Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(97)

Me to face down the mist. Katharine to be the vessel. And you to banish them with low magic.

‘There was only ever one thing that I was good at.’ She links her arm through Pietyr’s and draws the blade across her hand. ‘And I won’t be ashamed of it anymore.’ She holds her hand before her face and lets her blood drip down her wrist as her voice grows louder. ‘The dead queens started this fight. But it is the living ones who will finish it.’ She bares her teeth and slams her palm into the soil.

A great wind rushes down, and Pietyr ducks close, trying to cover her. The mist churns, and voices and cries echo from inside it. Perhaps it is Illiann. Maybe it is Daphne. But though she strains, she does not hear Mirabella.

She closes her eyes and presses her hand harder into the ground, and suddenly the air is light. She opens her eyes. They are in the courtyard beyond the front gates of the Volroy.

‘How?’ Pietyr asks, rising slowly.

‘Don’t ask questions. It’s where we were meant to be.’ Arsinoe rises and runs ahead, into the fortress.

Katharine is in her room beside the fire when she hears Arsinoe call her name. It has been so long since she has heard her voice, and she is surprised to find that the sound is a relief.

The castle is nearly empty; there will be no members of the Black Council and no soldiers to impede her. All that remains is to choose the place.

Katharine touches the knives at her waist, her dear, poisoned blades. Though against Arsinoe, the poison does not matter.

The dead queens who remain with her slither furtively into her blood. They prod gently, meek without the strength of their numbers.

‘Hush,’ Katharine whispers to them. ‘It is almost time for you to face my sister.’





THE BATTLEFIELD




Emilia lies frozen in place as she watches Jules and Rho Murtra circle each other. Arsinoe was right. Jules is beyond her. There is nothing she can do, to help, to protect, to stop what is coming.

‘Emilia!’

She looks to her right and sees Mathilde. The oracle has taken an arrow to her shoulder but fights on bravely, shoving soldiers back and waving her sword arm to signal rebellion flags. At her order, the reserves come, spilling from the northwest hill like ants. Watching them, Emilia feels a tightness in her throat. They are so brave. Despite the mist and despite the monster the Undead Queen sent for them, they do not flee.

‘Mathilde!’ Emilia struggles to her feet. Mathilde is unhorsed, and her yellow cape is stained dark with mud. Many of the oracles have fallen, their colors easy to see in the dirt. But a few still fight on.

‘We have to hold the line,’ Mathilde shouts. ‘Draw the western flank of queensguard thin!’

Emilia nods. She remounts her horse and catches a passing mare for Mathilde.

‘Wait,’ Mathilde says when she is in the saddle. ‘Look.’ Downfield, Billy stumbles through the battle, one hand pressed to his side and the other barely fending off attacks. His armor and clothes are soaked with red.

‘Foolish mainlander,’ Mathilde says. ‘He should have stayed nearby. If you lead the charge with the reserves now, you may be able to buckle the flank.’

Emilia looks between the queensguard, drawn enticingly thin, and Billy, on one knee and bleeding heavily. Downfield to her left, Jules and Rho begin to trade blows. There are so many places she would wish to be and no point in letting this moment of glory pass when the boy is practically dead already.

She raises her sword arm, and the war gift sings in her veins like the Goddess herself. She knows what it will feel like, crashing through the ranks. She can feel the strike of them against her knees, and hear their moans on the edge of her blade.

She squeezes her eyes shut and bellows. ‘Curse you, Arsinoe!’

‘What are you doing?’ Mathilde asks.

‘Charge the flank without me. Go!’ She turns her horse and races to Billy in fast strides, her sword sweeping down to cut through queensguard at the vulnerable place near the elbow. She relishes what fighting she may have all the way to the mainlander.

‘Billy!’

‘Emilia, thank god,’ he says as she pulls him into the saddle. ‘It was Renard. The bastard stabbed me when I tried to stop him from going after Arsinoe.’

‘Thank your god in your own country,’ she says, her heart lingering with the fight even as they gallop out of it. ‘Today you should thank my Goddess.’

They look back together as the horse takes them out of the fray. In the confusion of the mist, fighters scatter. They turn on each other, tripping friends and allies in the hopes of buying time. Everywhere the white touches them they scream; they fall to the ground with backs full of blood.

‘The mist,’ Billy says in horror. ‘What do we do about the mist?’

Emilia faces forward and kicks her horse hard.

‘That is up to your Arsinoe now.’

Camden prowls the border of Jules and Rho’s contest ground marked off by the fallen bodies of their mounts, killed when they first collided. But even without the cougar, no one would have disturbed them. For who would dare?

They strike and parry, strike and parry, their show of speed unnatural. The clang of their weapons crossing would vibrate any other fighter to her knees.

The only sounds are grunts and fierce bellows, the legion curse leaping high and the dead queens knocking it back, every impact hard enough to crush bones. Over and over, they come together and are thrown apart, yet the only damage they show was taken before the encounter began: ribbons of blood down a legion-cursed arm, a speckling of rot across an undead cheek.