One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(70)

“But you like Nicolas?” And when Katharine does not answer, “That is ridiculous. You cannot like Nicolas.”

At first, it was good fun to make Pietyr jealous. To make him suffer. He had it coming and worse, after all. But the joke is not a joke anymore. He seethes at Nicolas, and Nicolas’s cool response unnerves her. The moment Nicolas gets a whiff of power, he will find a way to hurt Pietyr. Whether to humiliate him or kill him she is not sure, but she senses he is capable of either.

They are in the billiards room, but neither is focused enough to play. She shoots and listens to the balls clack together, not watching where they go. Instead she watches Pietyr pout. Even pouting, he is handsome.

“I do not like the ideas he puts into your head. He encourages you to be reckless!” Pietyr breaks away from the window and comes to roll the cue ball across the table, angrily stuffing it into a pocket.

“Perhaps it is you I should send away,” she whispers. But he only scoffs and crosses his arms as if she cannot mean it. “Nicolas is a better match for me now, in many ways. Even better than you.”

His eyes raise to hers.

“Kat. That is not true.”

“Our goals are more aligned. We have similar minds. And if I decide to defy Natalia, he will make a strong king-consort.” She inclines her head and tries to be kind. “It is not fair, this game that I have made you play. Thinking we could be together again. That there was hope for us.” Once, she thought that she would keep Pietyr as her lover, no matter which suitor she married. But that is a dream from a long time ago and dreamed by a different Katharine.

“Pietyr, I want you to go.”

“Go?” he asks. “Go where?”

“I do not care. Away from here. Back to the country. But you must go and go now.”

His bright blue eyes swim with something like regret. Will he weep? If he weeps, she will not have the heart to send him off. She will take him in her arms instead.

“Why are you saying this?”

When she does not respond, he shakes his head adamantly.

“I cannot go now. You are to fight a duel in two days. You do not know what you are saying. This Ascension . . . it has made you volatile. When you return to your senses, you will thank me for staying.”

He talks to her as if she is a child, and whispers break into her mind. Angry, sweet whispers, and her fingers move to her ankle, to the poisoned blade she always keeps there. She slides it from its sheath almost without realizing what she is doing.

Pietyr has turned his back on her. A mistake. But he turns around at the last instant, and the knife slices through the air instead of his skin.

“Katharine!”

“I said go, so you go,” she says.

“Kat, stop!”

She strikes again and catches his sleeve; the dark gray fabric begins to stain red. He backpedals around the billiard table and into the bar, knocking over a tray and a decanter of Natalia’s favorite tainted brandy.

“It is for your own good,” she says miserably. “There is danger for you here.”

“I do not care. I will not leave you, Kat. And you still love me, I know that you do.”

Katharine stops short.

“Whatever is left in me that can love,” she says, “loves you.”

Before he can speak, she raises the knife and carves into her own face, along the hairline and her ear as though cutting off a mask. Her blood runs bright red down her neck and into her bodice.

“Katharine,” he whispers. “Oh, my Katharine.”

“Pietyr Renard,” she says in a gravelly voice. “We have not been your Katharine since you threw me down the Breccia Domain.”

Pietyr stumbles out of Greavedrake in a daze. Katharine told him to go. But he did not gather any of his belongings. Instead, he rushes to the stable and saddles the best horse he can find. His hands tremble as he tightens the cinch. All he can see is the image of her cutting into herself.

“It is not her fault.” He leads the horse quickly out of its stall and mounts. “It is my fault, and I will find a way to make it right.”

Pietyr puts heels to the horse and gallops down the drive, hurrying for the road that curves north around the capital and on to Prynn. He will ride all day and into the night, then rest and change horses in the morning.

He will ride all the way to Innisfuil Valley. Back to the cold, dark heart of the island: the Breccia Domain.





THE ROAD TO INDRID DOWN





“Jules,” Arsinoe says. “You’ve been staring at that map for hours.”

They are traveling through the quiet roads in the shadow of the mountain, all on horseback, except for Arsinoe, who had to borrow Willa’s ill-tempered brown mule. It is sticky hot, even riding in the shade, but Jules and Caragh both insist that everyone keep their cloak hoods up in case anyone passes.

“Jules! It’s a good thing you’re a naturalist, else your horse would’ve run face first into a tree with all the attention you’re paying.”

Jules responds with a grunt but keeps on studying the map of the capital.

“Let her be, Arsinoe,” Joseph says, riding up beside her. “If she studies now, by the time we reach Indrid Down, she’ll be able to pass through the city like water in a stream. And we won’t have to study as much.”