Through loud conversation, subdued laughter, the chaos of this feast, they did not unlock their eyes. Tear approached and held out the wine, and Regan took it, setting her empty cup to rest on the table nearest. As she did, he saw the tiny red sigil written against the meat of her thumb: a spell in the language of trees.
He saw it, and glanced directly at her face so she knew he did. Lifting his cup, he held her gaze again, staring at the swirl of brown and topaz in her eyes, at the tiny chips of blue ice. His breath sped up, and he heard the rush of blood in his ears.
She, too, raised her cup, and they drank, eyes locked together, as if their lips touched each other and not cool clay rims. As if it was a ritual, a glimpse of things to come.
Tear Connley wondered if prophecy could be read in the taste of bright wine or the wafts of spiced incense or the pounding of a young man’s own heart.
He said nothing, but he saw her. He understood her.
And he would not forget.
THE FOX
BAN LOST HIS horse in the raging storm.
First, they flew together over the rough, muddy earth, into the White Forest, where leaves were sharp slaps, and branches whipped his face and the horse’s, where lightning turned trunks to silver columns of fire and the roar of thunder broke over the closer roar of bloated, flooding streams. He leaned into the horse’s neck, fingers twisted in its mane, tight enough to cut off his blood, tight enough to make his hands numb, tight enough to keep his mind empty, only the throbbing reminder of the absence of pain.
Ban was eyeless with rage, like the wind, like the storm itself blowing over the forest.
So he gave the horse its head, and the creature ran fast and faster, crazed and speeding and wild. It screamed at a fallen tree, spun, and Ban wrestled it around again to the north. Or what he thought was north; into the wind at the very least, facing the storm head on and fearless, because he had nothing to fear anymore, nothing to lose.
And they came to a sudden gulley. The horse reared. Ban let go.
He fell, he slid, and his knees then hit the mud with a jarring impact. He caught himself against a tree, and his palm scraped raw on the jagged bark. The horse bolted.
Ban picked himself up and pressed on.
Rain pricked his eyes and lips; it soaked every layer of his clothes until he might as well have been naked. Still he moved forward.
Even beasts that loved the night did not love such nights as this.
He deserved it.
He needed it.
“Oh, stars,” Ban said, tasting the bitter flavor of the words alongside the earthy taste of rain. Stars had nothing to do with this storm. It was all nature and menace. It ripped at his hair, tore the ends of his coat to tatters.
But he looked to the roiling black clouds, and thought, I can out-scorn this wind and rain. A storm like this pitied neither wise men nor fools, and Ban would not, either.
He stripped off his coat and tossed it to the mud. Laughed, harsh and high, but the sound was lost in the black, demanding, raging noise.
White Forest, I am Ban the Fox! he yelled in their language.
The ground slid away, and Ban fell down into a creek. His sword twisted in the belt, pinching his hip as he landed hard. He stood. Fast water curled around his shins, tugged at his ankles. Yet he stayed upright, his legs strong as the mountain even as a gust of wind thrust at his chest, burned tears from his eyes, and made his teeth ache. He bared them, grinning furious at the storm and unsheathing his sword.
Maybe he would die in this blustering, frantic night. But Ban did not think so. Worse had not killed him. This was not war. Island bears or lions from Aremoria or hunger-pinched wolves might hide their heads tonight; Ban the Fox would not.
He lifted his face to the sky.
Ban Ban Ban! Ban the Fox! the forest cried, thrashing.
The rain, the wind, the lightning and thunder could hurt him, but not truly destroy him. Not like his father might have, or the king of Innis Lear, those men who should have loved him and wanted him, expected the best of him. Instead of leaving it to foreign kings! This storm was not to be blamed; it was not unkind. For what was kindness but offering comfort where none was owed?
This storm was not his father. It owed him nothing.
Ban laughed and walked on, sword in hand.
Soon he stumbled and fell to his knees, dropping his sword. In the darkness, it vanished, leaving him to crawl forward through clinging ferns, and up to his feet again. Ban saw blackness and streaks of lightning-silver rain. He saw branches like claws. He saw rain dripping down trees in rivulets, and thought of crying.
His father might be dead now.
Ban wished this wind would blow the earth beneath him back into the sea forever. End all this. The end of the Lear line, the end of this very island. His own miserable life.
Heat prickled his eyes; it was tears.
Ban the Fox was crying.
He’d left his father to die. And worse, he’d deceived his innocent brother. He’d betrayed Mars, completely. His only friend. And Elia, too, his own secret voice reminded him.
Ban gritted his teeth; he closed his eyes.
It was over, it was done. Ban would not pretend all his actions had been justified. He was not more sinned against than sinning. He had loved a girl, and been torn from her only for being a natural boy in a world that only welcomed star-blessed men, and there a seed of destruction had planted within his heart, and here it burst out of his chest full-formed, with thorns and vines and bloodred blossoms.
Sinking to his knees in the muck, Ban knew that no matter what else, he was as wrecked as this island. He was no vainglorious, distant star, but a creature of earth; flawed, desperate, and with a heart so ready to be hurt it could feel nothing else.
Ban was a wild gale, all raw and screaming, attacking anything unwise enough to face him. He welcomed the taste of cold rain on his tongue, the storm mingling with those tears that coursed down his cheeks.
Ban the Fox! cried the White Forest; Ban responded with only a wordless howl. This was pure magic, wild and electric, blurring the air and mud into one chaos, a tempest so violent there was no difference between sky and earth, star and root; all was all, and he was part of it.
No hero, no good man, but a force of nature.
With his hands firmly in the mud, Ban pushed upright. There was no way to go but forward, on a terrible night such as this. He could only blow himself out with the storm.
ELIA
IT WAS THE middle of the night, and Elia had yet to sleep. After a long discussion of queendom and rootwater and war, and it became clear there was no point waiting up for Kayo to return with Lear and the Fool, Brona had flung on a cloak and ventured outside. Elia tried to keep the woman here with her, but Brona had insisted, “I must check on the canvas over the garden, and one of the new families was having trouble with their roof—we’ve not managed to re-thatch it. Stay here and let me do my work. I will retire with Alis, or—or see if the trees will help me find Kayo. You will be queen; you must guard yourself.”
It took every ounce of Elia’s will to even pretend she might agree.
The storm sang to her as she lay alone on the straw mattress. The fire was low, popping around black and sun-red coals. Wind and thunder rattled the heavy wooden shutters tied down over the cottage windows and tore at the thatched roof. Elia curled onto her side, and the straw mattress crackled. She whispered a prayer for Lear, for Kayo, to the trees and wind. It cried back with every word, from every angle.
Elia needed to find her father, to speak with her sisters. As she’d said, her family was broken, and in breaking kept the kingdom unwell. That was what it whispered, that was the lament of Innis Lear. She needed to try to make them all see, her sisters and father, and Kayo and Connley and Astore, all: they were a family, and wouldn’t Dalat have wished them together? The island did. Together, between the stars and rootwaters. It would have them whole.
They could not treat each other this way. If Gaela had blinded their uncle … if their father died in the storm … could anything be mended at all?
Be everything, the forest had said to her.