Elia nodded but closed her eyes in dismissal. She wanted to be alone with the night. Brona’s steps creaked gently on the old wood, and the sound of the trapdoor closing settled the shadows in Elia’s heart. She breathed, listened to the angry night, and said to the wind,Thank you.
Eat the flower, drink the rootwater,the wind snarled back.
ELEVEN YEARS AGO, NEAR DONDUBHAN
“HOW DID MYsister die?” Kayo whispered into Brona’s hair.
He stared at the valley of candles and stars—Dalat’s year memorial, where the family she’d lost mourned—and it came to him that he should take Elia away from here, away from this island that had killed Dalat, before it sank into his niece’s bones, before she was too much a part of it. The old empress would welcome another daughter for her line.
To answer Kayo’s question, the witch of the White Forest turned to face him, and the star field cast her in fire, a salamander woman, a dragon with lips and curls and deep, sorrowful eyes. “Come,” she murmured nudging him farther away. “I have a message from Dalat, come.”
Breathless with surprise, he obeyed.
Brona led him back, along a winding route, through the moonlit field of stone and starfire. Near the trees again, she stopped. She took both of his hands; hers were cool and dry, gentle. “What know you of your sister’s marriage, as it relates to how the island viewed her queenship?”
Frowning, Kayo said, “The marriage was foretold by the religion of the stars, and Lear never questioned it.”
“Yes. And they loved each other.”
“So it seemed to me,” he agreed. Kayo remembered the way Dalat had watched her older husband, and how their heads leaned together always, sharing conversations and secrets and caresses.
“Before Dalat came, another woman was to be queen. The daughter of the old Duke Connley was married to our king’s elder brother. Connley had believed the marriage contract would survive the deaths of Lear’s brothers, but he underestimated Lear’s devotion to the stars.”
A hot flutter began in Kayo’s stomach: this was aged politics, and he had asked Brona for the story of Dalat’s death. “This Connley—I remember him.”
“Do you remember the rest of the marriage prophecy? That Lear’sdestined wife would give him strong children, rule beside him well, then die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.”
“She did,” Kayo whispered again.
“She did.” Brona smiled. It was a dangerous, flat smile.
“I did not believe in it! Or I would have been here. I thought… I didn’t think of it when I left because it wasridiculous.Stars do not know such things—they are merely lights in the sky!” Kayo pulled away from her. “How can you—”
“Listen, Kay Oak of Lear.”
It was not his name. She said it, though, with raw certainty, and it echoed in his skull like a spell. Brona had, with four words, rooted him here.
He was rigid. He did not want to hear more. He could hardly breathe.
“Two years ago, rumors reached Dalat’s ears: if the queen did not die on her appointed day, she could not be the woman the stars had ordained. If fate’s finale proved wrong, what of the start?” Brona’s voice was hollow now, but not soft. She was angry.
Kayo understood.
The moon flashed behind a swift-moving cloud, then was bright again. Time sped, it seemed to him, and the island trembled.
Brona said, “It was not only Dalat in danger, do you understand? It was her daughters and their entire legacy. There might have been war if Connley had convinced enough people that Dalat was not the true, star-ordained queen. And if she was not, how could her daughters be true? How could their foreign blood belong to Innis Lear? Do you see? If Dalat did not die…” Brona shook her head. “But she did.”
“Was it—Was it Lear?” Kayo could hardly bite out the words. “Did he murder my sister for his stars?”
“Lear would do nothing. He knew of the brewing danger, but he was ever paralyzed by heaven. He said again and again that Dalat must have faith, because shewashis true queen—their daughters, hisdaughters—and the stars would offer satisfying answers.Hold with me,he said,have faith with me, we will do and be as the stars require. For that is what we must always do.”
Kayo tried to crouch on the ground for balance in this dizzying, swaying world, but Brona held him upright.
“If I had been here,” he said, “I would have protected her—you should have! And… he did not protect her. He—”
“Now, Kay Oak, listen to me.” Brona knelt, and he collapsed with her. They faced each other on the rough moor, and Brona closed her eyes. She drew a deep breath.
Kayo’s eyes burned; his heart pounded in his ears and wrists and temples. All the sky was darkly silver.
