One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns #2)(98)

“No,” says Joseph. “I’m fine. I’m going with you, wherever that is. So where is it?”

Arsinoe touches his face. He will be all right. He must be. Joseph Sandrin is one half of Jules.

“There are doctors on the mainland,” Billy suggests. “Good ones. Surgeons, far better than here. And it’s a short sail through the mist. We can come back and find you,” he adds when Joseph starts to protest.

“No,” Arsinoe says. “That’s good. That’s where we’re going anyway.”

Everyone stops and stares at her. Even Mirabella.

“You could return to your cities,” Madrigal suggests. “And gather support there. Not everyone will back the Council’s decision to execute you.”

“We could take you,” says Emilia. “Hide you in Bastian City. We would welcome you, Juillenne. You and anyone whom you wished us to protect.”

Jules looks from Emilia to Arsinoe. Then she looks down.

Before the Ascension began, Arsinoe always thought she would find her way back to Wolf Spring. That the madness of the year would pass, and everything would return to normal. Days spent with Jules at the Milone house. Nights beside a warm fire inside the Lion’s Head with Billy and Joseph. With Cait and Ellis. Luke and his handsome rooster, Hank. But that life—that good, familiar, and precious time—is over.

The alliance between queens might hold long enough to topple Katharine. But afterward, the people would want them to start all over again. It would be Mirabella or herself. One to kill the other. That is how it has always been.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Arsinoe asks her sister.

“I will not go back,” Mirabella says solemnly. “The Council ordered my death, and they went along with it. Luca went along with it.”

Arsinoe takes a deep breath. A queen sits upon the throne. The island has no more need of them. She must let them go. She has to.

“So we make for Bardon Harbor,” says Arsinoe. “Let’s steal a boat big enough to get us off this Goddess-forsaken island.”





BARDON HARBOR





Jules helped the warriors call the small river barge that took them into Bardon Harbor. It was not much, barely large enough to fit them all, and nowhere near sturdy enough to brave the rough waters of the sea, but they climbed aboard. Now Jules stands beside the warriors, pushing it with her mind. Joseph chuckles watching Camden at Jules’s knee, training all her cougar-focus on the barge as well.

“Look at our girl,” he says to Arsinoe, sitting beside him on the barge with her hand pressed hard to the wound in his side. “She’s outgrowing us.”

“That’s not true.” But she supposes that it is. She and Joseph have both been chasing after Jules since they were children.

He chuckles again and winces.

“Here,” she says. “Let me bind that tighter.”

“No, Arsinoe. It’s fine.”

“Joseph, you have bled through the bandage. You should have stayed behind with Aunt Caragh. Found a healer.”

“And miss the adventure?” He smiles his lopsided Joseph smile.

“You’re wincing.”

“Yes. My side is sore because there’s a hole in it. Once we reach the mainland, Billy’ll take me to a doctor. And they’ll sew me up right and proper.”

The barge continues through the moonlight, skimming across the dark surface of the river. Arsinoe looks back. Warriors stayed behind, to run decoy in case of pursuit. Caragh and Braddock stayed behind as well.

“There was no getting the bear on the barge, Arsinoe,” Joseph says, reading her thoughts.

“I know.”

“You did save him. And Caragh will take good care of him at the Black Cottage.”

Stream-caught fish and berries for the rest of his days. And he will be safe. But she will never see him again.

Jules leaves the warriors and comes to squat beside them. She touches Joseph’s cheek and Camden climbs atop his legs to keep him warm. “Is he all right?”

“He is still conscious and can answer for himself,” he says.

“It’s not much longer now,” Jules says, and as she looks out worriedly at the river, the small barge seems to move faster. If the warriors notice, they do not acknowledge it, but Madrigal, Mirabella, and Billy all look over their shoulders.

“Good,” Joseph says. “Fishers are up early. If we want to steal a boat, we won’t have much time.”

They reach the mouth of the river, and Bardon Harbor slides into view. The boats docked at the port are much larger than the vessels in Sealhead Cove. Their masts rise through the predawn fog. These are far-ranging ships, built to chase frothbacks across the open sea, with smaller whale boats lashed to their sides. They are too big to be sailed with such a skeleton crew, but that is what Mirabella is for. And they will need a large vessel if the sea decides to put up any kind of fight.

The barge nudges silently up against the nearest dock, disturbing nothing but a couple of roosting gulls.

“Slowly, slowly,” Madrigal says as she helps Mirabella off the barge. “These docks are unfamiliar, and the moon gives us only so much light.”

Billy helps Arsinoe and Jules to lift Joseph, and grimaces at all the blood. Arsinoe flashes a bracing smile.