Elia shook her head, disbelieving. “And so you must invade? To save Innis Lear?”
“Innis Lear once was part of Aremoria.”
“Eight hundred years ago!”
“I would see our lands reunited.”
“Innis Lear will not choose you if you invade. Not the people, and not the roots. Not even if you think you’re saving us.”
“Aremoria needs the minerals buried in your mountains, needs the trade advantages. Aremoria needs her western flank secure, and Innis Lear is a volatile neighbor. But”—Morimaros inclined his head nearer hers—“none of that makes my words any less true. Innis Lear will destroy itself if left on this path. A ruler must recognize this and make a choice, where land cannot choose or act.”
Elia stood up and returned to the edge of the balcony, but faced Morimaros. She studied him, his hard handsomeness, the certainty in his eyes. Nothing about him suggested he did not believe everything he said. Her sisters were right. Gaela and Regan both—the king of Aremoria saw weakness in Lear, and he would blow through, expecting little resistance, unless Elia proved otherwise. And so far all she’d shown Morimaros was her own grief; none of Innis Lear’s strength, none of what she knew to be true about stars and roots, or even what her father had ever done well, what would make Innis Lear thrive. She thought of Lear’s expectant face, the strain with which he coaxed her to answer his terrible instruction at the Zenith Court. Star prophecy was woven into the bedrock of her island, but it had led them before to ruin.
“You don’t understand Innis Lear.”
“Perhaps.” Morimaros came to her. “But I understand rulership, and I understand balance.”
“You do not respect prophecy or the songs of the Aremore trees. There is no rootwater in your city wells, no voice for the wind or roots of this land. Ours may cry out for help now, but unless you embrace what those of Innis Lear require, you could never be our true king. Not unless you submerge yourself in the rootwater at the dark well of Tarinnish, when the stars are brilliant and ready on the Longest Night, and prove the island accepts you. Your blood and the blood of the island, one blood bringing life.” Elia felt breathless, imagining it from the handful of stories she knew about how Innis Lear made its kings.
He would never. He couldn’t.
Slowly, Morimaros reached out, giving her ample time to avoid his touch, and took both her elbows in his hands.
“Innis Lear is a mess, with no strong head, no direction. It is not because your father closed the holy wells, or because he gave all to the stars. That is only how he did it. By offering the people nothing else to believe in when he forbade access and censured their faith. He gave Innis Lear no common enemy, nor any common hero, nothing to unite his people and keep them bound to their crown. He rejected them, preferring the distance of cold stars to the warmth of his close blood. And your sisters? They may be individually capable of ruling, but what of giving your island a hero or myth or anything to heal the wounds inflicted? And what of their husbands? They are all too selfish to understand the weight of a healthy crown. And if your sisters could somehow come to deny their own desires, cast off such quarrelsome husbands and devote more to the island than their own wounds, would the people of Lear agree to follow them, women who have been nothing but angry and cold? You see, I know much of the history of strife over the crown of Lear, Lady.”
Elia stared in shock. How dare he say such things about her country, her family? She clenched her jaw, then said firmly, “My sisters are determined, Morimaros. They will fight, and the people will accept them, because they are daughters of the island. Gaela is immensely powerful, like a saint already in her reputation, and Regan is known to commune with the roots. There is more than belief on Innis Lear. It is magic, real magic in our blood and in the song of the trees. My sisters are the new story of Innis Lear. And—and if nothing else could bring Connley and Astore together, it is the prospect of Aremore invasion.”
“I would use all of this to your advantage.” Morimaros drew her closer to him by her elbows, as near into an embrace as he ever had. “Make you the new faith. I would make your sisters and their husbands understand the only thing to stop my invasion is their sister Elia on the throne of Lear.”
Elia shook her head, denying the thought of it, even as her skin warmed. “Me? That is impossible. I was never built for it, Morimaros. I am a priest, no more, and hardly that, any longer.”
“I cannot believe that.”
“Then believe that I do not want to be queen. I never have wanted such a thing. I want my life to be my own.”
“We do not always have a choice in that matter. Even kings.”
“Do not take that choice away from me,” she commanded, or tried to: her voice shook.
He studied her for a moment. “Your uncle, the Oak Earl, wants the same as I. He argued in my council today that Aremoria’s best move is to put you on the throne of Innis Lear, and have a friendly neighbor, open trade without offense to the Third Kingdom. That it is what your father wanted, what he expected to have done at the Zenith Court.”
Horror stalled her voice.
