Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(57)

“After this is over, I would like to become a teacher,” Mirabella says. “I like children. Though I have had little interaction with them.”

“Why would you?” Arsinoe asks crossly. “Queens whelp babies, but we don’t raise them.”

“Do not say ‘whelp.’” Mirabella frowns. “You know I hate it when you say ‘whelp.’”

“Whelp, that’s not my problem.” Arsinoe crunches through a biscuit, slouched down so far that crumbs are able to fall directly into her collar. “Though if you become a teacher, what would I do?”

“You could do the same.”

“I’d be a terrible teacher.”

“Only at first.”

Arsinoe studies the children, so well-behaved, their brown hair in ringlets. “I’d rather make clothes or work in a pub. I’m no use in a kitchen, but I can sew, a little. Ellis taught me how. And Luke.”

Mirabella looks down at her hands. “If you do the low magic again, I am afraid of what will happen. I am afraid we will lose all this.”

“All what?”

“Our lives. This future.”

Arsinoe sees the way her sister looks at the children. With a kind of hopeful despair. The way someone looks at something they can never possibly have.

“What if there’s something wrong on the island?” Arsinoe asks.

“Then let them sort it out. As they tried to sort us out. As they would again, the moment we set foot back in that place.”

Arsinoe sighs.

“I have to find a way to stop the dreams,” she whispers. “Or solve them. I have to, or they will drive me mad. But after that,” she reaches across the table and takes Mirabella’s hand. “There will be time. We can have a future here, I promise.”

Mirabella does not respond, and Arsinoe leans back and slides down into her chair.

“You promise,” says Mirabella. “Except that it will never be over. Because the island is not something we can escape.”

That night, Arsinoe fights sleep. For Mirabella and for Billy, she fights the dreams. She has her own life now and if she wants to keep it, Mirabella is right. She has to let go of the island and make the dreams stop.

She turns and peers through the darkness at her sister’s still form. Mirabella makes not a peep when she sleeps. No moans. Certainly no snoring. A queen through and through. And to think, Arsinoe once thought Mirabella would fart cyclones.

“Mira? Are you awake?” Arsinoe waits but gets no response. She takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes.

The dream begins as they always do: nestled snug down inside Daphne’s mind. Seeing through Daphne’s eyes. Hearing through Daphne’s ears.

As the dream takes hold and Arsinoe finds herself seated at a table in the Volroy, it is only the thought of Mirabella that allows her to keep her resolve. It would be so easy not to fight, to be Daphne for one more night, one more fortnight, another month . . . or to simply stay dreaming until her story ends. Except that the dreams have begun to feel less like an escape and more like a distraction, dulling her senses so she is oblivious as the ax swings down.

In the dream, Daphne sits beside Richard, Daphne and Henry’s pale, skinny friend from Centra, and glares up at the head table, where Queen Illiann and Duke Branden sit with their heads close together.

“I do not understand it, Richard,” Daphne says. “There is no reason why Henry should lose. He has beaten all comers at the joust, at hawking and archery. He commands a ship even better than I do!”

“You see Henry differently,” Richard replies.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She takes a swallow of ale, good ale, not like Arsinoe has had on the mainland.

“Anyone with two eyes can see that Henry is twice the man that rogue from Salkades is.”

“I believe that Henry is a match for any man,” says Richard. “But not every woman is a match for him.”

Daphne peers up at Illiann. Neither she nor Arsinoe know what he is talking about. Illiann is a beauty. Such long black hair and soft, even features. Eyes as dark as Daphne’s own but wider, larger, and more thickly lashed. “How can you say that? She is lovely.”

As Richard laughs, Arsinoe begins to squirm in Daphne’s mind. It is not easy, separating herself from the form she inhabits. It is actually so hard, she would be sweating if only she had a body to sweat with.

“Why are you laughing?”

“I always laugh when my friends are fools. Daphne, have you really never noticed the way that Henry looks at you? All those tavern girls back at Torrenside were a lie. All for show. For as long as I have known him, Henry has cared for only one girl above all the rest. You.”

Finally, someone said it. The thing that had been obvious from the moment Arsinoe had started dreaming, and she pauses her struggle to free herself from the dream in order to watch.

“That’s not true,” Daphne says. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Richard shakes his head and chuckles again.

“Yes it is.” Daphne pushes away from the table and stalks out into the quiet corridor.

Get back in there. Sit down and listen. But inside Daphne, Arsinoe feels the turmoil as the realization takes hold. As she remembers every interaction she and Henry have ever had and begins to see them in a different way. The poor girl. Arsinoe wishes she had her own arms to pat her comfortingly on the back with.