Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(47)

‘She is not like that now. The Ascension is over.’

‘Is it?’ Arsinoe says skeptically. ‘I’ve never heard of an Ascension ending with more than one queen alive.’

‘Except that you have. Illiann’s. Queen Illiann lived side by side with her sister. Happily. And if there was a way for her, then perhaps . . .’

At Mirabella’s words, Arsinoe looks away, out the window as the sky begins to drop small snowflakes. December nears its end.

‘It is almost our birthday,’ Mirabella murmurs.

Arsinoe looks at the snow and snorts. ‘I guess it is. If the Ascension weren’t over, like you say, I guess they’d be getting ready to lock us up in—’ She eyes the room. ‘Well, in here.’

‘They would not lock us in the tower until after Beltane.’ But even so, she and Arsinoe eye the walls uncomfortably. ‘It is unsettling, though, isn’t it? They’ve locked queens up in these very rooms. To kill each other. One might have died right there.’ Arsinoe points. ‘Or there.’ She points again. ‘Or over there.’

‘Arsinoe, stop that.’

‘Mathilde says that sometimes with the sight gift she can feel the place where someone died. That it lingers, like a stain. And Katharine lives here now.’

‘So would you, and so would I, if we had won.’

Arsinoe shrugs. ‘I would’ve stayed in Wolf Spring. But her? The Undead Queen? I suppose it suits her.’

‘She is not like that. It was—’

‘The Ascension, right. I heard you. Except what about that boy she killed? The one who stood against her and had his head ripped clean off?’

Mirabella closes her eyes. The Katharine she has come to know does not seem like she could ever have been so brutal. She cannot reconcile this Katharine with the stories she has heard. Yet she saw it herself at Innisfuil when she ran the long-bladed knife through Madrigal’s neck.

‘She is a danger, but she is my puzzle to solve.’

‘She isn’t a puzzle at all. This isn’t a game.’

‘It is almost like she is two different people,’ Mirabella says softly, and something about the words sticks. Katharine never shivers. There is some secret, that perhaps only Pietyr Arron knew, and that Madrigal somehow found out. She turns the pieces over in her mind. There are places where they almost fit. But there is something she is still missing.

‘Two different people,’ Arsinoe says. ‘Or she just grew up.’ Her eyes lose focus, and she half laughs, remembering something. ‘I loved her, too, once, you know. That day they came for us at the Black Cottage, after you were gone, I scratched Natalia Arron’s face when she tried to take her. Camden would’ve been proud. But that was a long time ago. Now I’d throw her at Natalia Arron.’

Before she can reply, Mirabella hears movement from the hall: the guards shuffling position and telltale footsteps approaching in the corridor. She grasps Arsinoe by the arm and pulls her back toward the tapestry.

‘You have to go!’

Arsinoe lifts the fabric and stops. ‘Not until you tell me you understand the plan for tomorrow.’

‘There is no plan for tomorrow. Call it off. Get out of the city while you still can!’

‘Mira, I won’t just leave you here!’

‘You have to!’ She shoves her sister a little harder, wishing she knew which stone to push or which to slide or kick to get the passageway to open. ‘I have made my choice, and I am safe here.’

‘Have you gone daft? How can you be safe here when we’re going to war?’

Arsinoe opens the passageway, too quickly for Mirabella to know how she did it, and Mirabella prods her inside. Before she lets the tapestry fall, she reaches for Arsinoe and kisses her hard on the head. Then the fabric drops, and her sister is gone. But before she hears the wall grind shut, she hears Arsinoe whisper.

‘You cannot always be the peacemaker.’

‘Mirabella!’

Mirabella spins around just as Katharine is admitted into the room. She cranes her thin neck this way and that until she spies Mirabella in the bedchamber.

‘There is a fire in the fireplace,’ Katharine says. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes. Only nerves. It helps, to play with the flames.’

Katharine looks back at the fire. But she does not move to it or hold her hands out to warm them. Perhaps she is warmed enough by the excitement of the coming parade. Her pale cheeks are even slightly flushed.

‘Is everything all right, Queen Katharine? Was there something you needed?’

‘Only to get away from the whispers of the Black Council in my ear. That the parade is a mistake. That to display you to the capital like this will somehow raise you up as queen.’

‘And what do you say?’ Mirabella asks.

Katharine cocks her head. ‘I say that the people can wish for you all they want; it will not make it so. And besides. They do not know . . . what plans I have for you.’

‘Plans? What plans?’ Mirabella steps away from the wall, sensing Arsinoe is still there. She has not fled down the passageway as she should. Instead, she is just behind the stone, listening.

‘Soon,’ Katharine promises. ‘Soon I will tell you everything.’





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