Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(72)

“Where’s Willa?” Jules asks. “In with Fenn?”

“Probably,” Caragh replies. “She does love that baby. More than that, though, she dislikes the sight gift. Having an oracle here makes her uneasy.”

In the yard, the fire melts the young snow in an even circle, and Mathilde crouches on toes and knees and the tips of her fingers. Sometimes it seems that she speaks to the flames. Other times that she sings. They cannot hear her through the glass or see what it is that she sees. To Jules, Caragh, and Emilia, the flames are only flames.

“You are sure you will be all right?” Emilia asks. “You two with the little one, until Jules’s mother returns?”

“I should think so. We’re both Midwives.”

Emilia rolls her shoulder, favoring a bruise that Jules gave her as they practiced sword-craft with thick sticks as the snow fell all around them.

Caragh reaches down and slaps her brown hound on the rump. “Let’s get into the kitchen and start the stew for dinner. And I would speak to my niece a moment.”

Emilia nudges Jules. “Go. I am going into the woods after grouse. You could send some my way, if your gift reaches that far.” She grins, but it changes quickly to a frown. “On second thought, don’t. I can’t shoot them when they come hopping into my lap.”

“Why don’t you take Camden? She could use the run.”

Emilia nods. Her dark hair is loose and rumpled; it looks as restless and ready to be off as the rest of her. “Fine. But make something delicious. It won’t be much longer that I will be able to get a meal from you. My queen.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Emilia swats her playfully. “I think you are starting to like it.”

Out by the fire, Mathilde blows into the smoke and feeds the flames with herbs and blue-burning amber. She shakes her hair back off her shoulders, the braid of white stiff and separate in the cold evening air.

In the kitchen, Caragh tears a large fillet of smoked fish into pieces.

“Dinner tonight, courtesy of Braddock.”

“Oh? He caught it just for us, did he?”

Caragh snorts.

“No. And to be honest it is starting to be harder to get it away from him.” She gestures to the counter, and Jules sets to chopping vegetables.

“How long do you think it will be until Madrigal returns?” Jules asks.

Caragh’s only response is a gentle raising of eyebrows. “Will you go to the larder for butter and cream?”

“You have more faith in her than I do.” Jules sets the butter and cream pitcher on the counter so Caragh can add it to the stockpot. She watches her aunt closely, but all she does is reach up into a cabinet for a sack of flour. Maybe for biscuits. “You shouldn’t have let her go.”

“Jules,” Caragh says, her voice sharp. “Who am I to tell my sister what she can and cannot do? Where she can and cannot go?” She starts to measure flour and lard. “Your Emilia is in a hurry. I wonder if that is how all warriors are. So eager to fight.”

“Grandma Cait always said I had the worst temper she had ever seen.”

“So she did.”

They look at each other, remembering broken plates and screaming fits. Wondering what could be attributed to the bound war gift and what was just a child needing to shout.

“So,” Jules says. “What is this word you need to have with me?” She sweeps the chopped vegetables into her hand and adds them to the stew hanging over the fire along with a measure of fish broth. But when she turns back, her aunt is frozen, staring blankly down at the knife on her cutting board. “Aunt Caragh?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Jules, so I am just going to tell you. There was a second prophecy after the oracle saw your legion curse that night.” Caragh straightens and looks into her eyes. “After the oracle saw your legion curse, she told us to drown you. Or to leave you out in the woods for the animals to find. That is just what is done, when the curse is discovered. But Madrigal refused. She wailed. I wailed. The oracle tried to take you out of your mother’s arms. And when she did, she had another vision.”

“Another vision?”

“Different than the one before.” Caragh’s brow knits. “Her discovery of your legion curse was like a healer finding a cracked bone or a rider finding a swollen pastern on a horse. The second time was like a trance.” She looks at Jules gravely. “She said you would be the fall of the island.”

For a moment, Jules thinks she has misheard.

“The fall of the island? Me?” She laughs. “That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Well, it must be a joke.”

“It could mean nothing. Prophecies mean a lot of things. Often never the things people think they do.”

Jules reaches for a potato and starts cutting it into chunks. The fall of the island. Her blade slows. “Or it has already come to pass. I was there when the Ascension Year failed. When the line of queens broke. I was there to help them escape. That must have been what the prophecy meant.”

“It must have been. And now you will lead an army against Katharine, who is despised by even the mist that protects us.”

“Yes,” Jules whispers.

“Unless you are wrong,” says Caragh, “and the mist truly rises in response to you.”