Would it be different if Dalat had lived?
Elia hardly remembered her mother’s voice, or face, but she remembered Dalat had liked to get dirty in a garden, or milking goats—“There are a dozen reasons for a princess to know how to milk a goat,” Dalat murmured, wrapping Elia’s tiny brown hand around the pink teat. Yet Dalat had also enjoyed the hours it took to create her elaborate hair, drinking wine and gossiping with her companions as they pampered her. The queen had suffered harsh pains when she bled, and allowed only her daughters and favorite women around her at such times. Elia learned to link her mother’s sweat and pain with intimacy, while Gaela learned her ferocious warrior’s grimace from the same, and Regan learned to hide any agony she felt behind a solid mask of ice, because pain was not for your enemies—or even your husband—to see.
Elia was too young when the queen died to hear the rumors that some enthusiastic star-reader, or even the king himself, had forced their prophecy to come true. But she heard it later, from Gaela’s own sharp tongue. Shocked and incredulous, Elia had defended Lear, and her own beloved stars, making them her point of constancy in the lonely roaming island court.
You’re such a baby, her sisters had said. His baby.
That moment was the end of any chance the sisters might have had for a close-hearted relationship. It was clear to Elia now, though they’d never spoken of it again. The divide with Gaela and Regan on one side, and Elia and Lear on the other, had begun that day in earnest, and gaped wider and wider as the girls grew, fairly or not. Gaela allied herself with Astore, first as ward, then as wife, and though this might’ve been a chance for Regan and Elia to connect, Regan gripped even tighter to Gaela. And when Regan married Connley against Lear’s direct wishes, his anger became the final divide between them all. Elia had grown so used to it, she’d accepted the fallout as if she’d never expected anything else.
People died every day, and their loved ones mourned, then lived on. Why could it not be so with her own family? Elia had been just as gutted as the rest of them by Dalat’s death, but it amazed her, even so, that one person could have so much power to break so many strong people, just by dying.
Did my father murder my mother for his stars? Elia whispered to the roses. She didn’t want to believe it. But then, it could perhaps explain Lear’s behavior. How easily and angrily he’d banished—and disowned—her, his favorite daughter. His baby. She had disobeyed his stars.
A breeze ruffled the grass, tickled the nape of Elia’s neck, and brought up such sweet autumn smells from the garden. But no voice came with the wind, no hissing answer from the earth. Either these foreign lands did not know, or would not answer a girl who’d abandoned the tongue of the earth for the stars.
And she’d forsaken it so readily. Because her father commanded it. Had she fought him at all? Had she struggled to keep a memory of Ban, had she begged to continue loving the trees? What was the last tree word she’d spoken? Elia hardly knew. She remembered grief and weeping and then finally the emptiness, but could not recall any fight.
Today was the first zenith since her father disowned her. Elia had never before sat alone beneath a zenith sun.
Just a month past, Ban Errigal had crouched at the base of a standing stone and called tiny silver lights to dance at his fingers; when Elia was a child, she had done the same. Once, it had been easy. She’d seen Aefa do similar, snapping fire, though the princess always would turn away, refusing that they could outshine the stars while so far from the sky.
Elia placed her hands in her lap, palms up, gently cupping the air. She took three long, deep breaths, and whispered, I would hold the sun in tiny mirror, a ball of warmth between my hands.
Her eyes flew open in apprehension. She scrubbed her hands together, then put them flat on the grass. She leaned forward, bent on her hands and knees, digging her fingers through the thick green grass to the cool earth beneath. Perhaps the trees of Aremoria would not speak to her, but Ban had made magic here. There was a voice to find in the roots of this land. There had to be.
My name is Elia, once of Lear, she said. I’m listening again.
The scrape of footsteps on the crushed shells of the narrow path leading here from the arched gate shocked Elia up from her crouch. She twisted, staring toward whomever had interrupted her, angry at Aefa and the royal guard who had allowed it.
Morimaros of Aremoria stood some several long strides away.
She supposed, bleakly, none would have even tried to stop him from entering.
“Elia?” he said, very quietly. “Are you well?”
“No,” she said sitting back on her bare feet. Her empty boots slumped together in the shade of a soft lamb’s-ear plant.
The king came to her and went down to one knee. He was fresh in trousers, boots, shirt, and short burnt-orange tunic, untied at the collar. Water glistened along the lines of his trim hair. Elia fought an urge to brush it away, to skim her fingers against his temple and skull. Was hair that short stiff, or soft? Warm as summer grass? Did it tickle like fox fur? Would his beard, exactly the same length, feel the same? Against her cheek or mouth?
It occurred to her that Morimaros would allow it, if she reached to touch. Her heartbeat sped, and she folded her hands together. The king blinked, and the sun caught his lovely lashes.
“I thought you were gone, still,” Elia said.
“I returned, just now.”
“The sun is in zenith today. It’s a full month since the … since my father unnamed me.”
Morimaros’s mouth made a sad shape. “And you’ve no word back from your sisters.”
She shook her head. “Nor have you?”
“No, but those I trust have confirmed that Connley took two towns along his border with Astore, one that spans a creek and is known for mills, and the other that has been officially in Astore’s territory since before the line of Lear. And Astore has seated himself in Dondubhan, like a king, to await Midwinter. Connley and Regan are in Errigal now. Shoring up the backing of that earl and his iron.”
“You know much.”
The king nodded.
“And I have no network of friends or informants, but would rely on my sisters or what I might hear from the Fool or Earl Errigal or…” she shrugged helplessly. “You see why I fear so little support, if I tried to be queen of any land.”
“I do not.”
“Morimaros—”
“But … I understand that is how you feel at the moment. So I will tell my navy to prepare for the winter spent at home.”
“Thank you.”
Morimaros shifted, almost as if uncomfortable, but Elia couldn’t believe it. He was in his palace, in his capital city, powerful and strong. His dark blue eyes looked randomly about the garden: the rose towers and beds of velvety lamb’s-ear and summer blaze, the tiny red trumpets of the war leaf, the bleeding-spade flowers deep purple with spikes of red, the black-heart bushes with their black limbs and thin green leaves so pale they neared grayish-white.
“Do you enjoy flowers?” he asked.
Elia lifted her eyebrows.
The king grimaced. “You’ve been spending much time here, while I was gone.” He looked at her hands; dirt made dark crescents in the beds of her ragged nails.
“I was trying to speak with them,” she said, prepared to defend herself if he found her ridiculous.
Instead, Morimaros nodded. “Ban preferred trees for conversation.”
Elia glanced away, warm for thinking of both men at once. “Your flowers will not talk to me, nor the junipers in your center courtyard. I am out of practice, I think.”
“Or merely out of your home,” he suggested with clear reluctance.
She put a hand over her heart.
“Elia,” the king began, stopping after her name.