Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(63)

‘Don’t you remember?’

Arsinoe rubs her eyes. ‘I remember everyone celebrating in the great hall, and then we came up here and Luke brought more ale.’

‘A lot more ale,’ Jules says, and shuts her eyes. ‘The room is still tilting.’

All of Sunpool had celebrated the taking of Pietyr Renard. Mathilde even flexed her barding muscles and sang the tale of his capture. It was a good story. Emilia breaking into Greavesdrake Manor and silently rushing the halls, incapacitating servants with the blunt handle of her dagger. Then pulling Pietyr Renard from the queen’s own bed. She just threw him over her shoulder and carried him out. With him unconscious, she said it was a little like kidnapping a rolled-up rug.

‘What were you dreaming about?’ Jules asks.

Arsinoe frowns. She dreamed that she had received a package from Katharine. But she had been too afraid to open it. It had been prettily wrapped in soft blue paper and tied with a black bow, but she knew that if she opened it, she would find Billy. Dead, folded up or in pieces.

‘Nothing. I don’t really remember.’

‘How long have I known you?’ Jules asks.

‘What?’

‘How long?’

Arsinoe sighs. ‘Since we were six.’

‘Since we were six,’ Jules repeats. ‘And you don’t think I know when you’re lying?’

Arsinoe gets to her feet. The dream has left her with a chill. She craves some crispy, fatty bacon and eggs fried in the same pan. ‘I think you know me so well that it doesn’t matter whether I lie or not. You know what I was dreaming about anyway.’

Jules purses her lips, but she stands, too, satisfied. Then she doubles back over. ‘You had far more ale than I did; how are you so spry?’

‘Poisoner constitution.’ Arsinoe pats her belly. ‘It would take a lot more than that to give me a headache.’

‘I need more sleep. Go without me.’

Arsinoe leaves the room, careful not to disturb the sleeping men, dog, and fowl. She arrives in the great hall and finds it a wreck: upended bottles spill wine and ale across tables to drip puddles on the floor, and half-eaten chunks of bread lie here and there, along with bones from a roasted bird. There are plenty of people, too, who did not make it to their beds and settled for a bench or a tilted-back chair.

‘You will have to serve yourself.’ Emilia is seated at a table alone, in the slanting shadow of early morning.

‘I didn’t see you there. Is that some unknown warrior trick?’

‘Becoming invisible?’ Emilia grins. ‘That would be a very good trick. Here.’ She pushes her plate of food across the table. Some of it is eaten, but she must have overloaded it in the kitchen, because there is plenty left. ‘I think we are the only ones awake in this entire city.’

‘If that’s true,’ Arsinoe says, and picks up a bit of fried potato, ‘then who cooked the food?’

‘Where is Jules?’

‘Hungover. She went back to bed.’

‘She left me for you last night.’ Emilia smiles ruefully. ‘As always.’

‘I didn’t ask her to choose.’ Arsinoe takes up a fork and shovels down egg, still good even if it is cold. ‘But if I had, she would have chosen me.’

‘For now.’

‘For’—Arsinoe pokes her with the fork—‘ever.’

It feels odd, arguing with Emilia over Jules like this. She does not care for Jules the way that Emilia cares for Jules. She knows that it is different. But she cannot help feeling possessive.

Possessive for who? she wonders. Am I guarding Jules for myself or for Joseph’s ghost? Shouldn’t it be for Jules to decide when it is time to let him go?

It should be. And it will be. And maybe when she does, things between Arsinoe and Emilia will have to change. She squints up at her between bites of food, and Emilia gives her a haughty, know-it-all wink. Maybe not.

‘Where’s the hostage?’

‘At the Lermont house, under the protection and guard of the seers. Mathilde is there with him now.’

‘The Lermont house?’ Arsinoe asks. Long ago, the castle was the Lermont house. But as their numbers dwindled, it was abandoned for a large white manor house in the southwest corner of the city. ‘Why not put him under guard here?’

‘Too many people come and go within the castle. Lermont House is quiet. More easily watched. Though I do not know what use he will be as a hostage or who would want to take him. He cannot move or speak. We have kidnapped a dead body. Not good protection for your Billy if Katharine comes to terms with that.’

Arsinoe stops eating. ‘Katharine would never . . .’

‘You don’t think so? She is the queen now. She has no time for foolish first loves. If I were on her Black Council, that is what I would advise.’

‘So you think she’ll kill Billy anyway.’

‘That is what I fear.’ She looks at Arsinoe gravely. ‘But I am sorry, Arsinoe. I did try.’

Quickly, Arsinoe eats the rest of the food. She wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve. Emilia did try. And Arsinoe will not let that effort go to waste.

‘Where are you going?’ Emilia asks.

‘I’m going to wake up Pietyr Renard.’

Arsinoe has never been to the Lermont house. She has seen it, though, passing by on her errands in that part of the city. The best butcher is not three blocks away, where she often goes to fetch scraps for Braddock, Camden, and the other familiars. But standing outside the gate, she feels out of place. It is early morning, even to those who did not spend the last night celebrating, and the Lermonts are the first family of Sunpool. Who is she to barge in on their household?