Elia gripped her cup of coffee so hard it trembled and spilled over onto the polished table.
She gasped, and the women turned back to her; she wanted to scream even louder. Her face burned and her jaw ached from clenching. She thought she should apologize, but her voice would not agree.
“Oh, saints, Elia,” Ianta said, thrusting herself to her feet and pointing at a boy in the orange lion tabard of the palace. “This calls for something stronger than milk. Fetch three—no, four—glasses, Searos.” With that, Ianta swept up her layers of red skirts and made for the nearest library shelf.
Elia and Aefa stared, but Elder Queen Calepia only leaned against her straight-backed chair and drawled, “She’s thrilled, Elia. My daughter has been near bursting with wondering when you’d finally thin out that incredible armor you wear around your heart.”
“I’m sorry,” Elia whispered, braced for disdain or disappointment.
“Apologizing!” Ianta cried from the shelf, where she was moving piles of leather-bound books to dig behind them. “It’s been weeks! I didn’t know if I would have to fill you with wine and start asking terribly pointed questions. Mars has said many things, and all of them made me want to wrap you up in pillows and silk quilts to keep you from further harm.”
Calepia said, “Daughter.”
Ianta spun around with a long bottle in hand. “Cherry brandy.”
“Oh, no,” Elia whispered.
“Oh, yes,” Aefa said. “You need it.”
Elia met Calepia’s eyes.
The queen gave her a soft, sorry smile. “Ianta, Elia is safe here, and we know it, but how is she to know it? How is she to trust us when everything she trusted before was taken away?”
Though the queen directed the words at Ianta, she watched Elia, and Elia knew they were for her.
“You are safe here, Elia Lear,” Calepia said.
Safe.
These ladies offered safety to her as Morimaros did: like conquerors. Elia could accept it, sit here in their extended haven. Safety. But what would she be asked to exchange, what was the trade? Kindness and honesty were easy things to give when you were secure. Promises were safe. But safety was also inaction; it was a privilege granted, not won. Elia should’ve been safe with her sisters, yet she could not depend on it. Because they did not trust her—allow her—to be at ease with them, had not permitted her to share comfort. She had never been safe with Gaela and Regan, and they would never be on her side.
Admitting it, even for a moment, broke something open inside Elia, and it pushed out from her heart like a great wind. The hairs on her arms raised.
“Thank you,” she said to the queen and her daughter. “I think I’ll accept your brandy.”
Ianta smiled large and rejoined them with her bottle, pouring it all around.
Elia sipped the sweet cherry brandy to cover the cold rain in her stomach. She asked, “What do you believe in, here in Aremoria, if you don’t have stars or earth saints?”
The Elder Queen said, “Our king.”
“Is he so … worthy of it?” Elia forced herself to ask.
Twice-Princess Ianta leaned toward her. “If he reunites Innis Lear and Aremoria, he will be considered the greatest king we’ve had in a thousand years.”
Elia froze.
“That is how Aremoria holds faith,” the Elder Queen said, more gently. “My husband’s father, King Aramos, proclaimed an end to the crown’s reliance on the stars or the land. He said we were stewards of the land, partners with it, not subject to it, and certainly not subject to the stars, which never suffer with us. He did not raze any chapels or close any caves or springs. He merely told the people they did not need to worship or sacrifice.”
“It worked? The land … did not…” Elia thought to say cry or rebel.
“It worked. But Aramos did something else to unite everyone behind him: he gave Aremoria enemies. We had always had border wars; there has always been pushing and pulling against Ispania, Burgun, Diota, even the Rusrike at times—and of course, your own island. But Aramos made our enemies definitive. Instead of being Aremore because we live with this land, because our families always have, we are Aremore because we fight to keep Aremoria. We are Aremore because we are not Ispanian, Burgundian, Diotan, or Learish. Do you see?”
Elia did see, and was horrified.
By this, Morimaros had to invade Innis Lear, or lose a piece of what made him who he was. The golden king of Aremoria. Their destined leader. A would-be god to his people. And when Elia had asked, Mars had offered several strong reasons he should invade. Political and martial, and economic, even going as far as arguing that it would be the clear best choice for the future growth of Innis Lear. But he had not revealed this reason. This destined one. Draining the brandy, Elia clutched the cup and looked straight at Ianta. “In Morimaros’s council meeting, did you urge him to invade my island? And was this why?”
Ianta lowered her cup. A tiny hint of brandy stained her bottom lip before she licked it away. “No,” she said. “I urged him to marry you instead.”
“He might do both.”
Calepia nodded. “Indeed, if you let him.”
Why is it me who must allow or stop or end or choose?
But the words did not leave her, for she knew the answer: it was because no one else would—or perhaps, no one else could. Her sisters chose long ago to make themselves rigid, and her father chose to give all to the stars. Morimaros had chosen his path in becoming king, and even Aefa had chosen, and would choose again, to stay with Elia and support her. Everyone
