“Oh, poor Regan,” Elia whispered to herself. Even so many years ago, when Elia had been a brand-new woman, Regan had made clear her desire to be a mother, and her awe at the processes.
Brona went to the door and pressed her hand against it as if to bear up the house with her strength of will. She whispered something Elia could not quite hear but she thought was a prayer to the island.
The storm battered the house, raging, then for a moment quieted itself. In the gentler melody of rain alone, Brona turned around. “Their truth leaves one option only. You, Elia, must be the queen, or Dalat’s legacy, and the dynasty of Lear, will end. For your mother—for her line, for her hopes—you must.”
“It’s not a good enough reason alone,” Elia whispered. “That I might have a fertile womb! It reduces me to only that, and I dislike it.”
“It is important to consolidate power this way.”
“In the eyes of men!”
Brona lifted her eyebrows.
Disgruntled, Elia grimaced. “I would like to … be a mother. One day. But not to rely on it, for the sake of a country more than even my own. And we can’t be certain I can conceive, because I’ve never tried. Maybe all three of us are cursed. Maybe this is the end of the kingdom of Lear, and the island will become something new. Maybe we never did belong here after all.”
“Is that what you truly believe, that you and your sisters are not part of us? That Dalat did not make her heart into another root of Innis Lear?”
Elia stopped breathing. She stared at the blank tension in Brona’s expression, feeling as though she were slowly tipping over an edge into some great writhing vortex of emotions. It would be so easy to give over to it, now.
Then she gasped and was solid again. “No,” Elia said quiet, but firm. “I know we are of Innis Lear; this island was hers, and ours. It whispers in all our dreams. It is just so hard. Why is it so hard?”
“People make it so.” Brona came to her and knelt upon the packed earth, touching both hands to Elia’s knees. “I will help you. I loved your mother.”
“As she loved you,” Elia said, though it was merely a guess. “And my family … We are Innis Lear, and maybe healing our own divisions, the wounds in our past, can heal this island, too.” Elia paused, ordering her thoughts. “I want … I want the island to be strong, the people to be safe and secure. I want a king or queen who loves our home and can protect it.”
“It should be you, Elia.”
The storm blew, hissing and screaming against the cottage. Elia could not hear words in the fury, but her breath shook out, full with fear. She touched Brona’s hands. Elia could not agree, not yet. She did not know how to speak it; she did not know how to open her heart to so much vulnerability, when she had only just now relearned to open it at all.
REGAN
THUNDER CRASHED OVER the towers of Errigal Keep.
Regan Lear seethed, her hands in fists, leaning forward as she stared at the once-Earl Errigal—this stamping bull of a man, her father’s greatest support—flushed and red-splotched under his beard.
“Bring me my sword!” Errigal roared, loud enough to follow lightning.
Connley’s breath was even, and Regan struggled to match his ease, despite the pulse of her heart under her jaw, the throbbing in her palms and temples. How dare this false, braying earl undercut them! How dare he turn to Elia! And Aremoria!
Her perfect nails cut into her palms with all their sharpness.
Ban the Fox had left, charged into the storm, and Regan wished to join him, to run and spin madly, to scream her rage with the wind and trees, and then harness all that power to her will. Take Connley and Ban both, put herself between them and the sky and the earth, dig and cut into herself, until Regan had her new life, or until she was dead.
But first, they would deal with this traitor.
A side door crashed open and a retainer burst in, gasping for orders from the raging Errigal. He skidded to a halt, looking between duke and earl.
“This man has proven a snake in the breast of Innis Lear,” Connley said, holding his sword low. “Bring him a weapon to defend himself.”
“Do it!” Regan snapped.
The retainer hesitated, and behind him others of the household slipped in, drawn to the growing commotion.
“Yours will do,” Errigal said, holding a large hand to the retainer. As the sword was given over, the earl added, “I am no traitor, though a fool.”
Connley pressed his lovely, hard lips together. “A traitor to me, who has always sought your support and friendship.”
“Your wife betrayed her father, my king, long before I thought to act against you,” Errigal said. “We have all first been betrayed by the stars themselves!”
“While my father betrayed the island beneath their blind eyes,” Regan spat.
“And yet you wonder why you can’t bear a child? It is punishment for all your conflict and undaughterly ambition. I’ve seen your star sign, I was present for your birth—”
Connley leapt forward, attacking with smooth grace. Regan gasped at the beauty of it, and gasped again at the clash of their swords.
Errigal used his greater weight, leveraging it to shove the duke back, but her husband was faster, younger, and he bounced free, turning hard with a new attack that the earl barely blocked.
Each steel strike rang in Regan’s bones, vibrating with its own frenzied song. All around the hall men and women of the Keep had gathered, clutching one another and watching, too. The storm blew, and Regan whispered “Destroy him”; in reply the freezing wet wind shrieked in through the open great doors, slamming them back. It rushed at Errigal, spinning around him to disorient. He cried out, and Connley smiled viciously.
“This is
