“I love Aremoria,” Mars said through his teeth.
“Then let Aremoria love you back!” Ianta cried. With a great sigh, she put her hand to the back of his neck. “Go talk to Elia. Tell her what you want most, and why. Tell her everything, and see if she is willing to meet you even halfway there.”
Mars’s stomach churned, rather like it did in the moments when his body-man buckled on the king’s armor before a battle. When Mars had already made a choice among too many possibilities, and was prepared to take that first step leading soldiers to their deaths.
THE FOX
THE SKY WAS bloody with the setting sun by the time Ban returned to Errigal Keep. From gossip in the stables, he heard that his father had retired, drunk and without dinner, to his bedchamber—with not one, but two women. Aggravated but unsurprised, Ban made his way toward the guest wing, where Connley and his lady had been settled. He had a letter in his coat from Elia to her sister Regan, given over from Kayo as Ban left his mother’s house.
There was no such message for himself.
The afternoon had been spent discussing war in all its possibilities. His best place, Ban argued, was at Errigal, where Regan and Connley were. They trust me, he told Brona and Kayo, insinuating he might mitigate the duke’s urgency to act until Elia returned. None doubted Connley and Astore would face off for control of the island, unless they could be united against Aremoria, or brought to heel under Elia.
Elia as queen! It was an idea both appealing and abhorrent to Ban. She could be glorious. As a boy, he’d loved her generous nature, her ability to empathize with anything—her terrifying sisters, the smallest worm, even him—but would the crown of Innis Lear not leave her crushed and wilted under the weight of responsibility? And without Aremoria and the strength of Mars’s army, would she have the might to defeat her sisters? What would Mars take, in exchange?
But Brona insisted the alternatives promised worse. Gaela was believed to be strong and competent, besides being the eldest child and perhaps rightful heir, and her husband Astore was ferocious and his family a respected ancient line. He’d taken up residence already at Dondubhan, sending a very clear message of their intent. But Gaela ignored star prophecy—understandably, some said, because of the role her stars had played in her mother’s death. Her vocal disdain for wormwork and the navel wells did not invoke confidence from the suffering families who worked the land. Many doubted that the holy well at Tarinnish would accept Gaela as its dedicated queen on the Longest Night. She was too martial, as singular thinking as her father, though toward a different power. No matter how strong she was, if the rootwaters refused to claim her, she would never have the trust of a majority of her people, leaving the throne weak and susceptible to sedition.
Regan, on the other hand, was known to understand the language of trees as well as any witch. The rootwaters would accept her, but could she rule? She was not trusted outside the Connley lands, and was considered to be cold and imperious in a way that did not endear her to or inspire the Learish people. However, she was the only of the two sisters to ever carry a child, and there were many who’d grown tired of the uncertainty of the royal line. She’d lost the babe—a boy—and two others before birth, but she had at least proved she could conceive. Gaela had been married for seven years with nothing to show, and Lear himself had never gotten a son, natural or otherwise. As for Connley, his reputation was strict, but his own people admired and trusted him; his justice was known to be fair, if swift, and where Astore was mighty, Connley was learned. He’d received a rather intense education from a variety of tutors throughout his childhood.
Ban’s mind had wandered to the grove of cherry trees, and to Regan’s determined pain, as she had laid out her body’s flaws for him. He could not ignore the instinct that Regan was a piece of the island, and it would accept her. Elia was all of the stars; she’d proved as much to him. But that had not always been so. Perhaps Elia could still bridge the distance between stars and roots. She had both in her, if she could only reject her father’s fanaticism, if she could see what Ban saw. He’d said, rather desperately, “Surely Elia embodies as much doubt, if not the same sort, as her sisters?”
“Elia is hope, she is possibility,” Kayo had said, and Brona had agreed. Because she had lived always at her father’s side, appearing only briefly as a star priest, she was a figure of speculation and wishes, not reputation. But there were rumors now, ones that Kayo had encouraged at home and abroad, that Lear had intended to name her his heir at the Zenith Court. Brona felt Elia should be present on the Longest Night, to stand before the holy well as the intended heir. And she reminded Ban that aside from Elia, the linchpin in the inevitable war between Connley and Astore would be Errigal.
The power of that earldom, with its iron magic and weaponry and standing, could sway the entire island in either direction. “That is why this business with your brother is so devastating,” the Oak Earl had sighed.
“It undercuts the reputation of Errigal,” Ban said, showing anger instead of the dark triumph he felt. “For the people don’t care that my father’s always been a brute, that he never leads, but only agrees and imitates the whims of Lear, because he’s friendly and generous, too. And so now they only care that there’s division between Rory and Errigal, a
