words.
Rowan sat on a narrow chair tucked against the stone wall of the chamber. Mora stood over him, sculpting her face into neutrality; he’d not see her aches and pains or rabid skepticism until she chose. That was fine, for he knew it was there by the way the corners of her eyes pinched and the balance with which she planted her bare feet against the rug. He knew everything about how she carried herself, had studied and worshipped her equally the past year and more.
He said, “I’ve known for years, but for so long the path to the end seemed fractured and impossible. The nearer I get, the more precise the future becomes.”
“Tell me.”
“I die in Aremoria.” He wove his fingers together, cupping them in his lap. “Elia the Dreamer saw it, and wrote it down, and delivered the vision to me when I was a child. Not sleeping, but dead at the crown of her ancient church.”
“So it’s another prophecy.” Mora remained dubious.
He shrugged, leaning back in his chair, and held his wife’s eyes. Long ago he’d stopped fearing his death. And now that Mora was pregnant, the final threads of sorrow had released their hold on him. However much he wished to live, this was a glorious part he’d played (and would continue to play) in the history of Innis Lear.
Banna Mora sighed irritably. “Then you will not go to Aremoria ever again.”
Rowan laughed, delighted.
“I am serious.” Mora put her bare foot upon his knee and shoved. “You will not give in to death unless it is by my hand.”
He caught her foot and squeezed it, held on just long enough to threaten her with imbalance. She snarled and he let go, standing again. “What will be will be,” he said, kissing her. Her belly pressed into his.
Mora tore away. “That is not true, or what is the point of prophecy? You fool, you ask the future in order to shift it, avoid or embrace it depending on if it aligns with your needs. That is the only reason to live a life or run a kingdom pandering to the stars! To change the future, not take whatever is offered.”
“Oh? You’re an expert now, my hemlock queen?” Rowan was vastly amused, and the hook in his heart blazed like lightning because Banna Mora was furious that he would die.
Instead of flaring up, instead of slapping him or yelling as she was wont to do, Mora’s expression cooled. “Yes,” she said. “I am your hemlock queen, and you should listen to my words and do as I say.”
“I listen,” he murmured, instantly tender.
She gritted her teeth. “Yet you accept your death.”
“Not freely, not for nothing. My death is a price to pay for my cause, and my cause is yours: Aremoria and Innis Lear reunited.”
“Explain.”
Rowan closed his eyes, and saw it again: the Dragon of the North in all its granite, starlit beauty. Its hollow-mountain voice:
a line of starlight stretching like a road between Aremoria and Innis Lear. Rowan, somehow, at both ends
He said to his wife, “When I was a boy, I found Elia the Dreamer’s journal of dreams, and she knew I would. She wrote to me, and said first that I should learn to become Innis Lear, not to rule it. And so I began the hemlock ritual when I was only nine years old. She also told me of a vision she had of me, dead in Aremoria at the crown of an ancient church—it is Lear’s church, the wizard Lear who cleaved our island from Aremoria a thousand years ago.”
Mora hissed in displeasure, but Rowan held up his hand.
“When I was older, and the Ashling spirit tried to kill me, I investigated her. I wanted to know the source of her power, and why she was obsessed with Connley. I wanted to protect him, Mora, and myself and all the island if need be. I studied, I discussed her with the roots and stars, I gathered everything possible, and I came to understand what I said earlier: she is a broken earth saint. Not quite alive nor either dead, not like them, not like the winds of Innis Lear, either.”
“What does that have to do with your death?”
Rowan smiled. “She is as she is because there is something fundamentally flawed within Innis Lear. With the island’s magic. She is not the only broken earth saint to wander our island. They are awful, lonely beings, inherently disruptive and destructive. They cannot exist apart, nor