She sank to the rush-covered floor, sitting in a pool of bright red skirts, and read the message a third time.
Aefa knelt beside her and read the letter, too.
“Worm shit,” she said.
“Aefa.” Elia took a deep breath. “Aefa, send everyone away, and bring me Kayo, Brona, and Rory. And Morimaros. I would speak with them.”
“Morimaros?”
“This is the business of kings and queens. It is time.”
While Aefa hastened to comply, Elia hauled herself to the tall-backed chair just beside the hearth. She lifted the hemlock crown from the seat, sat herself, and settled the crown onto her lap. She read the letter again.Death or exile will be the only way.
Ban had failed her, refused to bring her sisters here. This stank of his destructive work: turning family against itself, lighting sparks for war to burn everything to ashes instead of nurturing growth, instead of protection.
And her sisters threatened to kill her.
Elia closed her eyes. She did not want to feel the betrayal. Not this time. Better to turn cold and still, better to breathe the emotions away, to diffuse them into air and mist.
But no. She had to feel in order to fight.
Tears flicked down her cheeks, and she did not break. She put her hands on the arms of the chair, leaned her head back, and let herself be hurt. And angry. And so very sad. All the whirling emotions gathered around her heart, squeezing, lifting, and she wept quietly as she waited. Tears dripped off her chin to tap the letter itself.
Her sisters claimed to be queens, but high overhead the wind threaded itself angrily through the stones of the keep, blowing frustration down the side of the mountain. The island disagreed. They had not made the bargain.
Warmth from the whispering fire enveloped her; she tried to pull comfort from it. The shuffle of folk leaving with onions and knives had vanished, replaced by the sure footsteps of those summoned. Elia left her eyes closed.
“Elia?” Kayo said.
She stifled the urge to leap up and offer him aid. Instead she smiled sadly. “I have news from my sisters.”
Chairs were moved, and a bench, too.
Kayo settled in a heavy chair to support his weary body, and Brona sat beside him on a stool; Aefa, Morimaros, and Rory shared a bench. Rory leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eager for her word, though with a slight frown as he could see how she’d been affected. Morimaros positioned himself nearest to her on the bench, and his gaze branded her with its weight. Kayo shifted and opened his mouth; Brona touched his knee to quiet him. His bandage was pristine: no yellowing from the witch’s tonics, no blood.
“They will be here to speak with me in two nights,” Elia began. She no longer wept, but the evidence was clear on her cheeks, if not in her voice. “They have crowned themselves at Dondubhan, so many months before the Longest Night, flaunting the conventions of Innis Lear, and demand I submit to them here, or go into exile. Or die.”
Rory yelled wordlessly. Kayo grunted as if in pain. Brona closed her eyes. Morimaros held his expression reserved.
“I have asked you all here to advise me, as a council to a queen. My proven allies all, but for you, Morimaros. No matter how you came, you are the king of Aremoria, and I expect you to show it.”
He nodded, jaw clenched.
It was not an impressive group, Elia suddenly thought: Kayo never a warrior, so gravely wounded and near blind, Aefa her Fool, a half-deposed earl, and the witch of the White Forest. Though Brona was powerful, she rarely looked it. There was something, Elia supposed, to that tactic.
“What will happen if I submit?” she asked. “If I give in to them and be what they would have of me: little sister, star priest. Inconsequential. What is the worst that would follow? What consequence?”
“You will not,” Kayo said, gripping the arm of his chair shakily.
“This island will break,” Brona answered, as if her lover had not. “Gaela cannot rule Innis Lear. She is as bad as Lear himself, and worse than her late husband, Astore, for she embraced her path with wholeheartedness as fanatical as your father’s. She is the continuation of Lear’s rule, not a break from it, no matter what she believes. A zealous refusal to listen is no better than a zealous devotion to the stars.”
Elia agreed, and saw Rory nod vehemently. But she said, “Maybe Innis Lear is destined to break.”
Kayo leveled his niece with a vivid frown. “You do not believe that.”
The pain in his voice seemed physical, and Elia looked at Brona, worried she ought not to have summoned her uncle from his sick bed. But the witch nodded, though her brow wrinkled and she put her hand to Kayo’s back, caressing in soft circles.
Elia met her uncle’s open, unwounded eye, and said, “Ban believes it. He said Innis Lear should burn to ash. That it is the only way to remake the island better. I’ve seen nothing in the stars to suggest otherwise. And the roots are determined to tear us apart, with ill crops and wailing wind.”
