love he already felt for their child, and for her. “It is not weakness to be honored, it is not weakness to take care of yourself,” he murmured after they’d waited nearly an hour for Hotspur to arrive.
“I will meet her again on my feet,” Mora whispered, winding a finger around a thin silver-blond braid falling from Rowan’s temple. “Give me your arm so I may pace with half your strength, or be gone.”
He offered it, leaning in to splay his other hand over her belly. Only a linen shift and thin wool overdress separated his palm from the high curve of her body; she wore a heavier winter coat that laced over her swollen breasts, covering her arms and back, falling down to her knees. But Mora kept it open just beneath her breasts, so the wool and leather split over her pregnancy, revealing her belly in a cascade of red wool. Whether she entered a room or waited at a crossroads, none would forget she was with child. Mora had long ago learned that her body was her weapon and signal, and she would use it to her best advantage.
Her advantage now was reminding any who saw her that she bore the future queen.
Behind Mora the mighty fortress of Dondubhan waited, too, deep gray and blue as the moon in the evening sky. Every tower, crenellation, and window hung with Child Star banners and welcoming Aremore orange. Behind the castle the Tarinnish, that great black lake the fortress embraced, flickered with tiny waves created by a snappy winter wind, reflecting both the streaked clouds and the falling red sun.
The lake and castle were surrounded by marshland and moor, dipping into shallow valleys. Just southeast a hill rose, crowned by a trio of standing stones from which one could see the entire fortress, the edge of the town of Wellage as it curved around the Tarinnish, and the distant black outline of the Jawbone Mountains cutting off the northern thrust of the island.
Hotspur would come from the south, having made her way along the Ley Road from Connley Castle, then west across the northernmost tip of the White Forest. She’d curve around the Star Field—a meadow memorial where the ashes and bones of the dead of Innis Lear were buried beneath stone towers and slabs of rock. Candles dazzled from nearly every surface, slender and bright. Banna Mora had visited twice now: for the death of an old, retired retainer, and at the full moon. The vivid peace of the place soothed her, for she admired the practical marriage of stone and flame to create a spray of stars on earth. That was an ideal monument to a lost life, even to her Aremore sensibilities.
“We will know they approach,” Rowan said quietly, “in time for you to stand to greet her.”
Mora curled her lip angrily at her husband. The prince sighed and led her at a slow walk along the packed earth road. Built up from the marsh, it was narrow to keep any visitors to nothing but two horses abreast or a slender wagon.
For six weeks already Banna Mora and Rowan Lear had resided here at Dondubhan; Mora had grown irritable at her husband’s mother and at the women of the royal retinue stationed at the Summer Seat for their incessant advice and claim to her. As if this shared experience of pregnancy made her into one of them more certainly than her own word, than her marriage, than her island ancestry. Than the poison crown.
But none knew she’d accepted the hemlock. None except for Solas, Ryrie, and Rowan.
That single prophecy ate at her thoughts: The hemlock queen will die. She could not ignore it as the Learish queen seemed so able to do, nor accept it. On Innis Lear prophecies always came true.
“Oh, it will happen,” Rowan had said as if intending to reassure her. “We may not know how exactly, we may work to prevent it, but the prophecy will come true. There have been prophecies about the deaths of queens before. They always come true.”
Mora had stared at him, angry at his casual consent, until Rowan cupped her face, gripping her jaw hard, and said, “But you will not die—you are pregnant, and if you were to die, so would our child, and that is not prophesied.”
“And you, husband?”
“There are so many prophecies, Mora. For me, for you, for all of Innis Lear. It is a cacophony right now. A messy disaster. Try to enjoy