Silence drew between them, Celedrix watching her daughter, Hal returning the steady gaze of her mother.
Celeda asked, “Why?”
Hal’s hands trembled in relief at the simple question. It mattered that her mother assumed she’d had a reason. “There is much I have to tell you, Mother, but the most salient is this: Glennadoer murdered Ryrie Lear, and sought shelter with me, to ally his betrayal to Aremoria, and when I refused, he would have killed me had I not defended myself.”
The queen whispered a thing in the Mother-tongue that sounded like a wondering curse. “You’re uninjured? You’re well?”
“Yes.”
“By the blessings of the Luminous,” Celeda murmured. Then she leaned forward off her pillows. “It is an incredible thing to have defeated the Bear of Glennadoer, Calepia. We can use that for much good. No matter what you choose.”
“What I choose?”
The queen of Aremoria hesitated, leaning back again. “I have missed you while you were on Innis Lear, and given much thought to you, your future, and what is best. I was gone for ten long years, and I missed not only raising you, but the things that made you who you are, and what you want. When I think of legacy, I think of you.”
“Mother …” Hal had no voice for the word, and so her lips shaped empty air.
“I want you to be what you are. I want you to follow your heart to your own ambitions, Hal Bolinbroke. What I want for you and what you want for you—if they do not match, I can give all of this, put all of this to your sister. Because I want you to be happy. I want you to reach for strength and glory on your own terms. It is the best way for me to have any legacy at all. You. What you say of me when I am gone, how you remember—” Celeda stopped suddenly.
Hal blinked as if there were tears to hide, but her eyes were dry. “Mother,” she said, in the absence of anything else to say.
“You will tell stories of me,” the queen whispered. “Many children do not fondly recall their parents.”
“I do—I will. You …” Hal was lost. She did not like the particular swell of morbid expectation growing between them—it was not like her visions and dreams, it was too slow, too surreal.
Celeda said, “If you do not want this crown, tell me, Hal. I will release you. I will make you a knight or a general, I will send you to the Third Kingdom to serve as an ambassador. I will let you be a grape farmer in Ispania.”
“I …” Hal shook her head. “I can’t choose the crown. It’s mine already. I’ve begun to fight for it—it’s too late to choose, Mother.”
“It’s not.”
“Everything I might have had, if I’d had a choice, is …”
“Hal.” The dark certainty in Celeda’s voice stopped her. “Choose.”
Tongue dry, Hal stood. She backed away. “I already did. I chose you. And Aremoria.” Stunned and horrified by the overwhelming sense her world was about to shatter, Hal said, desperately, “I want to be as good as you. I want—I want to be a queen because I deserve it, because I serve and know the right thing to do.”
“I love you, Hal,” Celeda said tenderly enough to bend steel. “As a future queen, then, tell me the rest.”
The prince stared, wanting to push at her mother, wanting this delicate glass moment to break already. But the queen— Hal licked her lips, and obeyed. “I came here straightaway. I wanted to tell you what happened before anyone heard anything, so that together we could form a strategy.”
Her mother’s smile was proud, and Hal’s throat ached with gladness and grief both, a heady, spiraling feeling. “Go on, Prince Hal,” Celedrix said.
“I charmed them, everyone on Innis Lear but for Banna Mora, who is determined in her revenge, to follow a destiny she has discovered on Innis Lear. Hotspur I had on my side, and if not for this murder, if not for the bad ending of my stay, I might have brought her with me to fight against Mora and even Vindomata. Not only because of what I was to her, but she knows the reasons war is going to hurt this land she loves as well as we do. Though she married into Mora’s family, into the noble lineage of Innis Lear, she is the Wolf of Aremoria, Mother. We may still use that.”
“Good. What will you do next? Once I have food brought to us, and send word to the palace that you are gloriously returned, and after you tell me every detail, what will you do?”
Hal bent her head, closed her eyes, and said, “I will go to Charm Kurake, and tell him our wedding will be immediate. I will send invitations of pardon to Caratica Persy if she lays down her arms against me, and to Mercia, though Vindomata will refuse. I will—I will reinstate the Lady Knights, and then I will marry the son of your heart. I will make my sister Vatta a knight, and my advisor, and remind her that what I have earned is mine, she should not stand against me. I will lead the Aremore army north to keep the March, where Mora will go first, and Mercia, and Burgun probably, too. I will hold Aremoria in your name.”
“In yours,” Celedrix said. “Come here.”
Hal went to her mother’s outstretched hand, obedient more than eager. She sat on the edge of the bed, teeth clenched. “I don’t want to know.”
Celeda said nothing.
With a shaking sigh, Hal closed her eyes and said, “But you have to tell me.”
“I’m dying.”
The prince shook her head in easy denial.
“Only my physician and Charm know. So it should remain, for a sickness in the queen now, before you have consolidated your strength, will fuel enemy gossip.”
“I don’t believe you,” Hal said urgently. “It’s—it’s a story of your own, to make me stand up. You don’t have to tell it, I don’t need it. I’m already standing. Please stop.”
Celeda smiled a little, a knowing smile because she knew her daughter well.
Hal could hear her own heartbeat in the thick silence. She shook her head, her fingers too hard against her mother’s.
“I may have months or years,” Celeda said lightly. “Unpredictable. But it will be limited. The pain takes me sometimes, and soon I will not be able to hide it. You must ready yourself.”
“I’m ready to be a queen, but not an orphan,” Hal whispered.
“If you said you were, I’d be offended.”
The smile now on Celeda’s mouth reflected the half-cocked smile of the Prince of Riot, whom Hal suspected was dead and burned—broken at last.
“Go, sweetheart,” Celeda said. “Kiss my cheek and then go eat, bathe, speak with your sister and with Charm if you like. Let me rest, and when you have settled some, when you are able, we will make our plans. Remember: Charm knows, Vatta does not, nor Tigir.”
In a blurry haze, as if her skin had become clouds and her mind a shallow, wide pool, Hal kissed her mother’s cheek and then closed her eyes. She could tell herself a different story, disbelieve everything here. But she did need food, and a bath. She did need this kiss.
“Come back this afternoon,” her mother said, as if this were a day like any other.
HAL WENT TO the residential wing, to Charm of Kurake Queen’s chambers. She did not think, did not speak, but went filthy and hungry and lost. The foreign prince was not there, and Hal entered regardless. She sat upon the same half sofa where she had first conversed with Charm, months ago, and waited. She waited, thoughtless, thought-free, until the door opened and her betrothed was there, coming in alone, with a frown and an air of exasperation.
Prince Hal stood, eyes round and helpless.
Charm closed the door and came to her, said, “Prince Hal, why are you home? Are you well? Are—”
She touched his chest, shook her head, and stepped against him. She whispered, “You’re the only one who knows, she said. The only one.” Hal’s breath caught and she made fists, pushing them both into Charm’s chest. But she leaned into him, forehead against his shoulder.
Carefully, he wrapped his arms entirely around the prince, and held her in silence though she did not weep.
HOTSPUR
Innis Lear, winter
&nb
sp; THREE THINGS FROM that last winter haunted Lady Hotspur. A mother’s cry, a crown of smoke and fire, and her name spoken like it was the end of the world.
First:
Hal’s face was terrible as she stood up from her knees, covered in Glennadoer’s blood. The prince’s lips parted and she murmured to herself, the same phrase again and again. One hand slapped suddenly to her chest and her fingers curled as if to tear into the skin at her collar. She stared at the earl’s dying body, at the blood, at the hilt of the Heir’s Score rising from his chest like a monument.
“Hal,” Hotspur whispered, the name slicing through thick stillness and the gurgle of Glennadoer’s final moments.
Hal turned swiftly, unbalancing enough that she threw out her hand to catch herself. Her eyes were so wide, the vivid brown gaze nailing Hotspur into place. “He wanted me to give him shelter. Convey him to Aremoria for alliance against Innis Lear.”
“You said no,” Hotspur said, stepping farther into the room.
“I said no. But—but …”
With that, the prince grasped the Heir’s Score again and with a terrific grunt wrenched her sword free.
Blood slipped down the blade, scattering in an arc against the floor.
“I have to get out of here,” Hal said softly, as if to herself.
Hotspur grabbed her arm. “No, it will be understandable. Everyone will understand.”
“Mora can say I was working with him to kill Solas. She can say I arranged for him to come here. She can say anything, and she will be believed. I have to go. Don’t you see? Relationships don’t matter. I was wrong—I thought what we were could make our future, but he was—he was her husband. Glennadoer murdered her, his wife, and meant to kill his queen, and … Mora won’t care what we were to each other, either. I killed him. He’s dead, Hotspur.”
This was no look on Hal’s pallid face, in her eyes, that Hotspur had ever seen before. It was both certain and desperate. A decision had been made; there was no story to tell.
Hotspur could not argue. A knight did not argue with her queen.
“All right, Hal,” she whispered. “Get your things fast, I won’t tell anyone he is here yet. Come to the yard as soon as you can. I’ll have Sennos go with you, and—”
“No, none of your personal retainers unless you want to be implicated with me. My wizard, tell him, and Ter Melia, I think.” Hal nodded.
“Fuck,” Hotspur said.
“Keep the rest of my people safe, and send them after me when you can. Though if they end up hostages, Mora will treat them well. And so will you.” Hal got in Hotspur’s face, then, sword hanging from her hand so the tip touched the floor but did not—quite—drag. “Be careful. Do what you must. I love you—and that will always matter to me, if to no one else.”
“I’ll see you in the yard.” Hotspur kissed Hal quickly, tasting blood, and left.
Her last glimpse of Hal was moments later, the two of them crushed together in the lower yard as the search party charged through the barbican gate behind the moon-haired prince of Innis Lear. “Go, Hal.” Hotspur pressed Hal against her horse. Ter Melia swung up onto her saddle; the wizard was nowhere to be found.
Hal kissed her again. Fast and urgent, and stars wheeled overhead and inside Hotspur’s mind. She was terrified this would be the final kiss of her life, as if no other kisses counted. Remember Hal’s lips, she thought. And the texture of Hal’s tongue and the cool leather of Hal’s gloves on Hotspur’s neck. Ice in the air, dissolving hoofbeats, her own thrumming pulse making an ocean of her skull.
The kiss ended. From a breath away Hal said, “Hotspur,” and nothing more: an invocation of all they’d ever been and ever might be.
“Hal,” the Wolf of Aremoria whispered back.
SECOND:
Triplet funeral pyres reflected red-hot in the tears crawling down Rowan Lear’s sober face as he stared at the crackling, popping, melting bodies of his mother and his father and bastard sister. Ryrie Lear had her own pyre, built high beside three standing stones just within sight of Dondubhan fortress. Glennadoer and his unfortunate daughter shared a slighter pyre downslope, yet near enough that from a distance it seemed the same fire. The same plot had murdered them all, the same prophecies and ideology.
Hotspur stood beside Banna Mora, her shoulder an offering of support should Mora choose to accept. Instead, the woman pressed the heel of her hand against her belly, high up, as if to staunch a bleeding gash.
Though Hotspur had barely known the deceased, and hardly knew Rowan better, it was impossible not to sink into the tragedy of the evening. Her guts clenched, her eyes burned, and she let herself cry, as always.
The winds of Innis Lear whispered, One for Innis Lear, one for Aremoria. It was what the island wanted. Innis Lear and Aremoria, one. Together. Every voice of every tree and root murmured the same, again and again, unceasingly.
As the sun set, casting the sky in bonfire colors, Rowan raised his hands before the heavy smoke of his mother’s pyre. He gave a gentle command in the language of trees: The wind lifted at his feet, tugging the hem of his midnight-blue robe. It flared behind him with a snap, and the Child Star pennants carried by retainers snapped in response.
Rowan sighed, songlike, then moved his hands before him, weaving the air with his fingers.
The black column of smoke tightened together, narrowing into a funnel, turning, twisting, but slowly—too slowly. Rowan drew it into separate pieces and braided them with the wind his instrument.
Hotspur felt Innis Lear beneath her feet, approving. The island’s sanction reverberated in her bones like a new sense. Her fingers tightened upon the hilt of her sword; the voice of iron gleefully hissed, I burn, I burn!
She’d never heard it so clearly.
Connley put his hand over hers, enclosing her fingers and the sword hilt. He did not cry, but his gaze was haunted by the dampening weight of grief.
Rowan spread his hands apart and the smoke drew flat like a disk, turning slowly still, and the center opened up. Wind slipped, weaving, into the smoke, and formed it into a ring.
With another little snap, Rowan began to move around the bier. He whistled and whispered, then reached up to point at the smoky ring, where a narrow column of smoke lifted. Seven columns in all he made, evenly spaced around the ring, and at the tip of each tongues of fire blossomed.
The sun vanished, and the moorland fell dark but for this burning diadem and the glow against the three standing stones. The seven flecks of fire gleamed like cut topaz marking the spires of a raw iron crown.
And then Rowan clapped: the smoke dissipated in a gust, blown in all directions.
It rolled out over the lower yard, caressing every person gathered here to witness the funeral.
The prince sank to his knees, and Solas settled a hand on his shoulder. Rowan hugged her thighs, pressed his face against her stomach. The queen’s fingers clenched in the cloth of his robe, and she said, “Our family is always with us, on Innis Lear.” Her voice broke against the name of their island, and Hotspur thought she knew why.
Innis Lear demanded everything a person had to give.
THIRD:
Hotspur closed her eyes when Banna Mora screamed inside the birthing room, as if the raw sound were manifest and could be defeated with blindness. She pressed hard against the stone wall, glad to be out here, not helping with the midwife, the queen, Rowan and Connley and half a dozen women. But still the scream dug into Hotspur’s ears, pouring hot pellets underneath her skin.
A desperate thread connected her to her friend, as Mora balanced between life and death, and Hotspur wanted it. Wanted this with enough intensity it bowed her back. She clung to the terror and hope, the livid need inside her body. She knew this so well: it was war.
That alone taught Hotspur she would be a good mother herself one day, if she survived so long. Someday this war would be hers, too, and beside the desire blossoming deep inside her was an absolute certainty that she was made for this as much as sh
e was made for anything.
Hotspur lowered herself onto her haunches, hands dug against her eyes hard enough that blotches of light appeared, shifting and swirling like fish in a black pond.
By the time Mora’s daughter was born, tiny flowers had shoved up through the frosty crust of Innis Lear, and the rising sun dragged spring in its wake.
PRINCE HAL
Lionis, early spring
FREEZING RAIN GAVE the city of Lionis a streaked quality as Hal Bolinbroke made her way solemnly down the cobbled road to the Quick Sunrise. Her toes were numb with cold, but the cloak she’d wrapped herself in kept the rest of her pleasant enough—except her stomach, which was tangled with nerves.
At her back strode three soldiers in orange tabards over mail shirts, swords sheathed at their hips. It was no quiet approach, but a clarion of armor and stomping bright enough to wake the neighborhood.
Hal had avoided this for weeks. Facing her friends after spending the entire winter apart, and facing them like this, as royalty. Not the Prince of Riot, but the Lion Prince, heir to the throne of Aremoria.
She had been scoured out on Innis Lear, scraped down to her bones, and she was trying to rebuild. Ever since her mother was banished, Hal had looked to another person to anchor her heart. First Morimaros the Great, then Banna Mora, then Hotspur. That was unsustainable for a prince, and worse for a queen. To serve Aremoria, Hal had to be the anchor.
It began today. Before her wedding, before she marched to war, with this simple—impossible—confrontation.
The allies at the palace she’d wooed these past weeks had wished to come with her to her former haunt, but Hal had refused them, knowing she needed to take this leap herself, and prove she could resist temptation.
It was the turning point of her story, after all.
The prince paused before the slumped face of the tavern. The windows were pulled tightly closed and only a thin trickle of smoke rose from the main chimney; those other five mismatched pipes were cold. No music spilled through the cracks in the shutters, though it might’ve a mere hour ago, just before dawn. In the gutter beside the shallow steps leading up to the heavy front door, Hal smelled piss and sour wine, but nothing worse today.
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