yna, despite being surrounded by the beautifully dyed rugs and delicate oils, the clothing and scarves and books, Elia still could hardly imagine the Third Kingdom. And it was so very far away from her beloved island, her cliffs and White Forest and moorland, and from her father whom she could not just abandon. He would need her again, before the end. Before long. Elia’s heart was here, and she could not just run away from her heart.

But she had to go somewhere, and this king seemed so genuine.

Putting her hands back to her stomach, Elia folded them as if it were a casual move, not a thing designed to keep herself from cracking. “I will go, for now.”

Instead of smiling triumphantly or at least as if her answer pleased him, Morimaros slipped back into his impassive formality. He bowed to her, deeper than a king should. She bowed as well, unsure whether she was steady enough to curtsy. She said, “My girl, Aefa, will go with me.”

“As you like,” he said crisply. “It will be good, though my mother and sister would be happy to provide help or companionship for you.”

“She’s always expected to be with me, and would have no place here alone.” It occurred to Elia that Aefa might prefer to go to her mother in the White Forest. But it was spoken aloud now, and Elia did not wish to take it back: without Aefa, she’d be alone.

Morimaros nodded. “Sleep well, then, if you can, Elia. I will leave you to prepare.”

At the last moment, Elia took Morimaros’s large, rough hand. Her fingers slid over a garnet and pearl signet ring; her thumb found his palm, so chilled there against his warm skin. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes level with the tooled leather shoulder of his orange coat.

He hesitated for the space of two breaths, until Elia grew nervous and would have taken her hand away. “You are welcome,” the king of Aremoria finally said, covering her entire hand with his.

And then he left her.

Before the door swung closed behind him, Aefa appeared, shutting it firmly with herself inside. Tears sewed her lashes together.

“Oh, Elia,” the Fool’s daughter whispered thickly. “Your father.”

Elia held out her hands. Aefa hugged her, crying, and it was Elia who tried to offer shelter from her numb, absent heart.

THE FOX

IF ERRIGAL EXPECTED to have to drag Ban to an audience with the king, he was disappointed. During five long years in the Aremore army, Ban had learned to not put off unpleasant tasks, for they tended to only become more unpleasant with the stall. Besides, Ban had a job to do here, and meeting with the king at his father’s side was one of the first steps.

And so, though facing Lear was the last thing Ban wanted, he swallowed his rage from the Zenith Court, and tried to be grateful this meeting would take place in the retainers’ hall over a meal.

Unfortunately, Ban had forgotten how quickly his appetite deserted him under the king’s critical gaze.

The retainers’ hall of the Summer Seat was long, like the court, but lacking a roof. Built of timber rather than stone, it was more like a stable, Ban thought, with rows of benches and tables and a high seat for the king. Gulls perched on the walls, waiting to scrabble for leftovers, and the king’s collection of hounds slunk under legs and begged with open mouths. Lear’s retainers all wore the king’s midnight blue and carried fine swords, and they drank from goblets etched with the rampant swan of the king or striped in blue. A raucous, messy place of men, at least it was kept clean in between meals and celebrations by the youngest retainers and hopeful sons. Ban had spent plenty of mornings tossing pails of water and slop over the side of the cliff just outside the arched entryway, spreading fresh hay and rushes, and scrubbing the tables of spilled wine and grease. His brother, Rory, had chafed under the drudgery, but Ban appreciated any sort of work with immediate, provable results.

Tonight, the retainers’ hall was subdued, given the day’s events. It rubbed Ban poorly to enter at his father’s side and witness hushed conversations and side-eyed glances, despite plenty of flowing beer. This was not how the king of Innis Lear’s men should present, as if nervous and cowed! Not under any circumstance. The proud Aremore army would never have fallen prey to a scattering of nerves. Some smiled welcome at Errigal; others offered tight-lipped warnings. But Errigal scoffed and stormed up the side aisle to where the king himself slouched in his tall chair, the Fool lounging beside him in a tattered striped coat with his head against Lear’s knee.

“My king,” Errigal said expansively.

“What, sir, do you come to bother me with this night of all nights?” The king rolled his head back to stare up at the sky, too bright yet for stars.

Lear’s hair remained as wild and ragged as it had been at the Zenith Court, his face still drawn and blotched with drink or anger or tears. A stain of wine spread like a heart-wound down the left side of his tunic.

Errigal knocked Ban forward. “Here is my son, Lear, come home from a five-year foster with the cousins Alsax in Aremoria. Ban the Fox they call him now, though he was only a bastard, or simply Ban, here.”

Ban’s shoulders stiffened as he bowed, turning it into a jerky motion. People here had called him Errigal’s Bastard, not just any. Ban stared at the king’s woolen shoes, wondering what he could possibly say that would not get him banished or killed. Play the role, Fox, he reminded himself again. Be courteous, and remember your purpose here. He’d earned his name, exactly as he’d promised himself he would. These people would respect it.

A groan sighed out of the king before he said, “Yes, I remember you. Ban Errigal. You were born under a dragon’s tail, bright and vibrant but ultimately ineffective.”

“I have been effective, King,” Ban said, straightening.

“Perhaps for the limited time you burn brightly.” Lear shrugged. “But it will be a limited time, and you will change nothing.”

Ban worked his jaw, chewing on every response before he could spit it out.

“His actions in Aremoria have been exemplary, by all accounts,” Errigal said.

“Aremoria!” Lear roared, surging to his feet. “Say no more of that place or that king! Stealing my Elia, my most loved star away!”

The Fool leaned up and sang, “Stolen with the same stealing as the clouds steal the moon!”

Lear nodded. “Yes, yes.”

“No, no,” responded the Fool. He was a long, lanky man, in a long, lanky coat of rainbow colors and textures. Silk, linen, velvet, strips of leather even, and lace, rough wool and soft fur, patterned in places, woven in plaid in others: a coat such as his marked him a man outside of station or hierarchy. The Fool was all men and no man at all. He wore the remains of a dress beneath the coat, and so maybe he was all women, too. And none.

The king frowned mightily.

Ban said, “I thought you had no daughter Elia, sir.”

Errigal choked on a furious word, and the king whirled to Ban. “A smart tongue, have you?” Lear demanded.

“The boy meant nothing by it,” Errigal said.

Ban met the king’s gaze. “You are wrong, Father. I did mean much.”

“Always defiant,” Lear said.

Ban held his tongue.

“Always ablaze,” Errigal said, forcing a laugh. “Like his mother, he’s got that passion of—”

“Bah.” The king waved dismissively at the earl, turning his back on Ban.

A moment of silence was only punctuated by the rustle of retainers listening as hard as they could. Ban felt their eyes on his spine, their focus and newfound attention. He would not bend or quail. This was the start of the work he must do to earn respect here, where they only knew stories of him, and his bastard name. Even if it meant bowing to this king’s obsessions or anticipating his moods.

Errigal nudged him, and Ban caught the angry spark in his father’s determined look. He was expected to speak again.

Fine.

Ban said, “You should call Elia back.”

The room behind him erupted in curses and gasps, cries for his removal. Ban braced himself. Errigal gripped his elbow. The Fool lifted thoughtful, bushy brows.

But Lear collapsed back into his high seat. Sorrow, weariness, and a bitter curl of his lip painted the king in starkness. He turned a bony hand over, palm up. “Do you know, pup, what stars I was born under?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lear nodded. “And you know how my wife died?” The old king curled his fingers closed, holding his fist so tight it trembled. The knuckles whitened.

“I do,” Ban said through gritted teeth.

A murmured prayer floated throughout the hall, asking blessing from the stars against royal calamity. The layers of soft words were so like the language of trees Ban nearly forgot it was only fearful men muttering.

“You do not. Only I know,” the king said hoarsely, finally opening his watery eyes. Pink tinged the edges. “I have lost so much to my stars. Brothers, retainers, my wife, and now my precious daughter.”

“You did not lose her; you sent her away.”

“She chose. She betrayed.”

Ban threw his arms out, but before he could cry his disbelief, Errigal stepped before him.

“You are heartsick, my king,” Errigal said, “and my boy is travel-worn, desperate. Let me take him and soothe his feathers.”

“You cannot calm a creature such as this! More like to calm a storm,” Lear said, wiping his eyes.

At last, a thing Ban agreed with. The king’s shifting moods troubled him: not only for Elia’s sake, but for the unpredictability they brought. It was difficult to plan someone’s downfall when their actions could veer off course at any moment.

Lear shook his head, pressed his hands to his eyes. “Oh, oh, I must go. I must …”

The Fool stood, bending his tall body nearly in half to lean near the king and murmur a thing in his ear.

“Errigal,” the king said, allowing the Fool to help him to his feet.

“My king?” Errigal moved forward to take Lear’s other arm.

“I’ll not have your bastard in my retainers. I cannot breathe when he is near. His stars offend. Take him elsewhere.”

A tremor of absolute fury shocked through Ban, crown to toes. He’d not have served with the king’s retainers if his life itself depended on it.

Errigal shot Ban another warning glance but said gently to Lear, “One of my sons honoring you so is well enough acceptable for me, sir. I can use Ban at home.”

Ban bowed sharply, breath hissing out through his teeth. Without another word he left.

WHAT BEASTS FATHERS were, Ban thought darkly, head down, boots skidding on the rushes as he hurried on.

Outside, he lifted his face to the flat, still-blue sky. He’d rather get off this terrible promontory to find shade in the cool trees of the island. There was a place he knew, where the island reached up with ancient power, where surely Ban could dig his fingers into the ground and rekindle his heart’s lines.

But Elia. He grimaced, worried for her, though he had no right. She’d recognized him at dinner last night, and had smiled wondrously, as if so very glad to see him. In that moment, Ban had forgotten Morimaros of Aremoria and all the years in his service. He’d forgotten Errigal and the shame of bastardy. All he’d been was the boy who once made her a crown of wind and flower petals. She’d smiled then, too, and kissed him.

“Boy, stop,” Errigal growled, catching up to plant his arm across Ban’s chest and stick his nose in his son’s.

“The king has gone mad, Father,” Ban said calmly.

Errigal tilted his head as if he hadn’t yet decided on an opinion. “Kayo being banished was a terrible mistake, but the rest … that girl is an ungrateful whelp, and irrational for not bowing to this easy request made by king and father. Better she’s not given the crown, though he said it was his preference.”

A furious growl hummed in Ban’s throat, making his father smirk. Errigal said, “There’s that passion I remember.”

Ban jerked back, but Errigal clapped his hand onto Ban’s shoulder. “Ah, am I ever glad the stars chose not to make me have to worry about such things as dividing my land between children.”

The cool relief in his father’s words made Ban stare at his father with a creeping wonder. Errigal did have two named sons, after all. And only one of them had already earned fame and respect in war. In the beginning, the entire point of his success in Aremoria had been to show that Ban was as worthy as his brother.

Errigal caught Ban’s frown and looked surprised. “What! Stars—my boy, you thought …”

Nauseated, Ban turned away.

“Son.” Errigal roughly threw an arm around him, pulling him back. “You have my name, you have a place in my ranks, and surely you know your brother will always welcome you—Rory is incorrigibly kind, and he has always liked you. He pestered me constantly this last year to bring you home.”

Ban said nothing, understanding that he would always be subject to charity here, in this place where he was supposed to belong, where he’d been born, where his mother’s roots thrived. This place and its laws and its king did not want him. Ban had made the right choice when he gave his word to Aremoria.

“You’re a good son,” Errigal continued, his hesitation not born of uncertainty, but of the earl’s deepest enemy: emotional honesty. “Everything a man could want in his issue, but for your origins.” To save the moment from too much intimacy, the earl forced a hearty laugh. “I’ve often said it was the great pleasure and zeal at your getting that formed you into such a passionate, skilled warrior. I wouldn’t have it another way.”

Ban forced his shoulders to relax into Errigal’s embrace. Play the role, Fox. “Thank you, Father. Your praise is much appreciated.”

“Ha! Good.” Errigal shoved Ban along, finished with the moment of fatherly affection.

Ban did not hesitate to desert the field.

NINE YEARS AGO,
WEST COAST OF INNIS LEAR

THE SUN SANK, and the king studied his youngest daughter as she studied the sky.

Lear lounged upon the rug he’d brought, a half-empty bottle of wine gouged into the damp earth beside him, his wool-encased elbows bent to support his weight, his bare ankles crossed. He watched his daughter as she tilted her head and spoke some phrase the wind kept from him. She clapped suddenly, in delight, as if she alone could see the precise moment the gentle pink clouds became loose violet haze. Her hair bobbed in its own rhythm, like a cloud itself: an ecstatic, curling puff of copper and brown. It strengthened the king’s aggrieved heart to see her, his favorite, intent upon the final moments of twilight, so ready to mark which star might first appear.

But then the princess fluttered her hand at the young boy crouched a few paces from the hem of her dress, and as the boy glanced up at her his face went from scowling and concentrated to relaxed and smiling. She had that effect on many, though the king would rather it not extend to Errigal’s bastard. The boy’s legitimate brother yelled and skidded half the meadow away, a wide stick held up like a sword in a very good offensive position to fight off invisible enemies. That one, the king thought, was destined for great purpose. The stars had clearly stated it on the night of his birth. He was the king’s godson, named Errigal, too, though to distinguish him from his father the earl, everyone called him Rory. Would that Elia showed her preference to the gilded Rory, who was so beloved by the sun and saints of the earth that he bore the marks of their affection: dark red freckles all over his skin. As if his body were made an earthly mirror to the firmament itself.

As the king stared fondly at his godson, his youngest daughter clapped again, and he saw her fall to her knees in the churned dirt where the bastard boy had turned over a heavy field stone. The flat granite stood upright for a moment, then tipped away from the children, landing with a solid thump against the meadow grass. The king’s daughter laughed, and the boy bent over the fresh filth, digging with one hand, touching the princess’s hem with his other.

Lear’s daughter scooted nearer the bastard and dug her hand into the mud with him, dragging out a long, fat worm. “Elia,” the king said, frowning.

His daughter glanced at him, thrusting out the worm with a smile of triumph. It was pale and slick-looking in her eleven-year-old hand. No elegance or rich gleam like the sorts of ribbons that should curl around her noble wrist. The king shuddered at the grotesquery and opened his mouth to chide her, but she giggled at something the bastard muttered, turning away from her father.

The boy, wiry and smaller than his gilded brother, smaller than the king’s favorite daughter even, though they were of age, splayed his left hand. It was nearly as dark as the princess’s, though less smooth, less bright: she was a statue molded from fine metal, and he a creature built of mud and starshadow. The king had always thought so: the boy had been born under a dragon’s tail moon, and forged in an unsanctioned bed. What a disaster for Errigal, the king had always said, always counseled his friend the earl against such passionate dalliance. But some men refused to govern their bodies as they would their minds.

The bastard displayed on his outstretched hand a shining emerald.

No—merely a beetle shimmering all the colors of a deep summer day. The boy plucked the beetle from his hand and placed it upon the princess’s.

She squealed that the tiny legs tickled her skin, but she did not toss the insect away.

The king watched through narrowed eyes as their heads leaned together, temples brushing until her puffed curls and his black braids blended. “Elia,” the king said again, this time a low command.

She tossed him a smile and glance, then showed him the emerald beetle clinging to her finger like a union ring, as Dalat once had presented her own hand to Lear, so long ago. “See, Father, how its shell shimmers like a pearl,” she said.

It pained the king, vividly reminded of his queen, his dearest queen who had loved Innis Lear, had seen beauty in every piece of his island, even in him. The king blinked: his queen was dead, no longer able to love him, or his island, or anything at all.

“Insects are not suitable rings for princesses,” he said, harshly.

Surprise shook Elia’s hand; the bastard gently caught the beetle as it fell.

The princess dashed over to her father. “But there were stars in its eyes,” she whispered, pushing aside hair from her father’s ear.

He murmured fondly, softening as he always did with her, and pulled her gently back to her proper place, seated beside him on the woven rug. Where her mother, too, had sat.

A cool evening wind brushed its way through the meadow. Elia leaned her head against his shoulder, both of them tilting back to watch the sky. The king told her quiet lines of poetry about the wakening stars as the bastard lowered his fingers to the earth so that the beetle could crawl off him and back into the dirt. Always the boy kept the princess in the corner of his eye. The king was aware. And displeased.

The brother, Rory, stomped over, sweating and triumphant. “Ban!” Rory threw his pretend sword to the ground, scattering grubs and beetles in one swoop. “What is that terrible thing?” He scuffed his boot near a curled white creature with several thin legs. The bastard did not answer.

The king called for Rory to come to the rug, to join him and his daughter, to look at the darkening sky. “The first star you see will be a portent of your year, children, for tonight is halfway between the longest night and the longest day. Cast your gaze wide.”

Delighted, the princess rounded her black eyes and tried to see the entire sky at once. Rory, a year younger, flopped down at the king’s feet and knocked his skull against the rug-softened ground. He peered directly up to the dome of heaven, focused on one spot.

The king watched them both affectionately. His youngest daughter and his godson, intent upon his will, intent upon the prophetic stars. As he bid them, as was right. He could abide the bastard for the evening, since his presence pleased Elia.

His daughter gasped and said, “There!” Her little hand shot up, pointing near the horizon.

The king laid his old white thumb against her burnished brown forehead. “That, my daughter, is Terestria, the Star of Secrets. Terestria was so beloved by the stars that they drew her up with them when she died, so her body was buried in the blackness of the night sky instead of swallowed by the earth. I would make for you, my Elia, my dearest, a grave of stars, if you were to die before me.”

His daughter smiled in acceptance while Rory squinted his face more tightly to find another star above. The bastard gripped his brother’s discarded sword-stick and jammed it into the ground.

“You won’t find stars in the mud, boy,” the king admonished.

Elia frowned but Rory laughed, while the bastard dropped the stick and stood still as a tree, staring at the king with eerie light eyes. “I’m not looking for stars,” he said.

“Then go from here, for we are about the stars tonight, and your petulance will mar their shine.”

The bastard’s jaw squared stubbornly, then he dropped his gaze to the princess, who clutched her dress, caught between the king and the boy. His eyes lowered, and the boy turned away without a word. Good riddance.

“I found one!” crowed Rory, leaping to his feet. “Ban, look!”

The king angled his head up to see.

“That, godson,” the king said, “is the Star of the Hunt, also called the Hound’s Eye.” He declined to elaborate, but Rory didn’t care, elated to have captured the sight of such a glorious-sounding first star. He ran after his half-brother, crying Ban’s name and inventing fulsome meanings for the Star of the Hunt.

Easily, the king put both Errigal sons from his mind, curling around his favorite daughter, his Elia. She needed him, she trusted him.

The king held his youngest in the shelter of his love as he described the portents revealed by how the stars appeared tonight, through the vivid purple and pale blue evening. He would raise her in their clear light, he promised, to be the starry jewel in the crown of Lear, a radiant heir to the skies and proof that wisdom and purity would forever outshine base emotions and the filth of mortality.

ELIA

THE LAST MEAL Elia took at the Summer Seat was only wine, a dark red that had been her mother’s favorite, borne in a cool carafe by her sisters. Elia could not read their faces, and was too tired to guess their intentions. She wanted them with her so badly she ignored her suspicions and let them enter.

Regan set three clay cups upon Elia’s small dining table, and Gaela poured them to the brim, chasing Aefa away with a haughty scowl. Both had removed most of their finery from court: Gaela had on her deep red dress, but without pauldron or symbols of armor, and only clay held up her crown of twisting hair; Regan’s fingers remained jeweled, but she’d taken off her elaborate belt and had most of her chains and ribbons pulled out of her hair, to be bound in a simple knot at her nape. Elia had not changed at all, though Aefa, still crying herself, had washed the smeared red paint from Elia’s lip and eyes.

She wished it had been reapplied, to face this moment.

“To returning,” Gaela said, holding her cup in the palm of her hand.

Regan finished the blessing. “When the old fool is dead.”

Elia knocked her cup over with a shout, spilling wine across the pale table like a wave of fresh blood. Her anger surprised her.

Regan stood abruptly, though the motion sloshed her own wine onto the wrist of her very fine gown. “Elia,” she snapped.

Gaela only laughed. “What a fine mess, baby sister.” She drank her full cup of wine. Then she slammed her hand flat down into the puddle, splattering tiny drops onto Elia’s face. They hit like tears on her cold cheeks. “Drink some.”

Regan flicked her wine-covered hand at Elia, too, as if to add her irritable benediction to Gaela’s.

A laugh tugged out of Elia, though it was tremulous and dry and annoyed. Her sisters were terrible, but so desperately themselves.

She did not wipe her skin, but leaned forward and poured more wine into her toppled cup. Lifting it, she said, “To peace between us, and sisterly love, and reconciling with our father.”

Her sisters drank with her: Gaela with a raised, wry brow, and Regan smiling her untouchable smile. Regan said, “Reconciliation will never happen. We are queens now, Gaela and me. He declared so himself.”

Not until the Longest Night, they weren’t, Elia knew. But this set them as near as possible. Wine swirled in her belly, and Elia pressed her hand there. She risked herself by saying, “He asked me, when he first sent letters from Aremoria and Burgun this winter, if I thought I would make a good queen. I should have known then, that he was planning something like this.”

Gaela laughed, but Regan peered closely at the youngest of them. “And do you think it?” she asked.

“Compared to what?” Elia asked, letting Regan see the challenge there. The burned-out, desperate challenge. Compared to my cruel sisters? she thought at Regan.

It was Gaela who sneered now. “Do not put yourself against us in this; we have strength at home, while you are only yourself. It would be a butterfly against birds of prey.”

Elia was too used to the lack of sisterly support to be surprised or even newly injured. She lowered her eyes to the spilled wine, gave Regan and Gaela a moment to understand she was not truly challenging them; she was only so tired, so raw. So afraid for their father, for her future. She had done nothing at all, and yet her life was torn away. She could barely breathe, had felt lightheaded and breathless all afternoon. “I do not wish to be the queen of Innis Lear. I only wish to be home, and take care of him.”

“He does not deserve you,” Regan said.

“What will you do with him, then?” Elia asked. “Be kind, I beg you.”

Gaela said, “We will disband his retainers but for some hundred or so of them, and share the burden of housing him and them between us.”

“You could stay, Elia,” Regan said seductively, “if you marry some harmless man of Lear, and never stand against us.”

“Some harmless man?”

“Perhaps Rory Errigal,” Gaela said.

“No,” Elia said quickly, thinking instead of Ban, though she’d not let herself do so for years. It was only brotherly affection she held for Rory.

“No, Gaela,” Regan agreed. She tapped dangerous fingernails at the edge of the spill of wine. “You only want her to eek Errigal’s iron and loyalty away from my Connley with that, dear sister.”

Gaela smiled. Regan smiled.

Elia swallowed a heavier drink of wine.

“And so,” Gaela said, “Elia cannot remain here now. She must stay in Aremoria until Midwinter, and so keep herself out of the minds of any who remember Lear wished for her to be the next queen.”

“If you return before the Longest Night we will take it as a hostile act,” Regan added.

Sighing sharply, Elia finished her wine. She would be drunk soon, and she welcomed it. She felt exhausted. The brief silence among them was strangely comfortable, until Regan said, “Beware of Morimaros.”

“What?” She thought of his hands, the garnet and pearl ring, the rough, pinked knuckles.

Gaela said, “They say in Aremoria that the greatest king will reunite our island to their country. That what was sundered will be returned. Morimaros’s ambition will lead him to desire Innis Lear for his own. You must prove to him we three are Lear now, and we three are strong.”

Elia pinched her eyes closed. “Are we? You just told me my presence here threatens you.”

“Elia!” snapped Regan. “It is what we will make ourselves, do you understand?”

“I understand,” Elia said, leaning forward, “that my sisters played some vicious game today, that my father disowned me and believes he hates me, and I must leave my home because of it.”

Both her sisters smiled again, so familiar and yet unknowable to Elia. Regan’s was small and cold, Gaela’s wide enough to display her shield of white teeth.

“Why do you hate him?” Elia whispered, grasping at anything to make her understand why she was empty and broken, while her sisters triumphed.

Regan leaned in so Elia could see the tiny flecks of blue in her dark eyes. “Why don’t you?” she whispered back.

The wine gurgled in Elia’s belly. She touched a hand there, setting her cup down hard. “You won’t be better than him. The two of you will let the island break into war. Worse; you’ll encourage it between your husbands. How can you? How can you wish for such a thing?”

Gaela said, “We will encourage what we must to achieve what we desire.”

It was mysteriously said, low in voice, and most unlike Gaela. Elia stared at her eldest sister, the one whose face reminded her of their mother; or else she’d been told so often that Gaela resembled the queen that she’d invented some memory to account for it. She did not know what was real. “I want Innis Lear at peace. I want my family whole,” Elia said.

Regan reached for Gaela; their palms met, and they clasped hands.

Elia understood: they were whole, but apart from Elia, because Elia had been too young to choose against Lear when their mother died. Her sisters could only give her so much now, too many years later. Elia said, “I don’t want to be here.”

“You’ll go soon enough,” said Gaela.

Elia shook her head. She felt hollow where she was supposed to be overwhelmed: flooded with anger, or burning with grief. She hated the numbness, but she did not know how to change it or chase it away—and if she thought about anything else it was her father’s grimace as he took away her name, as he said—as he said—

She was shaking all over.

Her sisters dragged her onto her feet and suddenly embraced her. Elia covered her face, surprised, and pressed into Gaela and Regan. “You take care of him,” she said, muffling her own order. “You do as you promised today and love him. Make those words true.”

“Do not teach us our duty,” Gaela said, pinching Elia’s hip.

Elia gripped the hard arm of her eldest sister and the thin ribs of her middle sister. When was the last time they’d stood thus? When their mother died? No—when Ban Errigal had been sent away and she’d believed it her own fault, she’d come to Regan, begging for some plot to get him back, and Regan had taken her to Gaela’s room. They gave her wine like this, though she choked on it like the child she’d been, and they told her to forget her friend. Told her to hope for nothing but that he come home someday, stronger. That is always the way, Gaela had said. Go, but return home stronger. And Regan had said, If you are lucky and willful and brave. Lear would have us weaken away from him, but we will never do as he wishes, Elia. We would rather die than give him what he wants, even if all he wants is his stars.

“Go, but return home stronger,” Elia whispered now.

“If you can,” Regan said.

Gaela snorted, amused. “If she can.”

Elia pulled free of them. Stumbling to the door, she wished to cling to a single memory of a time she’d felt like their sister, part of them equally, a true triad, a triplet star, anything. The memories were there, faded and locked away in salty cliff caves, under the high table on the Longest Night, and in a cottage at the center of the White Forest. But in this moment she was untethered, shorn from her father and family because there was nothing in her sisters tying her heart secure.

THE FOX

FAR OUT PAST the Summer Seat, against the cliffs facing the fortress, a ragged half-circle of stones stood like the bottom row of a monster’s teeth, growing up out of the patchy moor. Thirteen stones, twice as tall as a man but not half so wide, worn raw by the salt wind.

Ban should’ve loved it. A temple of roots and rock, biting hard against the sky.

His boots scuffed against grit and gravel. The wind brushed through, humming around the stones, drawing thin purple clouds off the ocean. Heather clustered on the south sides of a few standing stones, bowing gently in the twilight. Ban reached out to the nearest stone, mottled with coins of black lichen and paler moon lichen. The rock was warm, purring like the wind.

Stepping fully into the half-circle, he tilted his head up. Purple and great swaths of rich indigo crawled across the sky, letting through only the strongest stars. A full moon glowed over the easternmost standing stone. The top was slanted, and Ban walked until the moon was pierced by its higher, sharper tip. This had always been his argument with Errigal and the king as a boy: the patterns Ban saw depended on where he stood. One needed the perspective of the earth to understand the stars.

Errigal had cuffed him and the king explained disgustedly, “A man should stand where he is supposed to stand, and from there see the signs and patterns around him. That is how you read the stars.”

Ban’s brother, Rory, had obediently taken a place beside Lear, grabbing Ban’s skinny wrist and dragging him there, too. “With me,” Rory said, hugging Ban’s shoulders in his arm and putting their faces together. “Look, brother!”

Then, Ban had smiled with Rory, leaned into the embrace. He’d tolerated the lesson so long as Rory had hold of him.

Elia would pace around and around the stones, counting the space, writing down her numbers to later draw a map of the circle. Lear had been proud when his daughter overlaid the stone map with a simple summer star map and showed how clear and smart the ancient star readers had been to lay this circle out just so. See, Ban? The earth itself made into the shape of stars!

Show me, Lear had said, dismissing Ban as irrelevant.

Now, Ban turned his back against the center stone and slid down to crouch at its base. Flattening his hands on the cold ground, Ban whispered, Blessings for Elia Lear, in the language of trees.

The words scratched at his tongue, and the standing stone warmed his back. Ban drew a breath, sinking against the earth and the stone, relaxing his body. His eyes drifted shut. He listened.

Chewing waves tugged out from the island with the vanishing tide. The purr of stones and the beat of his heart. Wind kissing his cheeks, scattering seed husks and dark petals across the gravelly earth here. Distant whispering trees clustered around streams and the thin Duv River that flowed from the northern Mountain of Teeth, through the White Forest, catching on boulders and the roots of ancient oak and ash, slick with spirits. Ban whispered, My name is Ban Errigal. My bones were made here with you.

Ban Errigal, the trees hissed quietly.

The island’s voice should have been stronger. It should have spoken to him last night, even far out on the Summer Seat ramparts. Or perhaps Ban was spoiled by the vibrant, glorious tones of Aremoria.

Innis Lear.

Here he smelled late summer roses and dry grass, salty sea and the tinge of fishy decay. Stone and earth, his own sweat. Maybe his memories of being a boy-witch here were thin; maybe the island always had spoken so tightly.

But no: Ban was certain. Lear had done this. The fool king had weakened the ancient voice of the island when he forbade the rootwaters from flowing. Both earth and stars were needed for magic: roots and blood for power, the stars to align them. Without both, everything was wild, or everything was dead. Here, it was dying.

Ban couldn’t—he wouldn’t let it happen. Not to the trees and wind. Not to this hungry island that birthed him. The only thing in his life to never let him go, to never choose someone else.

Kneeling, Ban drew off his thin jacket and then untucked his linen shirt and removed it, too. Dropped both in a pile beside him.

From a small folded pouch on his belt, he drew a sharp flint triangle and pressed the edge to his chest, over his heart. Blood, he whispered in the language of trees, slicing fast. Blood welled as the sting flared. It dripped a thin, dark line down his chest. Ban allowed it, but caught the stream upon his finger just before it reached the waist of his trousers. There, against his skin, he smeared it into the jagged language of trees, writing Innis Lear with marks like naked winter twigs.

His chest ached with every breath, a low fire heating his skin and heart. Ban pressed his palm to the wound, caught trickling blood, and then clasped his hands together until both palms glinted scarlet.

Here I am, he said to the wind, and leaned forward onto his hands and knees, giving the bloody prints to the earth. My power, and your power.

Ban Errigal, the island trees hissed. Ban the Fox, the Fox, the Fox.

The slice over his heart bled onto the ground, a dull dripping, a narrow thread of life between him and the island.

The puddle shaped itself into a crescent, tips reaching away.

Ban opened his eyes and looked into the crimson pool. He saw a word marked there, something close to promise.

I promise, he whispered tenderly. I swear to you.

Wind flew off the island, a cry of trees, rushing past him, dragging at his hair, and tears pricked suddenly in his eyes. The wind snatched his tears and shrieked off the cliff, crashing down, down, down to the rocks and sea foam.

WELCOME!

Ban smiled.

He leaned back onto his heels, holding his bloody, dusty hands before him. Light, he said.

Five tiny silver baubles of moonlight blossomed over his palms.

He laughed, delighted.

A soft noise echoed in response.

Then a human voice: “You’ve become a wizard.”

Ban lifted his head. Elia Lear stood across from him, part of the violet shadows. He wondered how long she’d been watching. Did she still understand the language of trees?

The moon washed out her eyes and dress and found the reddish glints in her dark chainmail curls. It turned her face into a gold mask like the kind an earth saint would wear: black eyes, slash of mouth, wild ribbons and scraggly moss and vines for hair.

Balancing the tiny stars still in his hands, he stood up slowly, his heart somehow lighter. That had always been her gift to him: she cut through all the angles of his anger and need, to a hidden spark of peace. “Elia,” he said, then, “Princess.”

Elia’s face crumpled, becoming human again, in painful motion. “No more,” she whispered. Her fingers pulled lines into the front of her gown.

Ban went to her and caught up her elbows, leaning in to offer her comfort. The balls of light dropped slow as bubbles, fading just before they hit the earth again. Elia clung to him, despite the blood and dust on his chest and hands. He put his arms full around her, his heart gasping between beats.

“Ban Errigal,” she whispered, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. “I never knew if I’d see you again. I hoped, but no more than hope. It is so good, so very good, to be held by you now.”

“Like the last time,” he said, low in his throat, forcing the words out, “your father made a terrible decision.”

She shuddered against him. Her hair teased his chin and jaw, smelling of spicy flowers still. Elia pulled away, though slid her hands down to his. She lifted one, touching the blood.

“Wormwork,” he said.

“It was beautiful.” She raised her eyes to his.

“The earth has its own constellations.”

Elia touched his chest, and Ban’s entire body stilled. Her finger skimmed above the heart-wound.

He said, “Your father makes wormwork filthy, severs himself and all of you from the island’s heart for nothing but the sake of pure stars and insincere loyalties. It’s hurting the magic. And the island.”

She pushed away from him, going to the nearest standing stone. Elia scratched her fingers down it, hard enough to flake off tiny edges of silver moon lichen. “There have been more poor harvests than good these past years, since you left. I’ve heard of sickness, too, in the forests, and fish dying. Fish! I thought—I thought when Gaela was queen it all would revive. That there was nothing to do but wait. The island does not love him, but we can all survive without love, for a time. All places have bad years, hard seasons. Especially an island like ours.”

“Does Gaela speak to the wind?” Ban called softly.

Elia shook her head and walked to the next stone, then the next, until she reached the center stone that he’d been crouched against. She wrapped her arms around it as far as they could go. “I can barely remember the language of trees.”

He nearly smiled but was too sad. “In Aremoria, the trees sing and laugh.”

“I thought they did not have magic there.”

“It is unused, uncultivated, but still present. A current under all.” No one he’d met in Aremoria spoke to the trees, which made it seem like they’d been waiting just for him.

Elia pressed her forehead to the stone. “My father …”

“Is wrong.”

“Let’s speak of something else.”

“Ah.” He thought hard for a neutral thing to say, stepping closer. The ocean wind streamed around him, and he felt the humming again, from the air, from the stones, from the moon. “If you stand here, and leap from one foot to the next”—he demonstrated, widening his stance comically—“back and forth, it looks like the moon herself is leaping.”

Seeming surprised, Elia joined him. She took his dirty hand and hopped, her eyes up on the hazy sky.

The moon bobbed as they did. It was like six years vanished between them, and they’d never been apart. Elia gripped his hand, and he smiled at her, watching her face when he could instead of the moon.

Slowly, slowly, he became aware of the feel of her cool hand in his, the sliding of her skin against his skin; the motion tingled and burned up along the soft side of his wrist, pooling in his elbow, tickled all the way to his heart with a thread of starlight. It was no imagined poetry that made him think it, but magic, tying them back together as he’d sought to tie himself again to Innis Lear. His blood between them, and this shared dance.

Ban thought about kissing her.

He stumbled, jerking at Elia’s arm, and she laughed. “I know what you were looking at, Ban Errigal.”

She could not, he hoped, know he’d had such a thought as he’d had, to take something from her she had not offered. “I enjoy making the moon move,” he said.

“Not very respectful,” she chided, but without much force behind it.

“I have no respect for this place.”

It killed their moment of pleasure, and Ban regretted that, though not what he’d said.

Elia went still. “Maybe your disdain can cancel out his worship,” she whispered.

“I’ll take you away from here,” he heard himself say, and knew he meant every word. He meant this more than any promise he’d ever made to Aremoria. “We could leave now. My horse is in the Sunton stables; we’ll go and be long away by dawn. From there to Aremoria and beyond, any place we like.”

The princess stared at his mouth, as if reading his next words there: “Two nobodies, just Ban and Elia. We could do anything. Come with me,” he said, almost frantic. This was the moment, the tilting, reaching moment that would change everything. Choose me, he thought.

But Elia turned away from him. Said, looking to the stars once more, “Everyone would blame you, say terrible things about you.”

“And so the sun rises every morning.” The bitterness staining his words stung even his own mouth. Did she know what it had been like for him as a boy? Did she ever notice her father’s jabs? No, he told himself, more likely Elia had loved him the way children love what they have, and forgot him the moment he was gone. Why else did she never write to him?

“I can’t, Ban. My father will regret this, I know. He must. He will see …” Her eyes closed, but her head was still tipped back to the sky. “He will see a new sign in the stars, and forgive me.”

“What kind of forgiveness is that, if he only does it for them?” Ban flung his hands at the stars.

Moonlight caught the tips of her short, curled lashes. “Forgiveness is its own point,” she insisted.

He stared at her, wondering if anyone could be so good. Wondering if she believed herself. “I can’t forgive him,” he said. “For what he’s done to you. To me. I don’t want to.”

She opened her eyes and faced him, revealing a vivid ache in her gaze. “I think … I used up my heart completely this afternoon. There is no space for any new feeling to take hold, Ban. Only for what already lived there, and rooted long ago.”

“I was there.”

Elia nodded. “As he has always been. And you are here now, and that is … it is such a balm to see you.”

“Just in time for you to leave, to trade places with me in Aremoria,” he said angrily, wanting to remind her sharply that Morimaros of Aremoria was not rooted in her heart. But he said no more, shocked at his conflicted loyalty. Morimaros deserved much better from him.

She shook her head sadly, disapproving of his anger. Then she asked, “Why did you come out here, to this place you dislike?”

“To escape our fathers,” he muttered.

“There are many ways to do that. Are you looking for a prophecy? It is what this place is for.”

“You should know better. I came to invite myself back to the roots of Innis Lear. To the voices of the trees and stones. Since there is no well from which to drink.” He stalked to the eastern stone, where the moon hung a handspan above it now, and the Star of First Birds sparkled just to the side. As he approached, the stone grew and grew against the darkening sky until it swallowed the moon whole. Ban put his hands flat against it and pushed. It did not budge, of course, but he ground his teeth and shoved, straining with all his strength. His boots slid roughly.

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