Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(23)

As Emilia tightens her grip on Camden, Arsinoe pauses. ‘Wait. Bring her here.’ She marks the cat between the ears, red painting her fur and turning it spiky. Camden sits down.

‘What . . . is that doing?’ Emilia asks as she drops the rope and comes to kneel before Arsinoe when she beckons. Arsinoe places the queensblood on her, and she shivers.

‘It is preparing the way.’

‘I did not really believe,’ Emilia murmurs, her voice odd and faraway. ‘Even as I hoped it would work, I did not really believe.’

Arsinoe does not respond. The low magic has its hold on her now, too. She feels her heartbeat in rhythm with the island, her whole body thrumming. The pain in her hand is a spark as more blood leaks with every pulse.

She lights a bundle of herbs with the candle flame and blows the bundle out to breathe in the cloud of fragrant smoke, the scent sending her even further into the spell. Her thoughts rise from her head and float. She has to blink hard to bring her mind back into her body and focus.

Intent is everything.

She takes up a length of the scarf and holds Jules’s arm. Quickly, she makes the cuts, working around the chains: three shallow slashes and the blood runs forth. She wraps the cuts around and around with the scarf and the white soaks red.

‘Emilia, give me your arm.’

The warrior does not hesitate. She is no stranger to pain, and when Arsinoe makes cuts to mirror the ones she made in Jules, Emilia seems to relish it even as she grimaces. She watches the blood run through the scarf that Arsinoe wraps her in and stares as her blood pools on the ground. ‘You are wasting it.’

Arsinoe looks down. She is right. The small puddle of Emilia’s blood is joined and blended with a small puddle of Jules’s. Blindly, Arsinoe reaches behind her for a piece of cloth or rope or ribbon, but what she finds is a scrap of bread. She shoves it into the mingled blood and lets it soak before placing it into her mouth and biting down.

The blood touches her tongue and she rocks back, the taste and sickening thickness enough to make her gag. She is barely aware of her movements as she joins Jules’s and Emilia’s hands, making more cuts into her palms and thumbs, joining their scarves with knots. She squeezes her fist and turns it over, lets her queensblood drip into her opposite hand. Then she grasps the joined knots.

Jules and Emilia jerk as the queensblood meets theirs, and the candle flares, hot enough to burn it down to a nub.

‘How much more?’ Emilia moans as their blood spreads across the floor. There is more blood than there should be for such shallow cuts.

‘As much as you can bear to lose,’ Arsinoe replies.

A gust of wind blasts through the room, and she and Emilia duck as their hair whips into their eyes.

‘Don’t let go,’ Arsinoe calls as the wind rages. ‘Hold on!’

With gritted teeth, she shields her face with her knife-wielding arm and cracks an eye open. Camden has collapsed. Her paw has drifted into the pooled blood, and Arsinoe tries to nudge it back with her foot. But crouched as she is and fighting the wind, it nearly makes her fall over.

Jules’s and Emilia’s fingers start to loosen inside her grip. Jules’s eyes roll back. Emilia’s head droops.

Arsinoe squeezes more blood from her hand and soaks the ends of the scarves. Then she knots them again. Three more knots, adding more queensblood each time, until her head begins to swim and the sound of the wind is far away.

That is it. That is all. She slips the blade of the knife beneath the scarf and cuts it away from Jules. Then from Emilia. Their arms fall, and Emilia slides onto her side, fingers feebly reaching to apply pressure to her wounds.

Arsinoe looks down. Her hands are coated and sticky with red, already drying. She uses her knife to cut the long, dangling lengths of scarf, separating the pieces from the knots, and rolls them carefully into the jar beside the last of Madrigal’s blood-soaked cord.

The knots that joined Jules and Emilia together are soaked through. There is so much of their blood and her blood that holding them in her hands is like holding a freshly harvested heart. She drops the mess into a small burlap sack.

On the floor, Jules and Emilia lie motionless, still bleeding. She hurries to her desk and retrieves bandages to pack and bind their cuts. Now that the spell is finished, the wounds are not so bad. They are not deep and will leave only thin scars. In a few years, they may fade completely.

‘Arsinoe.’

At first she does not hear Jules speak. She is too distracted by her task.

‘It worked,’ Emilia cries. ‘Arsinoe! She is here!’ She fumbles with the chains. ‘Get these off her!’

‘Wait.’ Arsinoe holds her breath, watching Jules. And then Camden nuzzles Jules’s cheek and purrs.

‘All right,’ Arsinoe says, and takes the key to the chains out of her pocket.

Billy and Mathilde look down from the castle upon the deserters leaving through the city gate. The Legion Queen has finally been gone too long from view, and the rebellion has begun to leave in earnest. They have no doubt heard, too, the rumor that is circulating: that Queen Mirabella has left them and gone to fight at Queen Katharine’s side.

‘It’s not your fault, you know,’ Billy says to Mathilde. ‘We both tried to convince them to stay. I used every charming trick I know on these deserting rats.’ He had even thought he had changed a few minds, only to wake the next morning and find they had snuck out in the night. ‘They’re just tired. It’s not easy being uprooted from home and living in strange, makeshift spaces.’