And Elia understood the answer was not to do the opposite: to obey the island roots unthinkingly. She could not eat the flower and drink the water on the island’s word alone. Ruling Innis Lear should be a partnership, a conversation, and she would not rush the moment, though she believed one would come.
There were many conversations to have first. The morning after Rory’d arrived, Elia tended the dead Earl Errigal at his side. The body had been laid out in the cellar, washed and dressed, with his sword and chain of earldom. Elia held Rory’s hand while he breathed through great pain, and when he calmed, she asked, “Why are you here at my side, Errigal Earlson?”
His full name startled him, and he wiped under his eyes. “My father—” he said thickly.
Elia took the earl’s chain off the dead father’s chest. “I mean, why did you come home, why are you with me? Your brother is gone to my sisters, and they will take this chain from you for defying them, and give it to Ban. They have already declared it—you’ve heard what the iron wizard said was Regan’s order.”
“It’s mine,” Rory said. “Maybe Ban should have been my father’s heir, because he’s oldest, or because he’s smarter than me, but he isn’t. I am. I want it.”
“Your stars are suited to it.”
“They are.”
“Why not go to Gaela and demand your rights of her?”
“Gaela alarms me.”
Surprise widened her eyes.
Rory pressed on, distraught, “She doesn’t … Do you know anything about war games? Gaela wins them, but always the same way. Even when her specific tactics vary, the strategy is the same. It is always an aggressive one, always driven and determined, but she cuts losses without a thought. She is a great commander, but a queen should not leave fields trampled behind her every time, nor use a village as a point of play. They’re homes, and they matter beyond winning that single battle.”
“And Regan?”
“Regan is a witch, not a—a queen. Maybe with Connley, she might’ve … but not alone.” He winced at the sound of his prejudice. So like his father’s, and he seemed to know it.
“And me?” Elia murmured.
“I trust you,” he said, as if it were that simple.
“Rory.”
He smiled, flirting just a little. “I’ve loved you since we were children, and I’ve seen you. You always made us stop to say hello to anyone we passed when we played. You knew their names, everyone.”
“You do that, too.”
“I’d probably make a good king, then,” he joked.
But a moment fell between them, and they stared. Elia wondered what would happen if she married him right now, today. An old friend, a soldier, one of her father’s favorites, the heir to Errigal iron. A man she could control better than her other options. It would rearrange many pieces of this dangerous puzzle.
“If you ask me, Elia,” Rory said, low and serious, “I will say yes. But you shouldn’t.”
“Tell me why.”
“We shouldn’t do things that will hurt more than they heal.”
It broke her heart to hear the regret in his voice, and Elia realized she did not want to know what caused it.
He told her anyway. “It was my fault they sent Ban to Aremoria, that spring.”
“How?” she whispered. “It was my father, afraid of Ban’s stars, and thinking Ban was unworthy of me.”
“I told my father…” Rory glanced at the slack face of the body laid out beside them. It was a gruesome location for such intimate talk. “I told him that Ban loved you, and that the two of you should be married, and then we’d all be happy. It was only a week later that—” He stopped.
Elia covered her mouth and turned away. “You didn’t know,” she said, muffled by her hand. She forced it down to hang rigid at her side and repeated herself.
“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t think. About much at all. And if Ban did know, or realized it…” Rory sighed. “I deserve that he’s returned the favor. Though I won’t—I won’t just submit to his revenge.”
“No.” Elia turned back and offered Rory the earl’s copper chain. “Take it.”
Rory kissed her temple and refused, grief thickening his tongue. “When this is over, either I or my brother will put it on. Only then.”
When the sun set each night, Elia crouched with Brona to cast holy bones. While Brona read the cards and bones, Elia would read the position of the stars. Together they wove stories of skies and roots: the first night came a tale of loss, where the stars dominated all and soon there was no place for the birds of any world to land.
The second night the story was about Kayo, who was in love. That story was a spark of warmth, a reminder that affection could still blossom and grow on Innis Lear, even in the past six years. Elia found herself teasing Brona, happy. Kayo himself admitted it in the morning, and admitted, too, that he’d asked Brona to marry him before and the witch’s answer remained always patience. “She will need to be patient with me now,” her uncle said, his hand hovering over the bandage on his face. The wound healed slowly, and Kayo had to be gentle with it or an infection might spread and blind him in his other eye, too. That Gaela had done this to him, so viciously, with such disregard, put Elia firmly in agreement with Rory: Gaela would make a terrible queen, even regardless of the island’s will.
Last night the bones and stars had told of a queen slowly being born.
Elia avoided the king of Aremoria completely: he and La Far lived with the retainers to keep knowledge of his identity shrouded in as much secrecy as could be managed. They did as her father’s retainers did, so it was easy to keep her distance. If she spoke to him, Elia was certain she would do irreparable damage between their countries. She did not forgive him—she could not, if she was to be queen of Innis Lear. But she did wish, some moments, she could find the strength to confront him, and then together they might commiserate over their hopes and fears regarding Ban the Fox.
Waiting put an edge to her voice; she could not relax. Neither did the island. Wind ravaged them, always, until only those who accustomed themselves to the noise were able to sleep. It begged and screamed wordlessly, but for the occasional cry of her name. Even under the brightest autumn sun, birds huddled in the crooks of tree branches and horses resisted leaving their barn.
She took several men to the navel well of Errigal Keep and pried off its cap. The well burped up a gasp of wind that ought to have been rancid but instead smelled like wine, sharp and sweet and heady. Drink, whispered the well. Eat, said the wind.
The hemlock crown had lost all its scent, and most of the petals had fallen in Elia’s wake. Aefa seemed relieved, but there was poison in the leaves and stems, too. Any part would suffice. And if she needed it, the island would show her where to find more starweed.
But Elia would not eat it, not yet. Not until she faced her sisters. She refused to take action that could not be undone.
And then the letter came, in the hand of a messenger in pink, who tore into the Keep sweaty and desperate.
Elia was in the great hall, seated at a long table near the hearth, peeling and chopping onions with women and boys from the kitchen. The stinky, tearful work was made better by the poetry and songs of the folk, who’d spread out here at her invitation because of the space and warmth; the gale outside had turned frigid.
Eager, ready, Elia opened the letter immediately. She read it, then again.
She sank to the rush-covered floor, sitting in a pool of bright red skirts, and read the message a third time.
Aefa knelt beside her and read the letter, too.
“Worm shit,” she said.
“Aefa.” Elia took a deep breath. “Aefa, send everyone away, and bring me Kayo, Brona, and Rory. And Morimaros. I would speak with them.”
“Morimaros?”
“This is the business of kings and queens. It is time.”
While Aefa hastened to comply, Elia hauled herself to the tall-backed chair just beside the hearth. She lifted the hemlock crown from the seat, sat herself, and settled the crown onto her lap. She read the letter again. Death or exile will be the only way.