The four of them spun to look at me, the relief making them sag within their breastplates. It was Yseult who came to me first, her hands outstretched to link with mine in welcome, a smile blooming across her face.
“Amadine,” she greeted, turning me away before I could so much as make eye contact with Jourdain. “Come, I have something for you.”
Luc stepped forward next, noticing Merei’s passion cloak instantly, capturing her in conversation as Yseult guided me through the trees, the torches hissing from their pegs in the trunks. She brought me to a tent, parting the cambric flaps to slip inside. Nessie lay down outside, the wolfhound exhausted from her long run, as I followed the queen, breathing in the scent of pine, smoke, and polished steel.
In one corner of the tent was a cot, rumpled with furs and quilts. In the other corner there was a set of armor. This is where the queen guided me, bringing forth a breastplate fashioned like dragon scales.
“This is for you,” Yseult said. “And I have a shirt and some breeches here as well.”
I unbuckled the satchel from my shoulders, saying, “And I have something for you, my lady.” My hands were trembling as I brought forth the Queen’s Canon, the white stone soaking in the candlelight as if the words were thirsty.
Yseult went very still when she saw it. She eased my breastplate to the ground and accepted the tablet, and I saw that she was trembling too.
“Amadine . . .” she whispered, her eyes rushing over the carved declaration, the declaration that was going to liberate this country. “Where? Where did you find this?”
I began to unlace my boots, unbuckle Allenach’s sword from my waist, unwind from my dress. “I fear that I have descended from a House of traitors. The Allenachs not only buried the stone; they took the Canon as well.”
The cold sent ripples over my skin as I pulled on the breeches and the linen shirt. The wooden locket clinked over my chest, and I felt Yseult’s gaze rest upon it, the stone stirring.
I was one moment from taking it from my neck, to give her the Eventide, when she stepped back.
“No,” Yseult whispered, holding the tablet to her breast. “I want you to wear the stone, Amadine. Do not give it to me yet.”
I watched the shadows and light dance over her face, her red hair loose about her shoulders.
“If I take the stone now,” she said, “then magic will return in the heat of battle. We both know that is dangerous.”
Yes, I knew. It was the very reason why the stone had been buried to begin with.
“Wear it for me, just one more day,” Yseult murmured.
“Yes, Lady,” I promised.
We both became quiet as Yseult set the Canon on her cot and lifted my breastplate once more. She buckled it snugly about me, and then dressed my forearms with leather vambraces, studded with little spikes that made me think of dragon teeth. I knew she had chosen this armor for me, was dressing me for battle. She plaited a river of braids about my face, to knot back, to keep my eyes clear for the fight. But the rest of my hair flowed around my shoulders, wild and brown and free.
A daughter of Maevana.
I could feel dawn creeping closer, trying to peek within the tent; I could feel the uncertainty in the queen, in me, as we both wondered what the light would bring. Would we have to fight? Would we fall? Would Lannon surrender to us?
Yet the questions faded, one by one, when Yseult brought forth a shell filled with blue. My heart brimmed with emotion when I saw her dip her fingers within the woad.
This is how we prepare for war, I thought as a dark peace wove between the queen and me. This is how we face the unexpected—not by our swords and our shields and our armor. Not even by the woad we paint upon our skin. We are ready because of sisterhood, because our bonds go deeper than blood. We rise for the queens of our past, and for the queens to come.
“This day, you fight at my side, Amadine,” she whispered and began to grace my brow with a steady line of blue dots. “This day, you rise with me.” She drew a line down my cheeks . . . steady, resolute, celestial. “This day would have never dawned without you, my sister, my friend.” And she set the shell in my hands, silently asking me to mark her as she had marked me.
I dipped my fingers in the woad, drew them from her forehead down across her face. As Liadan had once worn her war paint. As Oriana had once painted me that day in the art studio, long before I knew who I was.
The dawn was seeping through the mist when we at last emerged from the tent, armed and ready for battle. I followed Yseult through the woods, to where the trees began to thin, the crowd of men and women bowing their heads to her as she passed.
Just before the forest gave way to the field, three horses stood, saddled and waiting for their riders. Then I saw the three banners.
A red banner for Kavanagh, graced with the black dragon.
A blue banner for Morgane, graced with the silver horse.
A purple banner for MacQuinn, graced with the golden falcon.
Yseult went directly to the horse waiting in the middle, mounting with a flash of her armor, a man handing her the red banner.
This is it, I thought. The fallen Houses are about to rise from their ashes, brave and unyielding, ready to bleed again.
I turned away, overcome, until I saw Cartier striding to me. His armor gleamed like a fallen star as he walked, a long-sword sheathed at his side, his blond hair tamed by plaits, the right side of his face consumed by blue woad. He looked nothing like the master of knowledge I had known for years; he was a lord, rising.
He had never seemed so fierce and wild, and I had never wanted him more.
He framed my face with his hands, and I thought my heart had surely melted to the grass when he breathed, “When this battle is over, and we set the queen upon the throne . . . remind me to give you your cloak.”
I smiled, the laughter hanging between my lungs. I rested my hands upon his arms as he leaned his forehead to mine, the moment before battle quiet, peaceful, and aching. A bird sang above us in the branches. The mist flowed away as a tide about our ankles. And we breathed as one, holding every possibility deep in our hearts.
He kissed my cheeks, a chaste farewell that promised more when night fell, when the stars aligned.
I stood among his people and watched as he walked to the horse on the left, mounting with Valenian elegance, taking up his blue banner. Merei emerged from the crowd to stand at my side, her presence a balm to my fear. Someone had fitted her with armor, and she stood as if she had worn linked steel all her life, a quiver of arrows over her shoulder.
The third horse was still waiting, flicking her black tail. It was the horse for MacQuinn, and I wondered who would ride with the queen and Cartier, who would ride to defy Lannon with that forbidden purple and falcon streaming at their shoulder.
No sooner had I thought such did I see Luc carrying MacQuinn’s banner, his dark hair standing up in all the wrong angles, streaks of woad down his cheeks as he looked for something. As he looked for someone.
His eyes fell upon me, and there they remained. Slowly, my knees popping, I walked forward to meet him.
“Amadine. I want you to carry our banner, in memory of my mother,” he said.
“Luc, no, I couldn’t,” I hoarsely whispered in response. “It should be you.”
“My mother would want it to be you,” he insisted. “Please, Amadine.”
I hesitated, feeling the warmth of countless gazes upon us. I knew Jourdain was among them, standing in the crowd watching Luc make this request, and my chest tightened. Jourdain might not want me bearing his banner; he might not want me to claim his House. “Your father . . . he might not . . .”
“Our father wills it,” Luc murmured. “Please.”
Luc could be making a claim just to get me to acquiesce, but I could not let the morning continue to slip away from us. I reached forward and took the slender pole, felt the gentle weight of the purple banner become mine.
I walked to the horse as the third and final rider, mounting with a tremor in my legs. The saddle was cold beneath me as I settled my feet in the stirrups, as my left hand took up the reins while my right held to the pole. The velvet banner stroked my back, the golden-stitched falcon perching upon my shoulder.
I looked to Yseult, to Cartier, who both sat watching me, the morning light flickering across their faces. The wind came about us, tugging at my braids, stroking our banners. And the peace that came over me was like a warm cloak, guarding me against the fear that howled in the distance.
I nodded to the queen and the lord, my gaze proclaiming that I was ready, that I would ride, that I would fall at their side.
Yseult broke from the forest, the fire. Kavanagh the Bright.
Then Cartier, the water. Morgane the Swift.
And last, I emerged, the wings. MacQuinn the Steadfast.
We rode close together, the queen as the point of an arrow, Cartier and I at her flanks, our horses galloping in perfect stride. The fog continued to burn away as we claimed the field piece by piece, the grass glittering with frost, the earth pounding with the song of our redemption.
This was the same field that had witnessed the massacre, the defeat twenty-five years ago. And yet we took it as if it was ours, as if it had always been ours, even when the royal castle loomed in the distance with the green and yellow banners of Lannon, even when I saw that the king was waiting for us with a horde of soldiers lining his back as an impenetrable wall of steel and black armor.
He would know that we would come for him. He would know because he would have been woken just before dawn to find the Queen’s Canon had fallen upon Lyonesse as snow. He would know because Lord Allenach—I imagined—had stormed to the royal hall after discovering I had fled from his lands, along with Jourdain’s people.
There would be no doubt in Lannon’s narrow mind, not when he saw the three forbidden banners billowing at our shoulders.
We were coming to wage war.
Yseult eased her horse to a canter . . . to a trot. Cartier and I mirrored her, reining our horses slower, slower, as the distance between us and Lannon closed. My heart was throbbing as our horses came to an elegant halt, a stone’s throw from where the king sat upon his stead, flanked by the captain of his guard and Lord Allenach.
Oh, his eyes fell upon me as poison, as a blade to my heart. I met my father’s gaze, MacQuinn’s banner gracing my shoulder, and watched the hatred set upon his handsome face.
I had to look away before the grief cleaved me.
“Gilroy Lannon,” Yseult called, her voice sharp and rich in the air. “You are an imposter to this throne. We have come to claim it from your unrighteous hands. You can either abdicate now, peacefully, on this field. Or we will take it forcefully, by blood and steel.”
Lannon chuckled, a twisted sound. “Ah, little Isolde Kavanagh. However did you escape my blade twenty-fire years ago? You know that I drove my sword into your sister’s heart on this very field. And I can easily do it to yours. Kneel before me, deny this folly, and I will bring you and your disgraced House back into my fold.”
Yseult didn’t so much as flinch, as he was hoping she would. She didn’t let her emotions visibly gather, even though I could feel them, like a storm was brewing overhead.
“I do not kneel to a king,” she declared. “I do not kneel to tyranny and cruelty. You, sire, are a disgrace to this country. You are a dark blemish, and one that I am about to purge. I will give you one final chance to surrender before I rend you in two.”
He laughed, the sound taking to the air as crows, dark and cawing. I felt Allenach staring at me; he had not taken his eyes from me, not even to look at Yseult.
“Then I fear that we have come to an impasse, little Isolde,” Lannon said, the crown on his head snaring the sunlight. “I will give you a count of fifteen to ride back across the field and ready yourselves for battle. One . . . two . . . three . . .”
Yseult whirled her horse about. Cartier and I remained on either side of her, her buffers and her support, as our horses began to gallop the way we had come. I could see the line of our people as they strode over the grass, their shields locked and ready, to meet us in the middle and wage the battle we predicted would unfold.
I should have been counting. I should have kept track of the fifteen seconds. But time in that moment went shallow and thin, brittle. We were almost rejoined to our group when I heard the whizzing, as if the wind were trying to catch us.
I never turned about, not even as the arrows began to sink into the ground before us. There was a shout from one of our people—it sounded like Jourdain. He was screaming orders, and I watched as the wall of shields opened in the center, ready to swallow the three of us as we tore across the field.
I didn’t even realize I had been hit, not until I saw the blood begin to pour down my arm, red, eager. I glanced at it like I was looking at a stranger’s arm, saw the tip of an arrow protruding from my bicep, and the pain quivered deep in my bones, up to my teeth, stealing my breath.
You can make it, I told myself, even as the stars began to speckle the edges of my vision, even as I watched as Yseult and Cartier pulled ahead of me.
You can make it.
But my body was melting like butter in a hot skillet. And it wasn’t just the sharp pain of the arrow. I realized too late what was happening. . . . The pressure clenched around me, popping my ears, scraping my lungs.
No, no, no . . .
My hands went numb. MacQuinn’s banner slipped from my fingers just as the sky above me blackened with a storm, just as my body began to fall from the saddle.
I hit the ground as Tristan Allenach.