Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(14)

‘Yes, but it was only a nightmare. It wasn’t one of the dreams she sends. Contrary to what you and Mira think, I can tell the difference.’ She squints up at the windows; the light streaming through suggests it is already late morning. And they are on the floor. All they have are pillows and the small blanket that Arsinoe has kicked up against the wall. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks. ‘Why aren’t you in our room?’

‘Because you’re not in our room. I found you here already asleep with your face against the wood. So I fetched these pillows and a blanket.’ He sits up and stretches his back, wincing.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and squeezes his arm.

‘It’s all right. Have you found anything?’

Arsinoe drags herself toward her work space: knives and bottles and half the inventory from the apothecary shop lay scattered on the solitary table as well as the floor. The jar that contained Madrigal’s binding sits open, the letter out and five blood-soaked cords still inside.

‘I’m going to try this one.’ She holds up a vial of rust-colored liquid. ‘It’s the regular tonic, but I stirred in one of Madrigal’s blood-soaked cords.’

‘Well, that’s disgusting,’ says Billy. ‘So much for breakfast.’

Arsinoe rubs her face. She is sick to death of this room, and it is a mess. She is not a careful poisoner and leaves drippings of her concoctions running down the table legs and pooling on the floor.

‘Look at this.’ She gets to her feet and takes up spilled bottles, angrily righting them, then grabs for a cloth and wipes at the spills, even though some have dried into sticky stains. ‘I never learn.’ She throws down the cloth and lifts her fist. It takes everything she has not to shove every last bottle and blade onto the floor.

Billy stands behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Hey, it’s all right.’

‘It’s not. And don’t touch anything!’ She slaps him away. ‘You shouldn’t be anywhere near this. Do you want to end up like those two suitors I killed?’

‘That was an accident.’

‘It doesn’t matter. They’re still dead.’

‘Listen.’ Billy reaches out and tugs her away from the table. ‘I know enough not to lick the spills. And if you’re being careless, it’s because you’re working too hard. How much sleep have you gotten? How much blood have you lost, cutting into yourself?’

She flexes her fingers. Drops of blood have been squeezed from every tip. And her arms are a battlefield of scabs. She thought her days of low magic were finished. Instead, she is into it deeper than ever, deeper than Madrigal, perhaps deeper than any practitioner that came before her.

‘I’m not even her daughter, yet I am so like her.’

‘Like Madrigal,’ Billy says. ‘And will you wind up like her?’ He gestures to the jars, the knives, and the cloths spotted with red. ‘There’s always a price, isn’t that what you said? Low magic always has a price. But you never know what it costs until it collects.’

Arsinoe gestures to her weary face. ‘I think the cost is these big black circles underneath my eyes.’

‘I don’t think you know the cost. Just like Madrigal didn’t know that hers would be a knife stuck through her throat.’

Billy’s eyes are so serious, he hardly looks like himself. Madrigal’s death might have been a turn of luck. Murder at Katharine’s hands. Or it might have been the low magic. There is simply no way to tell.

‘Are you asking me to stop?’

‘But I can’t ask that, can I? Not when you’re doing it for Jules.’

‘It’s not because I want to,’ she says, but even she hears the lie. Low magic is dangerous, true, but it is potent, and thanks to her queensblood, hers is more potent than most. How can she stop now, in the middle of a war, when she is full-up with one of their best weapons racing right beneath her skin?

‘But it will have a price,’ Billy says. ‘There’s no way around that. No . . . loophole in the contract.’

‘Maybe it’s different for queens.’

‘Maybe it is,’ Billy says quietly. ‘Maybe they pay through the people they love.’

Arsinoe swallows hard. The people she loves. Joseph, dead. Jules, out of her mind. Billy takes her by the arms.

‘I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have said it. I only thought it because I almost hope that it’s true.’

‘How can you hope that it’s true?’

‘Because I’m selfish. And it would be better for me if it happened to me or Jules. Just not to you.’ He chuckles without much humor. ‘Maybe you should start intensely caring about Emilia.’

‘That’s not funny,’ Arsinoe says. ‘And besides, I don’t think it would work.’

She takes his hand and kicks at the sad blanket crumpled up on the floor. ‘Let’s go find something to eat. And get some fresh air.’

‘Let’s go to the great hall,’ Billy suggests. ‘There’s bound to be stew. There’s always stew. And we’ll probably find Luke, and Matthew and Caragh if the baby is sleeping. They found Braddock; did Luke tell you? Someone reported seeing him down the beach, and there he was, picking for shellfish during the low tide.’