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 his 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
