Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(78)

She will be cold. A shell. And the bits of dried pink matted into her hair make Arsinoe’s stomach wobble. No one else should see her like this.

She places her hands atop Mirabella’s shoulders. ‘There,’ she whispers, as if it is done, but despite herself, she is disappointed that Mirabella does not sit up and tell her it was all a ruse.

‘Do you do this alone?’ Pietyr Renard asks from the shadows behind her.

‘Get out.’

‘I only thought to share the load.’

‘I don’t care what you thought. No one else can see her this way. Especially not you.’

‘I can help you reset the bones. Help you to restore her.’

‘There is no restoring her,’ Arsinoe half shouts, and Pietyr, with typical Arron boldness, walks closer, uninvited. As he looks upon Mirabella’s wounds, all Arsinoe wants to do is give him wounds to match. Cave in his skull. Break his ribs and legs. Cut his throat and send him back to Katharine wrapped in a blanket. And then he touches Mirabella’s face so tenderly that Arsinoe’s tears pause in surprise.

‘She was so lovely,’ he says. ‘And so strong. How we feared her.’

‘Then how did this happen?’ Arsinoe asks.

Pietyr’s finger hovers over the dark red cut across her throat. ‘Perhaps the same way it nearly happened to me.’ He glances at Arsinoe as if ashamed. ‘Or perhaps not. I cannot pretend to have any answers or to know the truth.’ With slow hands, he moves Mirabella’s arm so it lies bent, her hand atop her stomach. He moves her shattered leg beneath her gown so that it looks straight and strong again.

Without a word, Arsinoe joins him, and they reset every broken bone. They clean every bit of redness out of her hair. She wraps the wound at Mirabella’s throat with a blue silk scarf, and Pietyr drapes her in a fine embroidered blanket of black. When they are finished, Mirabella is beautiful again.

‘I will not say she looks like she is sleeping,’ Pietyr whispers. ‘I have always hated that lie.’

‘Not sleeping,’ Arsinoe agrees. ‘But better. Almost like I remember her.’

He nods and turns away to go.

‘Renard.’

‘Yes?’

‘You know we are going to kill your queen.’ ‘Yes.’

‘And you won’t try and save her?’

‘I already tried,’ he says quietly. ‘I failed.’

After the body has burned, Jules and Emilia stand in the dunes of brown-green winter grass and look down on the beach at the remains of Mirabella’s funeral. It had not been, perhaps, fit for a queen, but the people of the rebellion had worn what crimson they had, even if that was only a bright red scarf wetted dark. They left offerings to Mirabella in the waves: paper lanterns painted with thunderheads, braided ribbon soaked in scented oil. The elementals called the wind and moved the currents to carry them out to sea. After Arsinoe had lit the fire, Camden walked the edge of the surf, pausing now and then to call through the smoke, making the sound that mother mountain cats make when they call to their hidden cubs. Even Cait’s crow, Eva, flew out over the sea, her caws strange and high, like the cries of a seabird.

‘You should go down to her,’ Emilia says, and leans against Jules’s shoulder. But Jules had been there all through the burning and the releasing of gifts. She had been there, with Billy, and Cait and Ellis. Aunt Caragh and Luke. Emilia and Mathilde. Even Pietyr Renard, though he did not dare to speak to any of them.

As the crowd dwindled with the sunset and the day turned colder, Jules retreated up the beach in the hopes that Arsinoe would follow. But Arsinoe remained with the embers. The only ones with her now are Camden, seated on the sand, and Billy. Luke has lingered a few steps away, shivering and holding his rooster.

‘I’m not really welcome,’ Jules says. ‘Mirabella and I . . . we never . . .’

‘That doesn’t matter now.’ Emilia gives her a light shove. ‘Go. Help her to mourn.’

Jules drags her feet. ‘I’m of no use. I know how to send an arrow through an eye. I know how to fight. I don’t know how to do this. Besides, she needs time. Distance.’

‘And she will have it, until the snow melts.’

The snow would melt in a few weeks’ time. And then the rebellion would march on Indrid Down. This time with Arsinoe riding beside her at the head of it.

Jules takes a breath and goes back down to the beach, her feet cold from seawater soaked through the leather, her short, brown hair whipping into her eyes. She nods to Billy and to Luke, who bow their heads and turn, shivering, back toward the city. Arsinoe does not move. She holds her diminishing torch and stares out at the darkening sea.

‘Arsinoe. You should come away.’

Jules reaches out to tug on her sleeve. She expects to be shrugged off or yelled at. But Arsinoe only rocks backward with the pull, and then forward again.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Jules says.

‘You don’t have to say anything.’ Arsinoe’s voice is thick. ‘I left you here with this. I left you alone with this same thing, when Joseph died.’

‘That was different. Joseph was different.’ Joseph was killed in an escape, by some soldier doing a duty. Looking back, she feels no hatred, almost like he died in an accident. ‘And besides, I left you, remember?’ She nudges Arsinoe softly. ‘I know I’m not your real sister, but—’