The witch said nothing, but tilted her chin down in disapproval.
With a sigh, Errigal let her slide down his body. “I know you don’t coddle him, but you are a woman, and this is a woman’s place here, women and witches, orphans, runaways, those with no lords. My son will not be such a thing.”
“You don’t mind it in me.”
“No, girl, I don’t,” he said, though she’d not been a girl in ages. He kissed her, and Brona allowed it, opening her mouth to his. She curled her fingers around his belt, tugging with exactly enough force to invite, and stepped back toward her cottage.
“Distracting me will only delay our departure,” Errigal said, kissing her eagerly.
Brona lifted one shoulder as if she cared not, and dragged him into the cottage. She would take this from him, and then he would take her heart away in return.
The finest thing about Errigal had always been his enthusiasm. Coupled with stamina and an instinct for generosity, it made him the best lover she’d ever had. Even if not for having made Ban, Brona would have welcomed Errigal back and back again to her bed, whenever he liked. His life outside Hartfare was no care of hers, for she’d learned long ago to revel in what joy she could find, and embrace love in every form. Innis Lear did not nurture such things, but scoured them away; it was the nature of the island, to be pulled between hungry earth and cold stars.
Brona considered herself an emissary of that wild, starving earth, and devouring the power of the Earl Errigal, taking it into herself, was a blessing, a ritual itself, to weave the stars and roots together again.
Nobody else was even trying, not since the last queen had died.
Sweaty and smiling, Errigal stretched beneath her when they were done, and Brona perched atop his hips, settled exactly like a witch on a throne. “This is the end,” she said.
Errigal reached up and skimmed a finger along the curve of her breast. “I don’t like that.”
“Then leave my son with me.”
“No.”
Brona put her hands on his chest and dug her fingernails in, sliding her palms along the soft hair hiding his milky skin. “This is the end.”
He nodded but wrapped his hands around her wrists. “I’ll take care of him.”
No, he would not. Brona knew this deeply. Errigal did not see Ban, did not understand his needs or how to foster joy in the slivers of passion that cut wildly inside their son.
“Brona, I will,” Errigal insisted.
She climbed off him, taking a blanket with her, wrapped around her shoulders.
“He is mine, and I will care for him as a father should.” The earl made a mess of noise pulling on his trousers. He tugged his beard as Brona held silent, and she saw the moment he decided to make a threat. “You have no choice in this. I’m taking him.”
That was true. Brona knew too well how precariously Hartfare existed: a heart of root magic and runaways and those hiding from King Lear’s stars. A word from Errigal and Lear would raze it to the ground. So far, prophecy had saved them, stars that promised the island needed this tiny center of roots. So far, Lear accepted it. But only so far.
“I know,” she whispered. “But it wounds me, Errigal.”
His bullish, handsome face crumpled, and he came to her. “Ah, girl, I would not hurt you if I could.”
“You do now.”
“So it must be.” Errigal kissed her, wiping his thumbs roughly along her cheeks, though Brona did not cry.
“Father.”
Both turned to see their son. He stood in the doorway, small, skinny, with a tangle of dark hair and solemn eyes. Dirt darkened the left side of his face and streaked his shirt. His toes were bare. Quite the forest goblin.
“What a disaster you are!” Errigal laughed. He swooped down and embraced Ban. “We’ll get you cleaned up a bit, then on to the Summer Seat with me. Your brother is there, and we’ll find you a sword, how do you like that?”
The boy’s gaze found Brona, over Errigal’s wide shoulders. “Do you like the Summer Seat, Mama?”
“I do,” she said. “It is full of magic, and there is a great maw of stone teeth near it. They will be strong for you, Ban.”
He frowned. “You aren’t coming.”
“Brona’s place is here in Hartfare,” Errigal said, standing. He put a possessive hand on Ban’s knobby shoulder.
“So is mine,” Ban said, his gaze still locked on his mother’s, pleading.
His father ruffled Ban’s hair. “No, boy, no. It’s with your father, and brother. It’s with the king and his men. You’ve been here with the flowers too long, and need to be able to see the starry skies.”
Ban drew away, finally looking at Errigal. “I want to stay in the forest. I want to stay with my mama.”
“Ban.” Brona knelt before him. One hand gripped the blanket tight around her shoulders, and one stretched out, but hesitating to touch his dear face. “You must go with your father.”
Hurt pinched Ban’s brow, and his small mouth puckered. “You don’t want me to stay.”
“Oh no, oh roots and worms, darling, no.” She threw her arms around him, heedless of her nudity, only desperate to hold him tight and prove his fears wrong. “No, Ban. I would have you stay. But this is your fate, to be in both worlds. You must go away from me now because your father loves you, and would have you share his world.”
Ban did not believe her; that much was clear. He stood still in her embrace, not returning it. The hook in her heart cut even deeper.
Errigal pulled the blanket around Brona again, crouching beside her as if to support her, as if they were united in will.
“Come on, Ban,” the earl said. “Do as you’re told.”
The boy broke free of his mother’s embrace. He turned his back to them, going for the trunk of their clothes, where Ban’s only coat splayed across the top, flung there yesterday in childish abandon. The boy, older today, put on the coat, scrubbed the dirt from his face, and shuffled around for his boots.
Errigal began to speak, but Brona touched his hand. There was nothing to say.
Before they left, Ban let his mother kiss him; it broke the seal he’d put over his heart, and so her kiss made his tears fall. He cried quietly, hugging himself, wretched and unmoving, until Errigal clapped him on the back and told him to stop, that a new home was nothing to grieve.
When the sounds of their footsteps had faded and she was alone, Brona walked out of Hartfare and into the White Forest, naked and heartbroken and covered in the last of Errigal’s love. She washed herself of everything in a cold, haunted stream, in the shade of an ash tree.
To the ash, she whispered,
Don’t let Ban forget the wind and roots. Don’t let him forget me.
THE FOX
BAN HAD NEVER done magic quite like this.
The air was still and quiet over the rocky moorland, here where the hill pushed out of the White Forest like a cresting whale. Silver clouds stretched over the dark sky, brightened by the soon-coming sun and by the moon that hung still in the west, off-center and almost full. Regan Connley, clad in a thin linen shift, sat along an arrow of exposed granite as sleek as she and exactly her size. Her back to the east, she cupped a shallow bowl in her lap and bowed her head over it. She whispered in the language of trees, the words blowing tiny ripples against the surface of pooled blood.
Ban snapped his fingers and called fire to hand, setting the flame down fast against the patch of pine, thistle, rose, and thick paper tinder here at the south end of the granite. The fire caught and crackled, flaring white-orange before settling in to curl the long stems and petals. Moving eastward himself, Ban sang a low song to the wind and trees, hissing a word or two for the fire. He trailed a line of mixed sand and oak charcoal behind him as he went to the north and then the west. When he reached the southern point again, Ban paused to call fire again, drawing it along the entire circle.