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.
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
