“Connley sent his men already into Brideton and Lowbinn, so I will establish our name in Dondubhan immediately, not wait for closer to Midwinter.”
“Good, good.” Gaela grinned. “Keep Connley in his place. I would go with you, but better, I think, for us to be both there and here. You can be Astore there, and I will be the almost-queen on my own, here, not to be seen stepping too soon.”
Astore took Gaela’s wrist. “That was my thought exactly. We do still make a good match. Despite your faith in your sister.”
“Let go,” she said softly.
“You’ve avoided my bed since you returned from the Summer Seat.”
Gaela denied it with a sneer.
“Soon you will be the ultimate regent, before even your sister Regan, for this halved-crown will not last. We won’t allow it. You will have what you have sought, and I would have it with you. This would not be possible without me to balance your womanly stars.”
“I know,” she said, truthfully: she never would have married at all if there had been another way.
He kissed her again, lowering his hands to her waist, then curled them around to hold her firmly. His mouth was urgent; he pressed their hips together. She did not resist, but gave nothing either. How her life might’ve been easier if she wanted this. Wanted him. Or anyone.
“Gaela,” he said, half into her mouth, then leaned away. His brow knit, darkening his pale eyes with shadow. “What is wrong with you? I know you have no lovers, not even that girl Osli whom you cherish so close to your person. You do not seek pleasure or companionship elsewhere.”
“I have no need of it,” she said, dismissively.
“Everyone does.”
Gaela shrugged and stepped away from him. She went to her desk, skimming her hand along the letters there; indeed one lay open and half written in his hand. “I am not everyone,” she said with pride, glancing up at him briefly.
“That is why I married you.” Astore stood with his hands at his hips, angry and admirably regal. His broad chest pulled at the wool tunic he wore and the gold-worked chains hooked from shoulder to shoulder. A large topaz hung from his left earlobe, glinting like the rings on his fingers and the hammered copper at his neck.
“Take a lover, Col. I’ll not stop you.”
“You are my wife. I want you. That is also why I married you. To make you mine, Geala Astore”
“I am not yours.” Gaela snorted a laugh. “Rather, you are my shield, as you said: your stars are necessary to make me queen. That is all.”
The duke came to her, grabbed her arm, and dragged her to him. “You are mine because you want that crown as much as I do. You came to me when your mother died so I would make you strong. Make you a warrior. And look at you.” He leaned in so his beard tickled her chin. “You are a warrior, and will be a ferocious queen. At my side.”
Gaela fisted her hands in his tunic and said through clenched teeth, “Yes, you will be at my side when I am queen; it is done. So why do you press this between us now, Col Astore?”
“We need an heir. There can be no more waiting. Seven years of marriage, and we have achieved our goal. The crown. Now we must keep it, and to keep it we need a child. Children. You cannot have convinced yourself otherwise, somehow.”
She thrust away from him and sat upon the edge of her desk. “Regan—”
Astore raised his hand between them, rigid and flat, pointing at her with all fingers. “Regan is not our ally in this,” he said firmly. “If she bears a healthy a child, and you have none, Connley will rally people against us, no matter how securely we get the crown now.”
“My sister is more my ally than any other.”
“I am your ally. She chose against you years ago when she married Connley!”
It was not in Gaela’s nature to argue on a person’s behalf if she believed that person’s motives to be clear. And so she stared at her husband, bland and cold, as she said, “You should have learned by now you cannot come between Regan and I.”
“She is your blindness.” Astore grabbed her knees and forced them apart, moving into the space. She pulled her lips back like a threatening wolf, but her husband transferred his hands to her thighs and pressed his fingers hard enough to bruise.
“Be careful, Col,” she warned.
“What will you do without an heir? Regan seems incapable of producing one. Even if she and you consolidate our rule, if we all manage it, what then? What of Innis Lear in twenty years, or thirty?” He continued to threaten with the weight of his hands on her thighs.
“We will bring Elia home,” she said through her teeth, not clawing at him or kicking him away; she’d not let him see how infuriating she found his behavior. How degrading.
“Elia!” he scoffed darkly. “Her children may well belong to Aremoria already! And why would you rather her children be your heirs than your own? Than mine?”
“My bloodline includes my sisters, Col. What difference in which of us continue it? In my grandmother’s empire it is always the empress’s niece who inherits after her. They make a stronger map of blood and alliance that way.” Gaela could feel her rage building, the spikes of it striking harder against her armor with every moment Astore touched her and every word he argued.
He said, “This is not the Third Kingdom, and I would have heirs, sons and daughters of my own line. You condemn not just Innis Lear with this folly, but my blood.”
“I do not care about your blood, you fool.”
“You had better start, or stars help me—”
“Stars!” she yelled, finally shoving him away and leaping to her feet. “The stars should have provided this future for you long ago, if they’re worth anything at all. I know my stars; they promised great posterity would spring from me, which is a great joke, for you could lie with me every day for eternity and never get me with child, and it has always been so, since before we married.”
He smiled meanly. “You cannot escape some of your stars, when at the same time you use others of them to gain a crown. I studied your birth chart; I looked at all the signs. You are fertile, Gaela, you are passionately so.”
She put her hand flat on his chest. “No. I changed it. I did this to myself. I make decisions and act upon them. I do not allow stars or prophecy to dictate my choices. They are a tool, nothing more.”
“Did what … to yourself?” Astore blinked.
“I am incapable of bearing a child, by choice and by necessity, Col. Brona Hartfare burned my womb out of me before you put your seed anywhere near it.”
Astore hit her.
The blow bent her around, and she caught herself with her hands against the corner of her desk.
“Lies!” he yelled.
Gaela’s skull rang, more with shock than any pain. She blinked. And then she turned, punching him in the gut. She followed with a slap across the side of his face.
Blood touched the tip of her tongue then, and she spat onto her floor. “Oh, Col,” she said dangerously, quietly.
He grabbed her by the throat.
So they stood. Gaela sneered, tilted her chin up, and welcomed his stare. “Do what you will,” she said through her teeth.
“Is it because of your mother?” Astore asked. A vein pulsed at the curve of his temple, hot pink where she’d hit him.
She wrapped her hands around his forearm. “It is because I will wear the crown, and I will get it like a king. Not as a mother and wife, but as the firstborn child, as the strongest. It is no fault of mine to be forced to perform this illusion of being your wife, to pretend to be what a woman of this island is supposed to be, in order to gain power among you and your peers.”
Astore dropped her suddenly, faltering back. He sank onto a short wooden chair with rounded arms. “Barren,” he said, with the ghost of a bitter smile. “What a schemer you are, Gaela Lear. You won this war before I even knew there was a battle to be had.”
She stalked toward him and leaned down, planting one hand on either arm of his chair. “And for it, you will be king, too. Be glad.”
“Never,” he muttered. “When we have the crown, when Connley is defeated, we will revisit this, wife.”
Gaela smiled and wondered if they both would survive so long.