Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(101)

“So you would know us. So you would love us. To call you home.”

“Is that what you want? For one of us to come home to take the crown from Katharine?”

“A queen crowned cannot be uncrowned,” Daphne replies.

Arsinoe nods to the silver and blue stones. “Then how did you come to wear Illiann’s?”

Daphne grimaces, baring teeth that are still tipped in shadow.

“Don’t,” Billy murmurs. “Don’t make her angry.”

“I’ll make her whatever I need to make her to learn what we came for. People are dying. The mist is killing them. And if she won’t speak, maybe we ought to be talking to Illiann.”

Daphne rounds on her and despite her irritation, Arsinoe gasps.

“You can’t talk to Illiann,” Daphne says, crooked finger pointed to Arsinoe’s chest.

“Why not?”

“Because Illiann is not Illiann. Illiann is the mist.”

“You mean she made the mist,” Arsinoe says.

“No. I mean she became it.”

Became the mist? Arsinoe blinks. “That couldn’t be. It had to be some kind of spell. Some elemental trick—”

Daphne springs forward, elongated fingers wrapped around the sides of Arsinoe’s head. “No tricks,” she hisses, and presses her thumbs over Arsinoe’s eyes.

“Let go of her!” Billy shouts, and Braddock roars and swipes his paw furiously. But the fire flares up like a wall, burning them both and sending them reeling backward out into the snow. Even long dead, the elemental is still an elemental.

Arsinoe squeals and squirms. But Daphne’s cold grip is like a vise.

“See,” Daphne whispers, and shakes her hard, sending a jolt through Arsinoe’s entire body. And Arsinoe sees.

Daphne and Illiann stand atop the cliffs over Bardon Harbor in the driving rain. It is night, but the waves are lit bright orange and yellow by the fires in the burning boats. Some torched, others struck by Illiann’s lightning. Farther out, the sea is dark, but each illuminating flash reveals the horror of the battle: Selkan ships like a swarm upon the waves.

“There are too many!” Daphne shouts over the thunder. “Too many here, too many in Rolanth.” Salkades has besieged the entire eastern side of the island. Fennbirn will be overrun.

All this, Arsinoe sees in flashes. As she struggles against the shadow queen, she sees the ships and feels the rain sting her cheeks.

“My storm is not done yet,” Illiann calls. “I can roll them under the waves. All of them.”

“You can’t,” Daphne cries. “Henry is out there!”

Arsinoe twists her arm up between her and Daphne’s chests and wrenches it down hard, forcing Daphne to let go.

“Stop!” Arsinoe strikes out blindly with her fists. “Just stop!”

But Daphne leaps on her again, cold hands pressed to her ears, over her eyes, leaking into her mind.

Illiann falls from the cliffs, screaming, her storm still surging over the harbor. She falls, down to break upon the rocks, but when she does, her body is lost to the white. To the mist that bursts out from the foot of the cliffs and across the sea, to spread across the water north and south, choking the invaders as Illiann would have done with her own waves.

“There is no place on the island for sisters,” Daphne says, still clutching her. “We tried, she and I, but we failed. My elemental sister had to die to create the mist.” She releases Arsinoe’s head and drags her close by the collar. “And yours must die to unmake it.”

Arsinoe shoves her away. “No. You’re lying. Queen Illiann ruled for decades more. She had the next triplets.”

“I had the next triplets,” Daphne says, her eyes ablaze. “I stepped into her life. Stepped into her crown, with Henry by my side. ‘Daphne’ died at sea, in the battle. And out of grief, the queen was not seen publicly for a long time. Or at least not without a veil.”

“No. Someone had to know.”

“Many knew. But Fennbirn needed a queen. And soon the island’s secrets are lost to time. Like my real name.”

Arsinoe trembles, sick from the sight of Illiann falling to her death and from the thought that Mirabella—

“There has to be another way.” Except there does not and wanting one will not make it so.

“Now you know why I did not call to Mirabella.”

“Don’t you say her name,” Arsinoe growls. “And stay away from me! You’re a liar! You’re a murderer!”

“Murderer—?”

She advances on Daphne, her anger driving back the fear, and Daphne retreats farther into the cave. Farther and farther, and every shadow she steps into clings to her skin until she is back in the dark. Grotesque once more.

“We aren’t like you, me and my sister! And for the island or not, I will never hurt her!”

“Arsinoe? Are you all right?”

She looks back. With Daphne gone, the fire has died, and Billy and Braddock stare at her from the cave entrance.

“What did you hear?” she asks.

“Everything.”

“Then you know it was nonsense.” She goes back to the fire and gathers their supplies. “Let’s just get back to Sunpool.”