there is not even a steady moon to calm the spirits.
Folk put candles in every window and fly red flags; they drop long scarves just as bloody-scarlet and thick brown along the ramparts and tie ribbons to trees: See, hungry ones, blood already has been shed here, no need for you to pause!
Parents tuck apples carved into ferocious masks into their children’s beds, then huddle together with friends or family and wine, to cast private prophecies and tell jokes against the night. They will not sleep, for to sleep on the Longest Night invites dreams of dark futures: the stars, of course, cannot see into dreams. Older children crawl out of beds and into those of their friends and siblings, and they, too, make stories of their futures and tease each other over falling in love and discovering sex.
In great halls and town squares bonfires flare as people weave constellations from holly and thorn vines and long bearded wheat, to throw their hopes into the fire. Those hopes burn and become sparks, and join the stars in the sky. Rowan Lear weaves a prophecy out of hemlock, for himself and his wife, for Innis Lear, and whispers in the language of trees for the fire to pause and part, so that he can reach a hand into its heart and cast his deadly wish. He kisses his aunt hello and farewell, just in case.
Nearby, Banna Mora winces at the ache in her joints as she lifts a bowl of stewed cabbage made just for her because it was all that sounded appetizing in the world. She reclines in her bedchamber, Trin of Errigal tending to her needs and willing to miss the bonfire spectacle. Rowan has promised to come to her after, and Mora is too pregnant to be a diplomat tonight: she knows better than to believe hungry earth saints wander the island, and she knows her future. She knows what Innis Lear wants from her, and the destiny she shares with her husband. Though a hemlock queen may die tonight, it will not be Rowan: his death will come later, in Aremoria. After the child is born.
Practical Trin doesn’t mind her lady’s temper. This dark night is meant for dark moods, and later, when the prince comes to spend the last hours here with his wife, Trin will join her lover Aelis and start the dawn with kissing and sex: that is the proper way to make a future with magic.
In the cold corridor that leads from the hall to the king’s tower, the Earl Glennadoer leans against the stone wall, large hands on his eldest daughter’s shoulders. “This is your destiny,” he says to her. “Are you ready?”
There is a light in Catrin’s eyes as she stares up at her father. Fear, anticipation, and bravery are sentiments to cause such a shine, and it might be any of them she’s feeling, or all. She squeezes the hilt of her sword and nods. He’ll show her how to transform tonight, how to summon the bear that exists in her blood. She is afraid, but oh so eager to experience it, and she trusts her father.
The queen of Innis Lear holds her sister’s delicate, pink-stained fingers as they walk to the central fire in the great hall of Dondubhan. They’ve made a crown of rose vines with the white-petaled, everblooming blossoms that cling to the wall of the queen’s garden. It is a tradition from their mother, who died when Solas was thirteen and Ryrie eleven. Bound in a circle, hooking thorns a danger to any hand that grasps it, the crown holds within it bright red strings of yarn, twisted across in a web, strung with crystals and glass beads in the constellations of the Swan and the Summer Hound, overlapping into a unified pattern. Together the sisters toss the crown of blood and stars into the fire. Ryrie laughs and slips her arm around Solas’s waist. They hug each other tightly, eyes locked on the flames, on the sizzle of rose thorns and flaring lines as the web catches. Between them are no regrets.
In the upper yard of the fortress, Connley Errigal and Era Star-Seer crouch amid half a dozen Errigal cousins, tossing holy bones across a Longest Night blanket. Deep midnight blue, it was woven into a tapestry of tonight’s sky, as seen from right here, this very spot at the midpoint between dusk and dawn. Tonight it is not needed, for the lack of moon