REGAN
THUNDER CRASHED OVERthe towers of Errigal Keep.
Regan Lear seethed, her hands in fists, leaning forward as she stared at the once-Earl Errigal—this stamping bull of a man, her father’s greatest support—flushed and red-splotched under his beard.
“Bring me my sword!” Errigal roared, loud enough to follow lightning.
Connley’s breath was even, and Regan struggled to match his ease, despite the pulse of her heart under her jaw, the throbbing in her palms and temples. How dare this false, braying earl undercut them! How dare he turn to Elia! AndAremoria!
Her perfect nails cut into her palms with all their sharpness.
Ban the Fox had left, charged into the storm, and Regan wished to join him, to run and spin madly, to scream her rage with the wind and trees, and then harness all that power to her will. Take Connley and Ban both, put herself between them and the sky and the earth, dig and cut into herself, until Regan had her new life, or until she was dead.
But first, they would deal with this traitor.
A side door crashed open and a retainer burst in, gasping for orders from the raging Errigal. He skidded to a halt, looking between duke and earl.
“This man has proven a snake in the breast of Innis Lear,” Connley said, holding his sword low. “Bring him a weapon to defend himself.”
“Do it!” Regan snapped.
The retainer hesitated, and behind him others of the household slipped in, drawn to the growing commotion.
“Yours will do,” Errigal said, holding a large hand to the retainer. As the sword was given over, the earl added, “I am no traitor, though a fool.”
Connley pressed his lovely, hard lips together. “A traitor to me, who has always sought your support and friendship.”
“Your wife betrayed her father, my king, long before I thought to act against you,” Errigal said. “We have all first been betrayed by the stars themselves!”
“While my father betrayed the island beneath their blind eyes,” Regan spat.
“And yet you wonder why you can’t bear a child? It is punishment for all your conflict and undaughterly ambition. I’ve seen your star sign, I was present for your birth—”
Connley leapt forward, attacking with smooth grace. Regan gasped at the beauty of it, and gasped again at the clash of their swords.
Errigal used his greater weight, leveraging it to shove the duke back, but her husband was faster, younger, and he bounced free, turning hard with a new attack that the earl barely blocked.
Each steel strike rang in Regan’s bones, vibrating with its own frenzied song. All around the hall men and women of the Keep had gathered, clutching one another and watching, too. The storm blew, and Regan whispered “Destroy him”; in reply the freezing wet wind shrieked in through the open great doors, slamming them back. It rushed at Errigal, spinning around him to disorient. He cried out, and Connley smiled viciously.
“This is no fair fight!” called out a rough voice. Curan the iron wizard, with his wife Sella holding his huge muscled arm in a vice grip. Curan’s mouth moved again, with a hissing command, and the fire in the hearth flared.
Regan pointed at him. “I will flay your skin from your bones if you aid this traitor.” The wind whipped away from Errigal, pulling his hair, and blasted Curan. The ironsmith stood like a wall and whispered something so that the wind fluttered and skirted softly around him.
Lightning struck and, two paces behind, thunder roared.
The duke and the old earl panted in the wake of the storm’s anger, then the earl growled and renewed his attack. They battled hard, all striking steel and grunts. Errigal caught Connley’s sword with his hilt, twisted, and hit Connley in the face. Connley fell to one knee, but turned, upright again even as Regan cried out, carving space with a good, desperate swing of the sword.
A pause as the two men faced each other again.
Regan said, “You would have done better to be ours, as your less loved son, Ban the Fox, has been. He will inherit this Keep, and be honored by us, by the queen myself and the king my sister. But swear yourself to me now, Errigal, and we will show you mercy.”
“Mercy like you gave your father?” the old earl snarled. “You’re anungrateful, dry bitch, just as he said, all the better to have not been allowed to breed!”
Regan screamed, throwing herself forward, just as Connley drove his sword through Errigal’s lower chest.
The earl flung his weapon wildly, slamming the flat of the blade against Connley’s ribs. Connley fell to one knee and let go of his sword, which stuck in Errigal’s chest: blood poured from the wound and spattered Errigal’s chin as he stumbled back.
Regan rushed to the old earl, commanding another gust of cold wind to keep any retainers far back. The earl hit the wooden floor with a massive thud, and Regan leapt upon him, straddling his waist. Her skirts ballooned around them, and she leaned forward to grasp the hilt of the sword. She twisted it. The earl choked on a scream: it sounded exactly like the shriek of the ghost owl. Regan released the sword. Crawling up his body, she put her hands on the earl’s face, hardly breathing—or perhaps breathing too hard, nearly out of her body. She curled her fingers. Sharp nails cut into the soft skin under Errigal’s eyes. Regan said, “I should take these, old man, and prove how sightless you are, how useless and stupid, how extreme a fool.”
