“They will be here to speak with me in two nights,” Elia began. She no longer wept, but the evidence was clear on her cheeks, if not in her voice. “They have crowned themselves at Dondubhan, so many months before the Longest Night, flaunting the conventions of Innis Lear, and demand I submit to them here, or go into exile. Or die.”
Rory yelled wordlessly. Kayo grunted as if in pain. Brona closed her eyes. Morimaros held his expression reserved.
“I have asked you all here to advise me, as a council to a queen. My proven allies all, but for you, Morimaros. No matter how you came, you are the king of Aremoria, and I expect you to show it.”
He nodded, jaw clenched.
It was not an impressive group, Elia suddenly thought: Kayo never a warrior, so gravely wounded and near blind, Aefa her Fool, a half-deposed earl, and the witch of the White Forest. Though Brona was powerful, she rarely looked it. There was something, Elia supposed, to that tactic.
“What will happen if I submit?” she asked. “If I give in to them and be what they would have of me: little sister, star priest. Inconsequential. What is the worst that would follow? What consequence?”
“You will not,” Kayo said, gripping the arm of his chair shakily.
“This island will break,” Brona answered, as if her lover had not. “Gaela cannot rule Innis Lear. She is as bad as Lear himself, and worse than her late husband, Astore, for she embraced her path with wholeheartedness as fanatical as your father’s. She is the continuation of Lear’s rule, not a break from it, no matter what she believes. A zealous refusal to listen is no better than a zealous devotion to the stars.”
Elia agreed, and saw Rory nod vehemently. But she said, “Maybe Innis Lear is destined to break.”
Kayo leveled his niece with a vivid frown. “You do not believe that.”
The pain in his voice seemed physical, and Elia looked at Brona, worried she ought not to have summoned her uncle from his sick bed. But the witch nodded, though her brow wrinkled and she put her hand to Kayo’s back, caressing in soft circles.
Elia met her uncle’s open, unwounded eye, and said, “Ban believes it. He said Innis Lear should burn to ash. That it is the only way to remake the island better. I’ve seen nothing in the stars to suggest otherwise. And the roots are determined to tear us apart, with ill crops and wailing wind.”
“Is that what you want?” Kayo asked.
“No.” That, at least, Elia knew. “I want Innis Lear to thrive.”
“So you cannot submit.”
“This is yours, Elia,” said Rory, as he had claimed Errigal for himself beside his father’s body. “Don’t give it away to your sisters.”
“How should I fight them? Should I cast Innis Lear into civil war? Raze the island with war machines and drown the rootwaters in blood?”
Kayo said, “Rosrua and Bracoch will be with us.”
Rory said, “Rosrua today, Bracoch tomorrow. If we fight, it will be near equal in numbers.”
“With the island on your side,” said Brona.
Elia looked at Morimaros, who had remained silent.
“Aremoria will eventually go to war with Gaela Lear on the throne,” he said, roughly as if he’d not spoken in days.
“But not with me.”
“That is not what I want from you.”
“You would take me, marry me, and scour Innis Lear of my wretched family? Give Ban and Gaela what they want? Destruction for his part, war for hers?”
“It is an option. If the island must break, make it break in the shape you want.”
“I don’t want it to break at all.”
“Something will,” he said, hands fisted on his thighs. “Do not let it be you.”
Elia stood, furious. The hemlock tumbled down her skirt to the stone floor. “So I should let my sisters destroy themselves? And all my island?”
“It would be a slow destruction, if you submit,” the king said. “Gaela could rule for years, until someone rebels, or until famine or this cursed wind drives the people against her. That might be sooner than I think. There are no heirs, and will never be, from what I understand. So under her crown the island is doomed. But if you went with me there would be time.”
“Time. To think, to plan, you mean. On your own behalf or mine? To analyze and find alternatives to submission or death. Exile is the safe choice.”
Morimaros pulled his mouth in a small grimace. “I want you too badly to pretend objectivity.”
“I appreciate the honesty,” she said flatly, even as Aefa gasped and Rory widened his eyes. For a moment, Elia had forgotten she was not alone with the king of Aremoria. To recover, she asked, “If you were me, would you retire? What would you do?”
“Fight.”
Elia sucked in a breath. He had not hesitated a second, despite it going against his own advice for her.
Morimaros said, “This is your country, your island, and you love it. If you can lead Innis Lear, the people and trees and all of it, to something better than your sisters, mustn’t you? If people will follow you and fight for you, choose you, if that is your gift, how can you run? How can you submit?”
Heart pounding, Elia asked, “Is it my gift? How do I know?”
The king tilted his face to hers; she stood over him, hands clenched at her sides. He said, “Will people come for you? I have. Kayo did, and your father’s retainers. These earls Rosrua and Bracoch with their armies. This witch, who holds more power than most. Are there more? Will your wind summon them, and the roots pass the call? What makes a king or a queen, besides the will of the land and the people together?”
Elia backed away from the intensity of his gaze. She knocked the backs of her
