He looked like a prince, which was why two people in this hall had already asked him if he was the young Aremore heir who had been sent by his father for the memorial. Tear tilted his chin down, both times, and said only, “No,” slanting his gaze toward where the real prince sat, resplendent in orange and white like a summer’s day, with only a finely embroidered strip of pale gray silk tied to his arm.
Abandoned by his mother, so she could more freely gossip and plot with her array of Connley cousins, Tear leaned his shoulder against the corner of a stone pillar, softened by time and darkened from hundreds of hands. He’d pulled his bloodred coat on to cover the mourning gray wool that he’d worn out on to the Star Field for the procession at dusk. Tear was beginning to be aware that the bolder color made him shine, instead of drawing him wan as it did his darker father. His mother approved, having raised him to use every weapon in his arsenal.
The great hall was crushed with people, most blending together in their mourning shades of white and gray, though some still wore jewels and silver that sparkled, in hair and at wrists or waists. Tear played a game with himself, trying to name every faction, and invent some plot for them to discuss. His own young cousins were mostly girls, and so they did not desire to spend time with him, given that he did not flirt or pretend to protect them. The boys were all ten years Tear’s elder, thanks to his parents’ long wait for children. Those boys had little interest in his cold quiet and used to call him his mother’s daughter when they were younger and stupid enough to forget he would be their duke. Though Tear had hardly minded. They would be his allies when the time came, because he knew everything they wanted, and he would be in position to grant it, or not. And because he was, in many ways, his mother’s daughter. She taught him very, very well, and he learned, adeptly and eagerly.
Someday Tear would wear the ducal chains; someday he would rule Connley and control the entire eastern edge of Innis Lear, down through the wealthy Errigal lands. Everyone on Innis Lear would love or fear him, or perhaps hate him. Anything, he thought, so long as their feelings were strong. His mother had told him, Make the people want you for you, not your stars. Give them a connection to your flesh and blood and purpose, my boy. As we connect ourselves to the rootwater.
He certainly wasn’t following that advice while leaning apart from the crowd, so, taking a breath, Tear pushed clear of the column. He began a measured pace deeper into the room. He wound through clusters of adults, some laughing, some gossiping intensely with concerned faces. All were drinking warm wine from braziers hung over the hot coals. Tear took a cup himself and drank half of it down, despite knowing it would bring the pink out in his sharp cheeks.
His goal was the prince of Aremoria, Morimaros. Several years Tear’s elder and here, his mother said, to court one of Lear’s daughters.
Tear stepped up beside the prince, hoping his solemn expression lent age and wisdom to his features.
Morimaros nodded, dark blue eyes flicking across Tear’s face. “From Connley?” the prince said.
Tear bowed. “The duke’s only son.”
“We hear fine things about your mind and ambitions, young Connley,” said the Earl Rosrua’s son, likely to take the title any month now. He stood at Morimaros’s opposite side. “We’ll welcome you to our ranks.”
Again, Tear bowed, though more slightly. What he had heard of the heir to Rosrua was not to be repeated before any Aremore. “I hope Dondubhan is impressing you,” he said to Morimaros.
“It is. Your people are very united.”
A strange response, Tear thought, having expected to speak about the massive black Tarinnish or the spreading Star Field or the ancient, strong ramparts of the castle itself, the twelve-foot-thick walls or the watchtower. This was significantly more intriguing. “We are. It must be so in Aremoria, too.”
Morimaros paused, as if realizing he’d been caught in an odd comparison. “I think … it is like the difference between our forests and yours. Here, you have fewer kinds of trees. Pines, oaks, and smaller trees in the south, but only the hardiest here in the north, where there are trees at all. They stand strong and alone against harsh circumstances, but still the forests are thick and immortal. Aremore forests have hundreds of kinds of trees. They do make forests—vast, amazing forests—but they are not so singular.”
Tear understood in his gut, immediately.
But the Rosrua heir chuckled. “It’s because our trees talk, you know, Your Highness. Like old women, leaning together and keeping everyone in line. But each a fishwife with an opinion to clutch at.”
An older man, whom Tear did not know, but who wore a belt with an Astore salmon stamped into the leather, said, “We do have some very foreign trees rooted here on our island. I believe, Prince, they’re the ones you’re most interested in.”
Frowning, Tear decided to find out the name of this fool, the better to keep his distance. The daughters of Lear were daughters of Lear, not foreign trees.
The Aremore prince held his opinion, merely nodded.
“The eldest,” Rosrua’s son said—Alson, that was his name! Tear would make sure to remember now—“will certainly marry your lord.”
Astore’s idiot nodded. “Indeed. He and she have a tightness between them, and what man wouldn’t want to bed her? She’s magnificent. A stallion’s prize.”
All the men gathered, even Tear, looked toward Gaela Lear. She stood beside the tall chair in which she’d feasted, the stark white of her gown and the white veil drawn over her short hair making her skin gleam darker than ever. The expression she wore was equally stark: grief and disdain, both warring in her fierce eyes, though she spoke readily enough to the duke in question.
“He was fifteen when she was born,” Alson said.
But Tear’s attention was no longer free—caught instead, skewered by an arrow of fate, on the second daughter of Lear.
Regan.
She was beautiful. Half-hidden behind the elder, star-cursed princess, it seemed Regan stood with her shoulder pressed gently to the center of Gaela’s back. As a support, or comfort.
Thin, boyish almost, except for the mature elegance of the quiet gray-and-white dress she wore. Silver shone at the princess’s fingers and in her hair, at her cool brown neck. Red paint plumped her bottom lip and dotted in perfect arcs from the corners of her large eyes.
Regan Lear was flawless.
“Regan would be a good match for you,” the loathsome Astore man said, attempting to engage the Aremore prince.
“How old is she?” Morimaros asked, though surely he knew.
“Fifteen,” said Tear.
So he would be, too, in a few short months. “Excuse me,” Tear murmured, slipping away. None cared.
He finished his cup of wine and retrieved more, as well as a second, for he’d seen Regan held a cup herself, dangled at the end of her loose arm, tapping gently against her thigh. It must have been long empty, for her to risk spotting her pale gown.
As he moved through people toward her, he saw her eyes never rested in one place for long. Regan studied everything, and twice tilted her chin up to murmur over Gaela’s shoulder. Then the elder would look where her sister had been, before continuing her conversation with Astore, or one or two of that lord’s nearby cousins.
Regan, Tear thought, fed Gaela information. Perhaps she was searching for something or someone in particular, or merely reported on what she could. The sister’s close contact, the casual communication between them, awoke a gentle longing in Tear. What devotion. What communion. What love.
He reached their perch, finally, coming around from behind Gaela so the eldest princess would not notice him, but nor would he startle Regan. Her dark eyes caught his, but she did nothing to give him pause.