Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(101)

‘You are bleeding.’

‘Yes,’ Arsinoe says, and grimaces as Katharine helps her up. She flexes her hands, squeezing more blood from the runes. ‘But I still have enough.’ She takes a deep breath and heaves off away from the wall, leaping again for Rho’s corpse as Pietyr grapples with the dead queens who still hold fast inside it. They rake their undead fingernails down his perfect cheek and he growls and shouts in pain.

‘Arsinoe, the ax!’ Pietyr wraps his arm around Rho in a crushing embrace and Arsinoe kicks hard against the hand that holds it. She must kick twice more before the ax clatters to the stones.

‘I need the head!’ Arsinoe bares her teeth. But as she tries to reach it, seeking to climb Rho’s massive arm as if it is a tree branch, the corpse jerks its neck and connects with Pietyr skull to skull, sending him to the ground. Katharine holds her breath as Rho’s darkened, broken hand wraps around Arsinoe’s throat. She will see her sister’s windpipe crushed. See the life ebb out of her.

Katharine runs forward. In one fast, smooth motion, she scoops up the ax and swings hard, with a guttural howl. Then she blinks. The blade is buried in the corpse’s chest. As the dead queens stare at her in shock, Arsinoe rises and slams the rune into Rho’s dead forehead.

The last of the dead seep out, the corpse’s jaw hanging as if dislocated. It takes only a moment, and then it collapses into a pile of meat and empty eyes. Katharine, Arsinoe, and Pietyr stand over it, breathless.

‘Don’t ever, ever make something like that again!’ Arsinoe shouts at Katharine, and starts to laugh, bent over with one hand on her knee, the other pressed against the deep cut in her hip. Pietyr begins to chuckle, too. In the face of the reanimated Queensguard Commander, they have momentarily forgotten about the cloud of the dead hanging in the air.

But Katharine has not. Her eyes flicker to them as the dead queens contract, desperately holding themselves together. They need a queen in order to remain. They need a body. And they sense that Arsinoe has been weakened enough.

Katharine does not have time to warn her. She jumps to her feet and throws herself in front of Arsinoe as the dead queens dive for her throat. The impact of them knocks her off her feet. The brush of the battlement stones against her shoulder is surreal as she goes over the top of it, hearing Arsinoe scream as she goes over the edge as well. But Katharine, always the smallest, is also the quickest, and kicks Arsinoe against the wall. The last thing she sees before she plunges into the mist is Arsinoe, holding tight to the Volroy stones. Safe.

Arsinoe clings to the side of the Volroy, legs dangling, her neck twisted as she watches Katharine and the dead queens fall into nothingness. Katharine had saved her. She had saved her. And she fell.

‘Kat,’ she whispers, and then she shouts. ‘Katharine!’

‘Give me your hand!’

She looks up. Pietyr is leaning over the edge. With a groan, she reaches up and grabs him, wincing at the sting of the rune in her hand.

And behind her, the dead queens scream.

‘Pietyr! Pull me up!’

He tries, but he will not be fast enough. She knows that by the terror in his eyes.

Arsinoe kicks; her feet scrabble against the stone, unsure whether she is trying to climb or to keep the dead queens away. She dares to look over her shoulder and sees them coming, their form stretched in inky arms and elongated legs.

‘I’m not going to make it,’ she shrieks. ‘Let go!’

She pulls against his grip, the blood making it easy to slip loose.

‘Wait!’

Arsinoe looks over her shoulder again.

The mist is rising, racing up alongside the dead queens. It swoops up above them and dives back down, swallowing them whole and tearing them apart, spitting wisps of blackness into the sky. Arsinoe and Pietyr freeze as they stare at the battle, the dead queens shrieking, becoming a maelstrom of writhing arms and bared teeth, as the mist wraps around and around them.

The dead queens do not stand a chance. The mist devours. The mist protects. Arsinoe sees the queens of old, hidden inside its depths. She sees Illiann and even Daphne. She feels Mirabella’s might as the mist crashes against the Volroy like a thunderstorm. She recognizes Katharine in the sharp, twisting quickness as it slices strands of darkness and casts them off in ribbons. She sees them fight, for her and the island, until all that remains of the dead queens are tatters and ashes floating in the air.

When it is over, the mist disappears. It does not roll back into the sea. It does not retreat. It simply evaporates and fades until there is nothing left to see.

‘Arsinoe,’ Pietyr says, grimacing. ‘Give me your other hand.’

She does, and he pulls her up and back over the side onto the rooftop, where they collapse together.

‘It was them,’ she says, panting. ‘Mirabella and Katharine.’

‘It was them,’ Pietyr agrees, and knocks his head against the stone. ‘And now it is finished.’





THE BATTLEFIELD




One moment, the mist is everywhere. The next it draws back, fading like it never was, and Emilia turns her horse and races in search of Jules.

All across the battlefield, soldiers are wakening. They wander together, helping their wounded, casting fearful eyes on the havoc that remains. So many are dead, twisted around or torn apart, that it is a relief to see a few felled by arrows or a spear, for at least that can be understood.