One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(101)

“Do you think she still wants to keep us?” Arsinoe shouts as she stands beside Mirabella on the foredeck.

Mirabella keeps her arms thrust down at her sides as she concentrates. “Perhaps it is one last test.”

No one says that they should turn back. But every one of them is afraid. The net of mist lies heavily atop the water, white and so very thick.

“Do not fear it!” Mirabella shouts.

“Easy for you to say! You don’t know what it’s like to try to pass through! How it chokes you and turns you around!”

Mirabella takes Arsinoe by the hand. “Are you ready, Sister?” she asks.

“I am. We go through! Or we sink!”

Mirabella pushes wind into the sails so hard that the entire ship jumps forward like a horse breaking its harness. The storm is as fine a storm as Mirabella has ever seen. She would be in love with it were it not trying to stand in their way.

“Go back with them,” she says to Arsinoe.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Go back with them and hold tight to something.” She looks at her little sister’s terrified face as seawater slams over the rail. She smiles. “Hold tight to Billy, perhaps.”

Arsinoe’s eyes shift away from the storm and she manages a laugh.

“If you say so.”

Mirabella watches her go. Jules has her arms wrapped around Joseph and gripping tight to ropes, soaked and miserable-looking already. Arsinoe joins Billy at the helm, and they cling to the wheel as the ship rises and falls.

Mirabella turns back to the storm. The electricity in the air hums in her elemental veins. The dawn is gone. All is dark. The waves raise them up only to send them crashing back down, and the first of the lightning crackles across the sky.

The net of mist swallows the boat to curl around the port side in thick, white fingers. Mirabella sends them surging ahead; she uses the wind to push the mist away. She calls more rain, more lightning to dance with the storm of the island.

If the Goddess truly wanted to keep her, then she should not have chosen a storm as the means to try.

Beneath the warring storms, it is dark as midnight. Only lightning illuminates their way, and it is terrifying: near constant. Arsinoe has never seen lightning strike lightning before, and after this is over, she has no care to again.

Together, she and Billy fight to keep the wheel steady, half steering and half holding on to keep from being washed overboard. Joseph and Jules huddle together near the railing, arms wrapped around ropes. Mirabella stands alone on the foredeck, using one storm to fight the other.

“I don’t know how much longer we can do this,” Billy shouts between the thunder. “I don’t know how much longer she can!”

Arsinoe’s teeth chatter in the wet and the wind, her jaw clacking too hard to reply.

They crest a wave and slam down. She bites her lip and tastes warm salt, but cannot tell whether it is blood or the sea. A wave tilts the deck hard to starboard, and for one frozen moment, it seems they will not come back upright. But they do. She barely has time to sigh with relief before another wave hits, with so much force it feels like being slammed into a wall.

“Are you all right?” Billy shouts, and she nods, coughing. There is so much water and cold. She wipes salt from her eyes. Mirabella is still upright amid everything, and Arsinoe smiles. She does not know how anyone ever expected that she or Katharine could stand against that.

Jules grabs Joseph by the arm and hauls him to her chest as the waves batter them against the railing. “Joseph, hold on to me! Hold on to me, and don’t let go!”

“I will never,” he says, his voice soft and clear so close to her neck. His breathing is shallow, and he no longer shivers. She draws back to look into his eyes. There is too much seawater for tears.

“What will we do,” she asks gently, “when we reach the mainland?”

“Anything we want.” His eyes drift shut. “There is a great school there, and bells that ring like music. . . . We can learn anything we like.”

“Anything,” she says. “And everything. And we will be together.”

“We will be. Just like I planned.” He smiles that Joseph smile, and Jules kisses him and kisses him, even after she no longer feels him kissing back.

The storm pitches them back and forth in the mist, but Mirabella clings to the rail like a barnacle, even though she is panting, and the strength is leaving her legs.

The mist still holds them like a net.

“I’ve got you, Sister,” Arsinoe says. “I’ll help you.”

Mirabella blinks. Somehow Arsinoe fought her way across the deck. Somehow she is standing and pulling Mirabella back onto her feet. She slips her fingers into Mirabella’s hand and squeezes.

“I’m no elemental,” Arsinoe says. “But I am still a queen.”

Mirabella laughs. She screams. And they face down the storm one more time as wind pushes the sails taut and the waves strike hard enough to tear at their clothes.

Perhaps if Katharine were there and they were three together it would have all gone easier. But as it is, they are only two, and the Goddess takes that much more convincing.

When the storm dies, it dies so quickly that Mirabella’s storm continues to rage for long moments before she realizes. She trembles, and Arsinoe catches her when she seems about to fall.

Around them, the white mist swirls and parts, revealing sunlight on the water, and in the distance, the dark shape of land.