Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(73)

Jules stops. The prophecy must be wrong. The rebellion must be right. It must be, because despite herself it has won her heart and given her hope.

She peers out the window at Mathilde.

“Mathilde told me something back in Bastian City. She said that the oracle who saw my curse never returned.”

Caragh adds more to the stew. Her mouth tightens.

“Did Cait kill her?” Jules asks. “Did she kill her to keep her quiet?”

“Yes,” Caragh replies.

“How?”

“The how doesn’t matter any more than where we buried her. She will never be found. We offered to pay. Everything we had. But she wouldn’t take it.”

Jules holds her knife tightly so it will not begin to shake. So her war gift will not bury it up to the handle in the wall of the Black Cottage. She cannot look at her aunt. She cannot think of Cait. So much darkness around her birth. So much death.

“You always told me how blessed I was.”

“You were. That was our crime, Jules. Not yours. I never wanted to tell you. I didn’t want you to bear it.”

“Someone always pays.”

Caragh and Juniper jump away from Mathilde, suddenly in the doorway.

“Mathilde!” Jules exhales. “I nearly put this knife through your head.”

The seer’s eyes are empty. Juniper creeps close and sniffs her. She paws at her knee, then jumps up against the oracle’s chest.

“Oh,” Mathilde says, and grasps the dog’s shoulders.

“Are you all right?”

“I am fine. Where is Emilia?”

“She’s out hunting with Camden.”

“Get her back. Get them both back. I have had a vision. We must call up the rebels now and fall back to Sunpool.” She pushes Juniper gently to the ground and comes to take Jules by the wrists. “She knows. The queen knows. And she is coming.”

“How? How does she know?”

“She knows because she has your mother.”





AT SEA




“How much farther?” the captain asks.

“Not far,” Billy replies, but he sounds uncertain. They have sailed through the afternoon and into evening, and still there is no sign of the island.

“Have we sailed for too long?” Arsinoe asks. “Is the mist not coming for us?”

“You would know better than I would,” Mirabella replies. “You have sailed into it much more than I have.”

And Billy would know best of all, having sailed into it and through many more times than either of them.

“I thought you said this would be a few hours,” the captain says. “For what you paid, I’ve let it go on, but now, we have to turn back.”

“A little farther!” Arsinoe walks to the fore, leans out and over. “I’ll know it when I see it!”

“See what? There’s nothing out here to see! No land in this direction until you run straight into Valostra.”

Billy joins her and Mirabella by the railing. “I can’t keep them out here much longer. We will have to turn and sail for home. Try again tomorrow.”

Arsinoe grits her teeth. He is trying to sound regretful, but his tone is full of relief.

“Look!” Mirabella lifts her hand and points. Though the horizon had been clear a moment ago, the mist stands up ahead, pale white from sea to sky. Under their feet, the little boat surges, and they hear the captain and his skeleton crew mutter in confusion.

“A squall? We’ll have to go around.”

“No.” Arsinoe waves her arm forward. “Straight through. Straight through!”

They plunge into the mist.

It is so thick that Arsinoe cannot see Mirabella though she is standing right beside her, and she is certain that if she breathes it in, it will stick inside her lungs and make her choke.

“What’s happening?” The captain shouts as inside the mist, the wind dies. “Check the sails!” Mirabella and Billy grasp each of Arsinoe’s hands.

“This . . . isn’t like what it usually is,” Billy whispers. But nor is it like when they fled. The mist is thick and pure white. No thunder or rain, and the water so still that the boat barely bobs. But it is taking too long.

Something large splashes just off to their port side, and Arsinoe shivers, imagining it is the dark queen taking form within the mist. In her ears, every wave is the slithering of the shadow’s mermaid tail, coil after coil of it rolling through the deep, murky water.

“Where do you think it will take us?” Mirabella asks. For the mist can take them anywhere.

“I never thought about it,” Arsinoe admits. “I guess maybe I thought I’d pass through and be looking at Wolf Spring.”

“And I thought of Rolanth. When the truth is we could emerge and find ourselves staring up at the twin spires of the Volroy.”

“Or we could not emerge at all,” Billy offers.

Arsinoe swallows. Everyone on board has fallen silent. Even the boat has ceased to creak.

Daphne. What have you lured me into?

“There,” Mirabella says, but the mist is too opaque to see where she points or whether she points at all. “Do you see that?”

Arsinoe turns. She looks up and gasps. The Blue Queen is directly above them. A black shape that cuts through the white.