REGAN LEAR TURNED away from the battle and walked north toward the White Forest.
Always, always she had been the second daughter of Lear. Gaela’s younger sister. The middle, the princess, not the heir, because her glorious older sister would rule. Regan was the pillar for Gaela’s wounded, raging heart, a web of iron roots dug deep into the earth of Innis Lear to hold Gaela high.
Regan did not know what to be, without her elder sister.
But Gaela was dead.
So Regan walked, and walked. The wind gusted hard at her back, pushing her along the way. Good, yes, Regan was glad the wind agreed this was the way to go.
Back to the earth, to the heart of the island. To a spring, or a grove of ash trees. Always ashes had been her favorite: slender and gray, at first, but spreading and gorgeous as they grew strong. The whisper of their leaves was always a delicate song.
Why did she feel so cold? She shivered hard, as if ill.
All Regan could hope for now was a bed of roots, a cool, damp nest in which to close her eyes and simply stop. Fade into the earth as if she’d always been a part of it. Where Gaela would be soon, and Connley already waited.
Regan was a worm of decay, twining about the forest roots, always between death and new life, but never quite alive. Everyone around her died; perhaps it was the reason she could bear no child. There was not enough life in her.
Her sister’s cheek had been so cold.
Regan shuddered again, and the wind trailed sharp fingers down her spine.
“She asked for the poison your mother used,” the witch had said softly. “I did not expect her to drink it.”
It had not seemed a thing to believe, and yet, there was the proof of it before Regan’s eyes: Gaela laid out by the hearth in Brona Hartfare’s room, sleeping, dead.
Regan had clawed her skin until blood dripped like hot tears down her face, and pulled Gaela’s dagger free of the sheath at her thigh. Brona had leaned away, but Regan did not strike. She’d touched the cold blade to her palm, then the back of her hand, dragging the tip up her wrist and over her sleeve, leveling it at her own heart.
But the sun had nearly risen, and Ban the Fox waited for her in the Refuge of Thorns. Regan had kissed her cold sister and gone out onto the moor to find her other sister, dull and alone. The dagger loose in her hand.
Shouldn’t she feel more?
Now the duel was over, too, and Regan walked. For a few minutes or an hour, or a day or a year, she lost the scale of time. There was such emptiness inside her.
Regan, pretty Regan, whispered the wind.
She replied not at all. The wind had given her nothing. The roots had given her nothing. She’d never had any reason to ask the stars. Only Gaela had loved her, and then Connley.
Ban the Fox might have, but he was dead. So was her mother. Her father, Lear, dead. All her enemies were dead, but all her family, too.
“Regan!”
The witch ignored the sound of her name, even from her baby sister’s voice, and walked on, her pace the same, toward the edge of the forest. Her slippers skidded on the rocky slope, and Regan crested it, stumbling down into the forest valley. Blue sky shone down on the black and gray and white forest, scratched here and there by scarlet and orange because it was so late in the year. Beautiful, the brilliant colors of death. On Innis Lear they wore white for the dead, but death was so vibrant. It was a sun of colors. Gaela was bold, and now she was dead. Regan had always been cool and shaded. She was still alive.
Not for long.
The shadows of the White Forest overcame her, and Regan lifted her gaze to the trees. Where the ash? she murmured in their language, and the wind pushed her forward.
“Regan!”
The second daughter of Lear entered the slip of ash trees and brandished Gaela’s knife.
“No!” Elia caught her arm, jerking her around. “Regan!”
Blood and tears striped Regan’s face; her loose hair crackled with wind and energy. “My sister is dead,” she said in a hollow voice.
“… Gaela is dead?” Elia breathed.
“I was not so strong as her, nor so glorious.”
The girl, the little princess, moved carefully closer, staring at the dagger in Regan’s hand. “How?”
Regan shut her eyes. “Gaela drank Dalat’s poison.”
Elia swayed, struggling to remain on her feet. “No.”
Dry, cracking grief shook Regan’s bones, and she showed her teeth in an anguished grimace. “I will not live without her!”
“I know, sister! I know!”
Regan bit her lip, turning it gray then breaking the skin. Blood leaked free.
“Listen to the wind, Regan, to the island and these roots, please. They love you, this island loves you, I love you—you are not lost, we are not lost!” Listen, Elia begged, ash friends, speak to my sister, this is Regan Connley of Lear.
The grove of ashes shook and shivered, whispering Regan’s name.
She closed her eyes. I know, she said to them. I am roots, I am the roots of this island, I am born of you, and formed of nothing else. Nothing is born from me but wormwork!
Elia knelt before her sister. “We have each other, we can still … we can still be better … a family.”
“A family! Our family is dead. All poisoned, with flowers or magic or stars. My Connley, dead. Gaela, dead. Our mother, too. Ban the Fox, dead—and you should be glad of that, sister.” Regan grasped Elia’s chin and took aim. “Our father’s murderer, slain now by your valiant king of Aremoria.”
“What?” Elia wrenched herself away.
“Ban Errigal killed his enemy, our father.”
“No, Father was old, and in despair! I was there: his heart simply stopped!”
“By magic. A wizard with the ear of the wind and the love of the roots, and the hatred of our father.” Regan laughed wildly, recalling the panicked, terrible moment when Connley was dead and Ban had glowed, incandescent with rage. He had dropped a nut from his pocket and crushed it, and all the wind of the island had begun to scream.
Elia shook her head. Tears clung to her short lashes, and she flailed at Regan, trying again to steal the dagger. “It isn’t true. Give that to me, Regan!”
But her sister pushed her back. “You tried to save him, last night. You love him, still.” She laughed more, but it was weak now, almost sympathetic. She knew what it was like to love too much and yet never be able to change a thing. Regan pressed the bloody scratches on her cheek again until they seeped, like the tears of Saint Halir, the spirit of hunters. Then she put one bloody hand against Elia’s and said, You will be alone, and for that I am sorry.
“Regan,” Elia whispered back.
“I will not miss you,” the witch said, lifting the small jeweled knife, “but you must remember us to your children.”
“Please, sister. Regan.”
Regan turned the knife upon herself. The point found her skin, just over the collar of her ruined gown. “I will take my mother’s way, too,” she said with a small, hysterical laugh. “The rootwater cannot save me from this! Soon, Gaela, soon, Husband, soon, Mother, soon, all my poor babies!”
Stop her, Elia begged of the island. She grasped Regan’s wrist, clinging to it. Wind, stop her. Be my ally. Ash friends, trees, stop her. Love her!
Regan lashed out at Elia’s face; pain burst in Regan’s hand and Elia folded quite suddenly. Regan took a deep breath and repositioned the knife.
The witch no longer listened as Elia begged the world, groggy, dragging herself up against a tree. Save her, please. Please.
The earth shivered.
Around Regan, roots pressed up, rolling the ground like ocean waves. Fingers of mud reached, worms of earth grasped Regan’s skirt, tugging at her. Regan looked down in surprise, blinking tears and blood.
Regan, queen, witch, lover, shuddered the whole of Innis Lear, opening its arms.
The ash trees bent toward her, their roots lifting, churning, walking the trees up out of the earth and nearer to Regan Lear.
Yes, she murmured.
Gaela’s knife fell from Regan’s hands.
An ash shoved Elia out of its way as the youngest daughter of Lear tried to hold on to her sister.
Seven ash trees gathered close to Regan, wrapping her up. Queen, love, Regan, they whispered as she slumped and wept, as she dug her hands into their golden leaves and their roots wound about her ankles. The trees twined themselves together, a braided tower of ashlings, closing Regan off from everything but their cool, dark center. They wanted her, and refused to give her up.
Then she was gone, leaving her last sister behind.
Wind ruffled the last autumn-yellow leaves, tossing them down onto Elia Lear like a benediction.