His eyes were closed, his skin yellowed and sunken beneath stark red scratches and a flowery bruise. He’d been washed, his hair slicked back, and his shoulders were bare; torso, too, until the thin blanket pulled nearly to his navel. A great, bloody bandage wrapped his chest and right shoulder. Ban Errigal was a garden of bruises and cuts shiny with salve.
The entire place smelled of sweat, blood, and clear, sharp medicine.
Seeing him infuriated her.
Her hands shook; she swallowed bile and sniffed great tears away. Her jaw clenched. This was what she’d been driven to, this moment in this dark room, just the two of them, him dying, her… she did not know. No longer sister, no longer daughter. A wizard and a queen.
A queen of all this: Her father—dead! Her sisters—dead! And for what? For this rageful creature. Pitiful, and still alive.
Elia hitched her skirts up and climbed over his body. His lips curled, and he hissed painfully through teeth, wincing, and his eyelids fluttered.Mama?he seemed to mouth.
She straddled his waist and leaned down to put the edge of the knife under his chin.
The touch of cold steel snapped his eyes open.
“Look what you’ve done to me,” she whispered.
“Elia.”
Her name thick as a prayer on his tongue.
She choked, eyes burning with tears. “Regan is dead. And Gaela is dead. And myfather! You murdered him! But you’re not sorry. You would not change a thing!”
Ban did not blink or look away. He did not deny he’d killed King Lear.When he swallowed, his throat leaned into the dagger. “My choices brought me here, and yours you. I am what I am, what I have always been.”
Her mouth contorted; the edges of her sight rippled. “I loved you more than anyone,” Elia whispered. “Yet you are the one who taught me to hate! Not even my sisters could do that! It wasyou.”
The blade pressed harder. His chin lifted, but there was no place for the Fox to hide. He did not move his arms, or tense; he did nothing to escape.
“You loved me,” Ban whispered, closing his eyes.
Elia trembled. She readied herself to take revenge, to slice this blade across his neck, to kill him as her father had been killed. Swiftly, some beast to be put out of its misery.
And he did look miserable. His eyes opened again, and he met her gaze with something calm, relieved in them. “I am glad,” he said, thickly. “I am glad to die at your hand and no other’s, Elia. Queen of Innis Lear.”
Tears plopped onto his chin.
Her tears.
She threw the knife across the room and collapsed against him, ignoring his small cry of pain. Elia curled her fingers in the blanket, tore at it, though it would not rip. She had to do it, or she might hit him, scratch at his bandages and see his wound gape anew, bite his bruises, beat him and make him hurt the way she hurt. She squeezed her eyes closed, ground her teeth against the shaking sobs.
Ban did nothing but breathe and then he lifted his less-injured arm to put his hand on her cheek.
It calmed her in a gut-wrenching flash.
Elia kissed Ban, like it was the last thing she would ever do: hard and angry, smearing tears with lips, fast and desperate.
Then she got up, and she left.
He said nothing to stop her, though his right hand shifted, fingers curling like he could catch her invisible traces and pull her back.
But Elia was gone; it was only a long-awaited queen who emerged from that dark embrace, who pushed out into the brightly lit corridor, where all her people waited. The light dazzled her earth-black eyes. She paused, touched a hand over her heart, and called for the hemlock crown.
IT BEGINSWHENthe new queen of Innis Lear admires the glint of ice crystals upon the standing stones; how each point bursts into silver strands, reaching for the next, connecting the frozen stars with interlocking lines of frost. Her breath appears as it passes her lips, given body by the chill of winter, and as she did when she was a little girl, she plays with it. She puffs air out in rhythm with her heart, then blows a long, thin stream, mouth tugging into a smile.
Moonlight silvers the flat hill upon which the trio of stones rise out of the moorland like ancient priests—or, she thinks, like three brave sisters. She walks to the smallest of them, fur slippers crunching gently over icy winter grass. Her glove is a white mark against the deep gray stone, and slowly, slowly, heat from her body spreads to the frost, melting it in an aura.
To the north the horizon blisters with bright firelight from the fortress of Dondubhan, where the Midwinter celebration lifts the Longest Night into glory and hope, where all her people still sing, drink, and dance. Where the king of Aremoria waits, summer gold and patient, for the queen to return, and the half-blind Oak Earl smiles at his new wife, and Rory Errigal wears a new duke’s chain, shirt stained from excess wine. Their queen should be there, she knows, and she will be. But this last atonement must to be served, this final moment to bury the remains of war and suffering and broken hearts.
