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 she 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.