One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(33)

Katharine’s stomach tightens with pleasure, and a tingle rolls up and down her back as if touched by unseen fingers.

“Would you indeed,” she whispers. “Perhaps you only think so. You might feel different when you saw your future queen slide a knife into her pretty sister’s breast.”

Nicolas smiles.

“I come from a family of soldiers, Queen Katharine. I have seen much of that. And worse.” He takes another swallow of wine. It gathers at the corners of his mouth, bright red. “And I do not like to be back from the action.”

Katharine’s pulse quickens until her heart beats so fast it seems there is more than one in her chest. The look in his eyes brings blood to her cheeks. She has seen that look before, on Pietyr, right before he would pull her to him and take her to bed.

“Natalia prefers that I poison from the safety of her bosom,” she says. “That is how the Arrons like to do it. Quiet and refined. Nothing pleases them more than pleasant dinner conversation that ends when someone’s face falls dead to their plate.”

Nicolas lets his eyes move over her body.

“There is charm in that,” he says. “But I would see your hands around their throats. A memory to take with me on the night of our marriage.”

Giselle clears her throat.

“Ahem, pardon me, my queen.”

“Giselle,” Katharine says. “Forgive me. We were so . . . engrossed . . . that we did not hear you.”

Giselle looks from Katharine to Nicolas, and flushes slightly at their expressions.

“Natalia sent for you,” the maid says. “She says you have a guest.”

“But I am already entertaining a guest.”

“She says you must come.”

Katharine sighs.

“Please, you must go,” Nicolas says. “You don’t want to keep the lady of the manor waiting.”

Katharine trudges up the stairs and down the hall to Natalia’s study.

“Natalia,” she says, “you sent for—” The rest of the words do not leave her mouth. Because standing in the middle of the room, his back straight and eyes bright as a frightened rabbit’s, is Pietyr.

“I knew you would want to see him right away,” Natalia says, smiling. “Do not be too hard on him, Katharine. I have already given him a stern lecture about leaving us for so long.”

But of course he would want to. Out of fear that she would send him to the cells beneath the Volroy, down so deep that he would never again see the sun. Out of terror that she would order Bertrand Roman to batter his brains out against the stones of the long, oval drive. Or that she would do it herself.

“No doubt you two would like to be alone,” Natalia says.

“No doubt,” Katharine agrees.

The cages of dead birds and rodents were cleared out of Katharine’s rooms when Nicolas arrived, but though her windows are kept open daily to combat the smell, it still lingers, and she hopes that Pietyr can detect it when he walks inside. The smell of death. Of pain. And not of hers, anymore.

He enters the room ahead of her, so he does not see it when she takes up the short-bladed knife from one of her tables. He walks into her bedchamber unaware. So bold. As if he still has the right to be there.

He taps the glass sides of Sweetheart’s cage, and the snake lifts her pretty head.

“I see Sweetheart is well,” he says, and Katharine leaps upon him.

She drags him to the bed and twists her body around his, kneeling on the mattress to grip him from the back. One arm wraps around the crown of his head as the other drags the knife lightly across his throat.

“Kat,” he says, and gasps.

“This will be messy.” She presses the knife harder into his skin. It will not take much. The edge is sharp, and his vein is close. “Giselle will have to fetch me a new coverlet. But it is true what Natalia says. You cannot poison a poisoner.”

“Kat, please.”

“Please what?” she growls, and squeezes his head tighter. His pulse races under her hands. But even as she wants to carve into his neck, she remembers what it was like, pressed against him like this. Her Pietyr, who she loved and who said he loved her. The scent of him, vanilla and ambergris, brings angry tears to the corners of her eyes.

“How could you, Pietyr!”

“I am sorry,” he says as the knife cuts into his throat.

“I will give you sorry,” she hisses.

“I had to!” he shouts quickly to stop her from cutting more. “Kat, please. I thought I had to.”

Her grip on his head does not loosen.

“Why?”

“There was a plot. Natalia told me of it in the days before Beltane. The priestesses, they had devised a scheme. To make Mirabella a White-Handed Queen. After your poor showing at the Quickening, they planned to charge the stages. They planned to cut you into pieces and feed you into the fires.”

“But I did not have a poor showing,” Katharine says, pressing the knife down again.

“I did not know that! When you came to me that night, beside the Breccia Domain, I thought that you were running from them! And I could not stand to see them touch you.” His hand strays up to her arm and she steels herself, but he does not try to draw the knife from his neck. He only touches her softly.

“I thought they were coming to kill you. And I could not let them. I would rather it be me.”