MARS BARELY SAW the corridor in front of him as he strode through Errigal Keep. He slid his hand along the stone wall, but his vision was a blur of blue-black wrath, and fear, and guilt.
His name was called behind him, and he ignored it the first time. The second time it was said sharply, and he paused, leaning into the wall. It was Elia’s voice, Elia Lear come after him.
She ducked around him, putting her small body between him and the heavy stone wall. Her dark eyes were glaring, now they were alone, her mouth bowed in displeasure. Anger, even. She put both hands on his chest and pushed.
It did not budge him at all.
“How dare you take this onto yourself, Morimaros,” she said furiously.
“It had to be done,” he said back, just as upset. He curled his fingers around her wrists, squeezing with careful control. “Ban Errigal was mine—my soldier, my spy—and now mine to show justice.”
“Revenge, you mean!”
A retainer passed, solicitously ignoring them.
The king took deep breaths in an attempt to rein in his emotions. But the air was thick, the corridor narrow, and beautiful Elia so close. His throat narrowed, too, and his chest clenched. He had to breathe. Mars jerked away and dragged Elia with him. She walked stiffly as he led her outside into the cold night. Soldiers camped everywhere, shadow bodies, impossible to tell apart. Around the long dark wall of the Keep he and Elia went, and to a corner where the outer fortification and the castle joined. There he stopped, turned her, and tucked her against the sheltered corner, blocked the wind with his body. He gasped for air, head fallen back. The night sky was blissfully huge and clear, the stars bright.
“Breathe, Morimaros,” she said gently, unlacing the ties at the collar of his dark blue Learish tunic. She freed his throat, then slid her hands up to his smooth jaw. After a brief touch, she dropped her hands and sighed angrily.
“Elia,” he said, low and longing.
“You acted the king—it was my negotiation. You undercut my authority.”
“No! I was a man—your man, to fight for you. Like the Fox himself said: kings use champions to fight their battles. Let me be your champion.”
“It should have been my choice; you should have listened to me. If you were my man, my champion, you would have stopped when I said no.”
Mars opened his mouth to argue, but couldn’t. He snapped it closed again, clenching his jaw in renewed anger—at himself, at the Fox, at all of them.
“I should send you away. Now. Before dawn can come and—”
“No, Elia, please.”
She crossed her arms. “Would you even go? If I commanded you to get your men and go before dawn, sail away so I could deal with this on my own, would you? I do not think so. You are not very good at taking orders.”
He stared at her, wanting nothing so much as for her to touch him again. His shoulders heaved. His thoughts fled through a maze of possibilities: the answers he could offer, the actions he could take, and what she would do, then his response, and on and on and on. It all turned to tragedy. For himself, and for ruined Ban Errigal.
In the end he said nothing.
“I thought so.” Elia’s arms relaxed until she held them still at her sides. “Then tell me, why did you do this? Challenge him?”
“I did it for you.”
“No, you did not! You did it for you. So why?”
Mars burst out, “Because I had to! Because he betrayed me. He was mine, my soldier and spy and—and my friend, and he threw me aside!”
“He was mine first. And before that he was his own, and his spirit belongs to Innis Lear. None of us are yours, Morimaros. We do not do things as you do; we have rootwater and poison in our blood and that makes us strong. This is not your island. It is mine.”
His hands shook. His heart, too. He’d not felt helpless like this since he was a small child. Not even when his father died and Mars had slid the Blood and the Sea onto his finger. “I know,” he said. “But you’re right, I don’t—I don’t know how to be other than a king.”
“You don’t have to. You can’t, and we shouldn’t have pretended otherwise.”
The grieved wisdom in her eyes filled Mars with longing again. To bundle her away to some safety, to tear her from all of this so she never had to carry this kind of weight. The kind of weight that made a king promise to kill his friend in a few short, dark hours. Nausea crawled up his throat.
Mars swallowed it painfully and whispered another truth. “I loved him.”
“I know.” In the darkness it was difficult to see; only a flicker of distant light from the Keep and torches lit along the ramparts overhead offered any break in the night. But her eyes shone, sharp and black and teary. “Please don’t kill him.”
The words cut between them; Mars stepped back. “He might kill me instead.”
Elia surged forward and grabbed his face—too hard. She dug her fingers around his jaw. “Don’t let him do that, either,” she commanded.
Mars felt the breath of her words slide along his chin, and he finally kissed her.
He kissed her slowly and desperately, as if her lips were his destiny, shaping him with every glancing touch or press or bite. An inexorable progression from who he’d been before, to who he would be now.
She hardly moved at first, except to allow it, then her clutching fingers relaxed and she touched his cheeks gently. He lifted her by the elbows and pulled her firmly against him, tasting the salt of tears on her mouth, the tang of lip paint, her softness, and then her power when Elia suddenly kissed him back.
Wind slipped around her and tugged at him, coiling around his neck, fingering his short hair and eyelashes. It giggled and whined. Elia slid her hands down his chest, grasped at his arms, at his ribs and waist, shifting and moving exactly like the wind she was.
Mars held her head in his large hands, kissing her until he needed to breathe. Then he leaned back enough to catch her blurry, fluttering gaze. She licked her lips.
“I love you, too,” the king of Aremoria said, hoarsely. And, “Do you forgive me?”
She’s said so much to Ban at the pavilion: forgiven him, her blessing and condemnation both.
Elia asked, “Should I forgive the man or the king?”
Slowly, Mars shook his head. He was both. Always.
“I will do what you tell me to do,” he said, touching a thumb to her bottom lip. “Whatever that is. Anything you order, right now.” He ran his thumb along the soft skin, then let go. His entire being longed to hold her closer, to beg Elia for what he wanted, to sink onto his knees before her, even as a king. “And forever from now, I will be honest with you—even if it makes Aremoria and Innis Lear enemies, for politics or trade or anything. I will tell you the truth.”
“Mars,” she said carefully, as if tasting the flavor of the nickname. “And Morimaros. Man and king.”
“I wish we could be only one thing, choose only one thing.”
Elia said, ferociously, “I don’t want to be chosen above all things, one thing most of all. I want to be a part of someone’s whole.”
He was silent a moment, studying her. “Do you remember all those weeks ago, at the Summer Seat, when you said I was the Lion of War and as such always apart from your Child Star? That they could not exist in the same sky, because of how they are created by the shapes around them?”
She nodded.
“What would happen if the eye of the lion were named Calpurlugh? It is only semantics; it is only what some old man said long ago, that makes such a thing impossible.”
“New shapes,” she murmured glancing up at the sky. “You want to make new shapes.”
“I don’t know what else a king is good for,” he said ruefully.
Elia Lear took his hand, the one missing its royal ring, and drew a long breath. She tilted her head toward the wind as it teased wisps of her curls free at her temple and ear. She said, “Fight for me at dawn, Morimaros of Aremoria. I will be ready, with a crown of hemlock.”