The Queen's Rising(97)

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 . . .”