Then she was gone, leaving her last sister behind.
Wind ruffled the last autumn-yellow leaves, tossing them down onto Elia Lear like a benediction.
TWENTY YEARS AGO, THE SUMMER SEAT
GAELA CROUCHED ONher hands and knees in the center of her bed chamber. Her arms shook and her shoulders heaved. She squeezed her eyes so tightly shut it pulled at her scalp.
Her sister crept slowly into the room, even younger and slighter. Regan was not afraid of Gaela, but afraid of whatever in the world had caused this uproar. The fur and blankets had been torn from the bed and crumpled across the floor. Ashes from the fire and chunks of black coal were strewn over the hearth. The small weapons rack lay crashed on the ground, spears and elegant knives scattered hard. A tapestry in the bold patterns of the Third Kingdom had been torn off the wall; threads and rags of it were pinned high still, tatters drifting in the ocean breeze that slipped salty and cool through the narrow window.
Gaela had ripped off her little leather vest, too, a gift from their father that was very like a soldier’s leather chest piece. She’d scoured it with her nails, then grabbed one of the spearheads and slashed at the leather, cutting it in ugly stripes.
“Gaela?” whispered Regan, kneeling beside her sister. She smoothed her pretty skirt and held her hands folded in her lap, waiting for Gaela’s signal.
A great sniffle and then a following sob were enough; Regan wrapped her thin body around Gaela’s back, hugging with all her might. She hummed and murmured, pressing her cheek to Gaela’s shoulder.
For a long time, Gaela cried, in silent, painful gasps and sobs, her tears stuck in her throat. She fisted her hands against her knees, then slammed them into the now ragged rug, again and again, until Regan caught them and held tight. Gaela shoved her away and then scrambled after, grabbing Regan into an embrace. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she hissed, horrified at hurting her sister.
They leaned together, Gaela’s bloody knuckles smeared against Regan’s soft palms, foreheads touching, eyes closed.
“Did you know about the prophecy?” Gaela asked, in a bare breath of a whisper.
“There are so many.”
“About Mother’s death.”
Regan stiffened, wary.
Gaela struggled to breathe without trembling. “The stars say she will die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.”
“No.” Regan pulled back to stare at her sister’s face. Studied the stain of tears and pink, swollen eyes.
“I heard Satiri say it, and she doesn’t believe it, but they were talking about the baby. That it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl, because what matters already happened. She already has afirstdaughter.”
“Satiri doesn’t like prophecy, maybe she misheard.”
Gaela shook her head. She rubbed her eyes with the backs of her wrists. “Satiri doesn’t mishear, and she doesn’t gossip. I turn sixteen in eight years.”
It was twice as long as she’d already lived.
“I should die instead,” Gaela said. She released Regan and reached for the spearhead again: a spade of iron, the tip jagged and sharp. She put it to her neck and pressed, but Regan took hold of her wrist and dragged it away.
“No, you can’t. You can’t do that.”
“Better me than our mother.”
“It won’t stop it, if that’s the prophecy. Say again what Satiri heard.”
“The queen will die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.”
Regan pressed her lips into a line, thinking, her eyes flicking between her sister’s. “You have to live, Gaela. With me. I need you—I don’t have my own stars, you promised to share with me yours. And—and that prophecy is about the day of your birth. You already were born, Gaela,” Regan said with gentle, cold certainty, disturbing in a girl of only six years. “It’s too late.”
Too late.
Gaela stared at her little sister, breathing hard and fast. She’d already killed her mother, before she even knew she could.
This occurred to her like a tiny seed: if she’d already done the worst, it didn’t matter what terrible things she had yet to do. So the eldest daughter of Lear gripped her sister’s hand, and promised never to let go.
It was too late for anything else.
