the Mother-tongue that sounded like a wondering curse. “You’re uninjured? You’re well?”
“Yes.”
“By the blessings of the Luminous,” Celeda murmured. Then she leaned forward off her pillows. “It is an incredible thing to have defeated the Bear of Glennadoer, Calepia. We can use that for much good. No matter what you choose.”
“What I choose?”
The queen of Aremoria hesitated, leaning back again. “I have missed you while you were on Innis Lear, and given much thought to you, your future, and what is best. I was gone for ten long years, and I missed not only raising you, but the things that made you who you are, and what you want. When I think of legacy, I think of you.”
“Mother …” Hal had no voice for the word, and so her lips shaped empty air.
“I want you to be what you are. I want you to follow your heart to your own ambitions, Hal Bolinbroke. What I want for you and what you want for you—if they do not match, I can give all of this, put all of this to your sister. Because I want you to be happy. I want you to reach for strength and glory on your own terms. It is the best way for me to have any legacy at all. You. What you say of me when I am gone, how you remember—” Celeda stopped suddenly.
Hal blinked as if there were tears to hide, but her eyes were dry. “Mother,” she said, in the absence of anything else to say.
“You will tell stories of me,” the queen whispered. “Many children do not fondly recall their parents.”
“I do—I will. You …” Hal was lost. She did not like the particular swell of morbid expectation growing between them—it was not like her visions and dreams, it was too slow, too surreal.
Celeda said, “If you do not want this crown, tell me, Hal. I will release you. I will make you a knight or a general, I will send you to the Third Kingdom to serve as an ambassador. I will let you be a grape farmer in Ispania.”
“I …” Hal shook her head. “I can’t choose the crown. It’s mine already. I’ve begun to fight for it—it’s too late to choose, Mother.”
“It’s not.”
“Everything I might have had, if I’d had a choice, is …”
“Hal.” The dark certainty in Celeda’s voice stopped her. “Choose.”
Tongue dry, Hal stood. She backed away. “I already did. I chose you. And Aremoria.” Stunned and horrified by the overwhelming sense her world was about to shatter, Hal said, desperately, “I want to be as good as you. I want—I want to be a queen because I deserve it, because I serve and know the right thing to do.”
“I love you, Hal,” Celeda said tenderly enough to bend steel. “As a future queen, then, tell me the rest.”
The prince stared, wanting to push at her mother, wanting this delicate glass moment to break already. But the queen— Hal licked her lips, and obeyed. “I came here straightaway. I wanted to tell you what happened before anyone heard anything, so that together we could form a strategy.”
Her mother’s smile was proud, and Hal’s throat ached with gladness and grief both, a heady, spiraling feeling. “Go on, Prince Hal,” Celedrix said.
“I charmed them, everyone on Innis Lear but for Banna Mora, who is determined in her revenge, to follow a destiny she has discovered on Innis Lear. Hotspur I had on my side, and if not for this murder, if not for the bad ending of my stay, I might have brought her with me to fight against Mora and even Vindomata. Not only because of what I was to her, but she knows the reasons war is going to hurt this land she loves as well as we do. Though she married into Mora’s family, into the noble lineage of Innis Lear, she is the Wolf of Aremoria, Mother. We may still use that.”
“Good. What will you do next? Once I have food brought to us, and send word to the palace that you are gloriously returned, and after you tell me every detail, what will you do?”
Hal bent her head, closed her eyes, and said, “I will go to Charm Kurake, and tell him our wedding will be immediate. I will send invitations of pardon to Caratica Persy if she lays down her arms against me, and to Mercia, though Vindomata will refuse. I will—I will reinstate the Lady Knights, and then I will marry