Shocked, Elia looked to Morimaros.
The king said, “He will not be talked out of it.”
“Uncle.” Elia took one of his hands from her shoulder and gripped it tight. “Your death rides on it. Stay here with me. I know you’re welcome.”
“You are,” Morimaros said, as if he’d said it before.
The Oak Earl shook his head, though Elia thought painfully, wistfully, that he no longer carried any such title. He was only Kayo. Like her.
“I want to go home. But I cannot. My sisters…” She paused, surprised by her own low vehemence. “They ordered me to stay away until they’re crowned.”
“I will do what I can, starling, rest assured of that.”
“Kayo, stay with me here in Lionis. My father promised to kill you. And though a month ago I’d have sworn he never would, I don’t know what goes on in his mind now. What if he would go through with it for his stupid, terrible pride?” She caught herself curling her fists against her stomach to hold in the growing ache, and forced her hands to smooth down the soft skirts of her gown.
“Innis Lear is my home, Elia, and I love Lear as my brother. No matter what he says as a king, I have never betrayed him in either guise. I won’t begin now, when he is lost in a storm of confusion.”
Elia said, “Uncle, I want you to be careful.”
“I have your sister Gaela’s help,” Kayo admitted, bitterness tainting what should have been a hopeful thing. “She’s promised to break any sentence on my head. More for her disdain toward Lear than for any belief in me, but at least I’ve yet allies.”
“Good. Gaela can protect you. She’s stronger than he is now.”
Kayo’s eyes lifted toward the ceiling. “We are as strong as the people who love us, Elia, and nobody loves Gaela Lear.”
It punched her, and she stepped back from him so her hip knocked into the king’s heavy table. “Regan does. I do,” she said. Her uncle’s mouth pulled in regret, but Elia shook her head, refusing any arguments. “Though I have little enough strength to offer.”
With a weighty sigh, Kayo said, “She will not accept strength from love, then. And she should, in this mess of a time. Your father threw everything into turmoil by removing you, by naming them both, and by giving himself into their care. He is still technically king until they’re crowned at Midwinter, so Astore and Connley will plot and scheme until the last moment if your sisters let them, with no one left to side for Lear.” The Oak Earl shook his head. “They’ve never stopped such scheming before now, I don’t see why they would now. But maybe it’s in their letters. I’ve brought you some. From Gaela, and Regan, and, strangely enough, from the Earl Errigal. Also one from the Fool to his daughter.”
“Errigal?” Elia took a deep breath. The study smelled of cinnamon and sweetness. Probably from whatever was cooling in the ceramic mugs on the table. She’d written several letters to Ban, but she’d never had the confidence to give them to anybody for delivery. All had ended up ashes in her hearth.
Kayo turned away to rummage in a worn cloth bag. He pulled a flat bundle of letters free and offered them by reaching over the curve of the table. Elia accepted, hugging them to her chest.
“Elia,” Morimaros said, “I would like to know what Errigal has to say to you, but it is only a request.”
She glanced at the king. His close-trimmed beard hid what subtle expression she might’ve otherwise found in the clench of his jaw or the fair skin about his mouth. There was nothing but control to see in his eyes. He was standing very near.
Unwrapping the letter bundle, Elia nervously freed the third letter, closed only with a smear of wax and her name scrawled by a hand she did not know well. Elia set her sisters’ letters, and the one for Aefa, onto the table and unfolded Errigal’s.
A tiny slip of paper fell out of the middle, fluttering toward the floor.
Fast as a cat, Morimaros caught it. He looked up at her from his crouch, proving his eyes did not stray to the note. But Elia nodded her permission. The king read it; his lashes flickered in either surprise or displeasure.
Her heart beat too hard as Elia took it back from him. His hands were calloused and the knuckles pinked and rough. A warrior’s hands, but for the pearl and garnet ring. That ring had anchored her to the earth, when her father cast her away.
“What in heaven is that?” Kayo asked.
Elia glanced at the small scrap. Scratched in the hash-marks of the language of trees, it read:
I keep my promises. B.
“Oh,” Elia said.
“My turn,” her uncle said, gently taking the paper. “But what is the meaning? I never learned to read these ancient marks.”
Elia did not have to glance again to translate, “I keep my promises. From Ban.”
Morimaros said, his chin tucked down and brows together, “The Fox?”
Elia shook her head, but Kayo said, “Yes, though he is most known in Lear as the bastard of Errigal.”
“We were friends when we were children,” Elia murmured, more nervous to open Earl Errigal’s letter itself now than before. Then the king’s inquiry struck her. She looked at him, startled. “You know Ban Errigal?”
“I do. He served in my army for years, and earned his epithet well. What promise?”
The last line was so evenly slipped in, Elia hardly noticed it at first, and nearly spoke unfettered truth. Ban had promised to tear her father down. I will prove it to you, how easy it is to ruin a father’s heart.
The full truth was that Elia was not certain exactly what Ban had so furiously sworn. Heat grew in her neck, in her cheeks, and Elia was glad it could barely be seen, not in the same indecorous way she could see the gentle pink flush reaching up from
