Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(77)

‘Yourself?’

‘Every cut I made into my arm. Every favor I asked for from whatever the low magic is. I knew the whole time it wasn’t free. And I did it anyway!’

‘Arsinoe—’

‘You warned me. You told me to stop. You said it was the people around me who would bear the cost.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant. This . . . it wasn’t what I meant at all.’

He looks away, and a silence grows between them. There in the room with Billy, something is slipping away. And if she would just reach out and take his hand, she could catch it and keep it from disappearing.

‘My father’s dead,’ he says dully. ‘They murdered him, too. Punishment for murdering Natalia Arron.’

Arsinoe looks up.

‘I’m going to have to go home and look after Mother and Jane. They deserve to know what’s happened.’

‘You’re going now?’

‘No. I won’t go now.’ He pauses. ‘Maybe I’ll come and find you after they’re settled. We can go away together like we talked about.’

It was not so long ago that they made that pact, to start over together someplace new.

‘The people who said that,’ she whispers, ‘were from another world. Now there’s only this one.’ This one, she thinks, and shuts her eyes bitterly. Where war presses in against the walls and will force them to battlefields soon enough. Where in the morning, she will have to burn the body of her sister.

‘I think we had our chance, Junior. And I think we missed it.’

‘I think so, too,’ he says through clenched teeth. He walks to the door and pauses with his hand on it. ‘Luca gave me a message for you. She told you to come and fight. That the temple wouldn’t stand in your way.’

Arsinoe nods. ‘Good. Then that’s just what I’ll do.’





INDRID DOWN




After Mirabella was killed, Luca made no attempt to hide what she had done. She confessed to freeing the suitor and sending Mirabella’s body with him home to the rebellion. She gave Katharine no choice but to summon the guards and have the High Priestess escorted to her rooms in Indrid Down Temple to await her sentence.

Rho, meanwhile, recovered from the sudden abandonment of the dead queens, regaining consciousness after a day and a night. Though she is not entirely the same. Her eyes, at times, seem to be missing something. But only Katharine herself knows what that could be.

With Genevieve in her shadow, Katharine walks atop the battlements between the Volroy’s indomitable towers, where the wind is strong enough to nearly knock her down. The Black Council refuses to meet. After the arrest of Luca, Bree is terrified she will be next, and as for Antonin, Cousin Lucian, and the rest . . . When first they were reluctant to have Mirabella in the capital at all, now they are more than happy to blame Katharine for the loss of their champion against the mist.

Katharine looks out across the harbor to the place below the cliffs where her sister died. The presence of the dead queens rests heavy and cold in her belly, as if she had swallowed a sphere of ice. After she stole Mirabella from them, they had stormed through her blood, cutting like razors, rotting her flesh from the inside out. But she is all they have, and soon enough, they quieted.

Katharine cannot be quiet. She feels only hate. Hate and impotent anger. But at least she had spared her sister the experience of sharing her skin with the dead.

‘The mist still hangs there,’ Genevieve says, leaning against the stone of the battlements and looking out at the bay. ‘Like it is waiting for something. But for what?’ She shivers and then cocks an eyebrow. ‘So much for the promises of a dead king-consort.’

‘Have you told anyone else what you found in those pages? That Mirabella’s death might have vanquished the mist?’

‘No. Only you. Though perhaps we should. We could say you had to try, based on what we learned. That you sacrificed her in an attempt to save the island. Even if it failed, no one could fault you for that.’

‘No. I do not want to make excuses.’ Katharine glares out at the mist. ‘Mirabella wanted to bring Arsinoe here. She would have brought Jules Milone. She would have had us fight beside them, had me stand aside and put the crown on the Legion Queen’s head. Perhaps that is still what I should do.’

Genevieve studies her carefully.

‘Do not worry,’ Katharine says. ‘I would only be that brave if she were still here. Now I will be a coward and let them bite and claw and scratch until there is nothing left.’

‘Kat,’ Genevieve says, but Katharine turns away. ‘Very well. What, then, do we do with the High Priestess? I never thought I would plead for mercy, but . . . seeing Luca’s eyes as she confessed . . . Her heart has broken, and her influence wanes. I think this was the last disappointment her old heart can bear.’

‘Let the High Priestess remain in her rooms under guard. Let her stay there until it is over.’

‘Over?’

‘If you do not think that Arsinoe will come for me now, you are a fool. She will come. And the mist will come. And the Legion Queen will come. And then there will be an ending.’





SUNPOOL




Jules and Billy try to keep Arsinoe from preparing Mirabella’s body herself. But who else could do it? Who else knows the way she liked to wear her hair or which perfumed oils she preferred? Only Arsinoe. So the morning of the funeral, she stands before her sister’s broken body and tries to work up the courage for that first touch.