“We hear fine things about your mind and ambitions, young Connley,” said the Earl Rosrua’s son, likely to take the title any month now. He stood at Morimaros’s opposite side. “We’ll welcome you to our ranks.”
Again, Tear bowed, though more slightly. What he had heard of the heir to Rosrua was not to be repeated before any Aremore. “I hope Dondubhan is impressing you,” he said to Morimaros.
“It is. Your people are very united.”
A strange response,Tear thought, having expected to speak about the massive black Tarinnish or the spreading Star Field or the ancient, strong ramparts of the castle itself, the twelve-foot-thick walls or the watchtower. This was significantly more intriguing. “We are. It must be so in Aremoria, too.”
Morimaros paused, as if realizing he’d been caught in an odd comparison. “I think… it is like the difference between our forests and yours. Here, you have fewer kinds of trees. Pines, oaks, and smaller trees in the south, but only the hardiest here in the north, where there are trees at all. They stand strong and alone against harsh circumstances, but still the forests are thick and immortal. Aremore forests have hundreds of kinds of trees. They do make forests—vast, amazing forests—but they are not so singular.”
Tear understood in his gut, immediately.
But the Rosrua heir chuckled. “It’s because our trees talk, you know, Your Highness. Like old women, leaning together and keeping everyone in line. But each a fishwife with an opinion to clutch at.”
An older man, whom Tear did not know, but who wore a belt with an Astore salmon stamped into the leather, said, “We do have some very foreign trees rooted here on our island. I believe, Prince, they’re the ones you’re most interested in.”
Frowning, Tear decided to find out the name of this fool, the better to keep his distance. The daughters of Lear were daughters of Lear, not foreign trees.
The Aremore prince held his opinion, merely nodded.
“The eldest,” Rosrua’s son said—Alson, that was his name! Tear would make sure to remember now—“will certainly marry your lord.”
Astore’s idiot nodded. “Indeed. He and she have a tightness between them, and what man wouldn’t want to bed her? She’s magnificent. A stallion’s prize.”
All the men gathered, even Tear, looked toward Gaela Lear. She stood beside the tall chair in which she’d feasted, the stark white of her gown and the white veil drawn over her short hair making her skin gleam darker than ever. The expression she wore was equally stark: grief and disdain, both warring in her fierce eyes, though she spoke readily enough to the duke in question.
“He was fifteen when she was born,” Alson said.
But Tear’s attention was no longer free—caught instead, skewered by an arrow of fate, on the second daughter of Lear.
Regan.
She was beautiful. Half-hidden behind the elder, star-cursed princess, it seemed Regan stood with her shoulder pressed gently to the center of Gaela’s back. As a support, or comfort.
Thin, boyish almost, except for the mature elegance of the quiet gray-and-white dress she wore. Silver shone at the princess’s fingers and in her hair, at her cool brown neck. Red paint plumped her bottom lip and dotted in perfect arcs from the corners of her large eyes.
Regan Lear was flawless.
“Regan would be a good match for you,” the loathsome Astore man said, attempting to engage the Aremore prince.
“How old is she?” Morimaros asked, though surely he knew.
“Fifteen,” said Tear.
So he would be, too, in a few short months. “Excuse me,” Tear murmured, slipping away. None cared.
He finished his cup of wine and retrieved more, as well as a second, for he’d seen Regan held a cup herself, dangled at the end of her loose arm, tapping gently against her thigh. It must have been long empty, for her to risk spotting her pale gown.
As he moved through people toward her, he saw her eyes never rested in one place for long. Regan studied everything, and twice tilted her chin up to murmur over Gaela’s shoulder. Then the elder would look where her sister had been, before continuing her conversation with Astore, or one or two of that lord’s nearby cousins.
Regan, Tear thought, fed Gaela information. Perhaps she was searching for something or someone in particular, or merely reported on what she could. The sister’s close contact, the casual communication between them, awoke a gentle longing in Tear. What devotion. What communion. What love.
He reached their perch, finally, coming around from behind Gaela so the eldest princess would not notice him, but nor would he startle Regan. Her dark eyes caught his, but she did nothing to give him pause.
Through loud conversation, subdued laughter, the chaos of this feast, they did not unlock their eyes. Tear approached and held out the wine, and Regan took it, setting her empty cup to rest on the table nearest. As she did, he saw the tiny red sigil written against the meat of her thumb: a spell in the language of trees.
He saw it, and glanced directly at her face so she knew he did. Lifting his cup, he held her gaze again, staring at the swirl of brown and topaz in her eyes, at the tiny chips of blue ice. His breath sped up, and he heard the rush of blood in his ears.
She, too, raised her cup, and they drank, eyes locked together, as if their lips touched each other and not cool clay rims. As if it was a ritual, a glimpse of things to come.
