Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(100)

“No!” Daphne and Illiann scream, their hands out as if to stop the attack.

Arsinoe feels something explode from the center of her. A flow of heat and a sense of elation.

One moment Branden was about to bludgeon Henry to death, and the next, the fire had set him ablaze.

Henry scrambles away as Branden falls screaming to roll across the rug. The fire goes out quickly, perhaps with Illiann’s help, but the damage is done.

“Send for a healer,” says Illiann, but Branden struggles to his feet, looking in horror at the burns across his arm and chest. He touches the black blisters on his face.

“Stay away from me, witch! Look what you’ve done! I’ll see you all dead for it. Fennbirn and Centra together will burn!”

Arsinoe startles awake with a deep intake of breath. She is herself again, lying on the stone floor of the deep, cold cave. The fire has burned down, but there is still light enough to see Billy and Braddock sleeping safely curled together.

She sits up and rubs her face, shaken from the dream, from the sensation of the poison running down her neck, and from the feel of Branden’s hands around it. She gets to her feet and rummages in Billy’s bag for another small piece of dry wood to add to the fire.

“Is that what you needed to say?” she whispers to the cave. “Is that why you brought me here? To confess?”

“To confess what?” Billy asks groggily, up on one elbow.

“It was her fault,” Arsinoe replies. “Daphne was the one who started the war between Fennbirn and Salkades.”

Something moves in the darkness at the rear of the cave, where it grows small and falls down into the heart of the mountain.

Billy scrambles back against Braddock, who wakes and lifts his head with a grunt.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Arsinoe says. Except that she does. She can see the shadow of the Blue Queen in her mind, scratching and dragging her way up the steep stone walls. She can see it so clearly that, when the ink-black arm slides around the rocks, she is not even surprised.

The shadow is just as hideous in the mountain as it was on the mainland. Elongated legs, thin bony fingers. The grotesque crown of silver and blue stones set atop her eyeless head.

“Is that her?” Billy asks breathlessly. “The Blue Queen?”

“No. It has never really been the Blue Queen.” She takes one step, all that she can manage on shaking legs. “It was your fault, wasn’t it, Daphne?”

The shadow slips forward. Arsinoe stands her ground as its jaws strain open, stretching the blackness apart like rotten skin.

“Yes,” the shadow says through softened lips, her words thick and spoken with a swollen tongue. “This was my doing. This and everything after. The war. The mist.” She looks down at herself. Long black fingers. A form that shifts like smoke. She reaches up to her face, and Arsinoe and Billy grimace as she pulls at the skin, tearing away strips of shadow to drop to the cave floor. She rakes down her arms, across her chest, until some semblance of Daphne shows through in a familiar inky eye and living skin.

“That night,” she goes on, her voice clearer and more the voice Arsinoe knows from the dreams, “I changed everything. I made a true enemy of the Duke of Bevanne and in so doing made an enemy of Salkades. And I discovered who I really was.”

“A lost queen,” Arsinoe says. “One of Illiann’s sisters.”

“Yes. I was one of those sisters drowned or exposed or smothered by the Midwife. The other elemental queen, given a name I will never know. But it didn’t matter. To Illiann and Henry, I was only Daphne.”

Daphne moves closer to the fire, picking off bits of shadow like scabs. “She kept my secret after we discovered it that night. She even helped me develop my gift. She wasn’t driven to kill me like the old stories say. Not any more than you were.

“I didn’t believe her at first. In Centra, kings made overtures of mercy often, only to change their minds on a whim and put their rival’s head to the block. But Illiann was different.”

“Daphne,” Arsinoe says. “Why did you want us to come here?”

Daphne stares soberly into the fire. She pulls a long strip of shadow from her neck and drops it into the flames to sizzle.

“The mist is rising against the island,” she says. “I would show you how to stop it. Because its creation was my fault.”





THE FATE OF THE BLUE QUEEN




It is strange to see Daphne outside of the dreams, a dead queen half-covered in shadow. And older. This Daphne is a full-grown woman. Her hair is long and lines lightly crease her face.

“Your boy is handsome,” she says, looking at Billy as he stands protectively in front of the bear. “He reminds me of my Henry.”

“Henry Redville,” Arsinoe says. “The king-consort of Queen Illiann.”

“The king-consort of the Blue Queen,” Daphne corrects her.

“What does that mean? What do we do about the mist? How do we keep it from rising?”

With every new question, Daphne shakes her head. “No.”

Arsinoe’s eyes narrow. She must remember that the Daphne before her is not the Daphne from her dreams. This Daphne has been long dead, and Arsinoe must remember that she knows her not at all.

“Why did you send me the dreams? Why did you show me your life?”