“Then go from here, for we are about the stars tonight, and your petulance will mar their shine.”
The bastard’s jaw squared stubbornly, then he dropped his gaze to the princess, who clutched her dress, caught between the king and the boy. His eyes lowered, and the boy turned away without a word. Good riddance.
“I found one!” crowed Rory, leaping to his feet. “Ban, look!”
The king angled his head up to see.
“That, godson,” the king said, “is the Star of the Hunt, also called the Hound’s Eye.” He declined to elaborate, but Rory didn’t care, elated to have captured the sight of such a glorious-sounding first star. He ran after his half-brother, crying Ban’s name and inventing fulsome meanings for the Star of the Hunt.
Easily, the king put both Errigal sons from his mind, curling around his favorite daughter, his Elia. She needed him, she trusted him.
The king held his youngest in the shelter of his love as he described the portents revealed by how the stars appeared tonight, through the vivid purple and pale blue evening. He would raise her in their clear light, he promised, to be the starry jewel in the crown of Lear, a radiant heir to the skies and proof that wisdom and purity would forever outshine base emotions and the filth of mortality.
ELIA
THE LAST MEAL Elia took at the Summer Seat was only wine, a dark red that had been her mother’s favorite, borne in a cool carafe by her sisters. Elia could not read their faces, and was too tired to guess their intentions. She wanted them with her so badly she ignored her suspicions and let them enter.
Regan set three clay cups upon Elia’s small dining table, and Gaela poured them to the brim, chasing Aefa away with a haughty scowl. Both had removed most of their finery from court: Gaela had on her deep red dress, but without pauldron or symbols of armor, and only clay held up her crown of twisting hair; Regan’s fingers remained jeweled, but she’d taken off her elaborate belt and had most of her chains and ribbons pulled out of her hair, to be bound in a simple knot at her nape. Elia had not changed at all, though Aefa, still crying herself, had washed the smeared red paint from Elia’s lip and eyes.
She wished it had been reapplied, to face this moment.
“To returning,” Gaela said, holding her cup in the palm of her hand.
Regan finished the blessing. “When the old fool is dead.”
Elia knocked her cup over with a shout, spilling wine across the pale table like a wave of fresh blood. Her anger surprised her.
Regan stood abruptly, though the motion sloshed her own wine onto the wrist of her very fine gown. “Elia,” she snapped.
Gaela only laughed. “What a fine mess, baby sister.” She drank her full cup of wine. Then she slammed her hand flat down into the puddle, splattering tiny drops onto Elia’s face. They hit like tears on her cold cheeks. “Drink some.”
Regan flicked her wine-covered hand at Elia, too, as if to add her irritable benediction to Gaela’s.
A laugh tugged out of Elia, though it was tremulous and dry and annoyed. Her sisters were terrible, but so desperately themselves.
She did not wipe her skin, but leaned forward and poured more wine into her toppled cup. Lifting it, she said, “To peace between us, and sisterly love, and reconciling with our father.”
Her sisters drank with her: Gaela with a raised, wry brow, and Regan smiling her untouchable smile. Regan said, “Reconciliation will never happen. We are queens now, Gaela and me. He declared so himself.”
Not until the Longest Night, they weren’t, Elia knew. But this set them as near as possible. Wine swirled in her belly, and Elia pressed her hand there. She risked herself by saying, “He asked me, when he first sent letters from Aremoria and Burgun this winter, if I thought I would make a good queen. I should have known then, that he was planning something like this.”
Gaela laughed, but Regan peered closely at the youngest of them. “And do you think it?” she asked.
“Compared to what?” Elia asked, letting Regan see the challenge there. The burned-out, desperate challenge. Compared to my cruel sisters? she thought at Regan.
It was Gaela who sneered now. “Do not put yourself against us in this; we have strength at home, while you are only yourself. It would be a butterfly against birds of prey.”
Elia was too used to the lack of sisterly support to be surprised or even newly injured. She lowered her eyes to the spilled wine, gave Regan and Gaela a moment to understand she was not truly challenging them; she was only so tired, so raw. So afraid for their father, for her future. She had done nothing at all, and yet her life was torn away. She could barely breathe, had felt lightheaded and breathless all afternoon. “I do not wish to be the queen of Innis Lear. I only wish to be home, and take care of him.”
“He does not deserve you,” Regan said.
“What will you do with him, then?” Elia asked. “Be kind, I beg you.”
Gaela said, “We will disband his retainers but for some hundred or so of them, and share the burden of housing him and them between us.”
“You could stay, Elia,” Regan said seductively, “if you marry some harmless man of Lear, and never stand against us.”
“Some harmless man?”
“Perhaps Rory Errigal,” Gaela said.
“No,” Elia said quickly, thinking instead of Ban, though she’d not let herself do so for years. It was only brotherly affection she held for Rory.
“No, Gaela,” Regan agreed. She tapped dangerous fingernails at the edge of the spill of wine. “You only want her to eek Errigal’s iron and loyalty away from my Connley with that, dear sister.”
Gaela smiled. Regan smiled.
Elia swallowed a heavier drink of wine.
“And so,” Gaela said, “Elia cannot remain here now. She must stay
