ELIA
FOR THREE DAYS Elia had awaited her sisters at Errigal Keep. She moderated the line between Lear’s retainers and those of Errigal still loyal to Ban the Fox, meeting those she could at Rory’s side. He knew all the women and servants and the families of his father’s retainers, and they welcomed him, even when Elia cast suspicions upon Ban. She spoke twice, for long hours, with Curan Ironworker, the wizard, gleaning what information she could on the recesses of the forest and the changes in the song of the iron marsh, as well as asked him questions about Ban. Elia had made herself available to all, as best she could, letting go of her old instincts to withdraw, to remain apart. She was not a star, she told herself, but a woman. A sister. A friend. A princess, as well as a star priest. A daughter still, and one day, she hoped, a mother, though she was not with child now.
Nor yet was she a queen.
With the crushed-hemlock crown circling the crook of her elbow, Elia went to the ramparts in the evenings to see the first stars, to mourn her father alone and allow herself to feel anger toward him and all the mistakes he’d made. To explore the unfamiliar fury burning in her heart: that he’d put Elia in this position, and brought the island so near to ruination. But in many ways, the stars had ruined him, too. They had been Lear’s everything, perhaps more so than even Dalat, and surely more so than himself. That singular focus had made him weak. If the stars were always to blame, there was no way to hold oneself responsible for anything.
And Elia understood the answer was not to do the opposite: to obey the island roots unthinkingly. She could not eat the flower and drink the water on the island’s word alone. Ruling Innis Lear should be a partnership, a conversation, and she would not rush the moment, though she believed one would come.
There were many conversations to have first. The morning after Rory’d arrived, Elia tended the dead Earl Errigal at his side. The body had been laid out in the cellar, washed and dressed, with his sword and chain of earldom. Elia held Rory’s hand while he breathed through great pain, and when he calmed, she asked, “Why are you here at my side, Errigal Earlson?”
His full name startled him, and he wiped under his eyes. “My father—” he said thickly.
Elia took the earl’s chain off the dead father’s chest. “I mean, why did you come home, why are you with me? Your brother is gone to my sisters, and they will take this chain from you for defying them, and give it to Ban. They have already declared it—you’ve heard what the iron wizard said was Regan’s order.”
“It’s mine,” Rory said. “Maybe Ban should have been my father’s heir, because he’s oldest, or because he’s smarter than me, but he isn’t. I am. I want it.”
“Your stars are suited to it.”
“They are.”
“Why not go to Gaela and demand your rights of her?”
“Gaela alarms me.”
Surprise widened her eyes.
Rory pressed on, distraught, “She doesn’t … Do you know anything about war games? Gaela wins them, but always the same way. Even when her specific tactics vary, the strategy is the same. It is always an aggressive one, always driven and determined, but she cuts losses without a thought. She is a great commander, but a queen should not leave fields trampled behind her every time, nor use a village as a point of play. They’re homes, and they matter beyond winning that single battle.”
“And Regan?”
“Regan is a witch, not a—a queen. Maybe with Connley, she might’ve … but not alone.” He winced at the sound of his prejudice. So like his father’s, and he seemed to know it.
“And me?” Elia murmured.
“I trust you,” he said, as if it were that simple.
“Rory.”
He smiled, flirting just a little. “I’ve loved you since we were children, and I’ve seen you. You always made us stop to say hello to anyone we passed when we played. You knew their names, everyone.”
“You do that, too.”
“I’d probably make a good king, then,” he joked.
But a moment fell between them, and they stared. Elia wondered what would happen if she married him right now, today. An old friend, a soldier, one of her father’s favorites, the heir to Errigal iron. A man she could control better than her other options. It would rearrange many pieces of this dangerous puzzle.
“If you ask me, Elia,” Rory said, low and serious, “I will say yes. But you shouldn’t.”
“Tell me why.”
“We shouldn’t do things that will hurt more than they heal.”
It broke her heart to hear the regret in his voice, and Elia realized she did not want to know what caused it.
He told her anyway. “It was my fault they sent Ban to Aremoria, that spring.”
“How?” she whispered. “It was my father, afraid of Ban’s stars, and thinking Ban was unworthy of me.”
“I told my father…” Rory glanced at the slack face of the body laid out beside them. It was a gruesome location for such intimate talk. “I told him that Ban loved you, and that the two of you should be married, and then we’d all be happy. It was only a week later that—” He stopped.
Elia covered her mouth and turned away. “You didn’t know,” she said, muffled by her hand. She forced it down to hang rigid at her side and repeated herself.
“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t think. About much at all. And if Ban did know, or realized it…” Rory sighed. “I deserve that he’s returned the favor. Though I won’t—I won’t just submit to his revenge.”
“No.” Elia turned back and offered Rory the earl’s copper chain. “Take it.”
Rory kissed her temple and refused, grief thickening his tongue. “When this is over, either I or my brother will put it on. Only then.”
When the sun set each night, Elia crouched with Brona to cast
