“Morimaros is a good king, a better commander,” Ban said. “I served in his army. If he chooses to invade our island, he will win it.”
Brona said gently, “You know what is right, son; you’ve always been rooted by it, here.”
“Have I? You said to me once, This is your fate—then so easily you sent me away. How can you know Errigal did not change the way I was grounded, or that Aremoria did not cure me from caring about this chunk of battered rock? I have made choices in a different language than that of Innis Lear, been saved and adored by strange trees whose words shift and laugh. What if I don’t choose Innis Lear now? It has never chosen me.”
He cut himself off, before he openly admitted his loyalties, before he gave too much away.
His mother studied him a long time; Ban focused on the rhythm of his breath and the crackle of the fire in the hearth.
Kayo said, “We’re not asking you to choose Innis Lear. We’re asking you to choose Elia.”
“How?” he demanded, more urgently than he should have.
“To keep your promise and fight for her. If you will help bring her home the right way, you must be on my side in this, and on Lear’s, until Elia herself is ready.”
“Ready for what?” Ban asked.
It was Brona who said, calmly and simply, “To take the throne.”
TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO, HARTFARE
FEW PEOPLE WOULD think to look for the queen of Innis Lear here inside this tiny cottage, tucked into the heart of the White Forest. Fewer still would expect her lounging in supreme contentment on a low, straw-filled mattress beside the hearth.
But Dalat was indeed at Hartfare, spending the week with her friend Brona, the witch of the White Forest. Both of them were heavily pregnant and ready to be finished with the experience.
Brona cupped her belly and crouched to relieve the pressure in the small of her back. She wore a long shift, sliced up the center to open in front so she could easily touch her naked skin, or press back with the heel of her hand when the baby elbowed her or stretched. Her ruffled skirt cinched the shift closed again under her belly, low around her hips, and covering her thighs, knees, and bottom. Still, it was nothing modest by anyone’s standards. A heavy wool cloak weighed on Brona’s shoulders, keeping in what warmth she could; this was early spring, and even the fire was not enough to heat bare skin. Cold, damp air slicked beneath the door of the cottage and at the open windows.
But the witch refused to bundle up and so lose the ability to splay her hands around her son whenever she liked.
The queen groaned, shifting onto her side where she lay on Brona’s bed. “Help me get my feet up, shk lab-i,” Dalat said, beckoning to her second daughter.
Regan Lear, six years old and quietly precocious, moved immediately to lift her mother’s feet.
That simple gesture caused a flutter in Brona’s heart. She could not wait to hold her son, to feel his touch outside her womb.
Dalat, because she was a good friend, saw Brona’s hunger. “Soon,” the queen said softly. “You’ll have him. We both will have them.”
It was Brona’s first child—and her only, she knew, through careful wormwork—but this would be Dalat’s third. Brona had not asked if the feelings changed: the anticipation, the pain, the longing, the exhaustion. Dalat’s face was older now than it had been when Gaela was born nearly eight years ago. The queen was thinner beneath her cheeks, despite health and happiness, but her skin still shone, her smile was vivid, and the merriment that lived in her deep brown eyes promised adventure, as much as it always did. When Brona spent time with Dalat, the witch felt as though she’d experienced so much more than even her own wild life on this angry island could provide: long sea-voyages, storms and illness, foreign ports and magnificent palaces built of shining white stone, points of lapis blue set into necklaces and coronas of gold, vast prairies of rolling, shifting sand, and poetry that dropped from the tongues of men and women like diamonds.
“Is the baby hurting you, Mother?” Regan Lear interrupted Brona’s musing, sitting down on the mattress beside her mother’s head to put a cool brown hand on the queen’s black braids.
“Ah, only a slight bit,” Dalat admitted.
“But I didn’t.”
The queen smiled and poked a finger against Regan’s ribs. The girl bent away, pressing her mouth closed against laughing too brightly. Dalat’s second daughter wore a more formal dress than even her mother, long and dyed bold purple. Brona knew—because she had repeatedly cast spreads of holy bones on behalf of each princess of Innis Lear—that this one carved her place already, as a partner and prop, mother or lover, perhaps even a witch herself. A consort, but never a true queen.
That destiny belonged to the unborn princess, or perhaps that first daughter, the ferocious warrior who even now cut across the lane outside Brona’s cottage, wooden sword in hand, meeting the boisterous Earl Errigal stroke for stroke.
Brona groaned as she settled onto the floor, her knees bent and splayed to the side, soles of her feet together. The princess eyed her suspiciously, judging the witch’s improper attire, but Brona wrinkled her nose and smiled; Regan mimicked the exact same position with the limber ease of childhood.
“Are we casting bones now?” Dalat’s daughter asked, leaning toward Brona eagerly, yet managing to keep her voice smooth.
“As the princess commands,” Brona replied, holding out her hand.
Regan hopped up to fetch Brona’s
