LITMIR.BIZ

       ELIA

      THE LAST MEAL Elia took at the Summer Seat was only wine, a dark red that had been her mother’s favorite, borne in a cool carafe by her sisters. Elia could not read their faces, and was too tired to guess their intentions. She wanted them with her so badly she ignored her suspicions and let them enter.

      Regan set three clay cups upon Elia’s small dining table, and Gaela poured them to the brim, chasing Aefa away with a haughty scowl. Both had removed most of their finery from court: Gaela had on her deep red dress, but without pauldron or symbols of armor, and only clay held up her crown of twisting hair; Regan’s fingers remained jeweled, but she’d taken off her elaborate belt and had most of her chains and ribbons pulled out of her hair, to be bound in a simple knot at her nape. Elia had not changed at all, though Aefa, still crying herself, had washed the smeared red paint from Elia’s lip and eyes.

      She wished it had been reapplied, to face this moment.

      “To returning,” Gaela said, holding her cup in the palm of her hand.

      Regan finished the blessing. “When the old fool is dead.”

      Elia knocked her cup over with a shout, spilling wine across the pale table like a wave of fresh blood. Her anger surprised her.

      Regan stood abruptly, though the motion sloshed her own wine onto the wrist of her very fine gown. “Elia,” she snapped.

      Gaela only laughed. “What a fine mess, baby sister.” She drank her full cup of wine. Then she slammed her hand flat down into the puddle, splattering tiny drops onto Elia’s face. They hit like tears on her cold cheeks. “Drink some.”

      Regan flicked her wine-covered hand at Elia, too, as if to add her irritable benediction to Gaela’s.

      A laugh tugged out of Elia, though it was tremulous and dry and annoyed. Her sisters were terrible, but so desperately themselves.

      She did not wipe her skin, but leaned forward and poured more wine into her toppled cup. Lifting it, she said, “To peace between us, and sisterly love, and reconciling with our father.”

      Her sisters drank with her: Gaela with a raised, wry brow, and Regan smiling her untouchable smile. Regan said, “Reconciliation will never happen. We are queens now, Gaela and me. He declared so himself.”

      Not until the Longest Night, they weren’t, Elia knew. But this set them as near as possible. Wine swirled in her belly, and Elia pressed her hand there. She risked herself by saying, “He asked me, when he first sent letters from Aremoria and Burgun this winter, if I thought I would make a good queen. I should have known then, that he was planning something like this.”

      Gaela laughed, but Regan peered closely at the youngest of them. “And do you think it?” she asked.

      “Compared to what?” Elia asked, letting Regan see the challenge there. The burned-out, desperate challenge. Compared to my cruel sisters? she thought at Regan.

      It was Gaela who sneered now. “Do not put yourself against us in this; we have strength at home, while you are only yourself. It would be a butterfly against birds of prey.”

      Elia was too used to the lack of sisterly support to be surprised or even newly injured. She lowered her eyes to the spilled wine, gave Regan and Gaela a moment to understand she was not truly challenging them; she was only so tired, so raw. So afraid for their father, for her future. She had done nothing at all, and yet her life was torn away. She could barely breathe, had felt lightheaded and breathless all afternoon. “I do not wish to be the queen of Innis Lear. I only wish to be home, and take care of him.”

      “He does not deserve you,” Regan said.

      “What will you do with him, then?” Elia asked. “Be kind, I beg you.”

      Gaela said, “We will disband his retainers but for some hundred or so of them, and share the burden of housing him and them between us.”

      “You could stay, Elia,” Regan said seductively, “if you marry some harmless man of Lear, and never stand against us.”

      “Some harmless man?”

      “Perhaps Rory Errigal,” Gaela said.

      “No,” Elia said quickly, thinking instead of Ban, though she’d not let herself do so for years. It was only brotherly affection she held for Rory.

      “No, Gaela,” Regan agreed. She tapped dangerous fingernails at the edge of the spill of wine. “You only want her to eek Errigal’s iron and loyalty away from my Connley with that, dear sister.”

      Gaela smiled. Regan smiled.

      Elia swallowed a heavier drink of wine.

      “And so,” Gaela said, “Elia cannot remain here now. She must stay in Aremoria until Midwinter, and so keep herself out of the minds of any who remember Lear wished for her to be the next queen.”

      “If you return before the Longest Night we will take it as a hostile act,” Regan added.

      Sighing sharply, Elia finished her wine. She would be drunk soon, and she welcomed it. She felt exhausted. The brief silence among them was strangely comfortable, until Regan said, “Beware of Morimaros.”

      “What?” She thought of his hands, the garnet and pearl ring, the rough, pinked knuckles.

      Gaela said, “They say in Aremoria that the greatest king will reunite our island to their country. That what was sundered will be returned. Morimaros’s ambition will lead him to desire Innis Lear for his own. You must prove to him we three are Lear now, and we three are strong.”

      Elia pinched her eyes closed. “Are we? You just told me my presence here threatens you.”

      “Elia!” snapped Regan. “It is what we will make ourselves, do you understand?”

      “I understand,” Elia said, leaning forward, “that my sisters played some vicious game today, that my father disowned me and believes he hates me, and I must leave my home because of it.”

      Both her sisters smiled again, so familiar and yet unknowable to Elia. Regan’s was small and cold, Gaela’s wide enough to display her shield of white teeth.

      “Why do you hate him?” Elia whispered, grasping at anything to make her understand why she was empty and broken, while her sisters triumphed.

      Regan leaned in so Elia could see the tiny flecks of blue in her dark eyes. “Why don’t you?” she whispered back.

      The wine gurgled in Elia’s belly. She touched a hand there, setting her cup down hard. “You won’t be better than him. The two of you will let the island break into war. Worse; you’ll encourage it between your husbands. How can you? How can you wish for such a thing?”

      Gaela said, “We will encourage what we must to achieve what we desire.”

      It

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