THE NIGHT BEFORE the Battle of Liresfane, four prophecies were cast.

Connley Errigal fanned holy cards out before his wife as they stood together in the light of a torch, surrounded by tents and muttering soldiers, snoring men and settling horses, the clink of bowls and cups, sudden laughter: the sounds of a camp at night. “Breathe in the wind, and pick,” he said.

Her hot blue eyes did not leave his face as she reached a pale hand and drew a card.

The Tree of Ancestors. In this deck, it was a ropy black tree with roots as twisted and intricate as its branches. Tongues of flame licked at the branches against the dark blue sky; beneath the green earth, stars lined the roots like silver leaves.

“Another,” he murmured, and Isarna chose the Bird of Sacrifice. Also a mirror-image card: a sleek-winged falcon at the edge of a spring, its feathers lined with lightning. In the reflection, the falcon’s feathers were made of blood.

“Two more,” Connley said, though he did not want her to.

His wife met his gaze this time, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

Connley shook his head, for he had no words to describe the gruesome feeling tearing at his heart.

“Conn.”

He lowered his hands. Holy cards fluttered to the trampled grass in a spiral like a star chart. Through blurring eyes Connley saw the leaping Salmon constellation, and above its arcing back the Wolf Star marked by the Saint of Stars—sanctified destiny. He said, “Do you know what you are meant to be? You’re connected to this land, and you’re torn. You have a great destiny, Isarna.”

She sighed. “I always have.”

“But it’s near. It’s … now.” Crouching, Connley touched the card holding the place in the spilled night sky where Hotspur’s birth star hung.

The Tree of Home.

His shoulders bowed, and then his wife touched his cheek, kneeling beside him. Wind nudged his lashes and the short ends of his curls, and this prophecy coiled in his ears: She will become home.

Connley whispered, “Rowan says someone must be anchored here, when he opens the star roads. He thinks it will be him, but what if it’s you? What if that’s what they’ve wanted, Isarna, all this time?”

Lady Hotspur kissed her husband, cradling his face in her rough hands. “If that is the answer, it is easy. I anchored myself on Innis Lear, and the whole island called my name. I can do the same, and better, at home in Aremoria.” She smiled.

Home, Connley whispered in the language of trees.

RELUCTANTLY, THE NAMELESS wizard stared up at twinkling stars.

“I don’t even know what I want to hear,” Prince Hal murmured beside him, her face turned up like its own moon.

“Good, because prophecies are mostly a waste of time.”

The prince laughed. “That is the least wizardly thing you’ve ever said.”

He shrugged one shoulder, feeling petulant.

Hal put her arm around him and pressed her cheek to his temple. “What do you see when you gaze at them?”

“Lies.”

“Wizard, don’t make me say your name.”

With a little sigh, he cast his eyes up again, marking constellations and sheer clouds, and the waning moon just risen in the east. Beneath his boots the earth trembled, but only with magic, only with crawling roots. Those were his tools, his masters, the avenues through which he might grasp at the future. In the sky, the stars softened and smeared, like lines of cold wind, blowing from east to west.

The wizard thought longingly of the queens of Innis Lear.

“One for Aremoria, one for Innis Lear,” he said. “That’s what the wind is saying. And She will become home and …”

“Home, hmm? Like your riddle. I’m not afraid, wizard. I’m ready to be home. But what do the stars say?”

The wizard shook his head. He faced Prince Hal and put a hand over her heart, spreading his fingers like wings. “Here is a prophecy for you: Be your own star.”

“And what does that mean?” she whispered, leaning nearer to peer into his eyes.

The wizard smiled mysteriously.

Just then flapping startled them both, and a small crow dropped through the night, awkward and irritable (night was not a time for crows to fly). It brushed its wing against the wizard’s cheek and he saw

long white braids

the ruins, a rustle of leaves tossed by wind

elegant hands

a line of earth and salt

Shooing the crow away with thanks, the wizard said, “Rowan Lear is at the old temple.”

DESPITE THE CRUMBLING nature of the walls and the wild vines spilling like tapestries from the trees, despite the ruined old well and nothing but shadows where once doors stood, Rowan Lear could sense the holy space around him. Long ago, this temple had echoed with joy and worship, with blessings, prophecy, and the language of trees.

The Poison Prince brushed aside a line of earth and salt, smiling gently. It was no barrier, but a signal. The wizard would know by wind or bird that Rowan had come, but the prince did not believe the wizard would bother him. Not here. It was only that neither Celedrix nor Banna Mora wanted their enemies using the temple for leverage.

Where two arms of the temple would once have met, a mound of black rocks hunched, damp and recently disturbed. The scent of rootwaters lifted to his nose: bright, but tinged with sweet decay. Rowan lowered himself to his knees and slid a leather pack from his shoulder. Inside were rolled star charts and clean parchment, charcoal pencils, candles, and a mirror setting he could use to reflect the flame of his candle onto the parchment so that it would not glare at his eyes nor ruin the crisp night sky.

Calmly, the prince unrolled parchment and without the aid of light sketched the arc of the sky. He smeared out stars and parts of constellations based on the angles of the wind and clouds, and the trees surrounding him: he spiraled his chart tighter and tighter, using all his fingers to connect some stars and shatter others, until the chart was a mass of black shadows precisely placed, with only a few tiny spots of creamy parchment speckled through.

Blinking, Rowan sat back and studied the prophecy.

It was the Star of Third Birds falling between the Child Star, the Wolf Star, and the Elegance. And Terestria’s Heart in balance.

a line of starlight stretching like a road between Aremoria and Innis Lear. Rowan, somehow, at both ends

a saint for Innis Lear

a heart for Aremoria

Rowan saw the face of the Dragon of the North, her garnet-bright eye swung to stare at his soul. He stared back, and through her, until his gaze landed upon the base of the Liresfane well, where clung a single weedy white flower.

ON INNIS LEAR, deep in the heart of Connley Castle, Era Star-Seer spread a woolen blanket and lay herself down. The old oak tree in the center of this ruined black castle blocked much of the sky from her eyes with its reaching, thick branches, but Era had earned her epithet for never needing to rely on sight alone. She held all the night skies inside her heart, and could cast them up accurately with little more than a reference point.

Tonight she could see the Child Star in the north, just over the edge of the black wall. She visualized all the constellations she could not see, those partially obscured, those still dipped below the horizons, those hidden behind thin silver clouds. The old moon rose. She breathed deeply and watched as the oak bent beneath an insistent wind: the shifting branches marked out a rhythm of prophecy against the night.

For a moment, the stars themselves became burning leaves dotting the oak branches, the limbs and thinnest twigs: silver-fire leaves, the Tree of Ancestors brought vividly to life.

Era gasped and sat up, seeing the path of the future in a sudden clear stream.

She would be too late!

Knowing it didn’t stop her from tearing through the castle grounds to the stables, and pounding against the door until an ostler woke to help her saddle a horse in the darkness.