One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(4)

“Nothing.” But Arsinoe returns with a book, brushing bits of bark off the soft green cover. She holds it up and Jules frowns. It is a book of poison plants, lifted discreetly from one of the shelves in Luke’s bookshop.

“You shouldn’t be messing about with that,” Jules says. “And what if someone sees you with it?”

“Then they’ll think I’m trying to get revenge, for what was done to you.”

“That won’t work. Reading a book to out-poison the poisoners? You can’t even poison a poisoner, can you?”

“Say ‘poison’ one more time, Jules.”

“I’m serious, Arsinoe.” She drops her voice to a hissing whisper even though they are alone in the yard. “If anyone finds out what you really are, we lose the only advantage that we have. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Arsinoe says quietly. She does not argue further, tired of listening to Jules talk of advantages and strategies. Jules has been considering their options since before she was even able to get out of bed from the poison.

“You sound hesitant,” Jules says.

“I am hesitant. I don’t want to kill them. And I don’t think they really want to kill me.”

“But they will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because every queen we have ever had has done the same. Since the beginning.”

Arsinoe’s jaw tightens. Since the beginning. That old parable, that the Goddess sent gifts through the sacrifice of queens, triplets sent to the island when the people were still wild tribes. The strongest slew her sisters and their blood fed the island. And she ruled as queen until the Goddess sent new triplets, who grew, and killed, and fed the island. They say it was an instinct once. The drive to kill one another as natural as stags locking horns in the autumn. But that is only a story.

“Arsinoe? You know they will. You know they’ll kill you whether they want to or not. Even Mirabella.”

“You only think that because of Joseph,” Arsinoe says. “But she didn’t know and . . . she couldn’t help it.” I did it, she almost says, but she still cannot, even after all that her botched spell has cost them. She is still too much a coward.

“That’s not why,” Jules says. “And besides, what happened with Joseph . . . it was a mistake. He doesn’t love her. He never left my side during the poison.”

Arsinoe looks away. She knows that Jules has tried hard to believe that. And to forgive him.

“Maybe we should just run,” Jules goes on. “Go to ground and hide until one destroys the other. They wouldn’t hunt for you too hard with each other there to choose from. Why bother searching the scrub brush for a grouse when there’s a deer standing in the clearing? I’ve been squirreling away food, just in case. Supplies. We could take horses for distance and trade them for provisions when we go on foot. We’ll circle around the capital, where no one will look. And where we’ll be sure to hear of it when one of them dies.” Jules looks at her from the side of her eye. “And for the record, I hope it’s Katharine who dies first. It will make Mirabella easier to poison if she’s not on the lookout for it anymore.”

“What if Mirabella dies first?” Arsinoe asks, and Jules shrugs.

“Walk up and stab Katharine in the throat, I suppose. She can’t hurt you.”

Arsinoe sighs. There is so much risk, no matter which queen falls first. Mirabella might kill her outright, without a bear to defend her, but if Katharine were to cut her with a poisoned blade, her poisoner secret would come out. Then even if she won, the Arrons would claim her, and she would be yet another poisoner queen seated on the throne.

There must be a way, she thinks, a way out of this for all of us.

If she could only talk to them. Even if it was forced. If she could force a stalemate and they were locked together in the tower. If they could only talk, she knew it could be different.

“You have to get rid of that book,” Jules says stubbornly. “I can’t stand the sight of it.”

Arsinoe slips the book guiltily into her vest.

“How would you feel if I told you to hide Camden?” she asks. “If you hate the poisoners, you hate me.”

“That’s not true,” Jules says. “You are ours. Haven’t you been raised a naturalist all this time? Aren’t you truly a naturalist, at heart?”

“I am a Milone,” she says. “At heart.”

Arsinoe bends down and parts the foliage and longer grasses in the meadow north of Dogwood Pond. She sent Jules into town, to the Lion’s Head to look for Joseph and Billy. She said she would follow as soon as she hid the poison book. But she lied. Crouching, she combs through the grasses, and it does not take long for her to locate what she seeks: a stalk of white-flowered hemlock.

The poison sent by Katharine, meant for Arsinoe but swallowed by Jules as well, was thought to have contained a measure of hemlock. According to her book, it causes a peaceful death as it paralyzes the body from the feet up.

“A peaceful death,” Arsinoe mutters. But it was not merciful, combined with whatever other poisons Katharine mixed it with. It was terrible. Slow, and damaging, and Jules suffered cruelly.

“Why did you do it, little sister?” Arsinoe wonders aloud. “Is it because you were angry? Because you thought I tried to have that bear slice you open?”