“Better me than our mother.”
“It won’t stop it, if that’s the prophecy. Say again what Satiri heard.”
“The queen will die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.”
Regan pressed her lips into a line, thinking, her eyes flicking between her sister’s. “You have to live, Gaela. With me. I need you—I don’t have my own stars, you promised to share with me yours. And—and that prophecy is about the day of your birth. You already were born, Gaela,” Regan said with gentle, cold certainty, disturbing in a girl of only six years. “It’s too late.”
Too late.
Gaela stared at her little sister, breathing hard and fast. She’d already killed her mother, before she even knew she could.
This occurred to her like a tiny seed: if she’d already done the worst, it didn’t matter what terrible things she had yet to do. So the eldest daughter of Lear gripped her sister’s hand, and promised never to let go.
It was too late for anything else.
ELIA
NO ONE STOPPED her as she wandered back toward Errigal Keep, dazed, bloody, with nothing but an ornamental knife in her drooping fingers. As Elia entered the front court, she was not recognized quickly, because of the slump of her shoulders, and her tangled, half-braided hair. Her skirt trailed behind her in tatters, the front hem muddy and tripping her, but she did nothing to lift it up.
“The queen,” someone murmured. But she could not be. Not now, not yet. Elia angled toward the side of the Keep; she needed to get to her room, wash up. No, she needed to find Gaela—no, Aefa … or … Her thoughts scattered. Her pulse pounded, and every thread of wind beat with the same rhythm, as if Elia herself were the core. My sisters!
A man ran toward her; she stopped to wait on his urgency. What could matter? Her sisters both were dead. She was the only remaining daughter of Dalat and Lear. Elia blinked. Her eyes were dry, her entire body dry as a mountain peak. Had Ban—
Morimaros of Aremoria reached her, gently panting. Behind him careened Aefa, running full tilt. Blood marred the king’s face, making his eyes sharp as blue fire. He’d shed his plate armor, down to crusty gambeson and trousers. Blood stained the collar of his shirt, and she wondered miserably it if had ever been any color but red.
He grasped her shoulders, said something of his relief.
Aefa flung herself into Elia, knocking her from Morimaros. “Gaela is dead! We did not know if Regan…”
Elia nodded, allowing the hug, arms limp and stolen dagger cold. “Regan, too.”
Aefa yelled for water, spared her friend a warm kiss, and dashed off to find Kay Oak and tell him the queen had been found.
The king of Aremoria said her name again. He touched his fingers to her cheek, extremely careful around the blossoming bruise. “You’re otherwise uninjured?” he asked softly.
Elia could hardly catalogue the extent of her wounds, so myriad, so small, and internal they were, slashes to her heart.
After a bruised silence and several steps, Morimaros spoke again. “You said Regan is also dead?”
“Gone, at least,” Elia whispered. She did not know if death had come to her furious, mad sister, or peace, or only soft darkness.
Morimaros studied her, then cupped her elbow. “Ban is going to die.”
She gripped the little knife tighter. “You mean he’s not dead yet.”
“Soon.” Morimaros took Elia’s other hand. “The day is yours, lady,” he said, and what began as a hesitant, sad voice grew in strength and volume. “This island is yours, too, Queen Elia of Lear.”
It shook her.
Around them soldiers and retainers knelt. Elia’s heart trembled as she tried to speak, or offer a mask of stately grief at least. But the knife was in her hand, and she burned to use it. As men said, Hail queen, and Elia of Lear, and Long under the stars may she reign, Elia stared at Morimaros’s weary blue eyes. “Take me to Ban, before he dies.” She strode forward without an answer from him, but made herself glance and nod to the lines of soldiers, turn her empty palm out to them in thanks and acceptance, in blessing.
Morimaros led her into the Keep, but suddenly Rory Errigal was there, crying her name. She did not give him anything. Rory smoothed his fingers over the aching side of her face where Regan had hit her, but she fisted a hand against his mail and shoved at his chest. “Not yet,” she said. “Take me to Ban.”
The earlson hesitated, concern streaked over his freckled features, but gave in with a reluctant nod.
No one stopped her after that.
Ban the Fox lay dying in his bed. Rory called softly for Brona to come out. She did. Her apron was streaked with blood, most of it dry, and she smelled of the iron stuff, and of sharp herbs, too. “Elia,” she murmured, glad and surprised.
“Let me through,” Elia said.
Instead, Brona put her arms around Elia, hugging her tight. Elia did not move to pull away or to return the embrace. She stood and accepted Brona, and the woman touched their cheeks together, nudging Elia’s mass of hair aside so she could whisper, “He is not so dire and dying as I’ve led them all to believe, Elia. It is very bad, and he’s broken, but I have some little hope. If they know he might live, they’ll put him in shackles. That weight will kill him surely.”
Cold understanding stiffened Elia’s limbs: Brona believed her to be an ally in wishing for the Fox’s survival.
She nearly laughed. But Elia had room for only one feeling in her heart, and sympathy, humor, love were none of it.
She went inside.
The fire was low, and only listless sunlight filtered through the dark, shuttered windows. Elia firmly shut the door behind her.
His breath was a crawling, shallow rattle.
Elia slowly approached, her steps silent across the thin rug. Unlit candles were set upon a low table, a pile of discarded weapons hugged one corner, and holy bones and their cards were spread in a half circle beside the smoky hearth.
His eyes were closed, his skin yellowed and sunken beneath stark red scratches and a flowery bruise. He’d been washed, his hair slicked back, and his shoulders were bare; torso, too, until the thin blanket pulled nearly to his navel. A great, bloody bandage wrapped his chest and right shoulder. Ban Errigal was a garden of bruises and cuts shiny with salve.
The entire place smelled of sweat, blood, and clear, sharp medicine.
Seeing him infuriated her.
Her hands shook; she swallowed bile and sniffed great tears away. Her jaw clenched. This was what she’d been driven to, this moment in this dark room, just the two of them, him dying, her … she did not know. No longer sister, no longer daughter. A wizard and a queen.
A queen of all this: Her father—dead! Her sisters—dead! And for what? For this rageful creature. Pitiful, and still alive.
Elia hitched her skirts up and climbed over his body. His lips curled, and he hissed painfully through teeth, wincing, and his eyelids fluttered. Mama? he seemed to mouth.
She straddled his waist and leaned down to put the edge of the knife under his chin.
The touch of cold steel snapped his eyes open.
“Look what you’ve done to me,” she whispered.
“Elia.”
Her name thick as a prayer on his tongue.
She choked, eyes burning with tears. “Regan is dead. And Gaela is dead. And my father! You murdered him! But you’re not sorry. You would not change a thing!”
Ban did not blink or look away. He did not deny he’d killed King Lear. When he swallowed, his throat leaned into the dagger. “My choices brought me here, and yours you. I am what I am, what I have always been.”
Her mouth contorted; the edges of her sight rippled. “I loved you more than anyone,” Elia whispered. “Yet you are the one who taught me to hate! Not even my sisters could do that! It was you.”
The blade pressed harder. His chin lifted, but there was no place for the Fox to hide. He did not move his arms, or tense; he did nothing to escape.