Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(33)
Arsinoe laughs.
“There are plenty of other chickens to eat besides Harriet. I’m sure she’s fine. Spoiled, even. Maybe she spends some of her days at the Milone house, following Cait and Ellis around. Maybe she’s met Luke’s rooster, Hank, and they’ve made you some adorable chicken grandchildren.”
“Chicken grandchildren.” He laughs and pulls her closer. “I think I would like that.”
Arsinoe nuzzles her face into his neck. Even on a hot summer day, she cannot seem to get close enough. Despite living in the same house, they have had so little time alone.
“You know, if your mother finds us like this, she will call it a scandal.”
Billy rolls onto her and grins. “Then we had better make it scandalous.”
After a very pleasurable while, Arsinoe and Billy drift off in the afternoon sun. And Arsinoe dreams.
She slides into Daphne’s body and finds herself at Innisfuil. And there is only one reason for so many to have gathered there: it must be the Beltane Festival.
In the dream, Daphne regards herself in the long polished mirror. She dresses always as a boy on Fennbirn. Always as she wishes. How fondly she runs her hands over the doublet and hose and the ends of her short hair. The folk of Fennbirn know she is a girl, yet they do not treat her any differently than if she had successfully passed as a boy. Which she does whenever she meets someone from her home country of Centra or Valostra or Salkades. She can dress as she pleases and move freely in all circles, and for the first time in her life, Daphne feels whole.
Arsinoe peers out through Daphne’s eyes as she stands beside the Blue Queen: Queen Illiann. Illiann reminds Arsinoe of Mirabella. They are both elementals, for a start, and Illiann is nearly as beautiful, with long black hair shining to her waist and intelligent eyes edged by thick black lashes. She is also just as elegant and assured of her crown as Mirabella was when they first met. So sure that her sisters had been killed as babies that the sight of a black-haired, black-eyed girl from Centra caused not even a flicker of curiosity.
But she is still not as strong as my sister, Arsinoe thinks as attendants dress Illiann for the festival, weaving around her and Daphne so quickly it is a wonder they both do not wind up bound into the same gown. Illiann’s elemental gift was for weather and water. A flickering of fire and nothing of earth. Not even the great Blue Queen was master of them all like Mirabella.
“Are you sure I can’t smuggle Henry off his ship?” Daphne asks, close to Queen Illiann’s ear. “The suitors miss out on so much of the festival. And Henry loves to watch the mummers.”
Mummers. Arsinoe searches her memory for the old word. Play actors.
“Absolutely not.” Illiann smiles. “The suitors remain on their ships until tonight’s Disembarking Ceremony.”
“Even Henry? When he has met you already so many times before?”
Illiann claps her hand across Daphne’s mouth, laughing. “You are not even supposed to be here,” Illiann says as her attendants clear out of the way, eyes rolling over their smiles.
Inside Daphne’s head, Arsinoe laughs along with them. It is still a strange sensation, disembodied yet within a body, the senses so keen that she can smell the sweet perfume on Illiann’s palm.
“Such a secret.” Daphne pries the queen’s fingers loose. “I don’t see what the trouble is when he will be your husband soon enough.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps not. There are still other suitors to meet tonight.”
“Other suitors. But what are they compared to my Henry? None of them will be as clever or as stout hearted. None of them can calm a horse with a word and a touch.”
“He is lucky to have a friend who is so confident of his virtues.”
A friend. What kind of friend would call him “her Henry”? And what kind of friend is he to look at Daphne like he does? Open your eyes, Illiann. Don’t be made a fool.
Daphne sighs. She looks over Illiann’s formal gown. The Blue Queen may be called “blue” but may still wear only black.
“Are you ready, then? Can we go and see the players, so I can tell Henry about them later?”
With a smile, Illiann affixes her sheer, protective veil across her face and leads the way.
Yuck. Veils. At least we didn’t have to wear those. Or a doublet and hose. Goddess bless the girl who invented trousers.
They step out of the tent, and Arsinoe peers around curiously. Innisfuil Valley has not changed much in the four hundred years between Daphne and Illiann’s time and Arsinoe’s own. The cliffs and the view of Mount Horn remain the same and the lushness of the long grass. The trees are different, though, smaller, and in varieties that no longer exist on that part of the island. They cast a different color and a shifting brand of shade—even the trees suggesting that this part of the island’s history was a brighter time than the time of blood and secrets that Arsinoe was born into.
Illiann pulls Daphne up onto a dais. Directly before it, a circle has opened up in the crowd to form an impromptu stage, and as they watch, actors in bright costumes prepare to present a scene for the queen’s amusement.
The lead actress steps to the fore and bows.
“We are a troupe from the oracle city of Sunpool. And we present a scene in honor of Queen Illiann’s birth.”
It begins, and three young girls wrapped in swaddling cloths of green, gray, and pale blue mime being born to a woman playing a queen with a great, yellow-painted crown atop her head. Another woman, dressed all in shining black, with silver ribbons in her hair, descends upon the queen and wraps her in her arms.