“Over my dead body,” snarled Gaela.
Regan closed her eyes. “What a fool our baby sister is, to set her sights so low.”
“Aremoria will see the loss of your husbands as opportunity,” Ban said, though it was only partially true.
A soft cry of distress escaped Regan’s lips. Gaela gripped her shoulder. “We will find vengeance for Connley’s death, sister,” Gaela promised. “Take Errigal, and this entire island, for our own, in your husband’s memory and for our glory. Elia will be sorry to come home for this challenge. She should have done as we said, and we would have made her choices easy.”
Regan clutched Gaela’s hand. The two shared a long, hot stare.
Ban lowered his gaze to the remains of duck and violent streaks of berry preserves.
“You look poorly, Ban,” Regan said.
“I am reluctant to go against your youngest sister. To see her harmed, more than she might otherwise be. We were friends, once.”
“But?” Gaela prompted, sensing his hesitation.
“I must—we must.” Ban let all the years of loathing coat his voice. “Elia would forgive Lear everything.”
Gaela downed her wine, licked a drop of it from the corner of her mouth. She came to him and grasped the shoulder of his tunic, dragging Ban to his feet. Regan joined them, taking his hand in her cold fingers.
Both his and Gaela’s hands were rough and dry, muscled and scarred by swordwork. Regan’s were smooth and elegant, with nails ragged from their travels, still honed enough to bite. Ban thought of Elia’s soft brown skin, how it would blister if she went to war.
“You hate our father as much as we do,” Gaela said. “I remember you, as a boy. He called you her dog. As if dogs are not loyal, not true.”
“And you made yourself a fox,” Regan continued.
Gaela said, “I made myself, too, Fox.”
“He was sent away, Gaela, for the same reasons our mother was murdered. As heartlessly, as carelessly, as if so easily discarded.”
If he did not confess to his part in Lear’s death, it would never be known. The king died of age, of a lack of breath. It was none of Ban’s doing. Yet he also greatly wanted the credit, to be included in the heat of their regard. And they needed to know it was done, that their way was clear. That Elia’s hopes were already in ruins. “I have had my revenge,” Ban said huskily.
Regan’s nails bit into his hand. “Ambitious fox,” she whispered, eyes stuck on his face, as if she would drown without him.
Before he could explain, Gaela said, “Do you swear to my cause, Ban the Fox, that which is my sister Regan’s cause, as well?”
“I swear,” he said, both believing it in that moment, and knowing it would not matter.
Neither woman knew how fickle Ban’s oaths were.
Regan said, “You should marry me.”
The air went still and heat spiked all through Ban, then Gaela snapped, “What?”
Regan detached herself from her sister and faced Ban. Though her hair was unadorned, and there’d been no trace of paint on her lips for days, that wintry beauty remained. “You are Errigal now, by our word. Become Connley, too,” she said, cool and gracious. “Ban the Fox, general of Innis Lear’s armies, all of them, beneath Gaela Astore of Lear. United by marriage and the roots of the island. Three impossibly strong lines of power between us. Our blood and our roots are suited.”
Ban could hardly breathe. Elia had refused to run with him, to leave the island, to choose him for nothing but love itself. And here her sister would choose him so boldly, proposing that their partnership would make the island stronger, that his presence would make her stronger.
Gaela studied her favored sister with narrow eyes. “You would have no mourning time. It might be seen as desperate.”
“It is desperate,” Regan answered, her gaze all for Ban. “But I will not let our father win now, even under Elia’s aegis. I will do anything to end their bid, to end them. Connley is dead, but we will be queen, Gaela. He died for it, and there will be nothing can stop me now.”
She drifted nearer to him. “Don’t you desire me, Ban Errigal?” Regan whispered.
He parted his lips to answer—something, Ban did not know what—and then Regan kissed him.
Ban gasped against her mouth. He lifted his hands and found her elbows, then her ribs, as Regan seduced him with this slow, sensuous kiss. Cool shade and a slender, crystal waterfall; she was a refuge from bruising sunlight and battering wind, from the hungry salt sea and cruel constellations. It stirred him, but not like Elia. He thought of her, and it hurt to do so, more even than he had expected.
Gaela’s deep laugh echoed, in the room and in Ban’s gut.
Regan ended her kiss with a delicate lick, a taste of his teeth. Her hands lit upon his jaw, but her eyes remained dull and quiet. Ban could see her disaffection, despite the prowess of her kiss. She cared not for him, not nearly as she had for Connley.
“Connley would have approved,” Regan said with a hush, as if she heard Ban’s thoughts. She let her fingers stroke him as she lowered her hands. “I would marry you, Ban, and we would be well matched, though you are young, and in love with Elia.”
Ban felt frantic, all at once: the terrified, cornered rabbit, not the fox.
“When it is all over, perhaps,” Regan continued, glancing at her sister, not for permission but only agreement.
Gaela snorted. “Win this battle for us, Fox, and perhaps you’ll be a duke for it, and shortly after a king.”
“I will win it. For myself, and for you. But I will never be a king, nor even—a duke.” Ban backed away from both, clutching his trembling hands at his sides as he bowed.
He remembered the messy passion with which Elia had kissed him. Insisting, making a home for him inside of her. Then the equally impassioned certainty with which she’d chosen against him,
