Tessa Gratton - The Queens of Innis Lear

“Maybe,” Gaela said, unusually thoughtful. Gaela, who had always favored more direct responses. At seventeen she’d bargained with Astore directly, demanding military training for herself. At nineteen she’d plotted to poison their father, and only Regan had convinced her sister of the folly of losing the king before he—or the island—blessed Gaela’s inheritance. Love him, or pretend to; let his throne be a rock of strength and a known position, while we shore up the rest of the island for ourselves, until we are ready and our methods are impenetrable.

“I promised you years ago,” Regan soothed. “I promised you that we—that I—would be his downfall. Do you remember the star under which I was born?”

“None.”

Regan swallowed the bitter word. “None. I was born under an empty sky, a sliver of blackness our father cannot bring himself to love. You were born under the Star of the Consort, with the Throne on the rise. Double stars, which Father claimed negated each other for how they were webbed that night by the sheer, high clouds. But you and I know my star was already with you. The Throne and the Consort, you and me. Father could never understand, but we do. We understand, Gaela.” She clutched at her belly, the tiny star she couldn’t yet feel, but already burned in her heart. Regan would destroy the world for this singular star of hers, this helpless, sparking thing. When she told Connley she was pregnant, if he hesitated for even a moment, the man—no matter how passionate, how glorious—would be sliced from her life. Regan stared at her sister, willing Gaela to agree, to accept Regan’s word.

She did. Of course she did. Gaela twisted around to dip her whole hand into the well. She splashed the holy water against Regan’s neck.

With the sky as witness overhead, and the sleeping city of Astora below, the sisters made new promises to each other, against their father, and toward the future of Innis Lear.

REGAN KNEW THAT when in residence at the Summer Seat, her sister Gaela did not share chambers with the Duke Astore, but chose instead to occupy the rooms that had been hers as a child, when this castle was Gaela’s favorite for its nearness to the rocky cliffs and caves their mother had loved.

Immediately upon arriving at the keep, Regan left Connley to find his supper and knocked gently at Gaela’s chamber door. “It’s me, sister.”

The door was thrown open and there Gaela stood, regal and tall in a dark red robe fastened with a sash, thick twists of black hair loose around her shoulders. Regan slipped inside and nudged the door shut again before putting her arms around Gaela’s neck and touching their cheeks together.

Gaela kissed Regan’s temple and cupped her sister’s face. “Your eyes are pink.”

Regan, who had only just divested herself of her cloak and muddy travel boots, pushed away and wiped her hands down the front of her bodice, as if her palms were filthy. They were not. Her hands paused for a breath just over her belly, and her face lowered.

“No!” cried Gaela, whipping around to swipe a clay jar of wine off the near table with her fist. It broke against the floor. The wine splashed, staining the wooden slats.

Starting at the streams and tiny reddish puddles, at the shards of clay, Regan saw flashes of hardened brown flesh, pieces of herself sprawled broken there. She clenched her fingers into fists, bruising her palms with her nails. The hurt relieved her.

“Why?” Gaela asked in a low, dangerous tone. She leaned back against the table, gripping its edge.

“I don’t know, Gaela,” Regan snarled.

“Is it Connley?”

“No.”

The eldest sister stared unblinking, waiting with the gathered fury of an army.

Regan refused to be cowed, returning the gaze, cool and still.

Silence stretched between them.

The very moment sorrow slipped in to replace anger in Gaela’s eyes, Regan spoke again. “I consulted with Brona Hartfare at the start of the summer, and have done all I know to do, but there is …”

Her sister stepped forward and embraced Regan again, tighter and with a shaking intensity.

She wept, with a weariness that dragged her toward the floor. But her sister, as always, held her upright. A tower, the strongest oak, the true root of Regan’s heart.

“I won’t give up,” Regan said, leaning her cheek against Gaela’s shoulder. She drew a deep breath, awash in the familiar scent of iron, clay, and rich evergreen that clouded Gaela. A fire crackled in the small round hearth that split the wall between the rooms they’d shared as girls: the one full of weapons and cast-off leather armor, bits of steel and pots of the soft, scented clay Gaela used to shape her hair at court; the other near empty, as Regan chose to sleep with her husband now. Though there still was a trunk left behind, filled with girlish dresses and flower dolls and Regan’s first recipe of herbal secrets she’d saved for her own daughters. Uselessly, it seemed.

“Sit at the fire,” Gaela ordered, with her Regan-reserved tenderness.

Regan removed her slippers and lifted a wool blanket from the hearth, gathering it about her shoulders as she sank into a low chair. “I will find a way to look inside myself, Sister. To find the cause of my … difficulties. There must be some magic raw and strong enough to speak with my body, to demand conversation with my womb.”

Gaela dropped herself into the chair opposite Regan. “If not, we must consider Elia,” she said bitterly. “Those kings courting her would not work, for they would want her issue for their own people, but perhaps … perhaps she could marry that bold boy, Errigal.”

“Rory,” Regan said. “It would be a strong match, her blood and his iron magic, though the boy himself has little power, or never developed it much, thanks to his milky mother.”

“I cannot confide in Elia,” Gaela said suddenly, vehemently, protesting her own suggestion. “Our baby sister is too like Lear. Takes his side, always. Would she want the crown herself, instead of making her children my heirs? Or fill their heads with starry nonsense? Would her ways weaken the children? She gave up your wormwork, too, after all. Is there any of Dalat in her? Any fire of adventure or conquest?”

“And what of my Connley, should Elia’s children inherit your crown? What of him, and us?”

Gaela snorted. “I care not for Connley’s prospects.”

Regan bit the inside of her lips to hold her expression cool and unconcerned. This was an old ritual, and she no longer argued on Connley’s behalf to her sister. Connley’s future was up to Regan alone. She said, “Elia can never threaten us for the crown. She has kept herself too hidden in the star towers, as our father’s starry shadow and acolyte. Some will love her for it, but not enough to follow her against us. Connley would swallow her up if she tried, even with Errigal her husband.”

“On that Astore will agree.”

“Let us eat, then, Gaela, and have this mess cleared.”

After marching to the door, Gaela flung it open, half calling already for a servant, but there stood Elia instead.

Their youngest sister froze, startled, a hand poised to knock. She wore the drab robes of a star priest, but her hair was rolled up and decorated with a net of crystals.

Gaela’s fury at the sight of Dalat’s jewelry flashed in the sudden tightening of her mouth, and Elia put her hands protectively up to her hair. She said, “Father put it in this afternoon, before I went to meet the kings.”