Ban turned in one smooth motion. Half the moths rose on a breeze, fluttering around his head; the others remained clinging to his skin, and flourished their wings.
This was the Ban Errigal she only remembered as a scrap of a bastard child, loving her baby sister. Now grown handsome in a wild, tight way, like a hungry wolf prince. One arm slowly streamed blood from a slash just above the elbow.
Ban the Fox, they called him at the Summer Seat.
Ban the Fox, who was beloved of the forest.
Ban the Fox was her answer.
Lady Regan,he said softly in the language of trees.
Ban… the Fox,she replied in the same.
The cherry trees all around them giggled, dropping tiny oval leaves like confetti.
“You’re a witch,” he said, awed, “as well as a soon-to-be queen.”
“And you a soldier as well as a witch.”
He bowed, unable, it seemed, to take his eyes off her.
Regan glanced again at the mantle of moths he wore, sending her own few to alight on his shoulders.
Shrugging as if their tiny feet tickled, Ban said, “They bring a message from my mother. She reminds me I’ve been home weeks, and not visited her.”
For a moment Regan peered at him, as if he were a trick of the White Forest, and then she remembered: “Brona Hartfare is your mother, and I was near when you were born, for my sister Elia was born that same day, while both our mothers resided at the Summer Seat.”
A thing shuttered his eyes, though he did not even blink, when she mentioned Elia’s name. All instincts urging her to slice into that, Regan stepped forward. “You and Elia were childhood lovers.”
The moths burst off him, though Regan did not note even a twitch or shift in his posture. He said nothing, holding her eyes with his.
“I only meant, young Ban,” she soothed, “that once my little sister trusted you, and so would I now.”
He swallowed, barely, and glanced down her body to the water still glistening at her ankles. “You aren’t wearing shoes.”
“I was in the stream, just north of here, begging the forest to lend me aid. The old oak who drinks from that stream said your name, the answer to a question I didn’t know to ask.”
“What is wrong?” Ban stepped nearer to her, the youthful concern in his frown and pulled brow a contrast to the reactions Regan usually garnered from men.
In answer, Regan joined him at the center of the cherry grove and knelt upon a tuft of short, teal-gray grass, flaring her coat around her like a skirt.
Ban sank to his knees. “Tell me what I can do, my lady.”
Regan held her hands, palms up, to him, and he slid his against hers. The pocket between their palms warmed, filling with a tingling spark.
“We are suited,” Regan said, giving him her kindest smile. One she rarely practiced in the mirror, for lack of necessity. “Both of long, powerful bloodlines rooted to Innis Lear.”
He nodded, fingers curling about her wrists.
She noted how roughly attractive he was, again, this near and with his lips parted, the muscles of his chest taut. At least five of his scars were put there for magic. There was an untamed, informal note to the crease of his mouth, the haphazard braids, the thick bands of muscle. The bed of Regan and Connley never had required elegance. His wildness would complementtheirs. She said, “I would like to continue my bloodline, Fox, but cannot carry a child well enough that it survives.”
Here her voice hitched, and she allowed it.
“I’m sorry,” Ban murmured. “My mother—she has tried to help?”
“Yes, but only with conception and enhanced potency. I need now to dig into myself, to see deep enough I might understand how to fix myself. And Brona will not go into me like that; she would not risk my life as a man might.”
The young wizard leaned away, though he did not try to let go of her hands. “I do not… I will not go inside you.”
