BAN TRIED TOlet the whole world slip away, curled in a bed with a fire crackling bright and warm, and Elia Lear pressed to his back, her cheek to his shoulder, her arm around his ribs. And the storm blowing itself to sleep outside. He closed his eyes.
Could he find a way to take this moment andmakeit last? Nothing mattered when she was with him; nothing, besides her. It had always been so. The feeling was a seed of something Ban did not recognize, but craved. The pale promise of a morning when storms would clear, the sun would rise, and he would see a new future stretched before him like a golden road. Peace. The end of vengeance, the end of this tense imbalance of loyalty, not knowing where he belonged or who loved him. It had always been Elia.
They’d have to leave to be free of it all, to fully dig the roots of Innis Lear out of their hearts and blood, to strip away the clinging history of stars. Ban would marry her, travel with her far away from Innis Lear and past Aremoria, and find a place where they could be only themselves. Whatever they chose to be, without all this fate and history and obligation. A hired soldier and a goat girl. Or perhaps a farmer and an herbwife, or two shepherds. Shopkeepers or tailors or bakers or a blacksmith and his loyal wife, mother to their wild brood.
Anything but a bastard and a princess, anything but a star priest and a traitor.
Ban touched the back of her hand, where it lay relaxed against his stomach, her fingers skimming his skin in tiny strokes. At his touch, she stilled, and he flattened her hand beneath his. Was it even possible to purge Innis Lear from their hearts? Whocouldthey be without stars and roots? “Elia.”
“Ban,” she replied, lips brushing his shoulder blade. Her sigh was soft and warm, skating down his spine to settle like a hot brand in the small ofhis back. He fought the urge to grip her fingers too tightly, to turn in the bed and press against her again, or to beg her without words to crawl onto his lap and move as she had before. To weave their spirits together again and again until she couldn’t leave him even if she wanted to.
He opened his mouth, and words came out in a rush: “Go with me, as soon as the sun rises. Far away from this island. We’ll start over, be only what we make ourselves, without pasts, together.”
For a long moment, Elia was silent and still. Then she said, “But I am a piece of Innis Lear, and so are you.”
“It’s broken,” he murmured. “Innis Lear. And we are broken, too. But if we left, maybe we could fix each other.” Ban touched the ends of her hair, pulling the curls out and releasing them to bounce back.
She pressed her face against his shoulder; he felt tears. She said, “We have to fix it all.”
“Why? Why us?”
Elia’s voice sharpened. “Do you remember that beetle you dug out from under the stone in the Summer Seat meadow? It was iridescent green, with rainbows of blue and yellow? You put it on my finger like an emerald ring.”
He nodded, voice stuck in his throat.
“I loved that silly bug. At first, after you were taken away, I searched for them on my own. I imagined, sometimes, when looking at the stars with my father, that the stars themselves were tiny bright beetles, crawling across the sky. The heavens were the same as the island mud, and all those stars my father worshipped were bugs like the one you put on my finger.”
Ban turned under her arm until he lay on his back as she leaned over him. Firelight gilded her hair. Her eyes were deep enough to dive into. She was frowning, her brow furrowed by sorrow.
The silence dragged: something was wrong. He didn’t want to ask; Ban wanted to exist here without the Fox, without questions and plotting, without everything he’d been made to be.
Her thumb stroked his collarbone.
“Elia?” he whispered.
The words tumbled out of her, then, hard and fast: “I know Morimaros sent you here, on his behalf. I know you’ve been an Aremore spy, and you intended to get the iron for Aremoria.”
Shock silenced him, and behind it a wave of shame. Elia knew. But beyond that, Mars had told her: it was the only way for her to know. What else had they shared?
Ban opened his mouth, and nothing came out. The two of them in thisbed, having been together like this, was another betrayal of that noble Aremore king. But Ban had loved Elia first.
“I…” Ban’s voice was hoarse. He swallowed, reaching for some explanation that would keep her in his arms. “I… I needed Aremoria, and I needed his—his respect. I had none of that here, and even you… even you let me go. Being the Fox meant something, and I was recognized for it. Not as a bastard, but a soldier. A friend, even.”
“I respected you. I needed you.”
But an old hurt welled up Ban’s throat and found its way out of his mouth. “You didn’t write to me,” he whispered like a child. “You never wrote to me, in all my time in Aremoria. I thought you loved me, but you let me go. Because your father told you to!”
“I shouldn’t have. I am sorry, Ban. I did not know how alone you were. How… abandoned. No wonder you gave yourself to Morimaros, abandoning Innis Lear in turn.”
“I didn’t do it to abandon Innis Lear! I did it forMorimaros. Because he asked me, and because he treated me like I was worth asking.”
Elia frowned, and Ban saw the struggle as she fought to hold his gaze. She, too, must be thinking of Mars now, while naked and sticky from sharing this bed with Ban. He desperately wanted to ask what was between the two of them, if they’d made promises.
Finally, Elia sighed softly. “I know Morimaros is good, Ban. Better than Connley, better than my father. But he’s still the king of Aremoria. He wants…” Elia looked away again. “He wants to marry me, too, and I believe he has not lied about what he wants.”
“Innis Lear. And you.”
“Yes.”
