Elia pulled hard away from him
“Don’t be afraid. Be bold, like you were today.” He slapped his hand on his chest. “All I have is what I was born with, no star promise, and it’s made me bold, won me what little I have. It’s what will push me further, allow me to take what is mine. That is what I want. What do you want? What is yours? What is it that makes you bold, Elia? Bold enough to look your father in the eye and be honest?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Find it.”
“Help me.”
“I can’t, Elia. You have to do it yourself. I went to Aremoria and found who I am. And now you could do the same. You aren’t your father or your sisters or your mother. Who are you?”
Elia touched the back of his hand. “Who am I?” she asked softly.
In the language of trees, he said it again: Who are you?
And she replied the first words he’d taught her, twelve years ago: Thank you.
Elia Lear, the island whispered, but she stared at him as if she did not hear its voice at all.
Ban left her at the stone and went to the edge of the cliff. Before him yawned a black, churning chasm of rocky teeth and hungry waves. Eating away at the island. Someday it would eat through enough that the earth where he stood would fall on its own, cleave apart because of that hungry sea. The stone circle would fall, destroyed and invisible to those cold stars.
Part
TWO
FIVE YEARS AGO, EASTERN BORDER OF AREMORIA
THE ONLY THING the king of Aremoria disliked about himself was this weakness he had of avoiding the hospital tents for hours or even days after battle.
It was not that he was bothered by injury, violence, or gore; no, he met with plenty such on the battlefield itself. His aversion was, he believed, a weakness of heart, and one he would need to conquer before he could truly lead Aremoria. Mars did not like to see the damage he’d caused to his own men. The permanently scarred or disabled; the dying; the sleepless moans; the cries of specific, prying pain. Their hurt overwhelmed him now as it had not when he was merely a prince and a soldier by their sides, not bearing responsibility for the damage done in the crown’s name. Mars saw the pinched eyes, the twisted mouths, the clenched fingers, the shallow breathing, and the soft pleading for mothers, wives, and children, and he could not keep from imagining those very people—mothers, wives, children, and fathers, too, cousins, friends, grand-folk, who would be immeasurably violated by the loss of a single soldier. Because of him.
Consequences lurked in the hospital tent, hungry and violent.
When Mars lay on his mat to sleep and his mind raged with possibilities, with shifting roads ahead, with history and borders and numbers and supply trains, with political operations and flag signals, all the complex trappings of running a campaign, the king of Aremoria knew how to hold it all in hand. It would build from a collection of pieces, as if each were a star scattered in its shifting—but accurate—place in the sky, and the work of a leader was to draw connections and patterns. The sky was a maze, and he must find, for his people, the way through. Consequences were only myriad pinpricks of light, distant and maneuverable.
And as Mars charged into battle, every soldier, every horse and spear, every shield and boot and arrow, the muddy, churning ground, the rain or blinding sun, the pain and sudden gutting surprises, the glint of swords, the splash of blood, the battle rage singing in his ears—that was what mattered most. He was a sword himself, a spear of light driving at the fore of his army to slice apart the enemy. Battle was a fork in the branches of the tree of war, and the options Mars saw meant only one thing or the other. Success or retreat, life or death—for himself, for the soldiers, for Aremoria. Consequences were immediate, dreadful, echoing, triumphant.
Then, home in his capital, Lionis, everything was words and plans, elaborate banquets and scheming with friends against enemies, marriages and lines of succession and blood knotting into ropes of generational manipulation. It was family and keeping them safe. Consequences linked together and spread out in spokes through cities, towns, farms, like a living system of royal roads. Mars could see the turns and breaks, the bridges that needed repair or would need it soon. His mission then became balance: strength and nurturing, losses and gains.
In most every aspect of his life, consequences were a map that Mars could manipulate. He could change things, make choices to improve the outcome, reach for the good, better, best results. There was always hope: Aremoria will be better for this step I take, for this word I pronounce, for this path I lead us down.
But in the hospital tent, Mars could affect nothing.
Change nothing.
Here the consequences begged, wept, died in simple rows, inside a blood-spattered tent, and it was too late for any king to make a difference.
And so Mars had allowed himself to avoid it, pretended his importance overshadowed his cowardice: Morimaros of Aremoria was needed in a great many other places, and because he could not help the dying, he shouldn’t prioritize them.
They’d been at war with the neighboring kingdom of Diota since his father had died three years ago, and Diota pressed its advantage against the possibility of internal Aremore divisiveness. But Mars had brought his country to heel quickly and hoped soon to earn the Diotan king’s surrender. This most recent battle had cost Aremoria, though, and Mars was uncertain how to attack next.
The morning had dawned clear, despite the great billowing clouds of smoke rising still off the stony valley where the dead of both sides smoldered after the midnight burn. Now, Mars stood several paces back from the flap of the hospital tent, wishing the sun shone brighter. Knees locked, arms at his sides. He was a man of nearly twenty-five years, a successful soldier, and a king. This should not have been a struggle. He was stronger, better than this. No coward. But the tent’s entrance was a black maw, a triangle of shadows that promised only angst in the shape of soft moans and clipped voices, the stench of rotting men and the tang of blood. It would’ve been worse last night, worse with desperation and bone saws. Screams, running healers, everyone giving orders or obeying them, staunching blood, stuffing poultices into gaping wounds, setting bones. Prayer.
He’d had his own injuries tended to inside his tent while he took reports from staggering, tired captains.
Novanos’s boots crunched the gravel as Mars’s second approached the tent. For a fleeting moment, Mars was relieved, carried off by a shameful hope that the other man had some urgent business to distract the king from this unpleasant duty. But Novanos stopped at Mars’s shoulder and only took a deep, gentle breath, held it for three counts, and let it slowly free.