Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(65)

‘What did they say?’

‘I could not tell. It was . . . mutterings. Wails.’

Arsinoe leans back, relieved.

‘This pleases you?’ he asks.

‘This pleases me. Because whatever happened to him was decidedly unnatural. And unnatural I can work with.’ She reaches for Pietyr’s hand again and pushes the sleeve up his arm to look at the pale skin of his wrist. As she grasps him, she feels something uneven and rough across his palm. She turns it over, and clucks her tongue. ‘Did you notice this?’

‘We did. An old wound. And an ugly one.’

‘Not that old.’ Arsinoe leans close to study the scars. There are so many, it is a wonder his hand did not just fall apart. Most of the palm is dark pink scar tissue. But the lines are still there, for someone who knew where to look. His scar is the mess one makes when one is trying to cover over a rune. A low-magic rune.

‘Pietyr Renard,’ she whispers. ‘You have come to the right place.’

As she hurries through the city to the apothecary shop, Arsinoe’s mind spins so fast that it forms knots. Pietyr Renard was doing low magic. And she knows who it was who taught it to him.

‘Madrigal,’ she whispers. ‘You always knew how to make the most of what time you had.’

The shop is empty this early in the morning, but she and the shopkeep have a generous understanding: she is free to come and go and take what she needs as she pleases. Quickly, she goes to the shelves and pulls down a mortar and pestle, a bottle of rose oil, and a tightly bound bundle of rosemary. Chunks of resin or amber would be best, but the herbs will have to do. She stuffs a small bag of dried flower petals into the mortar and quickly returns to Lermont House.

The house is awake. And full. Gilbert must have gotten nervous and raised the alarm. Mathilde is back, her hands pressed to Pietyr’s forehead and eyes. Emilia stands at his bedside with a drowsy, sick-looking Jules. Even Cait and Caragh have gathered there, with their arms crossed.

‘I can’t do this with all of you in here.’

They turn to Arsinoe. Mathilde removes her hands from Pietyr’s face.

‘Do?’ asks Cait. ‘And just what is it that you are going to do?’ By the way she frowns, it is plain to see that she knows very well.

‘If I don’t,’ she says, ‘he stays how he is.’ She looks to Jules, who glances at Emilia before nodding.

‘Leave her to it,’ Jules says. And one by one, the others bow their heads and go.

Caragh pauses at her ear. ‘You turn to this too quickly and too often,’ she says. ‘You are too like my sister.’

‘I don’t have a choice,’ Arsinoe replies.

When the room is empty except for her, Jules, and Camden, she begins laying out her materials.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Jules says. ‘You’re not like my mother.’

‘Maybe not,’ Arsinoe mutters. ‘But Caragh’s right. I turn to it. Even though it destroyed you and Joseph. Even though it might have killed him. Even though it scarred my face and gave the cat a limp. I still—’ She stops and looks down at her hands and the marks the low magic has left on her. No one else has been able to wield it like she has. And the greater the magic, the greater the cost.

Arsinoe pours oil into the bowl of the mortar and pestle and adds a fat pinch of flower petals. They are deep red, from roses. Rose petals into rose oil. Perhaps she should have chosen a different oil, but she was in a hurry.

‘So you’re going to try and wake him up.’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘But haven’t the healers in Indrid Down been trying to do that for months?’

‘I’m sure they have. But not like this.’ She nods to his hand. ‘Turn that over.’

Jules winces at the sight it, lips drawn back in a silent hiss.

‘I think your mother taught him.’

‘You think my mother taught him this?’ Jules holds up his palm. ‘It’s nothing but scars.’

‘No,’ Arsinoe says. ‘It’s just been buried. And we’re going to dig it back up.’

‘Why do I not like the sound of that?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Arsinoe. ‘You’re very queasy for a warrior.’

‘Half a warrior,’ Jules corrects her as Camden sniffs at Pietyr’s face.

Arsinoe leans forward and smears rose petal oil in a crescent across Pietyr’s forehead. The smell is strong. Strong enough, she hopes, to reach him all the way down wherever he is hiding. She lights one of the short candles by the bedside and uses the flame to ignite the herbs before blowing them out and waving the smoke across his chest. In her own chest, she feels the tug and tickle of the low magic as the oil and smoke open the path. It makes every scar on her arms come alive and her mouth water.

She sits beside Pietyr on the bed, and Jules brings the light close as Arsinoe peers into his hand. A dagger, a new one, to replace the one taken by guards at the Volroy, comes out of the sheath at her waist. It makes a dangerous, almost ringing sound as it does; one would think she was war-gifted herself for how sharp she always keeps it.

‘How can you dig anything up out of that?’ Jules wonders quietly as they look upon the nest of intermingled scars. So many slashes. So many cuts. It seems someone made a flurry of them in all directions. And Arsinoe senses that it was not Pietyr.