One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(11)

“You’re not ready,” Jules says, and Joseph slides his hand onto her shoulder. “Your bear . . . isn’t ready!”

“He seemed ready enough at Beltane!” someone shouts, and the crowd cheers.

Jules grasps Arsinoe by the arm.

“Let me slow her down. Let me be your decoy.”

“No, Jules. You know you can’t interfere.” She turns to Joseph. “Where is Billy? He should have been here. He should know.”

“His father sent a boat and he sailed for home. He said he wouldn’t be gone more than a couple of days. I . . .” He pauses helplessly. “If you go before he comes back, he’ll never forgive himself.”

“He’ll be fine,” Arsinoe says. “You’ll tell him I asked about him?”

Joseph nods.

“I’m going to go out and meet her,” Arsinoe says loudly. “I’m going to keep her out of our city so she can’t do any harm.”

The people smile and cheer. They clap their hands. Someone demands that she bring Mirabella’s body back strapped to the bear for them all to see. Something flies through the air and she catches it: a bag packed with supplies.

“A change of shirt and some food,” Madge says, and winks. “Bandages, though you won’t likely need them.”

Arsinoe swallows, and steps down into the square.

Jules tries to pull her back, and Camden cuts in front of her to curl around her legs.

“You can’t. You’re not ready.”

“It doesn’t matter, Jules. I don’t have any other choice.”

Beneath the bent-over tree, Arsinoe sits on a small log, edging her knife with poisonous nightshade. But though the poison on the blade practically sings through her blood, she does not want to use it. She does not want to hurt Mirabella.

But nor does she want to die.

“It won’t come to that,” she says to herself. “She’ll see me, and I’ll see her, and we’ll figure this out. It’ll be just like before.” She looks around beneath the tree, searching for agreement from the Goddess. For some sign.

The ancient, sunken stones are covered over with moss, and the tree has sprouted long, strange leaves, but that is only a disguise. Here in the sacred space, where the Goddess’s eye is always open, the tree does not care for summer, or winter, or time at all. Arsinoe listens to the utter silence, and wonders how much of her will be trapped here forever after she has sunk all that blood into the soil.

She gets back to work, rubbing and squeezing the nightshade along the blade. The scars of her face begin to itch, and she nudges the mask onto her crown. A twig snaps behind her and she tugs the mask quickly back down again.

“You don’t have to wear that thing on my account,” Madrigal says, dipping prettily below the bent branches in a bright green dress. “It can’t be that comfortable in the heat.”

“It’s fine,” Arsinoe says.

“You like the way that people look at you in it, you mean,” Madrigal says, and Arsinoe purses her lips. “I heard about Mirabella’s attack. I thought I might catch up with you here. I hoped that I would.”

“Why?”

“Because it would mean you are doing something more than walking out to face your death. Jules is going out of her mind. Not even Joseph can calm her.”

Arsinoe looks down. She hates to think of Jules that way. Panicked. Afraid.

“Is there anything?” she asks. “Anything that might help? Bring me luck? Make her attacks miss?”

“What a spell that would be. There is something, though, but we will need to work fast.” Madrigal raises her brow and looks at Arsinoe’s knife, and Arsinoe discreetly tucks the nightshade up into her sleeve. Madrigal will have brought her own knife anyway.

“What are we doing?” Arsinoe asks.

“Calling your bear,” Madrigal replies. “The same bear that we enchanted with low magic onto the stage at the Quickening. He is the only one you can hope for, and that’s only if the spell we cast was strong enough to still bind you together.”

“Even if it was, he will never get here in time.”

“Perhaps not,” Madrigal says. “But it is worth it to try.”

“Very well, then. Let’s have your knife.”

“What’s wrong with the one in your hand?”

“I’m saving that one for my sister,” she says, and Madrigal tosses hers over.

Arsinoe walks to the bent-over tree, ready to reopen the cuts in her palm, to paint the bear’s rune in blood and press it to the bark.

“He might only cause more problems. He certainly did before.”

“He did just what he should have.”

“Tell that to Jules. She still holds on to that, you know. Those people he killed. Even though I was the one who got her into it. Even though she didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Who says she didn’t do it on purpose?” Madrigal asks. “I saw the way that bear went straight for Queen Mirabella. You shouldn’t underestimate the depth of my Jules’s temper. It grows worse and worse. But when this Ascension is over, she will calm again, and we can all relax. So I’m doing this for her, and all of us, as much as for you.”

Arsinoe touches the knife to her skin and then pulls back.