One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(22)

“You sound very certain,” Katharine says. “But your eyes are nervous. Perhaps even afraid.”

“Only of accidentally eating something that was not meant for my plate.” Nicolas smiles and looks down as though to guard it.

The feast is a Gave Noir but not of the scope of the Quickening. Each dish is served as a separate course, and all of the poisoners in attendance partake, not only the queen.

Katharine pushes her fork into a green salad dotted with poisonous mushrooms, and adjusts the itchy gloves on her hands. Underneath, her skin is healing from a rubbing of dwarf nettle. The combination of healing scabs and sweat is making her want to scratch her skin off.

“Before the Beltane Festival, I thought watching a Gave Noir would be vulgar. But afterward”—he looks up at her from beneath his fall of gold hair—“there is something alluring about it. That you may eat something that I will never be able to taste.”

“Shall I describe it to you?”

“Do you think you could?”

“I do not know.” She looks down at the mushrooms: their bright red caps spotted with white. “Much of what we eat is bitter or has little taste. But there is something in the sensation of it. It is like eating power.” She stabs a bit onto her fork and pops it into her mouth. “And it does not hurt that our cooks drown everything in butter.”

Nicolas laughs. His voice is not deep—indeed, Natalia’s voice is deeper—but it is pleasant.

“It must be more than that,” he says. “Every poisoner here has turned their nose up as my dishes go by.” He glances about the room, and Katharine raises her eyebrows at his plate: a shallow bowl of chilled summer soup. Only he, giftless Renata Hargrove, and war-gifted Margaret Beaulin are eating that, and they all have the sense to pretend they are not hungry.

“Do not pay them any attention,” Katharine says. “Poisoners are always that way about untainted food.” She reaches up and touches the flowers of the centerpiece and the towers of shining fruit. “They see it as inelegant, no matter how much silver they pile it upon or how much spun sugar they hide it under.”

Nicolas reaches out as well, and their fingers touch. He seizes the opportunity and takes her hand to press it firmly to his lips, so firmly that she is sure to feel it even through the gloves.

Katharine does feel it. It shocks her just how much, and for a moment, Pietyr flashes into her mind, the memory of him suddenly strong enough to make her heart pound. She clenches her teeth and takes a breath. She refuses to think of Pietyr that way. Pietyr, who tried to murder her. She touches her face. Her cheeks are flushed. But Nicolas will think it is because of his kiss.

“There is such finery here,” Nicolas says. “But less of a heartbeat than at the Beltane Festival. Those nights beside the fires were so exciting. Watching you through the flames. Looking up at you from the sand. Will there be other festivals like that?”

“The next festival is for Midsummer,” Katharine says, and coughs when her voice trembles. “Celebrated across the island, of course, but really it is a naturalist affair, of harvest and bounty. Then there is the Reaping Moon in autumn, though the elementals claim that through fires and chilled winds.”

“Which festival is the poisoners’ festival?” Nicolas asks.

“Every festival,” Natalia answers from Katharine’s other side. She should have known that Natalia would be listening.

“At every festival there is a feast,” Natalia explains. “And every feast is for the poisoners.”

The main course is served: a poisoned hog with a bright spring pear stuffed into its mouth after roasting. The servers bring it first to Katharine and Natalia’s table, to carve her the choicest bits along with spoonfuls of orange squash sweetened with molasses and arsenic. The hog is delicious, juicy and robust. The seared bird on Nicolas’s plate looks shrunken and sad in comparison.

After the meal, Katharine leads her suitor onto the floor to dance.

“I can’t believe how well you are,” Nicolas whispers, gazing at her in awe. “There was so much poison . . . enough to kill a man twice your size.”

“Enough to kill twenty,” Katharine corrects him, smiling. “But do not worry, Nicolas. I have been eating poison since I was a child. Now I am practically made of it.”





ROLANTH





Mirabella turns back and forth in front of the mirror with a pained expression as Sara and the priestesses adjust the fall of her dress.

“It is so thin in places,” Mirabella says, studying a transparent spot near her hip.

The gown is fashioned from gauzy material overlaid and wrapped around itself. It is light as air and moves in the breeze.

“It is beautiful,” Elizabeth assures her.

“Just the thing to welcome a suitor in,” says Bree.

“William Chatworth Junior is not here as a suitor. He is here as a prisoner. Everyone knows he has already chosen Arsinoe. This feast is a farce.”

Sara fastens a necklace around Mirabella’s throat: it is the one she selected for Beltane, with the obsidian beads and gems that burn like fire. “Boys’ minds are changeable,” she says, and taps the gems. “This will remind him of your dance. His eye was on you then, no matter what he says about the naturalist.”

With an impish grin, Bree bumps Mirabella aside and turns before the mirror.