Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(103)

“You will never get her to submit to that,” he spits, but old Luca only smiles.

“I will get her to agree. But I do not have much time. I ask for your permission.” She looks to Katharine.

Mirabella returned. And still so regal, so arrogant in those mainlander clothes. She could never be loyal. Never be trusted. But it is worth a try.

“I will welcome my sister back with open arms,” Katharine says. “In exchange for her allegiance.”

The High Priestess bows; she takes Katharine’s hands and kisses them.

“How will you find her?”

“I have my ways,” says Luca. “But I must hurry before those ways are too far off to catch up with.” She smiles at them again and ducks out of the tent.

“For someone so old, she is certainly quick.” Pietyr sets his cup down and refills it for a third time. “Maybe she is lying about her years.” He takes a swallow and pauses. “Welcoming another queen into the capital, with no threat of death over her head . . . Katharine, this has never been done.”

“Many things we have done have never been done,” she replies. “This one gives me hope.”

“Hope?”

Katharine lifts her scarred hand and clenches it in a shaking fist. The dead queens know what she is thinking. She can feel their fear and their anger and their dead fingers clutching at her to soothe and plead.

You made me kill Madrigal Milone. You loosed the curse, the one thing I did not want to do.

They say that they are sorry. They promise to be calm. But she is not angry with them. They cannot help being what they are.

You will be at peace, dead sisters. You have done what you set out to do. And with you gone, perhaps the mist will quiet. With you gone, perhaps all will be well.

Katharine looks at Pietyr, eyes shining. “If Mirabella will fight for me, then I will have need of no one else. I can put the dead sisters to rest.”

“Katharine. Are you certain?”

“I am.”

He smiles and sighs a sigh that relaxes his whole form. “I am proud of you, Kat. And I think I have found a way.”





THE WESTERN WOODS




Mirabella is only a few miles into the woods, retreating after Emilia and the other rebels, who have rushed ahead carrying an unconscious Jules, when Pepper flies past her.

“Pepper,” she gasps, and stops.

The little bird flits from her shoulder to a tree and back again, all the while making high-pitched, piping calls. Mirabella looks around just in time to see them come through the trees on the back of an unsaddled horse.

“Bree! Elizabeth!” she cries, and they dismount and run. When they crash into her, she catches one in each arm and immediately begins to weep. “What are you doing here?”

“I am on her council.” Bree gasps and buries her face in Mirabella’s hair. Poor Elizabeth cannot even speak. All she can manage are tiny squeaks in between great heaving sobs, the squeaks not too dissimilar to her woodpecker’s.

“Calm, Elizabeth.”

“Can’t be calm. Mira!” She grins, face wet. “I might vomit.”

Mirabella and Bree laugh. “Take slow, deep breaths. You should not have followed me.”

“How could we not?” Bree asks. “When we saw you . . . Everyone said you were dead, but I knew it could not be. Not the way they told it. Not in a storm.”

“But it almost was.” She smooths Bree’s hair back from her cheek. So beautiful, still. And somehow, she seems to have grown. The Bree she remembered did not have such somber eyes, did not own such an austere gray-blue dress.

“Now I know what Pepper was trying so hard to tell me,” says Elizabeth, her breath lighter. “He found you, didn’t he? He saw you when he brought word to the rebels.”

“He flew into me so hard his beak tore my clothes.”

“And what clothes they are,” says Bree, stepping back to study her. “A far cry from island black.”

“Who cares?” Elizabeth says. “We have trunks and trunks of it to change her into. You are back, aren’t you, Mira? Back for good?”

“That is an excellent question.”

Bree and Elizabeth twist in her arms—as Luca appears through the trees on a tall white mare.

“They were so desperate to see you,” she says, “that they did not turn around to see if they were being followed.”

“I am sorry, Mira.” Bree takes her hand. “We were not careful.”

Elizabeth steps in front of them and throws out her arms. “Stay away from her, High Priestess! Please!”

Luca’s brows raise. “Such dramatics. I am not here to hurt her.”

“Why should we believe that,” Bree growls, “when you were ready to have her executed?”

Mirabella wipes her cheeks and forces herself to stare at Luca. At the woman who she had once thought to be her greatest protector. Luca’s eyes are soft as they travel over her face. Soft near to trembling, and Mirabella feels the same old urge: to take Luca’s hands, to help her walk, to find her someplace comfortable to take her ease. But all of that is over.

“What do you want, Luca?”

“To speak to you,” she says. “Only to speak to you.”

“Very well.”