One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(77)

“Where is Pepper?” Mirabella searches Elizabeth’s hood and her long dark hair. She had not realized how long it had been since she had seen the plucky woodpecker. She had just assumed he was staying in the trees outside the hotel.

“He’s gone,” Elizabeth whispers. “Rho made me choose. She had him in her fist.” A tear slides down her cheek. “I guess she knew about him all along.”

Mirabella trembles, partly from rage, and the anger quickens her for a moment and makes it easier to breathe.

“I could have stopped her,” she says. “I will still stop her.”

“No.” Elizabeth wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. “I would have chosen this, anyway. To be a priestess.”

Sara and Luca enter the room, Sara with a tray of tea. She sets it on a small circular table.

“You must be shaken to the core after that dance,” Sara says, and pours a steaming cup. “What a spectacle. Queen Katharine has nerve to spare.”

“Yes,” says Luca. “I am sure that Natalia never imagined she and I would need to separate the two of you like children fighting over toys.”

“It was not a fight,” says Mirabella. “It was not anything.”

“She is only trying to scare you.” Bree curls her lip. “As if she could.”

But Katharine did scare her. And judging by their taut, pale faces, she had scared them all.

Mirabella blinks. The room is spinning. And blacking in and out. Sara hands her a cup of tea.

“I must sit,” she murmurs. The teacup falls and shatters at her feet, and she crumples to the floor.

“Mira!” Elizabeth shouts.

Sara draws back, her hands to her face.

“It is poison!” she gasps. “Where is the taster? Where is he?”

“It was not his fault,” Mirabella whispers.

Luca kneels at her side and barks for Rho. It takes less than a minute for the war-gifted priestess to secure the room, shuttering windows and ordering guards.

“How?” Rho asks.

“It must have been Katharine,” Luca says. “She must have had something on her gloves.”

Luca holds Mirabella’s hand and studies her skin everywhere that Katharine touched her during their dance. There is no redness or blisters. No sign of irritation.

“Where is Billy?”

“He stayed behind,” Bree says. “With Joseph Sandrin.”

“He should have been watching her.” Sara grinds her teeth. “Protecting her!”

“So should we all,” Luca says. “But it does not matter now.”

“I have sent for healers,” Rho calls from the door.

“There is no pain,” Mirabella says. “I am only weak. Perhaps it is not . . .” Her voice trails off. “Perhaps it is not poison at all.”

Sara touches her cheek. Bree and Elizabeth are both crying. She wishes she could tell them to stop. That she is fine.

When the healers arrive, they lift her into bed. They take blood from her arm and sniff her breath. They poke and prod and pull back her eyelids to see how her eyes move.

“She is getting no worse,” they murmur after a time. “Whatever it is, it is not progressing.”

“Why would they poison her if not to kill her?” Bree asks.

“Because they have killed her,” Luca says softly.

Sara kneels beside the bed and takes Mirabella’s hand. The poison does not race through her body. She does not break out in spasms or labor to breathe.

“Cowards,” Rho growls from the door, and Mirabella hears something break as the war priestess loses her temper.

“Can the duel be postponed?” Sara asks.

Luca shakes her head. There is no rule against this. A poisoner is allowed to poison, as they will. As they can. No matter how Mirabella survives the night, she will still be too weak to fight in the morning. She will walk into the arena as good as giftless.

“This was my fault, child,” Luca says sadly. “I let down my guard.”





THE ARENA





The arena grounds fill quickly. The vendors come first, right before dawn, to prepare food to sell from their stands: skewers of chicken and plums, sweet roasted nuts, barrels of cooled wine and cider. Many foods Arsinoe had not tried. Her stomach rumbles. She sent Madrigal out as soon as the crowds were heavy enough to hide her, with plenty of coin to procure samples of everything. But she is not back yet.

“So many people,” Arsinoe muses as the makeshift stands creak over their heads. “Dressed in their best. Hair pinned and faces painted, to watch a queen die.”

“Don’t think of that,” Jules says, lurking in shadow with Camden. “It must be done. And when it’s over, the island will have a new elemental queen. And we’ll be free to go.”

“I should go alone,” says Arsinoe. “You shouldn’t have to give up everything too.”

“What am I giving up?” Jules asks. “A town that will hunt me for my war gift? There’s no peace for me either, now that my curse is known.”

“Not everyone would be that way. Not Cait or Ellis. What about Madrigal and your new baby sister or brother?”

Jules lowers her eyes, and Arsinoe holds her breath. She does not know what she will do if Jules goes back to Wolf Spring. She does not know how to be without her.