If there had been thoughts or words in her head, Hal would not have paid them heed. Her hands tore down Hotspur’s front and she found the hem of her trousers. As Hal kissed Hotspur’s mouth, never letting go, even to breathe, she found the ties at the waist and tugged. Hotspur eagerly lifted her hips, spine arching, and her head fell back. Hal scoured that revealed neck with hungry kisses, and when Hotspur whimpered, Hal bit her carefully, pressing her teeth firm and tender.
Hotspur’s searching hands found a slice of skin, and Hal jerked at the cold fingers there on her side, then her belly. She leaned down against Hotspur, pushing her thigh between Hotspur’s. Hotspur kissed Hal’s cheek, straining for her mouth again.
As they kissed, they rolled to their sides, and Hal wedged her hand into Hotspur’s trousers, crawling her fingers down toward that hot, slick well.
“Hal,” Hotspur whispered, sounding hesitant at the same time her legs shifted apart and she shoved herself into Hal’s hand.
Hal nearly burst at the eager heat, at the stuttering of her heart: This was how they were meant to be, connected right here. She moved her fingers hard, remembering what Hotspur liked the way she remembered her own name. Hotspur panted, flinging her head back, grasping at Hal’s thighs, then bottom, then dipped under her shirt again and scraped nails along Hal’s sides to the laces of Hal’s pants. She got her own hands dug in, too, groping for Hal, both of them urgent and chaotic. When Hotspur pushed inside Hal, Hal nearly perished.
It was the easiest fuck she’d had in her life; maybe for the wait, or the desperation, or just the very rightness.
Both panting and alight with desperate pleasure on the battlements of Dondubhan, Hal and Hotspur closed their eyes and melted into stillness. Wind whispered. Occasionally a burst of laughter broke the peace of these final moments before dawn. Hal put her nose to Hotspur’s neck, a hand tucked into Hotspur’s ferocious curls. Her heartbeat thumped in her hot, chapped lips, in the palms of her hands, in the center of satisfaction deep in the cauldron of her belly.
“Hal,” Hotspur tentatively said. She shifted under Hal, and the prince recognized the motion of discomfort.
“Don’t ruin this,” Hal begged. “Don’t say anything.”
Hotspur wrapped her arms around Hal’s shoulders. “Maybe I’ll say something to make it better,” she hissed.
Hal laughed, shoulders shaking. She pressed her nose into Hotspur’s neck as Hotspur snarled at her mirth.
“Get off of me, you hag,” Hotspur said, shoving.
Hal’s laughter worsened as she was tipped over. She let the laughter grow, lift up and shoot toward the brightening sky.
Flinging out her arms, the prince welcomed the cold against her palms, against the strip of bared skin where her shirt still rode high, and she welcomed the hard reality of the stone against the base of her skull. Overhead, the stars dipped and flickered, surrendering to pale silver dawn.
She thought perhaps to remain here until she died of thirst. Her bones could grow into the pretty stone, a yellow-white skeleton melded to the gray-blue. Stories told by the wind and trees would entertain her, and Innis Lear could syphon her ghost bit by bit until Hal was part of the island.
Could Aremoria do such a thing?
“I love you, too, Hal,” Hotspur whispered.
Hal smiled, said nothing. She’d keep that, and this.
“I have to say something else, though. And you …”
“Oh, Hotspur.” Hal laughed sadly. She was going to ruin it.
“This only makes everything worse.”
“Love doesn’t make things worse.”
“Harder, then.”
“The only thing in my life that’s ever been easy was falling in love with you,” Hal murmured. “Staying in love with you, on the other hand …”
Hotspur smacked the back of her hand against Hal’s stomach. “Be serious.”
Hal sat up, taking Hotspur’s hand and keeping it between her own to listen.
“I don’t know what to do, Hal. I’m stuck between the two of you—between you and Mora. I exist between Hal Bolinbroke and the rest of the world.”
Their hands together were the only parts of them touching. Hal said, “I’m part of the world, too. Maybe you simply exist in this world with me.”
“I feel like an arrow shot into the sky, that always arcs back to the earth. I always arc back to you, Hal.”
Hal’s entire body suddenly was floating, expanding. “Hotspur … What are you saying to me, Hotspur?”
“Maybe you … could be better, Hal. A queen. I—”
A scream broke the night.
Not a cry of the wild hunt, not joy, but a high, suffering wail that stripped up through the queen’s tower.
Hal and Hotspur stared at each other for a breath, eyes gone wide, then leapt to their feet, scrambling to adjust their clothes. They tore together for the tower stairs.
Their boots smacked the worn steps as they clattered down the tightly winding stairway. A yell echoed, a man’s voice, and another answered: Hal nearly collided with a retainer in Learish dark blue. They pushed on, moving through the narrow corridor to the interior stairs: these spiraled, too, but led to the residential levels.
A crowd blocked the opening to the queen’s chambers, which took up this fourth floor of the tower. Hotspur and Hal pressed through, pushing people and using their names to get through soldiers and servants. Just inside, the duke of Taria rubbed his face, confused and worried, and when Hal burst into the bright, open chamber that was Queen Solas’s personal bedroom, she skidded to a halt.
The bed, taking up most of the space, was splashed with blood.
Ryrie Lear was dead.
Her neck had been slashed and her dark hair soaked up the blood, turning it into heavy black snakes that sprawled across the mattress and strangled her throat—no, that was the gash, the jagged wound. The lady’s eyes stared up.
Nausea climbed Hal’s throat.
The flash of blade, the hot blood on her face, Hotspur’s hand tight in hers—
Kneeling beside the bed, moaning softly, was Solas. Her nightgown pooled about her knees in a puddle of blood gone cold and sticky; her hands pressed into the mattress, one tangled in her sister’s wet hair.
Behind the queen crouched the wizard, shirtless, holding Solas about the waist in one strong arm. She leaned against him, tears streaking down her face. They dripped off her jaw.
Morning light grew from the windows, reaching toward the shadowy bed. Hal couldn’t breathe but for shallow, uneven gasps. Her skin prickled with cold sweat.
Hotspur squeezed her shoulder and said something, but Hal missed it; Hotspur vanished. There were conversations behind Hal, in the hall, but inside this room everything hushed.
The queen’s mouth trembled and she sobbed once, bending to put her forehead against Ryrie’s. “She wasn’t a hemlock queen,” Solas moaned. The wizard let her go but touched a hand to her back, then stroked hair off her shoulders, gathering it to keep it away from the blood. The tender, careful movements soothed Hal’s panic as if the wizard were touching her.
“Mother.” Rowan Lear knocked Hal aside. He stepped forward, bewildered, stunned, and climbed onto the bed. It creaked and rustled, and he put his hand to Ryrie’s throat, then her face, leaving scarlet prints against her cheeks. “Mother,” he said again, and then whispered in the language of trees.
The air in the bedchamber rushed toward him, and Solas cried out, gripping his wrist. “Stop, Rowan,” the queen said. “She’s dead.”
“She’s cold,” Rowan said in a voice of such anger Hal’s knees trembled.
“What happened? Who did this?” There came Banna Mora. Hal finally turned: Mora stood with Hotspur, the latter supporting Mora with an arm about her waist.
“Someone hours ago,” said the wizard.
Solas stood and wiped tears off her cheeks: she smeared blood under her eyes in an arc toward her jaw. “Where is Mared? He is the captain of my soldiers here. Where are Ta
ria and Rory Errigal and Glennadoer? Wake everyone not already so. Search every room, account for all—some others might be dead, or missing. Hal Bolinbroke, do the same for your people, and you as well, Lady Hotspur. Mora, sit down.”
Mora frowned, a hand pressing hard to the side of her belly, and said, “Rowan.”
The prince got up as if his name from her lips were an alarm. “I will find whoever did this,” he said. “No part of Innis Lear is safe.”
“The Swan burned faster than my Summer Hound last night,” Solas murmured, glancing again at her sister’s body. “She is not a hemlock queen.”
Hal backed away, turning to go as Solas had bidden her. Every moment she regained herself was a moment it sank deeper into her awareness that she was in danger: she the foreign prince, the enemy, the one Innis Lear already planned to meet in war. No matter that Hal wished to prevent that war, and this the most assured way to guarantee it.
“Wait,” said Era Star-Seer, her small voice calling from outside the room. “Here is someone who knows.”
Solas said, “Make way,” and Hal moved toward the dark hearth instead of forcing her way out while Era brought in her witness.
With Era and Connley came the second Glennadoer sister, of the bastard line. Laise. She was slight and seventeen and shy; even now she shuffled reluctantly and held her head so that her dark blond hair fell in front of her eyes.
“Laise Glennadoer,” commanded Solas of Innis Lear in an only slightly trembling voice. “What do you know?”
The girl’s hands grasped each other, and she wrung them, pressing her lips together. Her light eyes darted to the dead princess and pink flushed her cheeks. “My father did this.”
Hal’s stomach rolled. Protests and gasps of shock coursed through the room, but Solas hissed through her teeth, a sharp order for silence. (Behind her, the wizard stood tense, like a hound eager and ready to be unleashed.)
“Why,” Solas asked softly, “would your father wish to murder his queen?”
And Hal suddenly understood: this was Solas’s room, and she ought to have been sleeping here, not Ryrie. Or not only Ryrie. The queen had escaped because … Hal glanced again at the wizard and tried not to goggle.
Era nudged Laise Glennadoer roughly, and the girl said in a rush, “He’s taken Catrin to the hemlock well, to make her a queen.”
At that Rowan strode out, fury masking his features. He called for retainers and his armor, and for saddled horses. But as he vanished, Banna Mora laughed.
Solas smiled, too, but grimly, and pressed her hand to her heart, fingers curled like claws. “Why should you not be killed where you stand, complicit and willing, Laise?” Solas asked too softly to be anything but a threat.
“I didn’t know—I—Catrin only told me her part, early tonight—I’m so very sorry, Solas, my bright—bright queen.” Laise’s legs gave out, but Connley caught her.
Hal met Hotspur’s furious, panicked eyes, and they both nodded at once, then turned to push out of the bedchamber.
“Meet you in the yard?” Hal said breathlessly, and Hotspur clasped her wrist before leaving.
The prince made her way hard and fast up the tower again, burst onto the roof and dashed across the battlements connecting the queen’s tower to the king’s. She ignored retainers and dove toward her rooms. The whole way she planned out what she would don first, and she hoped Ter Melia was near, or Rianor so she could have somebody quickly saddle a horse for her, too, and join Rowan Lear on his hunt. They’d need all the swords they could claim, to chase down his father.
When Hal pushed open the door, eyes already darting toward the stand with her mail, it took her several breaths too long before she noticed the hulking shape that stepped out of the shadows behind her and closed her bedroom door.
Owyn Glennadoer.
Hal gasped and flung herself at her armor, reaching for the Heir’s Score.
“Stop, Prince Hal,” Glennadoer rumbled. “I am not here to hurt you.”
Finding the sword, she gripped it and unsheathed it in one motion, spinning to face him with her left hand on the pommel for strength and leverage. “You murdered your own wife, why should I trust anything you say?”
The entire rocky slope of his face bent into a frown. “Me?”
It was not offense at the accusation, but surprise to be found out so readily.
Hal did not give up that his daughter had betrayed him. Her heart hammered hard, and she focused on evening her breath, putting her feet in a balanced stance: she was too exhausted for this, too tipsy still, and unsteady with the shift from giddy to horrified in the past half hour.
“Hide me, Hal Bolinbroke,” the earl said. “Go with me now, to Aremoria, and claim the might of Glennadoer for your side.”
“Oh, wormshit,” Hal breathed.
“With Glennadoer, it would balance some of the enmity your mother faces. I have taken the March, which Vindomata holds now, before. I can do so again. I have pushed into Aremoria, and I have Burgun barons who are my friends.”
“You’re a murderer.”
“Who among us is not?”
“I am not!” cried Hal. She could see the value he offered, though, the means to tip these scales toward her mother again.
Glennadoer smiled. “You only have the pretense of friends, Hal Bolinbroke. None who choose you, who die for you and yours. For centuries, Glennadoer has felt the pretense of friendship from the throne of Innis Lear, but we have been kept from the fruit of rootwaters and the glory of stars. Because of sins hundreds of years old! I know what your position is, I know, I share it. We are put in places we deserve but are judged not to have earned.”
Hal licked her lips. She grasped for anything to say, to stall. Hotspur would come for her, when Hal did not arrive at the stables. “What of Catrin?”
The earl’s expression hardened. “She, too, is dead. Poisoned by this island, and not saved. She ought to have been my queen; she was the true strength of Glennadoer. The stars told me she would die—Solas. The queen, not my child. The stars as good as told me to do this.”
As she shook her head, Hal’s mind raced. She didn’t understand how the island could poison Catrin, or a husband murder his wife—but then, he’d intended to murder Solas. This was what came of prophecy! “The stars lied to you, then,” she said. “How can I throw in with you when your own stars betray you? Solas was not where she should have been, so you murdered your wife, and your daughter is dead.”
The air seemed to thicken as if Glennadoer’s energy—his magic—filled it. The spirit of a bear pressing against Hal, terrifying.
“The island itself betrayed me,” he growled.
Hal gripped her sword tighter, though she knew to keep loose, to be ready. “No,” she said. She could not stall longer, nor pretend for him. “No, I will not. Give up. Surrender to your queen.”
The earl roared and charged. Hal braced to block his sword, then turned to give his momentum its weight. He stumbled, she spun, and Hal screamed with all her might.
His sword cut back and she blocked again: the hit clanged up her arms, hard enough to rattle her teeth. This room was no place for a fight: too many obstacles.
Ah! But she grabbed a clay cup and threw it at his head, then flung a chair awkwardly, and dove in, stabbing up with the Heir’s Score.
Glennadoer grunted, turned, and she cut him! Triumph surged through Hal and she used the spike of energy to leap onto her bed and then throw herself off it, angling her sword down.
He threw up his arm to block her, and she felt the crack as her sword broke his bone. A harsh cry split open his mouth, and Hal saw his dark red throat in a flash. She hit the floor and pushed all her body at him; hit his gut, tipped him over.
His sword came at her, and she turned: the tip slashed through her coat and vest and shirt, scoring her flesh in a line of fire.
She kicked out, found his wrist, and stepped hard. He grabbed her other leg, throwing her off-balance. Hal screamed again as she twisted and managed
to get her sword under her so that when she slammed down, it was with all her strength behind her sword, and that sword skewered through his gut.
Stunned silence rippled out from them both: Hal stared at Glennadoer’s mouth, splattered with blood. He brought both hands to the blade of her sword, and Hal stared at the bubbling blood, the gush with his every breath. She’d killed him.
Her body seemed to dissipate into nothing but air: she was nothing. In the center of the world steel became blood and flesh, his body grunted, flailed, and—died.
Hal let go the hilt of the Heir’s Score.
She stumbled away.
There was blood on her face. Hal smeared it, panicked. Rovassos—this is how kings—how kings
—die—
Just then Hotspur burst into the room.
Hal’s vision blurred, sparking at the edges, like stars—wheeling, merry stars, calling out to her—and she was broken in pieces: an arm here, a leg on the tower roof, her thoughts spread and scattered among the chopping waves of the Tarinnish, her heart—her heart—
her heart
The
WOLF
INNIS LEAR REMEMBERS the wizard for whom it is named.
Her memories are its first:
She digs her fingers into the cold earth. A nail breaks, pain snapping into her palm. She uses it, thrusting back into the earth, diving deep into the cliff.
Beneath the wizard waves crash, dragging and pushing, as they claw inexorably higher.
The sun lends power to her back, and the moon is a sharp hook above her, angled with its points toward her homeland, her shattered temple, the king who broke her.
Lady Hotspur Page 58