One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(35)

“Grandma Cait says the binding might be all that’s keeping me sane.”

“Or all that’s holding you back.”

Jules looks at the knife. She could make it move. Make it fly. Make it cut. Nothing about her naturalist gift has ever felt so wicked or out of control.

Madrigal picks up the knife, and Jules breathes easier with it safe in her hand.

“I suppose this means you’re not happy about the baby. But you can’t hate him, Jules. Just to spite me. You won’t, will you?”

“No,” Jules says darkly. “I will be a good sister.”

Madrigal looks at her. Then she rolls potatoes onto the counter and starts to chop them.

“I thought I would be so happy,” she mutters. “I thought this baby would make me so happy.”

“Pity for you, then,” says Jules. “Nothing is ever as good as you want it to be.”

A second crow, larger than Aria, flies into the kitchen and lands on the table with a letter in her beak. It is Eva, Grandma Cait’s familiar, and the letter bears the seal of the Black Council. Cait comes in behind her and sees the scowl on Jules’s face.

“I take it that you’ve told her about the baby.”

“Why does everyone in this family know things before I do?” Jules asks.

“Never mind that, Jules. You’ll get over it.”

Jules nods toward Eva’s letter. “What does it say?”

“That Wolf Spring is about to be crowded. It seems that both of the other queens and their households are coming for Midsummer. Where has Arsinoe gotten off to?”

“The woods, I think, with Braddock.”

“You’d better go, then, and tell her.”

Jules gets up from the table, and she and Camden head outside. They hurry down the path to the road, stretching the muscles in their bad legs. They meet Joseph as they reach the hilltop fork.

“What’s got you in such a hurry?” he asks as she slips her hand into his and tugs him along.

“News for Arsinoe. I’m glad you’re here. It saves us a trip.”

“Oh no,” Arsinoe says when Jules and Joseph come into the meadow. “What news is there now?” She had been watching Braddock pluck blackberries off a vine, his flapping lips nearly as good as fingers.

“Mirabella and Katharine are coming here,” Jules says. “For Midsummer. And they’re each bringing an army of supporters besides. The letter from the Council just arrived.”

Arsinoe’s shoulders slump. The other queens, here. Wolf Spring will be flooded with strangers.

“A lot of good it did, my trying to keep Mirabella out of my city.”

“I don’t like it,” Jules growls, and at her side, Camden snarls. “We won’t be able to guard you. It’ll be chaos.”

“It won’t be easy,” Joseph agrees. “But at least we’ll be here, at home. Where we know how things lie.”

“Midsummer is in less than a week,” Arsinoe says. “And there was no letter of warning from Billy. What good is having a spy in Rolanth if he can’t even tell us about this?”

“Rolanth might not have gotten more notice than we did,” says Jules. But that is unlikely. Even if it was an Arron plot, the temple would have needed to agree.

Arsinoe sighs.

“Naturalists. We are always the last to know.”

“After you’re crowned, there will be naturalists on the Council,” Joseph says. “Wolf Spring will finally have a say again in how Fennbirn is run.”

Arsinoe and Jules trade glances. Joseph, the look says. Ever the optimist.

“Has Billy written?” he asks. “Is he well? Is he safe?”

“He’s written twice. He promised to write daily.” Arsinoe crosses her arms. Two letters, and both were formal and stilted, containing none of the awful personality that she misses so much.

She looks at her friends standing in the meadow where they have stood so many times before. The summer sun casts their shadows onto the ground, and those shadows seem like the ghosts of their childhood, forever running through these trees.

“Our happy ending,” she says quietly.

“Arsinoe,” says Jules. “You have to do something. You know why they’re coming.”

Not to talk. Foolish to have thought that talking would stop Mirabella from searing blisters up and down her back.

Arsinoe watches Braddock foraging in the bushes. She does not want to put him in danger. Or Jules. Or Joseph. But they are all she has. Only her friends and her low magic.





GREAVESDRAKE MANOR





Katharine holds Sweetheart carefully as she extracts the snake’s venom, pressing the glands. The yellow poison runs down the sides of the glass jar. There is not very much. Sweetheart is a small snake, and even in a small jar, her venom barely coats the bottom.

Nicolas leans across her bed watching, enrapt.

“How strange,” he whispers. “That so little of a thing can cause such great harm.”

Katharine pries the snake free with a gentle motion and places her back into her cage. Sweetheart writhes crankily and bites at the glass, wriggling as she tries to inject venom that is no longer there.

Nicolas recoils; Katharine giggles. She screws a lid onto the jar.