“He is a strong king; you saw his court, walked his city. He is good, and so he must have believed his reasoning was also good. And he didn’t know you when he first sent Ban. You hardly gave him anything of yourself in those letters.” Aefa managed a weak smile. “Remember how much he talked of farming?”
It churned in Elia’s guts: simple, personal hurt. She’d though Morimaros was incapable of this deceit, which was ridiculous of her, naive and stupid, perhaps, but still—she hurt to be so wrong. “I will discover Ban Errigal’s truth apart from Aremoria, and his choices, and judge him for them, whatever they may be.”
“He was gone for five years, and you spent perhaps an hour with him, at the most desperate, vulnerable moment of your entire life, and so you trust him? This is folly!”
Elia held on to Aefa’s hands. “I loved him before, Aefa. Before any of this, before you came to me. You don’t remember. You were not yet at Father’s court. My father was terrible to him, and then he—with Errigal, too—earned Ban’s hatred. Even I … I let him go without a fight. I cannot … I cannot be surprised he fell into admiration for a king like Morimaros. I did myself, as did you! You condemn Ban for the same, but his betrayal did not come from nothing. Innis Lear betrayed him first, because his birth stars say he is worthless, or at least less, and so our men would believe, refusing to see their part in the ruin of their sons. But he … Oh, Aefa, if you could have seen the conviction in him that night. How he looked at me. He has power, different from Morimaros, from my sisters, from my father.”
Aefa squinted her light eyes and brushed damp hair off her face. “But you do want to see him again, personally.”
“I do.”
“Uh!” Aefa laughed like she was annoyed, and shoved Elia gently. The princess rocked backward, only catching herself by letting go of Aefa and scrambling. It was very ungainly, very lacking royal grace.
La Far appeared immediately, formed out of the shadows and sea spray. He caught Elia’s elbow and steadied her. “We have a few hours left, lady. Perhaps you might try to sleep.”
Allowing him to lift her to her feet, Elia smiled a small, polite smile. “Thank you, but I do not sleep well at sea, and I would like to be aware of the moment we come again into Lear’s waters.”
Aefa dragged herself up by the rail, and La Far belatedly offered an arm to her as well.
The soldier watched both young women for a moment, and his sad frown nearly revealed some amusement—or perhaps it was pride. Then La Far reluctantly nodded, and Elia stopped herself from wrapping her arms around her stomach. Instead she nodded back as nobly as possible. She would not return to Innis Lear with her eyes cast down.
Though afraid, she lifted her gaze.
She turned again to face the prow, to face the northwestern horizon where soon would be a black gash against the sea and stars. A black gash of rock, of mountains and moors and gullies, of roots and ancient ruins, of wild dark forests and jeweled beetles.
A star blinked in and out, revealed and covered and revealed again, hanging there bright as a pearl. Elia did not want to care, did not want to think on it, but she knew and felt she had always known: it was the silver face of Saint Terestria, the Star of Secrets, giving her homecoming benediction.
Elia would not leave Innis Lear again.
TEN YEARS AGO, HARTFARE
BRONA HARTFARE HAD always known the day would come when Errigal arrived in her village not for a fuck, but to claim their son.
Against that inevitability, she cultivated an appreciation of the smallest moments. Flashes of connection, of love, of growth. The sun on a single, crisp green spring leaf as Ban pinched it between his dirty little fingers, to put into a basket for roasting. His rare laugh—not the slow, soft one he let loose for silly rolling beetles or a perfect splatter of bird droppings, but the one that startled everyone, even himself, with its sudden burst of strength. The first time he hid from his mother in her very own forest, emerging from the bark of a low, dying oak tree after she’d passed by. A shine of glee in his eyes, so like her own, and nothing like Errigal’s. Often, Brona wondered what he would become after he left the bosom of Hartfare, out in the world where people took too much from one another and rarely gave back to the roots.
Only his passion would protect him, and that at least Ban had received from both his mother and father.
If there had been a way to keep those feelings from ever souring to anger, Brona would have sacrificed anything. But no matter what time of year, or under what moon she threw the holy bones, Brona could see no path that did not paint her son in bitter colors.
His birth anniversary was six days passed when Errigal came. Because of cycles of seasons and stars, it had been that very early morning when the dragon’s-tail moon under which he’d been born, ten years ago, hung against the dawn, burning painfully silver in a seeping pink sky. A sickle to harvest Brona’s heart, which always before she’d kept as her own.
Ban still slept, now, curled in the garden despite the frosty morning. He’d settled into a hollow of dirt and roots where the squash vines would be later in the year. A tiny fire burned in a shallow obsidian bowl Brona’s grandmother had brought with them on the flight from Ispania. The flames danced against the black stone, alive by a thread of magic linked to Ban’s breath and the power of the White Forest. It kept him warm despite being slight, for the magic kept his own body working.
Brona sat on a stool, leaning against the mud brick wall of their cottage, wrapped in a thick wool blanket and cradling a little bowl of her own. Hers held the last of their winter honeycomb.
Light slowly spread through the garden, waking the roots and tiny shoots of grass that worked toward the sun. A few of her hardier plants held green: the holly with its sharp leaves, and a small juniper tree Brona kept to remind her of Dalat. The overwinter cabbages and onions were beginning to peek up now that the spring had come. The garlic would soon follow, and turnips. When the light touched Ban’s messy thick hair, then the line of his cheek, Brona let a tear fall, catching it with the honeycomb.
An instant later, she heard him coming, that enemy of her peace. Errigal must have left his Keep long before dawn. He would not plan to stay long, then, intending, certainly, to travel far away from Hartfare before the day was finished. His footsteps were as stomping and broad as ever, eager and careless. And as usual, he’d left his horse at the fore of the village.
Brona pinched off a coin of honeycomb and left the bowl near Ban. She went around to the front of her cottage.
Errigal smiled to see her. His breath flared in small white puffs, and the rising sun glowed in his golden hair and rough beard, lighting the star charms he’d braided in, glinting off his rings and the bright tooling along his thick belt. Wind pushed aside treetops and the sun hit full in his face; Brona’s lover did not hesitate or quit his smile, and the brilliant morning turned his eyes into shards of pure light.
She greeted him at the arched trellis that marked the entrance to her yard, putting the coin of honeycomb up to his mouth.
Errigal parted his lips, and she slipped it in, allowing him to bleed the comb of its sweetness in a few quick presses of his tongue, and then to lick the remains off her fingers.
All told, Brona would have greatly preferred him to be here just for sex.
“What charm is in this honey?” he asked, wrapping his arm around her waist.
She smiled mysteriously. Let him think what he liked, but Brona offered honey so she knew what to expect when she tasted him herself.
“Ah, love.” Errigal laughed and picked her up easily, leaning back to prop her against his chest. He did not kiss her, but only held her there, one arm around her waist, the other cupping her bottom. Brona put her arms around his neck and waited. “I’ve come for Ban,” he said.
“I don’t want you to take him.” Her voice was soft, but commanding.
“He’s my son, and should be raised with men and retainers. He’s been coddled here enough.”