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 THEmiddle 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.
Buteverythingwas 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.
