One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(19)

Katharine turns in the saddle.

“Let us go and find your horse. If she was from our stables, she would have been trained and would not wander far. But as it is, I do not know where she has gone to.” She holds out her hand. Nicolas accepts it along with one of her stirrups and climbs onto Half Moon behind her. He slides his arms around her waist.

“I thank you,” he says into her ear. “Perhaps this was not so bad a first meeting after all.”





WOLF SPRING





Arsinoe, Jules, and Joseph leave the Valleywood Road and cut west, following the stream that joins eventually with Dogwood Pond. They sneak onto the Milone property as the sun sinks below the trees, and manage to avoid the eyes and questions of people in town.

Cait, Madrigal, and Ellis burst through the front door before anyone can call out. Jake the spaniel jumps into Jules’s arms and the crow familiars flap soft, worried wings against their heads.

“My Goddess.” Ellis walks up and takes Arsinoe by the hand. “We’ll send for a healer.”

“No,” Arsinoe says. “I’m fine. Look.”

As if she needed to tell them. The great brown bear is hard to miss.

“He’s called Braddock,” Arsinoe says. She places her hand atop the bear’s large furred head.

Madrigal extends her arm like she might touch him, then reconsiders. “Is Mirabella dead, then?” she asks.

The door slams, and a moment later, Cait returns with a bowl of water, already hot. She sponges off Arsinoe’s face and arms, which are crusted with blood and blistering burns. Cait looks almost like she might cry, but when she speaks her voice is like it always is.

“You look like a propped-up corpse. She had better be dead.” She prods Arsinoe’s bruised ribs. “You won’t survive another fight like this.”

“She’s not dead. Braddock, he . . . I don’t think she had the stomach to face him again.”

“She will soon,” says Jules in a low, tired voice.

“Did you get to her at least?” Madrigal asks Joseph.

Joseph tightens his arm around Jules’s waist and puts his chin protectively atop her head.

“I got to her,” he says. “And I told her what you told me.”

“Come inside,” Cait says gravely. “Those burns need tending. Braddock, I’m afraid, will have to stay out here. He’s not a familiar, and even if he was, he wouldn’t fit through any of the doors.”

The next morning, Arsinoe wakes with her mask askew. She had been so exhausted that she fell asleep without taking it off. She straightens it and turns to Jules, who is rolled on her side facing the wall. But Camden is sitting up, her black tail-tip curling up and down. Jules is awake.

It is hard to believe the things that Cait and Madrigal said last night. Even though Joseph said he saw the branches break off the trees and stab into the ground. Jules, her strong Jules, is legion cursed. Touched with war. The Milones had known and hidden it all this time, with not one word of warning. They had bound the war gift with low magic, they said. But the binding is beginning to fail. And what would happen if it tore loose completely? The legion curse is an abomination, and the legion cursed go mad. Everyone knows that.

“Stop staring at me, Arsinoe,” Jules says. She turns over and blinks her two-colored eyes. Arsinoe has always thought them pretty, one blue and one green, but Cait said the oracle had wanted to drown Jules as soon as she saw them.

“You’ll be all right, Jules. You’ve been all right so far.”

“Of course I’ll be all right.” Jules turns and stares up at the ceiling, dark wood beams and one pretty spiderweb left in the east corner. “Now we both have secrets.” She looks at Arsinoe again. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’d called the bear?”

“I did it after I’d left. I never thought he’d make it in time. He must’ve been looking for me already.” She sits up in bed and peers out the window. Braddock spent the night in the yard, probably trying to figure a way into the chicken coop. Arsinoe grins.

“I can’t wait for Billy to come back so I can show him.”

Jules smiles softly. She stares down at her hands and squeezes them into fists.

“Will you let Madrigal do the unbinding?” Arsinoe asks.

“Do you think I should?”

“I don’t know.”

“Joseph doesn’t think so. He says it’s too dangerous. That the binding might be the only thing holding back the curse. But I keep on thinking of something that Luke said . . . that there must be a reason why the Goddess put me near you. Like I could be strong. Like I could help you win.”

“You don’t need the war gift to make you strong,” Arsinoe says. “You already are. Is there anything else that Cait and Madrigal aren’t telling us? Anything else that the oracle said, something that might help?”

“No. She said I was legion cursed with war, and they paid her to keep the secret. I think it was fairly simple.”

They smile at each other, a bit uncomfortably. Arsinoe does not know what Jules will decide. But she does wish that it was someone other than Madrigal who held the key to the binding.

Ellis knocks and pokes his head in with Jake, who gives a bright bark.

“Up and dressed,” he says. “We have suitors to prepare for.”