One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(27)

“Sometimes I don’t. As you’ve seen.” She smiles at him, and his expression flickers. No doubt he remembers the carnage on the Quickening stages. But the bear was not Braddock then. He was only a bear under a low magic spell. Angry and frightened.

Arsinoe slips her hand loose from Michael’s. There is nothing wrong with accepting a suitor’s helping hand. Only she cannot help wondering what Billy would say, and what he is doing in Rolanth, with her sister.

Tommy approaches from her other side.

“Are you all right?” he asks, speaking fast as if to cut off Michael’s questions. If they keep up like that she will be tired of them by the end of the day.

“Why have you chosen to pay court together?” Arsinoe asks them. “Sharing a barge for the Disembarking was odd, but this is truly uncommon.”

“Competitiveness,” Tommy says simply. He grins and shows bright white teeth in a pleasantly handsome face. He is more sturdily built than Michael, but with their shared red-gold hair and similar features, looking at them is like viewing one through open air and another through a magnifying glass.

“It’s true. We’ve always been this way,” Michael cuts in. He bends to help Luke right an upended table. Arsinoe smiles apologetically, but Luke only winks. No one seems to mind the cleaning up. As long as she has her bear, she can do no wrong.

“We’re cousins, you see,” Michael goes on. “Go to the same schools, spend summers on each other’s estates. When you spend so much time together, it’s hard not to engage in one-upmanship.”

“You must feel the same about the other queens,” Tommy says.

“It’s not exactly the same when you have to kill them,” says Arsinoe, and cranes her neck to look for Jules. Maybe she can take one of these boys off her hands. They were nearly as impressed by the sight of Camden as they were by Braddock.

She looks back at Tommy, and he glances away. It takes her a moment to realize why: he had been trying to peek at what is underneath her mask. Arsinoe cannot decide whether to laugh or punch him.

“Why did you request first suit with me?” she asks. “Did you think I would die first?”

Michael shakes his head emphatically.

“Not at all,” he says. “We just had to see the bear up close. We couldn’t wait.” He gestures, rather shyly, toward Braddock lumbering ahead of them. “May I?” he asks. “I mean, is he safe?”

“If you feed him a fish he will be perfectly safe.”

As the sun sets over the orchard and the braziers are lit for evening, Arsinoe and Jules stand back from the crowd. It is a good night. The children of Wolf Spring chase one another from hot brazier to hot brazier, fearless. Folk sit at tables playing games and nibbling on leftover pie. Camden leans against Jules’s legs, and Braddock lies somewhere in the dark, finally stuffed full of fish and apples and tired of the children’s shrieks.

“They aren’t really so bad,” Jules says. “They could be much worse.”

“I suppose so.” Arsinoe cocks her head wearily. Tommy and Michael are at a table near the roasted suckling pigs, nodding and chuckling at something Luke is saying.

“Luke seems to like them.”

“Don’t be fooled,” says Jules. “He finds them tolerable. You know his heart is pledged to Billy nearly as solidly as yours is.”

“As mine is? I don’t remember making any pledges.”

“Well. As soon as he gets back from Rolanth, maybe.”

“Maybe.” Arsinoe snorts, and crosses her arms. Her heart skips. Her knife is no longer in her vest.

“Jules, my knife is gone.” She pats herself all over, as if it might have moved to another pocket by itself.

“It probably fell out when you were tussling with Braddock,” Jules says. “We can find it tomorrow, in the daylight.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Arsinoe looks quickly over the people in attendance. Her people, talking and drinking. Luke calls to Tommy and Michael from the edge of the nearest row of apple trees and they get up to play a shadow game with the children. Before he goes, Tommy slices another serving of meat and eats it, and Arsinoe’s heart stops at the sight.

He used her knife. The whole table had. Her knife, with the poisoned edge.

“Oh, Goddess,” she whispers, and runs to the table to pick it up.

“Arsinoe? What’s wrong?” Jules asks, running up behind her.

“They used my knife! The knife I dropped!”

It takes Jules a moment to understand. To her, Arsinoe is still not a poisoner.

“Who was eating here?” she asks.

“Both of the suitors . . . I don’t know who else! We have to send for a healer, Jules, now!” Arsinoe moves to bolt, but Jules holds her fast.

“Send for a healer and say what? That our poisoner in disguise accidentally poisoned her own suitors? You can’t!”

Arsinoe blinks.

“What are you saying? That doesn’t matter now. They need help!”

“Arsinoe, no.”

She has grasped on to Arsinoe’s arm with a grip like iron when they hear the first cry.

“Poison!” Luke shouts. “Poison! Send for the healers! The suitors have been poisoned!”

“No,” Arsinoe whispers miserably, but Jules holds her fast and takes the knife to slide into her back pocket.