She clenched tighter to the simple buckler she’d swiped from the muddy battlefield, and evened her breathing as best she was able. Calm and speed were her only allies against Glennadoer: he was larger and so much stronger than Mora. Behind her, an army of the March—her army—struggled to live, yelling, growling, moaning their final efforts against this brutal force the Earl Glennadoer had led across the channel from Innis Lear. Her people were overwhelmed, losing, and there was nothing Mora could do except fight. There would be no retreat—Glennadoer had them surrounded to the south and east, Burgun held the north, and the ocean itself provided boundary in the west.
Baring her teeth, Banna Mora screamed and again attacked the monster before her.
He cut suddenly left, bending and sliding his shield under her strike; his entire colossal body shifted aside from her. Mora dashed back, then whirled with all her might to attack his flank. Glennadoer laughed once, parried with his sword, and sliced at her. She dodged and swung with her buckler. It clashed hard against his shield; they shoved apart. Glennadoer struck, and Mora blocked, then cut in immediately despite the tear of pain burning down her side. She nearly caught him, but he smashed his shield against the flat of her sword and lifted a heavy foot to shove her back. Mora skidded, tripped, and fell hard.
Gasping, she turned over and pushed up despite the numbness tingling from elbow to fingers. She’d dropped her sword. As she managed a crouch, she punched up with her buckler. It connected with his helm in a clash that rang out above her grunt of pain.
Owyn Glennadoer laughed again.
The sound boomed against her and fury flared hot in her heart. Mora charged, bent over, bracing her buckler with both fists and all her strength behind it, and she collided with his gut.
She knocked him back, slammed up with the buckler, hit his chin. Dropping it at his cry, she locked her arms around his waist and flung herself to the side.
They both went down, and Mora twisted just enough to land on top. But there was no breath in her body, her vision blurred in black-and-silver spots.
Glennadoer rolled and got his gloved fingers around her throat. “Yield, you beast,” he growled. “Before I have to hurt you.”
Choking, she snarled. Blood coated her teeth. Flailing, she punched at him. Glennadoer lifted her head and knocked it into the mud.
Pain blackened her mind as she passed out for a moment, coming to almost immediately. But Glennadoer had gotten to his knees. A dagger glinted in the milky sunlight, and he touched it to her throat where his hand had been before. “You are mine, Banna Mora. Say it, or I’ll bleed you out, here and now.”
Mora turned her head to spit and the ground bucked under her like a stormy sea; nausea crawled up her chest.
“Ah, fuck.” Glennadoer tilted her onto her side and yelled in Learish for a healer, then he called out, “Banna Mora is the prisoner of Owyn Glennadoer. Lear has taken the field.”
The words pounded through her skeleton and hot tears burned the corners of her eyes. She closed them, swallowing back thin vomit.
The call spread and she panted shallowly, trying not to allow her breath to touch her stomach. Aches pulsed throughout her body and she was glad to lie still, despite defeat. A healer arrived and put water to her lips, asked about her injuries. She answered, aware Glennadoer remained at her side, speaking with captains of his own, giving orders to take prisoners, but only important ones and those who could be moved quickly across the channel. They’d sail before dawn, when the tide was in their favor.
Mora understood she’d be on one of those boats.
These Learish bastards! They’d come across the channel to claim the March as part of Innis Lear in the name of Banna Mora’s own dead father, as if she did not hold it in his name! And she couldn’t stop them. But they’d never keep it, Glennadoer knew that—not against the full might of Aremoria. They had no true claim—it was hers—and to sail here, fight, and now relinquish their win was further madness. The Glennadoers were monsters, throwing lives away for—for fun! They must’ve grown ferociously bored over the winter on their cold island.
When the word came to bind her, she gripped the healer’s arm and said, “Put me on my feet.”
The man protested, but she sneered at him and called, “Glennadoer. Take me on my feet if you would have a royal prisoner.”
Glennadoer grunted and stared down at her with light brown eyes. His helm was gone, all his wild brown hair pressed down with sweat and blood in the same shape. He said, beard moving stiffly, “Very well, princess.”
And he hauled her to her feet.
She threw up immediately.
The healer cursed, complaining with very familiar language to the Earl Glennadoer.
Mora’s throat burned, her vision wavered, but she kept her feet under her. Chin up, she allowed the healer to clean her face and strip away her gauntlets so she might be shackled.
It gutted her pride to stand there and allow a soldier in faded Learish blue to bind her. They did not remove her armor, and she’d lost her weapons in the battle.
“Your forces fought well,” Glennadoer said, looming just behind her left shoulder. They stared out over the slope of the field, at the fallen bodies and red mud, the lines of prisoners and the movement of Learish soldiers and healers. It was mostly a blur to Mora, who needed to lie down again but would not give in.
“Not well enough,” she responded after a long pause.
Glennadoer laughed. “You thought we had half the number we do.”
Mora gritted her teeth, sending a fresh ache around her skull.
“My son obscured them from your scouts,” Glennadoer said.
“Not very honorable.”
The earl laughed the same vibrant, booming laugh. It made Mora’s stomach turn over again from the pounding in her brain. “Honor rarely survives battle,” he said.
Mora had heard such sentiment before, and to hear it mirrored by the shape-shifting Glennadoer made her—almost—like him, just the slightest bit.
A horse approached, and she felt the earl turn to it. Mora did, too, but slowly, breathing in her shallow, painful way. But when she saw the rider, nausea and pain faded as if washed off by a great fall of light and clear water.
Perched atop a blood-spattered white horse was the most stunning man she’d ever seen. His carriage was straight and slender, despite the bulk of shimmering chain mail and the star-shaped chest plate glowing at his breast. Pale of skin and shaved clean, his jaw was sharp and square, his eyes a glass-brown and gray like polished tiger iron, and thick braids fell around his shoulders like white-gold ropes. A blue leather coat hugged his shoulders, dotted with steel studs in clusters and patterns like stars in the sky.
“Father,” he said in Learish.
Mora’s lips parted, and the sour battlefield air rushed down her throat as pain slammed into her again. It throbbed with her pulse. She would fall to her knees if she did not sit soon, and curse her spirit to the darkest saint’s grave if she knelt before this particular man.
Glennadoer’s son was Rowan Lear, prince and heir to the island crown.
“I’ve caught Banna Mora for your hostage,” Glennadoer said, voice full of humor.
Rowan dismounted and strode toward them, eyes on Mora. She blinked and struggled to maintain focus. He was a hand taller than her, but stopped far enough back she could hold his tiger-iron gaze.
“Banna Mora,” he said, voice surprisingly soft.
“Rowan,” she replied, more harshly. She’d not seen him since they both were fifteen, nearly a decade ago. The prince of Innis Lear had traveled to Lionis where King Rovassos had named Mora his heir in an elaborate ceremony and week-long celebration. He’d been weedier then, not grown into his dramatic features, and coolly unfocused, as if seeing a world beyond Aremoria. She’d been distracted by the weight of the Heir’s Score at her hip.
It took all of Mora’s willpower, in her concussed, battle-weary state, not to put her hand over her chest plate to feel the ring
concealed against her breastbone.
“Take her to the cliff and put her in my tent,” Rowan said to someone behind her. “Clean and care for her, and ready her as best you can to leave.”
Mora curled her mouth into a sneer, but Rowan bowed to her, despite the fact that Mora no longer met him in rank.
She said nothing for the roar of blood in her ears, the pounding pain, and her trembling knees. When the healer touched her shoulder, she melted into the stretcher. Mora attempted to ignore the voices in her head telling her to get up, to argue, to keep fighting. There was information she needed, at the very least: How many of her soldiers were dead, how many dying, who captured alongside her? What did Glennadoer intend to do with the March? Her March, now subdued? Celedrix ruled over a messy Aremoria, nearly a year since her rebellion, but she was not so weak that she could not throw Innis Lear off her lands. In fact, an enemy to defeat might bring some of her bitching nobles together.
Banna Mora drifted in a tumbling river of aches and nausea as the stretcher carried her nearly a mile to the bluffs overlooking the sea. Even the thought of opening her eyes roiled her stomach. The March stretched a hundred miles in the north of Aremoria, along the western coast north to Burgun, pushing east toward Perseria: wet lands of river deltas and fertile fields, with the crumbling ruins of a cliff-side temple carved into rock and built up into natural caves. This was said to be the home of that ancient wizard who furiously broke the land apart and created Innis Lear. It had been her father’s, and his before that, and then Mora’s since her parents drowned crossing back to the island. Now it belonged to Owyn Glennadoer. Soon Vindomata of Mercia would retake it, or maybe Hotspur. Mora groggily hoped it would be Hotspur.
The healer and two soldiers helped her off the stretcher when they passed into the thick shade of a tall canvas tent. She did not open her eyes, even as the shackles were removed and she was stripped bare.
When a soldier touched the chain at her neck, she glared at him. Even the dim light stabbed at her brain. “Leave it,” she said, curling her fingers around the thin leather pouch hiding the Blood and the Sea.
They obeyed. The tent was stark, fit for a campaign and lacking the ostentation of Aremore royal tents. A bath was filled and Mora gave over to their ministrations. She was gently bathed and her tender head washed. She was given simple bread and a broth along with very watered wine. Time lost coherence as Mora sank in and out of sleep. But it was sleep, not unconsciousness. The healer spread a salve on her open wounds, binding all, and murmured that the swelling egg at the back of her skull was not too large nor hard.
The fur bedding, intended for the prince of Innis Lear, was warm and comfortable.
Candles were lit, and then she was abandoned to her own devices, unshackled. Mora was no threat in this state. Her body hurt everywhere and, though her stomach had settled, if she moved too quickly knives of pain slashed her brain and she grew faint.
She held the wool jacket they’d given her tightly closed over the loose tunic and long shift they’d dressed her in. Leggings waited on a stool, but Mora didn’t relish the thought of getting back out of them to relieve herself. As it was, she suspected this clothing belonged to Rowan Lear, too. Plain linen for the shift, but the tunic was embroidered with lines of blue hash-marks she knew to be the language of trees.
Mora drank the last of the watered wine from the large mug they’d given her and lay back. She slept immediately, only to be woken by a soft hand on her bare ankle. “Banna Mora.”
Opening her eyes, she winced at the headache—duller now, but there—and the strange fire aura the candles cast in her vision.
The prince crouched beside her in a sleeveless blue tunic and leggings, his glorious white-gold hair loose and falling damply down his chest. Tattoos marked his white biceps: more hash-marks, constellations, and a cuff depicting the nine phases of the moon.
“Rowan,” she croaked.
He held out a mug. “Drink.”
Getting her arms under her to push up and sit took three tries. He did not offer aid, for which she was both grateful and resented. Her arms shook, but she succeeded.
Behind the prince, the tent entrance had been pinned open, and darkness pushed close. “What time?”
“Several hours before dawn. My ship leaves shortly.”
“I need to piss.”
“In a moment.” Rowan offered the mug again.
Scowling, Mora took it and drank. Her need to relieve her bladder was not urgent. This wine was just as watered as before, weak and near tasteless. She sipped slowly, knowing better than to guzzle in her state.
“You aren’t my hostage, Banna Mora,” Rowan said, startling her.
Mora narrowed her eyes and set the mug onto the floor rather hard. “Fuck you.”
A smile pulled his mouth unevenly. “I remember when we were both heirs to magnificent thrones, cousin, and I would not renew our acquaintance with such a power imbalance as hostage and sovereign.”
She scoffed. “Why did you invade Aremoria if not for hostages?”
“My father was bored and wanted to flex his muscles, and the stars and the wind required that I join him.”
“Oh, wormshit, Rowan.”
He said nothing in response, but regarded her steadily. The candle flame caught at the gold in his eyes and turned it to matching fire. Mora remembered Glennadoer had said, My son obscured them from your scouts.
She glanced down. There was magic on Innis Lear. She knew it, remembered it, remembered her young brother who had gossiped with butterflies and trees even when he’d been barely old enough to walk. “You won’t be able to keep the March,” Mora said to the rippling surface of the watered wine.
“I don’t need to keep it.” I have you, his tone added.
Pressing her mouth shut, Mora refused to snap back what a waste of blood this had been if he’d only attacked for some prophecy. Except—he’d been the one to cast the prophecy for Celedrix, the one announced at the tourney. Had he known Mora was considered part of it? What game did Rowan Lear play?
“I want you to go home with me,” he said.
“You have me under your power, no matter what you say about equal titles.”
“No.” He touched her chin, tipping her head up. “Mora, if you will not go with me of your own accord, I’ll leave you here in this tent, with six of your soldiers we’ve captured. Once we’ve gone, you can return to your queen and live whatever life she allows you, whatever life you’ve had since Rovassos died.”
Mora forced her breath shallow again, and slow, and forced herself, too, not to tug her chin free of his touch. Her body tightened into aches as she sat so still. The bed below her tilted and turned as if she were drunk. Her skull throbbed; her left side was near numb with pain. But she would not shift for comfort. “Why would I go with you, only to be subject to the same denigration I face here in Aremoria?”
“Innis Lear would love you, and welcome your presence. Does Aremoria offer the same?”
“Of course,” Mora lied.
Rowan released her, his hand falling to his knee. “You belong on Innis Lear, if for nothing else than to hear the wind again, to drink the rootwater. To visit your brother and great-grandmother before she dies. To meet your cousins again, none of whom have seen you since you were a child. Your blood is in our island.”
“My blood is in my veins, and I feel its heat whatever land I walk,” she replied viciously.
That brought a smile again to Rowan’s mouth. “We leave shortly. If you will go with me, you need to choose in the next few moments. I’ll go, and send in a retainer to hear your answer. I hope you pull on boots and come. I promise to show you everything Innis Lear holds, of strength and passion and magic.”
With that, Rowan Lear stood. His hair brushed his tunic with a whisper, and he was gone.
Grimacing at the pain, Mora fell back, giving in to a moment of abject suffering. Tears leaked from her eyes and she moaned softly.
It twisted her heart to thi
nk of leaving Aremoria: it was hers. Her country, her destiny, hers. Or it had been. She slapped her hand against her breast; the lump of leather hiding the Blood and the Sea filled her palm.
Would Celeda even ransom her if Mora were taken hostage by Glennadoer and his royal son? Or just leave Mora to languish on Innis Lear, pretending the loss was a tragedy but eager for the excuse to be rid of a troublesome potential challenger to the throne?
She knew the answer.
Anger, hurt, and an old yearning she could barely name choked Banna Mora; when the retainer ducked inside for her intentions, the lady of the March demanded her boots and the return of her armor. She would not set foot on Innis Lear a half-dressed invalid.
No—only as a lost heir coming home.
PRINCE HAL
Lionis, spring
HAL BURST INTO her mother’s study. It was a long mirrored room with white and deep gray molding, the narrow vaulted ceiling painted with a tangle of grapevines as if the room were an arboretum. Two tall cages guarded the door, each with seven finches hopping, chirping, fluttering their wings. At the far end, Celeda’s desk sat between unlit braziers and was surrounded by a cluster of men. The queen watched Hal, quill paused in hand, face blank.
Walking the length of the room was a quick ordeal under the eyes of those advisors and her mother’s disapproval.
“Mother,” Hal said. She’d obviously come from the bath, in a hastily donned gown laced unevenly and her thickly braided hair dripping down the back of her neck. There’d not been time to wait when Nova told her the news.
“Leave us,” Celedrix said. She signed whatever she’d been preparing to sign and slid it toward her steward. The rest bowed and departed, but for Abovax, a grizzled soldier in Aremore orange Hal had known since she was a child, who now commanded the palace garrison. He watched with a skeptical look, leaning against the wall behind the queen’s left shoulder.
Hal took a deep breath, tried to be calm, but couldn’t. She complained, “You should have sent for me!”
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