Brona lowered herself to sit beside Elia and stared across the small tower at the opposite stones. “Dalat, your mother, took hemlock and died of it.”
A great, raw pulse of fear drained Elia of all warmth, and she remembered that morning suddenly: her mother’s dull, dead gaze, her father’s choking grief, her sisters’ fury, and Gaela’s accusation that Lear had poisoned her. Elia shook her head. “No, Father would not have done that. I cannot believe it.”
“Dalat did it to herself.”
Elia’s lips fell open, as if she could taste the delicate petals of hemlock. “She tried to be the island’s queen?”
“No,” Brona said. “No, it was not for that. She did not intend to be saved.”
Elia’s tongue dried and her gorge rose.No.
Brona continued gently, “Dalat loved you, and your sisters, and even your father and this country, so deeply that she died to preserve it. She died to keep everything alive, to hold your place and your father’s authority.”
“No,” Elia said, pressing away from Brona. “She… the stars… she would not have done that. If she loved us.”
“If the prophecy concerning Dalat’s death had proven false, everything your father had built would have crumbled. Not only his personal faith, but his rule and the provenance of his crown. All would have questioned you. Connley’s mother and Earl Glennadoer would have questioned yourentire bloodline, and Dalat’s very presence on the island. Everything, don’t you see? If your mother had not…”
Elia stared at her small, brown, trembling hands. Dalat had killed herself? For politics. For stars. To stop war. To protect her daughters and her people.Oh, Mother,she said to the wind.
“Elia.”
She needed—she needed to breathe, to think through this. Three long, deep breaths were all she allowed herself. Each shook. “It was not my father,” she finally said.
“No, Lear did not know her plans.”
Elia shook her head, opened her mouth, was silent, and then tried again. “Why didn’t you tell my sisters, at least? So they would know, and not hate him? Why didn’tshe?”
“Dalat did not want you to know,” Brona said. The witch sat straight, old grief bowing her mouth. “She wanted all of you to have faith in the stars and in your father, too. She thought—she thought her death would bring you all together. Make you stronger.”
Elia laughed pitifully and looked up at the sky. Wind blew hard enough to blur the constellations. “Oh no. She trusted none of us, not even my father. Her husband! She did not—did not let us be her family.”
“It was bold, brave even, to take her own life for the island. To remove the uncertainty, prove that your father and his ways were true. I admire that… a singular choice, one that changed everything, solidifying the power of the crown.”
“It didn’t work,” Elia said.
“It could have. The choices your father made afterward are what ruined it: Lear alienated his daughters, and as king he adhered to such a strict form of star worship he cut out all other avenues. If he’d merely kept his faith, and continued to rule—without closing the wells, for example—if he’d striven for connection with his daughters… maybe Dalat’s sacrifice would have been successful.”
“She should have trusted him, and told him.”
“Maybe, but Lear was always so impulsive. He might have stopped her and ruined her plans.”
“Because he loved her! He might have given her to the rootwaters to save her.”
Brona frowned.
“You truly never knew of the hemlock ritual?” Elia asked, feeling accusatory but not caring. She might accuse the whole world tonight.
“I did not.” The witch’s brow crumpled, and tears shone in her dark browneyes. “I’d have brought her rootwater. She might have died on Gaela’s birthday, then been reborn.”
Compassion pierced Elia’s heart, but she was crying again, too. She glanced toward the stars. Would they ever have comfort to offer her again? No longer could she imagine them pure and righteous, nor even bright, crawling beetles. What if the prophecy had been written:On the night of her first daughter’s sixteenth birthday, the queen will be reborn?
It was such a similar prophecy. Depending on the wind, or roots. Depending on the entire shape of the sky.
“Are you going to do it?” Brona asked.
“Yes,” Elia said. “To give myself entirely to the fight, I must transform. But I will offer my sisters the same chance. I will not make my mother’s mistake, or my father’s.”
“I will follow you to the very end, Elia Lear, and not only because I loved your mother.”
