One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(14)

Cait blinks at Madrigal and shakes her head.

“That is not why. You know why we bound it. Not because she would destroy Fennbirn. Because she would destroy herself.”

“But she hasn’t destroyed herself. She’s ready now.”

“You are never ready. The legion curse drives people mad. More than one gift is too much for a mind to bear.”

“So they say,” Madrigal counters. “But they also say that the gifts under a legion curse are weak. And my Jules is the strongest naturalist anyone has ever seen. Just think what her war gift might be beside it.”

On the banister, Cait’s crow familiar croaks and shifts angrily from foot to foot. Madrigal was always ambitious. No doubt some part of her was excited that a child of hers had received such a prophecy.

“Is that what this is about?” Cait asks. “Your daughter. Your daughter. Being a part of this. Having a great destiny. But it is still really about you, Madrigal. You being a part of this. Hoping for your own great destiny.”

“What an ugly thing to say, Mother.” For an almost imperceptible moment, Madrigal’s eyes narrow. Anyone who knew her any less would have missed it completely. And then her eyes are wide again, and imploring.

“I know we had to bind it,” she says gently. “Sufferers of the legion curse were burned once. They were drowned. The Council would have demanded I leave her in the woods to die.” She touches her mother on the shoulder. “But she has grown up. Strong. And sane.”

“We bound Jules’s war gift for her own good,” Cait says. “And”—she hesitates to say what she has never wanted to believe—“as the seer was right about the legion curse, it must have occurred to you that she could also be right about the rest of it.”

“That Jules will bring about the fall of the island?” Madrigal scoffs. “That oracle was mad, like so many oracles before her.”

“Perhaps. But, Madrigal, the binding will stay.”

“Stay. But it will not hold. It weakens even now. I could release it if I chose. Her blood is my blood. I am her mother. And I will do what I think is best.”





THE ASHBURN WOODS





When Arsinoe gets tired of walking, she stops and builds a sizable campfire by the side of the road. Mirabella’s scout comes upon her as she lies beside it, her head resting on her sack of clothes.

She or he is fairly good at stealth. Arsinoe does not hear them until they are so close that she does not need to shout to be heard. Of course, a truly stealthy scout would not have come so close in the first place.

“Tell my sister I’m here,” Arsinoe says without moving. “Tell her I’m waiting.”

“Mirabella.” Elizabeth shakes her shoulder gently. “Mira, wake up. The scout has returned.”

It is still too dark in the deep woods to see anything but a shape. Mirabella thought she had fallen asleep against the trunk of a tree, but as she dozed, she must have fallen over into the dirt. Her cheek is gritty with it.

Somewhere to her right, Bree grumbles, and then her face is illuminated by orange flames as she lights a small pile of sticks on fire.

“Well,” Bree says, her eyes puffy. She flicks her wrist and the fire grows. “What’s so important that we must wake from our spots on the hard ground?”

The scout dismounts and takes a knee. He seems nervous. Confused.

“What is it?” Mirabella asks. “Is the way through to Wolf Spring barred?”

“That is unlikely.” Bree yawns.

“It is Queen Arsinoe,” the scout says. “She is waiting for you on the main road.”

No one reacts, except for Bree, who comes fully awake and inadvertently sends her small flames rushing into the air.

“How did she know we were coming?” Elizabeth wonders. “She must have better spies than we thought.”

“Did you see the bear?” asks Mirabella.

“I did not. I looked for it everywhere, but not even my horse ever seemed to catch its scent.”

Mirabella looks eastward. Dawn is beginning to gray through the trees. The thought of the bear is like ice in her stomach. She remembers claws and roars and screams, and swallows hard.

“I will leave as soon as it is light enough to keep from tripping over roots,” she says. “Do I need Crackle, or is it walkable?”

“Mira!” Bree and Elizabeth exclaim together.

“You cannot go if we do not know where the bear is,” says Bree.

“Let us scout ahead more, in the daylight.”

“No,” Mirabella says. “If she has hidden her bear, then she has hidden it. I will be ready.” She looks at her friends’ faces in the firelight and is careful not to show her own fear. “She is here. It is time.”

Joseph travels as fast as he can along the dark, tree-covered stretch of the Valleywood Road. He is exhausted after a long day working the boats and had barely closed his eyes to sleep when Madrigal started throwing pebbles at his bedroom window.

He thought she was looking for his brother Matthew, but when he opened the sash, she called to him and waved her arms. So now he is running through the dark, hoping that he has gone the right way after Jules and Camden. They do not have much of a head start, and the pain in Jules’s legs may slow her down after a while.