Silence fell. Elia glanced at the wretched, dead crown of hemlock at her feet. She knew what she believed in her heart, but she waited to hear what Brona would say.
Rory and Aefa both fidgeted. Kayo held Brona’s hand but said nothing, and by that Elia thought he agreed, or at least would not argue either way. A remnant of his upbringing, to let the women in his life decide for themselves.
Morimaros’s jaw was tight.
Finally, Brona said, “It is not my name the island calls.”
Closing her eyes in relief, in sorrow, Elia nodded. She understood. She agreed. “The island won’t have Gaela, either. Brona is right: my sister can call herself king, and all the people of Innis Lear can follow her, and the island still will not submit. She would have to tame it with fire and iron, and I cannot imagine Innis Lear would endure it. And Regan might once have been able to survive the ascension, but no longer, with her withered heart.”
“Survive…” Aefa’s clever eyes darted to the poison circlet on the ground. “What aren’t you telling us, Elia Lear? You don’t mean war; you mean something else. What is it that would kill your middle sister, were she to try to rule?”
“I know how to become queen,” Elia replied softly, glancing around at all her allies. “In a way that not even Gaela can stop, not without killing me herself.”
“The Longest Night ritual,” Brona said.
“Do you know what it is?” Elia asked.
“No.”
Kayo said, “Talich at Dondubhan does. The old priest who led your father through it. He married them, too, your mother and father.”
Elia knelt and lifted the hemlock crown. Eat of the flower, drink of the rootwater, she said in the language of trees. She repeated herself for her allies, aloud and in their own tongue: “Eat of the flower, drink of the roots. That is all.” She took a deep breath. “I swallow the poison, and the rootwaters cleanse me of it, and so is the bargain between crown and island set. My blood becomes its blood, and its blood mine.”
Her uncle let go of Brona abruptly, shaking his head. He put his hand to his bandage, grimacing.
But Brona touched her mouth, and nodded yes. She understood in her gut, as Elia did.
“You can’t,” Morimaros said, and Aefa shot to her feet.
“I agree with the king!” the Fool’s daughter cried. “Poison, Elia, you can’t think it, who told you that? Was it Ban? Was it Regan? Think where the message came from and mistrust it!”
“The island told me,” Elia said.
Rory put his arm around Aefa. “It sounds like magic. It sounds like the oldest earth saint stories and festivals.” His voice was full of wonder, and dread—but also hope.
“I—” Elia nodded. “Thank you for your counsel, all of you. I am going to meet my sisters in two nights. I will bring a crown of hemlock, and between the three of us, before the night ends, there will be a queen of Innis Lear.”
“One of you will do as the island bids.” Aefa’s distress heightened her voice.
“Or all three of us,” Elia said soothingly, feeling calm and cool—but it was not the distance of stars, it was the strength of certainty. “In two nights, we shall meet them. And it will be done.”
“Ban will be with them,” the king of Aremoria said suddenly.
“Yes.”
“I want to go at your side. I need to.”
“I will allow it,” she replied, and then left them all, without another word. As was her right.
Outside the great hall, Elia turned in a full circle, unsure where to go. But of course, the answer was high toward the stars.
Up and up she went, through the old part of the Keep and into the black stones of its most ancient tower. The stairs narrowed, and Elia climbed higher, until she reached the pinnacle, ascending through the trapdoor and into the bare sky: this platform, with barely room for two or three men, had been built for a watch in the days when kings ruled only pieces of the island, constantly on guard for attack.
Stars gleamed; she could see them in every direction, though wind cut harshly from the southeast. Elia sank down against the crenellations.
Tilting her head back, she stared into the night, tracing the shape of blackness, not the points of light. She resisted all thoughts, flattening her mind into nothing more than the patterns between stars. No signs revealed themselves, and Elia discovered no hidden meaning; long ago star priests had suggested the void beyond the heavens was the origin of chaos, the home of pain and love, of all wild instincts. That it had been the coming of the stars that brought order into the world.
Footsteps on the narrow stairs below the platform roused her.
It was Brona, lifting the trapdoor.
“Did I upset everyone, enough so they sent you to chide me?” Elia asked.
But the witch said nothing, staring at Elia with a strangeness, a hesitancy. “Say what you’ve come to say,” Elia ordered gently.
Brona lowered herself to sit beside Elia and stared across the small tower at the opposite stones. “Dalat, your mother, took hemlock and died of it.”
A great, raw pulse of fear drained Elia of all warmth, and she remembered that morning suddenly: her mother’s dull, dead gaze, her father’s choking grief, her sisters’ fury, and Gaela’s accusation that Lear had poisoned her. Elia shook her head. “No, Father would not have done that. I cannot believe it.”
“Dalat did it to herself.”
Elia’s lips fell open, as if she could taste the delicate petals of hemlock. “She tried to be the island’s queen?”
“No,” Brona said. “No, it was not for that. She did not intend to be
