Impulsively, she lowered her hand to his rough knuckles. Her finger skimmed over the large ring of pearls and garnets. The Blood and the Sea. The ring of Aremore kingship.
Morimaros hardly breathed, she noted, as she walked her fingers gently along the back of his hand to his wrist. He turned it over, and she touched the softest, palest part of his arm, where his pulse lived.
“Elia,” he said again, more of a whisper now.
“Morimaros,” she replied, wishing she could say it in the language of trees. King of this land, she whispered instead.
Our king, the garden whispered.
Elia startled, snatched her hand back, and flung herself around, staring at the roses and garden entire.
The king leapt to his feet, alert for danger.
“It’s all right,” she said, climbing up, too. “I only heard them, I heard the flowers speak. They like that you are their king.” Her voice did not shake, though her spirit did, and her heartbeat, too.
Morimaros cleared his throat, his own hands now folded behind his back, in that favorite pose, that made his shoulders broader and expanded the force of his presence as if he’d put on a blinding golden crown.
Still with a quiver in her heart, Elia met his eyes. The energy there, the intention, parted her lips.
He said, “I want you to marry me.”
She caught her breath, and then said, “You want, or Aremoria wants?”
“Both.”
“You told me you cannot care what you want for yourself, that you are ever the crown.” Elia glanced away, then forced her gaze back.
“I went away with the army to stop myself from caring, to focus Aremoria again at the fore of my heart. It did not work. I thought—think—of you always.” A grimace pulled at his mouth again.
“And that is terrible,” she said very seriously.
“No! But I—” he stopped as she gave him a small, wry smile.
“I shouldn’t tease you,” Elia whispered.
Morimaros laughed once: a breath of humor, then gone. “I am glad of it.”
“I told my father I would never marry,” she said suddenly. “He let you write to me, for some purpose of his own. Politics, I assumed, and I asked him to stop, before expectations could be set, but…”
The king’s face stiffened.
Shame lowered Elia’s eyes again, though it was more her father’s shame than her own. “I should not have to be a wife. I have spent years training as a priest. I should be an advisor, not a queen. A diplomat at best. I know nothing about strategy or holding a land secure. You have said that I bring people together, and I do believe I can; but that is because my people respond to an unwavering devotion and practice of faith and—and in my reliable prophecies and star-study. Things you do not have in Aremoria. Maybe I have some natural humor, and I think I am—I try to be—often kind. But my sisters devour me so easily, and so would I be consumed here, as your queen. No strength to you, no light of my own; merely something to be protected and displayed.”
“I would not let you be consumed, and you would learn to assert yourself. You have fewer enemies here than you think.”
“Because I am in exile, with no power. The moment this place thought I had any power, particularly over you, I would be destroyed.”
“You do have power over me,” he said.
Her head tilted up again, Elia smiled sadly. “You see something when you look at me that I would like to feel.”
A tiny noise of frustration hummed from Morimaros’s throat. “I would protect you. I can.”
“I don’t want to have to be protected, Morimaros,” she said, biting back her own frustration. “That is a trap, too.”
“Then … encourage you. Support you. We could find a way to be … partners.”
“While I abandon Innis Lear?”
“Elia, you told me you want peace, and to be compassionate, and to follow the stars. That you do not want to be the queen of Innis Lear. I am not asking you to do that, I am only asking you to marry me. Marry me, and then keep up your studies, if you like. I will never allow Aremoria to obey the stars, but that doesn’t mean I would forbid you, or anyone, from listening to them. Be a queen at my side, one who is a diplomat, who is an advisor. Mine. My wife and own guiding star. I won’t ask you to make choices over people’s lives. I won’t make you responsible for anything you don’t want. Bring your father here, or we’ll sail forth and claim him. You can care for him, here in Aremoria. I will give you everything, all you have said you want in this life. Just with a husband, and here, in my home.”
Tears pricked her eyes, because it was everything she’d claimed to want. This king—no, this man—was offering her all of it. But her heart clenched. It twisted, and she knew she could not concede. Elia could not forsake that rough island that had borne her, as much as her parents. Not now that she felt the lack of it, that she finally understood how she’d cut herself off from the rootwaters years ago, before her father banished her. Innis Lear was broken, everyone kept saying so, and Elia had never even noticed. She was as selfish as her sisters. If she abandoned the island, her history, as readily as her father had tried to strip her name, would she ever be able to know herself? Was that why her family made such terrible decisions? Because none knew themselves, but only knew how others defined them, be it the stars or husbands or fathers? Bad enough Elia was forced to wait here until Midwinter, until her sisters allowed her to return. Bad enough to be the youngest, weakest of them. Bad enough her father—who loved her—had also lost himself. If she cut herself away from all of it, Elia knew her regrets would forever haunt her, and her unhappiness might poison this golden land, as her family had done to their own.
But how could Elia of Lear even begin to explain it all to the king of Aremoria? She said, “You would give me all I ask for, Morimaros, and then—and then still could take the crown of Innis Lear from us. Marriage would not stop war.”
“There are many possibilities, not all war. Not all—”
“But you would not be satisfied with only me. I know what they say here about reuniting Aremoria and Innis Lear. You want to be the greatest king in a thousand years. That means taking my island for your own.”
He said nothing.
“You might try to give it back to me, like a gift. If I were your wife. Your queen. Is that what you think?” Elia blinked, and tears rolled down her cheeks, clinging to the line of her jaw. “Do you see? You are above me.”
“What? No.” Morimaros shook his head in emphatic denial. “You are already royalty, the daughter of kings and—and empresses. Never beneath me.”
“That’s how I feel. Disempowered, with no authority. If I marry you as I am, it would be like locking that into place.” The realization took Elia’s breath away. This was it: the core truth. She had to make herself into—something. Her choice. Before she could hold any power over herself or others. “I can’t abandon Innis Lear to you, and marrying you now would do exactly that.”
“I’m asking only for you, Elia. And nothing else.”
“You know that isn’t how it works. You are never only you, and I—I don’t even know what I can be!”
“I’m sorry,” Morimaros said, low with regret. “This is still too soon. I’m making everything worse.”
He turned, but Elia grasped his elbow. The tears fell into the air. “It is not too much. I am not breaking again. Tears are not a sign of such calamity.” She curled her hands around his wrist, pressing his hand to her heart. “I cannot hide here with you, I cannot be small when Innis Lear needs help. I—I cannot let you be my strength. I let my father be that for me, let him protect me, hide me away, coddle me, so that I would not be sullied with the emotions of life, or face any distress. So that I would not become my sisters. I won’t make such a mistake again. My giving my all to one man, even one I might learn to trust, is how he alone was able to take everything I thought I was.”