Every morning Elia faced Innis Lear as the sun obliterated the stars, though every morning she wished she could bring herself to turn any other way.
Dawn breeze off the river now chilled her wrists and bare fingers, ruffling the curls of hair she’d picked loose from her sleeping braid. This tower seemed nearer to the sky than ever she’d been, though Elia had once visited the Mountain of Teeth with her father and sisters on the Longest Night. Then, surrounded by jagged stone and ice along the narrow pilgrim path, by snow and low clouds, she had felt the sky descend to meet her. Gaela had grimaced to show the mountain her own teeth, and Regan had howled at the power of it. King Lear had spoken twisting star poems, while Elia had cried in silent wonder.
She thought of it now, and at every dawn, stuck in reverie, unwilling to step outside of it. As if to unlatch herself from the memory would be to forget, to let go. To begin something new.
Elia Lear was terrified of a new beginning. This dawn moment was not the start of a day, but the end of a night, or both, or neither.
Her father refused to wake before dawn; he hated to see the stars die.
She’d made the mistake at first of pretending everything could be normal; she woke in her bed and remained there, then ate her breakfast of cheese, fine cold meat, and delicate bread, allowed Aefa to dress her body and hair, and attempted to go about a lady’s day. As if Elia chose to be in Aremoria, as if she had not been cast away from Innis Lear. The result had been sudden, severe moments of pain throughout the day, brought on by unpredictable words, a glance, or merely the sight of a bird the likes of which she’d known before. Elia could barely control herself at those times, shaking with the power of this inner tempest.
To calm herself, she thought of her mother, and her childhood, before Dalat died, before her family fractured. In those days, Elia had been allowed to wake slowly, so long as she was fed and bathed by the time the queen expected her—waiting in the solar if it snowed and iced, or the garden if it did not—for several hours of reading, writing, and history lessons together. The queen had encouraged her youngest in learning, as she’d done with both elder daughters, and Elia was the one, finally, to appreciate any story, no matter how foreign or strange. Both had cherished their time alone, before a quick lunch with the king, and afterward Dalat would leave Elia to the star priests, for further lessons. The queen had spent her own afternoons supporting her husband’s rule: attending the king’s hunt, meeting with his clerks, inspecting new spices and goods from Aremoria or the Rusrike, or sometimes even the Third Kingdom. Often, Dalat’s duty had included embroidering with the other ladies of the keep, sharing the sort of gossip that greased the wheels of any government, and collecting information to use in other cases.
When Elia had been very lucky, she’d been allowed join her mother at this womanly task, so long as she worked quietly and did not repeat what she might learn. Her elder sisters joined them occasionally, hand in hand. Regan had excelled at the art of sewing with gossip, keen enough to participate despite her relative youth. Gaela had worn trousers and a soldier’s gambeson more often than not, and excitedly would explain to Dalat and the ladies what the earl Errigal or earl Glennadoer—or even the ladies’ own retainers—had taught her recently, of defense and the sword and the way of men. Possibly Gaela had not yet realized how vital her occasional dropped detail was to the women’s network.
Elia did: she could always see the patterns of their world.
In the evenings, the whole family dined in the great hall, included in a warm mess of retainers and servants, along with visiting earls and local barons, or the sons and daughters of their neighbors; whomever had come to the long gray wall of Dondubhan Castle, crossing the Star Field to pray for the spirits of their dead. And after the meal, if Elia was not too sleepy, the princess was welcome to curl beside her parents as they listened to a harpist or oliphant player, poetry in at least three different languages, or the Fool’s riddles. Elia’s head would lean upon her mother’s or father’s lap, and the youngest Lear would drift away to the sights and sounds of her family at peace.
The memories felt like a story now, a tale of earth saints and music and happiness that had lived in some other princess’s heart.
On the sleepy ramparts of Lionis Palace it hurt Elia less to think of what had never changed: Regan’s pinched smile when she sipped hot coffee, for Regan loved the bitter drink; Gaela slipping a small, sheathed knife into the hidden pocket of her gown. She thought of Aefa dotting red paint down her cheeks and making a poem from any three words Elia offered. She thought of the scrape of a quill against paper, the smell of pine boughs covering the hall at Dondubhan, the lapping waves of the Tarinnish. She tried never to think of her father.
She thought of Ban Errigal.
Be bold, he had said.
She thought of the stars—but no, no, they could not be relied upon. Not her birth chart or dawn signs, none of it. Not even Calpurlugh.
When the wind blew, she listened for the whisper of Aremore trees. They did not speak to her. Whether she’d gone deaf to the language, or they refused her on some rooted principle, she did not know. Ban had said the trees of Aremoria laughed, but
