Tessa Gratton - The Queens of Innis Lear

“Sister,” Gaela said harshly. Not from anger or irritation, but for herself. Gaela wielded her words and movements like armor and war hammers. Regan preferred her own thorns to be small and precise and subtle, though no less deadly.

Settling back onto her heels, Regan sang out in the language of trees. Sister! One of the only such words Gaela understood.

Gaela Astore fumed out of the shadows, stomped to Regan’s side, and fell hard to her knees. She wore leather and wool, an empty sword belt and a skirt of mail. Her hair was twisted back like the roots of an oak, pulling her forehead wide. She was a beauty, despite herself, Regan had always thought: a slice of moon, magnificent and dangerous.

“This should be filled in,” Gaela said, gesturing at the old well. “Why did you wish to meet here? After all these months.”

Regan waited, patient with Gaela as with no other.

Gaela’s eyes roamed her sister’s face and body, coming to rest on the hand still curled at Regan’s belly. “Yes,” Gaela whispered. And her mouth broadened into a toothy smile.

Regan grasped Gaela’s hand and flattened it against her belly, pressing their hands together there. “The future queen.”

“Or king,” Gaela answered, fisting her hand in the layers of Regan’s skirt, and dragged her sister toward her. They embraced. For so many years this had been a piece of their goal: Gaela on the throne of Innis Lear, with Regan’s children for her heirs. Gaela had been sixteen when she swore to her sister, fast and secretly, that no child would lock into her womb, she would make sure of it. We will be king and queen of Lear, iron-strong Gaela had promised her willow-thin fourteen-year-old sister. No matter husbands or rivals, it will be you and me, our bodies and our blood. Regan had kissed her cheek and promised.

Regan kissed her again now, and touched their cheeks together. She braced for the next step.

The lady-warrior took Regan’s shoulders in demanding hands and said, “How long?”

“I only was certain five days ago, and so it will come in the earliest weeks of spring. You are the first to know.”

“You must marry, and fast.”

“We’ll say we eloped already, and everyone will believe it.”

Gaela’s brows lifted. “Of the neat, passionless Regan Lear? I have my doubts.”

“But, sister”—Regan’s lips pressed a secretive smile—“they will believe it of me with this man. That we were forced to hide our passion from the king.”

“Who is the father?” Gaela growled.

This sparked a brilliant fire in Regan’s eyes: shards of brown and tan and a blue just like their father’s, tossed together in a tempest that seemed a gentle brown when beheld from the distance most gave between themselves and the sly middle daughter. Only a handful of people stood close enough to know Regan had slices of her father inside her eyes. “Lear will be so furious, Gaela,” she whispered, glee and cruelty warring in the thin tone. “And Astore, too. It is the worst and the best I could do.”

Understanding passed swiftly to Gaela. “Oh, Regan, my love, you did not.”

“Connley, Connley, Connley, ” Regan said, differently each time. First casual, then wicked, then deep in her mouth, as if she could taste him buried there.

Gaela thrust herself to her feet. “His grandfather despised our mother! His mother sought for years to marry our father! You give Connley the hope of the crown now?”

“His children only.” Regan slid to stand as well. “And a knife in our father’s heart.”

“So, too, it will divide us, all the more because my husband and your lover are chiefest of rivals.”

“It is done.”

“You should have discussed it with me!”

“You did not ask my advice when you chose Astore!”

“Ah! But Astore was the obvious, only choice! He is fierce and, by our father’s and other men’s reckoning, worthy of the crown. The anticipated alternate, should the line of Lear fall, because of his proven strength and his blasted stars. I chose him to play the part I want him to play. He thinks already to have a crown from me. Connley will not rest with that. Does he fear you? I will not believe if you say he does.”

Regan touched her tongue to her bottom lip, uncontrolled before her sister as she was before no other. “He does not fear me, no, nor I him. But Connley feels a more possessive thing for me, one that will not drive him away as fear or pity or sorrow might drive yours.”

“Surely you do not speak of love, ” Gaela scoffed. “Love is no strength.”

“Not even between us?”

Gaela scoffed. “This is not love between us, we are one. We are beyond love!”

“Are we?” Regan touched her sister’s earlobe, tugged gently. She knew Gaela had a heart of iron in her chest and cared only slightly for anything she did not feel in her very bones. Worse yet was Gaela at expressing emotions that were not the fiery sort, were not those powerful feelings allowed to great warriors and kings; she disdained all things considered womanly as she disdained her own womb. Regan could not remember if Gaela had been born so, or learned it from their father, his stars, and Dalat’s death. All Regan knew was that her sister had the stars of conquerors in her sky, and such men did not love well. Gaela thought she was beyond love’s reach, while Regan believed herself to be composed of nothing but love. Terrible, devastating, insatiable love.

“So.” Gaela sighed gruffly and put her hands on Regan’s hips. “This is the child of two royal lines, then.”

“Three, sister. Lear and Connley and the Third Kingdom.”

“Connley’s grandfather said it was a taint in the blood of the island, that Dalat was here.”

“ My Connley is proud of it,” Regan said.

“Connley. Connley. ” Gaela narrowed dark eyes. “You have laid yourself with him, you bear his child, and yet do not call him the name his mother gave him?”

Regan forced herself not to lower her lashes, angry at how difficult it was to hold her sister’s gaze in this moment. The union with Connley would be a wedge between them; Gaela was unfairly correct. But she still protested, “Connley is himself, and so too is he his land, his title, his own ferocious crown, sister. Connley is all the crags and peaks, the rushing waters and moors of the eastern coast.” Regan’s voice lowered again, memories of skin and cries and a bed of earth quieting her. “Connley is so many things more than his person.”

Gaela sucked in a shocked breath. “You spoke of love, but it is your love. You love him. ”

Regan shuddered, skin tightening around the dangerous expansion of her heart as something quickened, much lower.

“Regan.”

“Gaela.” Regan sighed. “Don’t you see how this is our best result? Who better to father your heirs than our father’s least favored duke, one sure never to align on his side? Lear will have to swallow it, he must, because here, listen: Connley’s stars predict it! I’ve seen his birth chart, and the trees are adamant. The rest of the island will rejoice at the wisdom of it. Better than marrying me to Morimaros of Aremoria! Even you see the folly in allowing talks of such nature. Connley is already ours; he is entrenched in Innis Lear, sprung from our storm-wracked waves and rooted in iron. And, Gaela, his land is wild and his keep strong; his wells are far better than this one beside us. Deep and rich and flowing. They did not give up on the rootwaters as Father ordered. Do you see? Together you and I bring the two greatest dukedoms under the line of Lear. Through your rightful crown, and my growing child. We will make this island ours, the opposite of our father’s foolish skyward devotions and heartless intentions!”