Gaela returned to the table and poured them all more wine.
Ban took his cup from her hand. He drank it fast, and though Gaela smirked at him and made to speak, he was quicker.
“King Lear is dead.”
“What?” growled Gaela. “What did you say?”
“The—your father. Your father is dead.”
Regan grasped his jaw. “How do you know this? When?”
“I killed him,” Ban said hoarsely, pulling free of the two women to stand as tall as he could, apart so that he might have a chance if they leapt to kill him. “The night Connley died. You raged and wept so thoroughly. I had Lear’s breath in my hand, and I took it from him forever.”
Gaela was shaking her head. “Magic? Is this only magic? You did not cut out his heart, or see him go cold?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure, then? Are you as mad as he is? Shall I throw you in the bottom of my tower for this treason?”
Ban looked at Regan. “I hated him. But he was safe, and living, my spell waiting for your deployment. Then you reminded me. This was all the fault of our fathers: they have always been the cause of our misery. So they are dead now, mine and yours, both. We are free of them! We are beholden only to ourselves, no cursed stars.”
Regan stared at him, breath shallow, the gleam of awe sparking deep in her eyes.
“Ban Errigal, are you certain?” Gaela demanded. Her dinner knife was clutched in her fist. “My father is dead? You killed him, truly? You robbed me, so easily, of my vengeance?”
“Listen to the island,” Ban replied, trembling but sure. “Listen to this angry wind that has blown four long days and nights—since he died—and hear that it says nothing. If you can. Or ask your sister, and she will confirm. The island is silent even as it screams. There must be a king of Innis Lear. It longs for a head beneath a crown. It must have a ruler. Without a king, Innis Lear will die, or wilt, or—or the rootwaters will go dry, and the island will crumble into the sea if one of you does not take the crown now. Much faster than it has been doing, even under the fatal stewardship of that old, wretched fool.”
Gaela’s lips parted eagerly.
“The rootwaters,” Regan murmured, drifting toward the window. “They’ll accept me.”
“You?” Gaela stalked after her, took her arm harshly, and spun her sister around. “Me. I will be king.”
“Connley is dead,” Regan insisted, as if it meant anything. Would prove something.
“No, you are Connley! And I am Astore. We are Innis Lear, sister, as has always been our intention. No stars. We will make our own meaning. Let us go now to the throne room and declare it so!” Gaela laughed.
Ban shook his head, knowing in his gut what he said was true: “The rootwaters must accept you. The island. Not the people. Whatever ritual is done on the Longest Night, that is what you must do to win the crown. Then the people will follow, only after that. Even Elia will agree to support your claim, if the island accepts you.”
Regan nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, Gaela. Let us go together. Now. To the rootwaters of the Tarinnish. By morning we will be the queens of Innis Lear and nothing will stop us.” She picked up her cup and drank all its wine, lifting her chin to reveal her tender, vulnerable throat. When she finished, the redness clung to her lips like blood.
Gaela lifted her cup in salute, and smiled.
Ban the Fox did not smile, because outside the wind blew voicelessly still.
ELIA
THROUGH THE COLD night came a summons:
Elia of Lear.
Elia.
She’d been dreaming of something, but it was gone now, leaving only flowery vestiges in her memory.
Elia sat up in the small bed, awake.
Silence—but for the wordless wind and the crackle of straw as her own body settled.
Elia.
It was the trees.
Leaping to her feet, Elia grabbed her boots and shoved them on. Fumbling for her overdress, she was glad it laced up the sides instead of the back; Aefa stayed every night with her parents, and couldn’t have helped tie anything tonight. The days had grown colder, so Elia grabbed the wool blanket from the bed and wrapped it over her shoulders before stepping outside.
Hartfare slept.
Overhead stars turned, winking and shimmering as if they crawled and moved of their own accord. Elia saw too many patterns, too many possibilities, the constellations weaving in and out of each other, rivers of stars and potential. She blinked.
The sky stilled.
Elia drew a deep breath of cold air. She listened, hoping to hear the call of Innis Lear again.
Hello, she whispered.
Wind blew in reply, flicking small, cold fingers against her messy crown of braids, teasing her nape until she drew the blanket tighter around herself.
Elia, said a few trees—those at the southwest of the village.
That was the way she walked.
For three days she’d lived in Hartfare, enduring as the island mourned. In all that time, the wind had not stopped howling and keening in sorrow, though Elia had cried herself out the first night. They’d brought her father here, to Brona’s cottage, and washed him, put him in a simple gray shift. Elia had dotted his birth stars down his forehead with the white of star priests. She cast a final chart for him, too, based on the stars showing at the moment of his death: he should be interred when the Autumn Throne crested, a week before the Longest Night, the stars said. Nearly three months from now. And so with Brona and Kayo, Lear’s youngest daughter had bound her father’s body in cloth and settled him into a box built of oak, lined with flint and chips of blue granite. The once-king rested now back in the meadow where he’d died, guarded by a trio of his retainers until Elia was ready to have him sent north to Dondubhan.
Brona advised that Elia must consolidate her strength here
