Someday Tear would wear the ducal chains; someday he would rule Connley and control the entire eastern edge of Innis Lear, down through the wealthy Errigal lands. Everyone on Innis Lear would love or fear him, or perhaps hate him. Anything, he thought, so long as their feelings were strong. His mother had told him, Make the people want you for you, not your stars. Give them a connection to your flesh and blood and purpose, my boy. As we connect ourselves to the rootwater.
He certainly wasn’t following that advice while leaning apart from the crowd, so, taking a breath, Tear pushed clear of the column. He began a measured pace deeper into the room. He wound through clusters of adults, some laughing, some gossiping intensely with concerned faces. All were drinking warm wine from braziers hung over the hot coals. Tear took a cup himself and drank half of it down, despite knowing it would bring the pink out in his sharp cheeks.
His goal was the prince of Aremoria, Morimaros. Several years Tear’s elder and here, his mother said, to court one of Lear’s daughters.
Tear stepped up beside the prince, hoping his solemn expression lent age and wisdom to his features.
Morimaros nodded, dark blue eyes flicking across Tear’s face. “From Connley?” the prince said.
Tear bowed. “The duke’s only son.”
“We hear fine things about your mind and ambitions, young Connley,” said the Earl Rosrua’s son, likely to take the title any month now. He stood at Morimaros’s opposite side. “We’ll welcome you to our ranks.”
Again, Tear bowed, though more slightly. What he had heard of the heir to Rosrua was not to be repeated before any Aremore. “I hope Dondubhan is impressing you,” he said to Morimaros.
“It is. Your people are very united.”
A strange response, Tear thought, having expected to speak about the massive black Tarinnish or the spreading Star Field or the ancient, strong ramparts of the castle itself, the twelve-foot-thick walls or the watchtower. This was significantly more intriguing. “We are. It must be so in Aremoria, too.”
Morimaros paused, as if realizing he’d been caught in an odd comparison. “I think … it is like the difference between our forests and yours. Here, you have fewer kinds of trees. Pines, oaks, and smaller trees in the south, but only the hardiest here in the north, where there are trees at all. They stand strong and alone against harsh circumstances, but still the forests are thick and immortal. Aremore forests have hundreds of kinds of trees. They do make forests—vast, amazing forests—but they are not so singular.”
Tear understood in his gut, immediately.
But the Rosrua heir chuckled. “It’s because our trees talk, you know, Your Highness. Like old women, leaning together and keeping everyone in line. But each a fishwife with an opinion to clutch at.”
An older man, whom Tear did not know, but who wore a belt with an Astore salmon stamped into the leather, said, “We do have some very foreign trees rooted here on our island. I believe, Prince, they’re the ones you’re most interested in.”
Frowning, Tear decided to find out the name of this fool, the better to keep his distance. The daughters of Lear were daughters of Lear, not foreign trees.
The Aremore prince held his opinion, merely nodded.
“The eldest,” Rosrua’s son said—Alson, that was his name! Tear would make sure to remember now—“will certainly marry your lord.”
Astore’s idiot nodded. “Indeed. He and she have a tightness between them, and what man wouldn’t want to bed her? She’s magnificent. A stallion’s prize.”
All the men gathered, even Tear, looked toward Gaela Lear. She stood beside the tall chair in which she’d feasted, the stark white of her gown and the white veil drawn over her short hair making her skin gleam darker than ever. The expression she wore was equally stark: grief and disdain, both warring in her fierce eyes, though she spoke readily enough to the duke in question.
“He was fifteen when she was born,” Alson said.
But Tear’s attention was no longer free—caught instead, skewered by an arrow of fate, on the second daughter of Lear.
Regan.
She was beautiful. Half-hidden behind the elder, star-cursed princess, it seemed Regan stood with her shoulder pressed gently to the center of Gaela’s back. As a support, or comfort.
Thin, boyish almost, except for the mature elegance of the quiet gray-and-white dress she wore. Silver shone at the princess’s fingers and in her hair, at her cool brown neck. Red paint plumped her bottom lip and dotted in perfect arcs from the corners of her large eyes.
Regan Lear was flawless.
“Regan would be a good match for you,” the loathsome Astore man said, attempting to engage the Aremore prince.
“How old is she?” Morimaros asked, though surely he knew.
“Fifteen,” said Tear.
So he would be, too, in a few short months. “Excuse me,” Tear murmured, slipping away. None cared.
He finished his cup of wine and retrieved more, as well as a second, for he’d seen Regan held a cup herself, dangled at the end of her loose arm, tapping gently against her thigh. It must have been long empty, for her to risk spotting her pale gown.
As he moved through people toward her, he saw her eyes never rested in one place for long. Regan studied everything, and twice tilted her chin up to murmur over Gaela’s shoulder. Then the elder would look where her sister had been, before continuing her conversation with Astore, or one or two of that lord’s nearby cousins.
Regan, Tear thought, fed Gaela information. Perhaps she was searching for something or someone in particular, or merely reported on what she could. The sister’s close contact, the casual communication between them, awoke a gentle longing in Tear. What devotion. What communion. What love.
He reached their perch, finally, coming around from behind Gaela so the eldest princess would not notice him, but nor would he startle Regan. Her dark eyes caught his, but she did nothing to give him pause.
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 hi
s 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.
But everything was too much.
She tucked the blankets beneath her chin, stared at the shadowy silhouettes of drying rue and late roses, strips of mint, dill, starweed, and rowan berries. They hung in clusters and bouquets from the rafters, filling the cottage with a delicate perfume that held its own even against the ash of the fire and the wet, angry wind slipping fingers of peaty air under the door.
Elia closed her eyes. This dark cottage in the center of the storm was like the heart of an old oak tree, its damp, warm, black womb hollowed out for a nest, readied for a long winter’s sleep. She’d huddled inside such an oak before, listening to its heartbeat, to the slow drawl of its dreams. There had been tiny green beetles and glittering dirt, the impossibly slow growth of roots, and the strong walls of the tree around her, reaching up and up into the night sky, a protective ceiling of black branches. And she had shared it with Ban.
The Fox is my spy.
A crack of wood and gust of wind startled Elia up.
She scrambled to her feet, blanket pulled tight to her chest. The cottage door hung open, and a man stood there. Lightning flashed behind him, presenting him as a solid black creature covered in streaks and droplets of water that glistened like the stars in the sky.
He stepped in. Wind picked water off his hair and shoulders, flinging it at Elia, as he struggled to shut the door against the gale.
It slammed closed, and there he braced against it.
This star-shadow man had on boots and a soldier’s trousers, a linen shirt molded by water to his shoulders and back like a thin second skin. No coat or hood, no sword even. His black, choppy hair stuck out in thick twists and tattered braids, all of it heavy with rain. An earth saint, regurgitated by the storm.
Elia stepped forward. Her throat tightened; her fingers went cold and her face hot.
He groaned, his shoulders shaking like a sick man’s.
“Ban?” she whispered.
His head hung as he pushed away from the door, turning. He stumbled, and Elia caught him around the waist with a grunt. Cold water soaked the long wool shirt Brona had given her to sleep in. She half dragged, half led Ban Errigal to the bed. “Sit.”
He collapsed upon it.
“Get this off,” she said firmly, struggling to lift his shirt. Clumsily, he helped. She pulled it over his head and threw it aside, crouching to begin the arduous process of untying the wrapped, tall boots. His breath rattled harsh in his mouth and teased the curls atop her head. Elia’s fingers were dull and heavy, but she got one boot undone and tugged it hard. His hand fell against her hair, and Elia tilted her chin up to look through the darkness at Ban’s face.
“Elia?” he whispered. Passion or fever or some desperate thing burned in his ghostly eyes. Ban did not seem so wildly beautiful as that day so many weeks ago when she’d last seen him. Tonight, he was desolate, young, and lost.
“Help me get this off,” she said. “You need to be warm.”
She focused again on the other boot, struggling to accept that Ban Errigal, the roots of her heart—and yet an Aremore spy!—was adrift, and breaking, and here.
After a moment, he obeyed her, removing his boots. “Now out of those pants,” she said, going abruptly to the fire. Her hands were dirty with mud and bits of the forest he’d brought inside with him. She grabbed a handful of tinder and threw it into the hearth, then poked at the embers with an iron rod to wake them hurriedly. There was plenty of wood to feed it, if she could get it going again.