Queens of Fennbirn (Three Dark Crowns 0.5)(2)

Queen Camille walked down the high-ceilinged hall of the Black Cottage, one hand out along the wall to steady her. The light from the lamps in the nursery cast warm yellow light, and inside, another bright fire crackled against the cold.

Much like Camille’s king-consort, Willa slept upright in a chair. Though not, perhaps, as prettily. Willa’s mouth hung open, and her head fell over to the side. Her snore sounded like a pig searching excitedly for mushrooms.

Camille crept past. The newborn queens in the bassinets were dressed in black and affixed with the colors of their gifts. Blue buttons for elemental Mirabella, and a purple patch for poisoner Arsinoe. Pretty green ribbons for tiny naturalist Katharine. Even the bassinets had been decorated with items associated with each gift: a cloud-shaped pillow, a mobile hung with snakes and spiders, and a quilt embroidered with flowers.

“Enjoy the colors, little queens,” Camille whispered. “Soon enough it will all be black, black, black.”

She looked down on their sleeping faces—red and wrinkled, and angry-looking, even at birth. She did not blame them. Their lives would not be easy. And then two lives would be over.

Camille was a poisoner, like Queen Nicola, and Queen Sylvia before her. Three generations of poisoner queens. Almost a dynasty. But instead of growing stronger, it seemed that the blood of the poisoner queens grew thinner. The Arrons flourished in their power, as well as other poisoner families in Prynn and the capital, but Sylvia was stronger than Nicola, and Camille was the weakest of all. Over hundreds of years, the other gifts of the island had lessened: elementals lost their mastery over one or more elements, and the war-gifted lost the ability to guide their weapons with their minds. The naturalists’ familiars grew smaller and smaller. And the oracles . . . The true oracle gift was almost gone, thanks to generations of drowned oracle queens.

Something was changing on the island and within the line of queens. As a queen, Camille could feel that. Not that anyone would believe her. The Arrons never listened when she spoke of queenly instinct. They never listened to her about anything. They had been bullies her whole life, from the moment they claimed her from that very cottage. They shamed her when she failed. They did not let her rule. With each successive poisoner queen, the queen herself mattered less and less. The line of queens was not important, the Arrons said. It was the poisoners who the Goddess truly favored.

In their bassinets, the new triplets hummed with an aura of the gift each carried, that energy—like a scent or a heartbeat—that linked them to the Goddess and called to the queensblood in Camille. It was that which told her what she had given birth to, when she announced it to Willa, and named them, as though in a trance. It was like a trance. On Arsinoe and Katharine, the auras that lingered were weak. On Katharine it was barely a hint. But Mirabella still blazed with it.

“What are you doing here, Queen Camille?”

Camille flinched. Willa’s voice from behind her had sounded like Mistress Arron.

“Nothing.” She straightened her shoulders as Willa rose from her chair and came slowly to join her. “Only looking in on them. The messengers have been dispatched?” Messengers, summoned to the Black Cottage upon her labor, to ferry word to Rolanth, Indrid Down, and Wolf Spring. The elemental, poisoner, and naturalist cities, respectively.

“They have. They rode out at dusk.”

Camille sucked in her cheeks. A messenger to Indrid Down was hardly necessary anymore. The poisoners were so assured of their destiny.

Camille nodded to the baby in the storm-blue blanket.

“Her, there. Mirabella. She will be the next queen.”

Willa, still a servant of her temple teachings though no longer a priestess, made a pious gesture, touching first her eyes and then her heart.

“The Goddess decides,” Willa said. “Only she decides who rules her island.”

Camille took a deep breath. The walls of the cottage where the queens would spend their first six years, where she spent her own first six years, closed in, squeezing her out. Here they would play and have their hair braided. Here they would learn to walk and run, and if they were lucky, to not love one another too much.

“She decides,” Camille said. “But the queen knows. And I was mistaken about those two.” She pointed to poisoner Arsinoe and naturalist Katharine. “Arsinoe is a naturalist. Katharine . . . a poisoner.” She almost said war-gifted, to deny the Arrons a queen at all. But they would never believe it. They would investigate and look too closely.

“Camille . . .” Willa turned to her, and shook her head.

Camille clenched her jaw. She was still bleeding, and exhausted. For all she knew, she was slowly dying. But she willed herself to look strong. To look like the queen she was, for once.

“Mirabella will be queen. I can see that. Feel that. And she will be a great one. These other two will not survive long. Katharine’s gift is so weak, it will never fully quicken. And Arsinoe . . . Another poisoner queen will not sit the throne. But if the Arrons have a gifted poisoner, they will make her suffer. Training and belittling. Beating her when she gets it wrong. Like they did to me.”

“And what would they do with Queen Katharine?” Willa asked.

“What could they do with a giftless girl but leave her alone?” Camille swallowed hard. That was a lie. The Arrons could do plenty to a giftless girl. Everything they ever did to Camille, and worse. But at least they would fail. At least they would have no winning queen.