Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(96)

With the arrival of the hawk, her queensguard comes alive, arming themselves and falling into formation. Though many of her soldiers are older than she, some are old enough to have served under the last queen, and she walks through them with a sense of pride. They are hers now. She reaches out and rattles a spear held in a girl’s shaking wrist.

“No need for courage today.” She smiles. “You are simply an escort for queen and prisoner.”

She mounts her horse, who looks twice his normal size in light armor, and takes a long shield to hold on her right. Madrigal will ride to her left and Pietyr, on Madrigal’s far side.

“Keep the army to the rear,” she says to Rho, who holds her horse’s bridle. “Do not seem a threat. We do not want Jules Milone to turn tail and run.”

She takes up her reins, and Pietyr rides close, tucking a sharp knife into his belt.

“Are you all right, Kat? Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she says without looking at him. Perhaps she should have left him behind. In Pietyr’s eyes and beneath his gaze, she is Kat, little Katharine. Only herself. And she cannot be that today, not until the trade is over.

The crowd parts as the prisoner is brought near. Madrigal Milone sits astride an old gray mare, her hands bound behind her back. Her crow familiar rests docilely on her shoulder, still tethered to her wrist.

“Are you looking forward to seeing your daughter?” Katharine asks.

“More than you should be.”

Katharine leans over and pushes the woman’s hair out of her eyes. She tucks it behind her ear and smooths it down, revealing some of that unsinkable prettiness. She is so lovely but of so little substance. Only a regular-sized woman despite that beauty. Though they were of similar height, Natalia would have towered over Madrigal Milone and covered her in shadow.

“Do not be afraid,” she says gently when Madrigal flinches. “I will not hurt you. I swear that it is not why we have come.”

“You can’t hurt me,” Madrigal mutters.

Katharine clicks at the mare and tugs her along, keeping her close enough that Madrigal’s toe occasionally bumps into her heel. She looks over her shoulder where her army stands waiting.

“No.”

Turned around, she sees it before anyone: the mist, rising over the water of Longmorrow Bay.

“Not now! Pietyr!”

He twists in the saddle, just as the soldiers farthest away on the beach begin to scream.

The mist spreads, slow and thick through the path between the cliffs and into the meadow. She watches it creep up over the cliff tops, watches it swallow her lookouts.

“Kat, what do we do?”

“It does not matter,” Katharine replies as her army breaks ranks and scatters.

From her perch up in the tree, Mirabella sees the mist roll out over the sand of the beach and crawl up the sides of the cliffs. At first she thinks it is only a storm. Some quirk of the weather. But as it swallows the first soldier and the next and the next, and she hears them scream . . .

“The mist,” she whispers.

She grasps on to the branches so hard the cold bark splits the skin of her hands. Her heart beats loudly as she watches the mist swirl over the terrified soldiers. To cloak them? To protect them?

A shrill shriek draws her eye as the mist rolls back, revealing a body twisted in two and pulled apart. The snow between the torso and legs is littered with entrails and spreading red.

She does not know what to do. The mist has wound nearly the length of the valley, leaving some and maiming others, causing panic and confusion, and swirling westward, toward Katharine and Jules.

If Mirabella stays her hand, it may all be resolved. The Undead Queen and the Legion Queen destroyed in one stroke. Perhaps that is what the Blue Queen wants. What the island wants. Perhaps she was brought there only to witness.

“No.” Mirabella slides down the trunk. She jumps from the lowest branch and winces as her ankle rolls.

All those innocent soldiers. The servants. The priestesses she saw in their white robes. She does not know what is wrong with the mist. But she knows that it is wrong.

Mirabella runs as fast as she can toward the sounds of screaming, calling the wind and the storm up behind her.

Katharine can only watch as her army comes apart. As the mist darts through them like wispy fingers, mangling them or swallowing them whole.

The entire camp is in shambles: turned-over tents, horses running loose to trample through supply stores or over the tops of people the mist has taken and spun around.

“Katharine! We have to get you to safety!” Pietyr shouts.

“What safety?” Her head turns at the sound of hoofbeats. Rho is leading a band of cavalry, galloping for the cover of the trees. The priestess’s face is hard as stone. Angry as Katharine is that there is no form to truly fight. The mist is almost upon them, creeping around to the sides. How can it move so quickly without seeming to move at all?

“Ride!” Pietyr calls to her. “Follow Rho!”

He kicks his horse hard. He does not see the arm of white billow between them until it is too late.

“Pietyr!”

“It’s blocking us in!” Madrigal screeches. “Don’t you see? We have to run!”

“Where?” Katharine drags her closer, the dead war queens infusing her with strength enough to pull Madrigal from her horse and across Katharine’s pommel. “Right for the western woods? Right into your waiting rebels’ arms?”