The Queens of Innis Lear

  Breathless at the end, Elia wrapped her arms around his ribs, laying her body against his. Her small beginning breasts flattened on his chest, and he lovingly touched her hair, fluffing it and caressing the ends before finding her bare neck and drawing her closer to him.

  Elia’s heart beat fast as a rabbit’s, and she saw all the colors of the forest in Ban’s eyes, just before they drifted shut and their mouths touched, dry and hot.

  His pulse floundered, too, where she felt it through his back, in the sensitive palms of her hands.

  As they kissed, tasting with lips and only the tips of tongues, sweet and lapping like kittens, the forest sighed. Her crown of petals and wind dissolved; so too did his circlet of shadow and light.

  Strands of wormwork and the thin light of daytime stars sparkled as they reached for each other, but fell short and dropped instead to the ground. Little imaginary flowers, born of bruised hearts and silly hopes, blossomed for just a few brief moments, lifted in pairs like the wings of tiny moths, then sank home to the earth and died.

  ELIA

  ELIA KNELT BEFORE a tower of white roses and breathed a gentle sigh onto the nearest fat-faced flower. It bobbed back at her, and she whispered, I am Elia the daughter of the king of Innis Lear, in the language of trees.

  She’d been practicing every day, for the week and some since Rory arrived in Aremoria. So her tongue might be ready when the time came to go home, at Midwinter. If only she could return now, before the crowning, and solicit the opinions of the trees and wind and perhaps even the birds—but she did not know what ramifications would follow if she defied her sisters so directly. Elia would not ask those unfeeling stars that awaited her nightly.

  Not yet.

  Sunlight transformed the garden into a brilliant cluster of jewels, heating her until sweat prickled her scalp. A red skirt flared around her legs, a pool of contrast against perfectly cut emerald grass, and the bodice attached kept her from slouching, with all its stiff embroidery. The collar clung to the edges of her shoulders, and tight sleeves ended at her elbows in ribbons. It was simple, but beautiful, the compromise she’d found these past weeks with Aefa, who would have Elia dolled up in impressive, elaborate costumes if she could.

  Amber beads gleamed from her braids, which she’d allowed Aefa to add after the girl begged her to think of the king. At least let me rope in amber so Morimaros might admire the flare of fire.

  But Elia had no idea when he would return, and besides, she’d come here to this garden to be left alone, asking that the gate be locked behind her until she was finished. Nearly a week ago, Elia had written to Errigal in defense of his second-born son. To Ban, she’d written and rewritten, as unsure of her words as she was his motives. She tried telling him the truth: that knowing he’d been here in Aremoria before her made her less lonely. Then a half-truth: that she wished she’d not wasted their time together on grief and rage. That she wished she had asked him of his experiences since they’d last met, what he’d accomplished in Aremoria and what friends he’d made and whom he had grown to love. And then, a lie: that she could not believe he had betrayed his own brother, just to prove something to a woman he no longer knew.

  In the end, she had written, Do not keep promises by causing more pain, and nothing more.

  Her sisters had not replied, though surely they would have received her previous missives.

  There still was time, Elia told herself, to avoid war, though she could not help but worry. Gaela and Regan would never agree to any path that offered succor or forgiveness to Lear. They’d never allow him to retire here in Aremoria, even if it meant they could rule the island without him or her or the threat of invasion or rebellion. They wanted Lear close, to witness his decline, to watch him suffer and die. His penance, for presumed transgressions. She supposed their familial drama would not be so terrible, except that they sat at the center of an entire kingdom. Most families did not have to worry about their passions and arguments rippling out into war and famine and disease.

  Would it be different if Dalat had lived?

  Elia hardly remembered her mother’s voice, or face, but she remembered Dalat had liked to get dirty in a garden, or milking goats—“There are a dozen reasons for a princess to know how to milk a goat,” Dalat murmured, wrapping Elia’s tiny brown hand around the pink teat. Yet Dalat had also enjoyed the hours it took to create her elaborate hair, drinking wine and gossiping with her companions as they pampered her. The queen had suffered harsh pains when she bled, and allowed only her daughters and favorite women around her at such times. Elia learned to link her mother’s sweat and pain with intimacy, while Gaela learned her ferocious warrior’s grimace from the same, and Regan learned to hide any agony she felt behind a solid mask of ice, because pain was not for your enemies—or even your husband—to see.

  Elia was too young when the queen died to hear the rumors that some enthusiastic star-reader, or even the king himself, had forced their prophecy to come true. But she heard it later, from Gaela’s own sharp tongue. Shocked and incredulous, Elia had defended Lear, and her own beloved stars, making them her point of constancy in the lonely roaming island court.

  You’re such a baby, her sisters had said. His baby.

  That moment was the end of any chance the sisters might have had for a close-hearted relationship. It was clear to Elia now, though they’d never spoken of it again. The divide with Gaela and Regan on one side, and Elia and Lear on the other, had begun that day in earnest, and gaped wider and wider as the girls grew, fairly or not. Gaela allied herself with Astore, first as ward, then as wife, and though this might’ve been a chance for Regan and Elia to connect, Regan gripped even tighter to Gaela. And when Regan married Connley against Lear’s direct wishes, his anger became the final divide between them all. Elia had grown so used to it, she’d accepted the fallout as if she’d never expected anything else.

  People died every day, and their loved ones mourned, then lived on. Why could it not be so with her own family? Elia had been just as gutted as the rest of them by Dalat’s death, but it amazed her, even so, that one person could have so much power to break so many strong people, just by dying.

  Did my father murder my mother for his stars? Elia whispered to the roses. She didn’t want to believe it. But then, it could perhaps explain Lear’s behavior. How easily and angrily he’d banished—and disowned—her, his favorite daughter. His baby. She had disobeyed his stars.

  A breeze ruffled the grass, tickled the nape of Elia’s neck, and brought up such sweet autumn smells from the garden. But no voice came with the wind, no hissing answer from the earth. Either these foreign lands did not know, or would not answer a girl who’d abandoned the tongue of the earth for the stars.

  And she’d forsaken it so readily. Because her father commanded it. Had she fought him at all? Had she struggled to keep a memory of Ban, had she begged to continue loving the trees? What was the last tree word she’d spoken? Elia hardly knew. She remembered grief and weeping and then finally the emptiness, but could not recall any fight.

  Today was the first zenith since her father disowned her. Elia had never before sat alone beneath a zenith sun.

  Just a month past, Ban Errigal had crouched at the base of a standing stone and called tiny silver lights to dance at his fingers; when Elia was a child, she had done the same. Once, it had been easy. She’d seen Aefa do similar, snapping fire, though the princess always would turn away, refusing that they could outshine the stars while so far from the sky.

  Elia placed her hands in her lap, palms up, gently cupping the air. She took three long, deep breaths, and whispered, I would hold the sun in tiny mirror, a ball of warmth between my hands.

  Her eyes flew open in apprehension. She scrubbed her hands together, then put them flat on the grass. She leaned forward, bent on her hands and knees, digging her fingers through the thick green grass to the cool earth beneath. Perhaps the trees of Aremoria would not speak to her, but Ban had made magic here. There was a voice
to find in the roots of this land. There had to be.

  My name is Elia, once of Lear, she said. I’m listening again.

  The scrape of footsteps on the crushed shells of the narrow path leading here from the arched gate shocked Elia up from her crouch. She twisted, staring toward whomever had interrupted her, angry at Aefa and the royal guard who had allowed it.

  Morimaros of Aremoria stood some several long strides away.

  She supposed, bleakly, none would have even tried to stop him from entering.

  “Elia?” he said, very quietly. “Are you well?”

  “No,” she said sitting back on her bare feet. Her empty boots slumped together in the shade of a soft lamb’s-ear plant.

  The king came to her and went down to one knee. He was fresh in trousers, boots, shirt, and short burnt-orange tunic, untied at the collar. Water glistened along the lines of his trim hair. Elia fought an urge to brush it away, to skim her fingers against his temple and skull. Was hair that short stiff, or soft? Warm as summer grass? Did it tickle like fox fur? Would his beard, exactly the same length, feel the same? Against her cheek or mouth?

  It occurred to her that Morimaros would allow it, if she reached to touch. Her heartbeat sped, and she folded her hands together. The king blinked, and the sun caught his lovely lashes.

  “I thought you were gone, still,” Elia said.

  “I returned, just now.”

  “The sun is in zenith today. It’s a full month since the … since my father unnamed me.”

  Morimaros’s mouth made a sad shape. “And you’ve no word back from your sisters.”

  She shook her head. “Nor have you?”

  “No, but those I trust have confirmed that Connley took two towns along his border with Astore, one that spans a creek and is known for mills, and the other that has been officially in Astore’s territory since before the line of Lear. And Astore has seated himself in Dondubhan, like a king, to await Midwinter. Connley and Regan are in Errigal now. Shoring up the backing of that earl and his iron.”

  “You know much.”

  The king nodded.

  “And I have no network of friends or informants, but would rely on my sisters or what I might hear from the Fool or Earl Errigal or…” she shrugged helplessly. “You see why I fear so little support, if I tried to be queen of any land.”

  “I do not.”

  “Morimaros—”

  “But … I understand that is how you feel at the moment. So I will tell my navy to prepare for the winter spent at home.”

  “Thank you.”

  Morimaros shifted, almost as if uncomfortable, but Elia couldn’t believe it. He was in his palace, in his capital city, powerful and strong. His dark blue eyes looked randomly about the garden: the rose towers and beds of velvety lamb’s-ear and summer blaze, the tiny red trumpets of the war leaf, the bleeding-spade flowers deep purple with spikes of red, the black-heart bushes with their black limbs and thin green leaves so pale they neared grayish-white.

  “Do you enjoy flowers?” he asked.

  Elia lifted her eyebrows.

  The king grimaced. “You’ve been spending much time here, while I was gone.” He looked at her hands; dirt made dark crescents in the beds of her ragged nails.

  “I was trying to speak with them,” she said, prepared to defend herself if he found her ridiculous.

  Instead, Morimaros nodded. “Ban preferred trees for conversation.”

  Elia glanced away, warm for thinking of both men at once. “Your flowers will not talk to me, nor the junipers in your center courtyard. I am out of practice, I think.”

  “Or merely out of your home,” he suggested with clear reluctance.

  She put a hand over her heart.

  “Elia,” the king began, stopping after her name.

  Impulsively, she lowered her hand to his rough knuckles. Her finger skimmed over the large ring of pearls and garnets. The Blood and the Sea. The ring of Aremore kingship.

  Morimaros hardly breathed, she noted, as she walked her fingers gently along the back of his hand to his wrist. He turned it over, and she touched the softest, palest part of his arm, where his pulse lived.

  “Elia,” he said again, more of a whisper now.

  “Morimaros,” she replied, wishing she could say it in the language of trees. King of this land, she whispered instead.

  Our king, the garden whispered.

  Elia startled, snatched her hand back, and flung herself around, staring at the roses and garden entire.

  The king leapt to his feet, alert for danger.

  “It’s all right,” she said, climbing up, too. “I only heard them, I heard the flowers speak. They like that you are their king.” Her voice did not shake, though her spirit did, and her heartbeat, too.

  Morimaros cleared his throat, his own hands now folded behind his back, in that favorite pose, that made his shoulders broader and expanded the force of his presence as if he’d put on a blinding golden crown.

  Still with a quiver in her heart, Elia met his eyes. The energy there, the intention, parted her lips.

  He said, “I want you to marry me.”

  She caught her breath, and then said, “You want, or Aremoria wants?”

  “Both.”

  “You told me you cannot care what you want for yourself, that you are ever the crown.” Elia glanced away, then forced her gaze back.

  “I went away with the army to stop myself from caring, to focus Aremoria again at the fore of my heart. It did not work. I thought—think—of you always.” A grimace pulled at his mouth again.

  “And that is terrible,” she said very seriously.

  “No! But I—” he stopped as she gave him a small, wry smile.

  “I shouldn’t tease you,” Elia whispered.

  Morimaros laughed once: a breath of humor, then gone. “I am glad of it.”

  “I told my father I would never marry,” she said suddenly. “He let you write to me, for some purpose of his own. Politics, I assumed, and I asked him to stop, before expectations could be set, but…”

  The king’s face stiffened.

  Shame lowered Elia’s eyes again, though it was more her father’s shame than her own. “I should not have to be a wife. I have spent years training as a priest. I should be an advisor, not a queen. A diplomat at best. I know nothing about strategy or holding a land secure. You have said that I bring people together, and I do believe I can; but that is because my people respond to an unwavering devotion and practice of faith and—and in my reliable prophecies and star-study. Things you do not have in Aremoria. Maybe I have some natural humor, and I think I am—I try to be—often kind. But my sisters devour me so easily, and so would I be consumed here, as your queen. No strength to you, no light of my own; merely something to be protected and displayed.”

  “I would not let you be consumed, and you would learn to assert yourself. You have fewer enemies here than you think.”

  “Because I am in exile, with no power. The moment this place thought I had any power, particularly over you, I would be destroyed.”

  “You do have power over me,” he said.

  Her head tilted up again, Elia smiled sadly. “You see something when you look at me that I would like to feel.”

  A tiny noise of frustration hummed from Morimaros’s throat. “I would protect you. I can.”

  “I don’t want to have to be protected, Morimaros,” she said, biting back her own frustration. “That is a trap, too.”

  “Then … encourage you. Support you. We could find a way to be … partners.”

  “While I abandon Innis Lear?”

  “Elia, you told me you want peace, and to be compassionate, and to follow the stars. That you do not want to be the queen of Innis Lear. I am not asking you to do that, I am only asking you to marry me. Marry me, and then keep up your studies, if you like. I will never allow Aremoria to obey the stars, but that doesn’t mean I would forbid you, or anyone, from listening to them. Be a queen at my side, one who
is a diplomat, who is an advisor. Mine. My wife and own guiding star. I won’t ask you to make choices over people’s lives. I won’t make you responsible for anything you don’t want. Bring your father here, or we’ll sail forth and claim him. You can care for him, here in Aremoria. I will give you everything, all you have said you want in this life. Just with a husband, and here, in my home.”

  Tears pricked her eyes, because it was everything she’d claimed to want. This king—no, this man—was offering her all of it. But her heart clenched. It twisted, and she knew she could not concede. Elia could not forsake that rough island that had borne her, as much as her parents. Not now that she felt the lack of it, that she finally understood how she’d cut herself off from the rootwaters years ago, before her father banished her. Innis Lear was broken, everyone kept saying so, and Elia had never even noticed. She was as selfish as her sisters. If she abandoned the island, her history, as readily as her father had tried to strip her name, would she ever be able to know herself? Was that why her family made such terrible decisions? Because none knew themselves, but only knew how others defined them, be it the stars or husbands or fathers? Bad enough Elia was forced to wait here until Midwinter, until her sisters allowed her to return. Bad enough to be the youngest, weakest of them. Bad enough her father—who loved her—had also lost himself. If she cut herself away from all of it, Elia knew her regrets would forever haunt her, and her unhappiness might poison this golden land, as her family had done to their own.

  But how could Elia of Lear even begin to explain it all to the king of Aremoria? She said, “You would give me all I ask for, Morimaros, and then—and then still could take the crown of Innis Lear from us. Marriage would not stop war.”

  “There are many possibilities, not all war. Not all—”

  “But you would not be satisfied with only me. I know what they say here about reuniting Aremoria and Innis Lear. You want to be the greatest king in a thousand years. That means taking my island for your own.”