One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(6)

“Don’t touch me!”

She shoves him, and he lands on his hip in the grass.

“Ow,” he says.

“Sorry,” she responds sheepishly, and helps him up. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“The near kiss or the shove?” He brushes himself off without looking at her, his cheeks red with embarrassment. “Did I do something wrong? Did you want to be the one to kiss me? Is that how it is here? Because I would be fine with that—”

“No.” Arsinoe can still taste the hemlock, in the back of her throat. She almost forgot. She almost killed him, and the thought takes her breath away. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to. Not right now.”

Jules and Joseph finish two mugs of ale before acknowledging that Billy is not coming back with Arsinoe.

“Probably for the best,” Joseph says. “It’s grown late. Drunk folk might start demanding to see her bear.”

Jules frowns. Their phantom bear is becoming a problem. Arsinoe has not been seen with him since the night of the Quickening, saying that he is too violent and must be kept far off in the woods. But that will not satisfy the people of Wolf Spring for much longer.

“Well,” Joseph says, and pushes back from the table. “Shall we go? Or do you want another order of fried clams?”

Jules shakes her head, and they walk together out into the street. The early-evening light is softening, and the water of Sealhead Cove glitters cobalt and orange, visible between the buildings. As they make their way down toward it, Joseph slips his fingers into hers.

His touch still gives her a pleasurable jolt, even if it is tainted by what happened between him and Mirabella.

“Joseph,” she says, and holds his hand up. “Your knuckles.”

He lets go of her to make a fist. His knuckles are split and scabbed from working the boats. “I always said I would never work in the shipyard with my father and Matthew. Though I don’t know what else I thought I would be doing.” He sighs. “It’s not a bad life, I suppose. If it’s good enough for them, who am I to think any different? As long as you don’t mind me smelling like a barnacle.”

Jules hates to see his brave face. And how trapped he seems.

“I don’t mind,” she says. “And anyhow it’s not forever.”

“It’s not?”

“Of course not. It’s only until Arsinoe is crowned, remember? You on her council and me on her guard.”

“Ah,” he says, and slips his arm about her shoulders. “Our happy ending. I did say something like that, didn’t I?”

They walk companionably through the alley between the Heath and Stone and the Wolverton Inn, Camden hopping up and down on stacks of wooden crates full of empty bottles.

“Where did Arsinoe go off to tonight?” Joseph asks.

“To the bent-over tree, probably. To find Madrigal and do more low magic.”

“Madrigal is with Matthew. She met him on the docks, the moment he came in off The Whistler.”

Madrigal and Matthew. Their names together make her wince. Her mother’s fling with Joseph’s older brother should be over by now. Matthew at least should have come to his senses. He should realize how flighty and fickle Madrigal is. He should remember that he still loves her Aunt Caragh, banished to the Black Cottage or not.

“They ought to end that,” she says.

“Maybe. But they won’t. He says he loves her, Jules.”

“Only with his eyes,” she spits. “Not with his heart.” Joseph nearly flinches when she says that, and she glances sideways at his handsome profile. Perhaps that is how all men love. More with their eyes than with their hearts. So maybe it was not the storm and the circumstances. The delirium. Queen Mirabella is certainly more to look at than she is, and maybe it was nothing more complicated than that.

Jules pulls away.

“What?” Joseph asks. They round the corner at the end of the alley, and a small group spills out from the doors of the Heath and Stone. When they see Joseph, they stop short.

Joseph wraps an arm about Jules’s shoulders.

“Just keep walking.”

But as they pass, the nearest girl, brave on too much whiskey, cuffs Joseph in the back of the head. When he turns, she spits on the chest of his shirt.

Joseph exhales in disgust, but does his best to smile.

Jules’s temper flares.

“It’s all right, Jules,” he says.

“It’s not all right,” the girl snarls. “I saw what you did at the Beltane Festival. How you protected that elemental queen. Traitor!” She spits again. “Mainlander!” She turns to walk away but warns him over her shoulder, “Next time it won’t be spit. Next time it’ll be a knife between your ribs.”

“That tears it,” Jules says, and Camden leaps. She knocks the girl to the ground and pins her to the worn stones of the street with her one good paw.

Underneath the cougar, the girl trembles. The whiskey-courage is gone now, but she manages to curl her lip.

“What are you going to do?” she challenges.

“Anyone who touches Joseph will answer to me,” Jules says. “Or maybe to the queen. And her bear.”

Jules motions with her head, and Camden backs off.

“You shouldn’t protect him,” one of the girl’s friends says as they help her up.