“My husband would destroy you if you tried, Ban Errigal,” she said, “and I would help him. That is not what I meant.” Regan smiled her most dangerous smile, as she found it very telling what he assumed.
Ban cleared his throat. Wind shivered in response, whispering all around them:good good good,for the trees of Innis Lear approved of this alliance. “You don’t seek power, either, then? For Brona is that—powerful.”
“You are rooted with magic, but not only to Innis Lear?”
“I allied with Aremore forests,” he answered simply.
“And you are iron. You are.” Her nails dug at the soft insides of his wrists. “You are forged unlike me, unlike your mother. I would reap your insight, your ideas. Your power.”
His chin lifted: pride at her words. Regan hid her own tiny smile of triumph in favor of a quiet, pleading frown. “Help me, Ban the Fox.”
In reply, he bowed over their joined hands, turning them to kiss her knuckles.
THE FOX
BAN EMERGED FROMthe cool cover of the White Forest at the side of Regan Connley. His heart raced, more hare than fox.
He continually glanced at her from the corners of his eyes; she smiled knowingly. Her fingers at the edge of his sleeve were cool and bare, and she wore now a dark red over-dress and leather slippers they’d fetched from beside the creek. She was slightly taller than he, and six years older, and beautiful like the sun on winter trees. As he glanced at her, a small, fluttering sigh escaped her lips. Although Ban knew—absolutely knew—it was an affectation, he felt an answering flutter at the base of his spine.
Meeting her as he had, both of them nearly nude, and her glistening with water in a sleek white shift, with magic sparking in the air and sliding between them back and forth, it was no wonder he felt the bite of infatuation. At least he could recognize it.
And Regan had asked for his aid.
She’d appeared to him like the spirit of an elegant ash tree, an earth saint of old, a witch. And, Ban thought, a queen already. When he stood beside her, the unsettled roots of Innis Lear seemed to calm. Despite everything, it calmed him, too.
Once they’d both retrieved their discarded clothes, once Regan had swiftly wound her wet hair into a low knot, and once she had helped to bind the wound still glistening on his shield arm, Ban asked her why she and her husband had come to Errigal.
“To visit your father,” she said.
He steadied his hand under hers as she stepped over a scatter of rocks pressing up through the path. “To assure yourselves of his allegiance to Connley, you mean.”
Regan smiled quickly, then it vanished. “Is it strong?”
“From what I know, yes.”
“He was distraught when we arrived this morning. I left my husband with him, as Errigal said something about his son’s betrayal? He must not mean… you?”
It was simple to put grief and unease on his face, both being what he felt. “My younger brother, Rory, the one not a bastard. He was discovered to harbor a desire to be earl sooner than my father is like to die, and…”
The lady’s fingers curled around his wrist. “I am so very sorry, Fox.”
“I was out in the forest, hunting after his trail.” Ban shook his head, looking down. It was half-true, for last night he’d pointed Rory in the direction of Hartfare, where he could find shelter. Then Ban returned home, to lie to his father that Rory had fled. Errigal’s rage and grief had been wild, and this morning before dawn, Ban had left his still-drunken father, to lead several parties of men out hunting Rory’s trail. It had been no difficulty to whisper at the trees and ask a handful of crows to divert them all from any path that had his brother’s trace. By the sun’s zenith, they’d all split off, and Ban was alone. He took the opportunity to sink into the forest, to give some blood to the roots of the trees and say hello. Messages had arrived from his mother, on the wings of moths and kisses of wind. Then Regan had come.
“Did you find him? Did he give you that wound on your arm?” she asked.
Ban nodded, though he’d done it himself, knowing how to cut to make it seem enemy-inflicted. He sighed to make his voice breathy. “We fought, but he got away, running.”
Regan paused to touch his cheek where Ban had used his long knife to flick some drops of blood.
She smoothed her thumb down his rough jaw, then continued on.
Together they walked out over the moor toward Errigal Keep, past the iron chimneys. Their linked hands stretched between them. At the gate to the Keep, a bloodred flag for Connley had joined the winter blue banners of Errigal.
Ban needed to make a report for Morimaros.
But first, he would meet the duke, and lie to his father.
He escorted Lady Regan through the ward and into the old great hall, but that was not where the duke and earl were to be found. No, they’d retired to the former library, which had been Errigal’s study since his wife returned to her family some ten years ago.
