Both her first and second daughters slept in Gaela’s bed, and though she’d expected it, the image of Gaela curled protectively around her sister Regan wiped the smile from Dalat’s mouth. She closed her eyes against a swift cut of grief.
Dalat went straight to the window. The heavy winter shutter had been pried open and set on the floor, leaning beneath the sill. Damp wind spat at her, and no wonder her girls huddled beneath a heavy bearskin, imported from the Rusrike. The queen tightened the knot holding her robe closed. She put her hands on the stone sill and leaned out, but the walls of the castle were so thick that even bending fully at the waist her head barely peeked past the edge. Below, the sheer drop angled straight down to the Tarinnish’s black waters. Beyond, the foothills of the Jawbone Mountains. She could see miles and miles of the north island. None could approach this way without being seen. It was desolate and silver under the late horned moon and the scatter of winter stars. In the distant east, Dalat spied a hint of velvety blue. She breathed deeply, her stomach pushing against the corner of the window.
In the Third Kingdom, the sun would be up already, for the days were longer there. Her people would be breakfasting, spilling crumbs of biscuits and drops of last night’s wine onto the sand to honor God’s creations.
She hoped God would forgive her.
Putting her back to the window, the queen gazed at her daughters. She had tried to teach them about God, but not as earnestly as she might’ve. One zealous parent was enough for any child. And her people’s God was also the stars, after all, and the earth; God did not need or beg worship, but only sought love. So long as her daughters loved, they knew Dalat’s God. And these two would always love each other, of that she had no doubt.
She knelt at the side of Gaela’s bed, wishing she did not have to say goodbye. But here was the flaw in her husband’s faith: when there was proof to be had, its lack could kill. Dalat had heard the whispers, the threat to her children: those stars decreed she was the true queen of Innis Lear, and the true queen would die on her daughter’s sixteenth birthday.
If she did not die, she could not be the true queen.
It was a suffocating paradox. Die, or her legitimacy died. And with it her daughters’ future. Her husband’s faith.
Dalat pushed a puff of curls back from Gaela’s temple and kissed her cheek. Her husband had not wanted Dalat to bear any daughters, as if that on its own would defeat the prophecy. Four years of marriage passed before Dalat had stopped trying to convince him otherwise, and took the matter onto her own shoulders. From the moment she’d told him of their child, the king had been afraid. Even small moments of happiness were overshadowed by his fear. That was the greatest tragedy of it all, to Dalat: every father should know joy in his first child.
Dalat had loved Gaela with all of her soul to make up for it.
That eldest daughter slept with her lips just parted, so even in the dream world everyone could see her teeth. Regan’s eyes flickered under her lids, one hand beneath her cheek, the other fisted in the blanket. They’d spent all the previous day together, with Elia, too, and Brona Hartfare, who knew everything. Who waited alone right now at the Dondubhan well, writing prayers into the water, reciting Dalat’s promise to herself and to the wind and roots of Innis Lear. Dalat understood the magic of this place, though had never claimed it. The island would embrace her daughters if they allowed it to: Gaela, a piece of iron already, still forging herself; Regan, who reached as the wind reached, thirsty as roots for life; Elia all joy, a little piece of luminous God.
They would protect one another, and, she hoped, their father. With her death, the king would need them, turn to them. Gaela would understand her father’s faith in the stars was true, finally, and he would see this was none of Gaela’s fault. They could love each other, and they only foughtbecause they were so similarly stubborn and set in their own righteousness. But when Dalat died, they would come together. And Regan and Elia.
The queen bent across her eldest and pressed a kiss to Regan’s mouth, which frowned now in her dreams. Her mother’s kiss smoothed the girl’s lips. Regan relaxed, and the dream slipped away, leaving only peace.
Dalat left them to sleep the rest of the night away.
She nearly did not go to Elia’s room.
Her baby. Curled at the foot of her bed in a twist of blankets, Elia’s hair was impossibly tangled, for the little girl rejected her cap and picked it all free of its braids nearly every night. Dalat climbed into the bed and grasped Elia’s waist, dragging the girl against her belly. Elia groaned and snuggled closer. “Mama?”
“Yes, baby.” Dalat buried her nose in Elia’s curls, smelled the dirt and sweat under that sheen of bergamot. Elia was eight years old and should have been getting over this childish disregard for bath time, but it was so sweet when she still snuck into the jars at Dalat’s mirror and overused the expensive oil from the Third Kingdom. To smell just like her mother. Dalat laughed happily, squeezing her.
Elia’s eyes popped open. “Mama!”
“I’m sorry, baby.” Dalat kissed Elia’s head. The queen shut her eyes and hummed a few notes from an old desert prayer she barely remembered, until her daughter had been quiet and still for many long moments.
Dalat did not make another stop. She’d said her farewell to Brona last night, and could only hope those ladies she’d befriended these past twenty years, and the retainers’ wives she loved, and especially her companions from home, would understand. Understand, and watch out for her babies. Understand and hold this kingdom together with her husband, despite how terrible his grief would be.
She’d left the vial of starweed in their bedchamber, to force herself to go back to him, else Dalat feared she’d have taken it outside, not found the courage to face him as she died.
The king of Innis Lear snored softly in the light of a single wide candle. Though it had melted to a stub, it still managed to flicker over the volumes of star charts he’d been reading before sleep. His head tilted to the side in his repose, one hand on his chest, the other flung over his head, with two fingers twined in his long brown hair. He did that, twisting strands around several fingers as he pondered something, like wool around a spindle. It was so rich a brown, his hair, thick and dry and waved. Sometimes Dalat found single silver hairs and plucked them, eliciting a hum of irritationfrom him: he wanted their proof of age and wisdom, for he was, after all, halfway through his sixth decade, and old.You must think younger, to keep up with me,she would say in turn, and drag him to bed for a romp. Dalat teased that she alone kept him in shape, for without her, he would hunch over a book or slump in his throne, disaffected and bored with all but the stars.
Quickly, before she could change her mind, Dalat went to the small table that was her own, covered in slim books of poetry and her letters. She unstoppered the thin vial and drank every bit of the slick poison. Then she took it to the window and dragged open the heavy shutter. Lear stirred at the noise, but Dalat ignored it for the moment. Below her bedroom window was a small garden of sturdy fruit trees and juniper. She tossed the vial at the trio of gnarled cherry trees, where Brona knew to collect it in the morning.
Light in the east turned the central tower of Dondubhan Castle into a black silhouette.I will be air, and I will be rain, and I will be dust, and I will be free,she thought to herself, another old desert prayer. Maybe Dalat would see her own mother again, soon. Maybe death would feel like dry desert wind.
Returning to the bed, she slipped out of her robe and under the wool blanket with her husband. Pillowing her head with her arm, she lay on her side to study him. There already had been wrinkles at his eyes and mouth when she first met him, stepping off her ship and onto this rocky island. She’d come from the Third Kingdom via five foreign ports, meeting kings in all, and eating new foods and singing new songs. But the look in his warm eyes, blue as a shallow lake in a face pale as melon rind, caught her immediately and never let go. He was so much older than she, with a purity of passion like she’d never before known. Nothing got in the king’s way when he set his heart on a thing, especially when that thing came as a mission from his stars.
Dalat had been glad to be such a mission. Destiny was romantic, and not something the Third Kingdom empresses put much stock in: hard work and loyalty made queens, they said, not prophecy. But there was little room for adventure without faith.
The queen of Innis Lear sighed. Here she’d had twenty years of destiny, and she would not go back and change a moment. Dalat kissed her husband. “Gaelan,” she murmured against his mouth.
He had refused for so long to speak of this moment; now she would give him no choice. This they would experience together; he owed her that, because he loved her. Because his stars and his enemies had built this cagearound her. She would kiss him as she died, exchange vows of love once more, and then he would know that his faith in the stars was true and right. He would keep his faith and be able to love their daughters. Without her. Be both father and mother.
Her fingers tingled: the poison would numb her and put her to sleep, Brona had promised, and she would die in a daydream.
“Gaelan, wake up.”
