Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3)(98)

Katharine stares at Mirabella as Mirabella stares back. Katharine can no longer feel the ache in the leg that was trapped under her horse. She no longer cares whether the mist has retreated all the way into the sea. She does not even see it when the warriors and the oracle in a yellow cloak come to spirit away the legion-cursed naturalist and her fallen cougar. All that matters is Mirabella.

“Come to me.” Katharine holds out her hand. “Come to me, sister!”

Mirabella backs away into the trees until she is far enough to turn and run. But she need not even do that. The mist and her lightning have taken the fight out of the queensguard. Not a one of them is brave enough now to follow. Not even Rho.

“Kat!” Pietyr rides to her and leaps from the saddle. He takes her by the shoulders and presses his forehead against hers. “Kat, thank the Goddess. I thought I had lost you. I thought you were lost in it.” He tugs gently, and she moans. “You there,” he barks, and points to the soldiers and then her horse. “Get him up! Get him off the queen!”

They roll him up, and he kicks out his front legs—he is not dead, after all—and Pietyr drags her out of the way.

“What happened?” he asks. “Kat, are you truly all right?”

“They made me kill her,” she whispers as she braces against him and struggles to her feet. “The fools. They used my hand and cut the legion curse loose.”

“Oh, Kat.” Pietyr holds her tight as the shock wears slowly off. She is cold, all over, and herself again, the dead queens gone, perhaps ashamed or perhaps merely sated by Madrigal’s blood.

Katharine surveys the meadow and all her wet soldiers. Some lie dead, torn apart by the mist, and she is sure that many are missing. But most appear unharmed. Pietyr is unharmed. Rho and twenty-five of her cavalry emerge from the trees.

Jules Milone and the rebels are gone. Even Madrigal’s body is gone, dragged away in the chaos.

“My sister has returned,” Katharine says dazedly. “Mirabella is alive.”





MOUNT HORN




“Aren’t you glad we brought him now?” Arsinoe asks Billy as they ascend along a steep slope of icy rock, their hands buried in the warm fur of Braddock’s rump.

“Yes.” He stretches his neck to get a view of something other than bear tail. “You don’t think the trail is becoming too narrow?”

“He’ll let us know. He’ll stop.”

“And how will we get around, then? How will he get down?”

Arsinoe squints as fat snowflakes start to fly by. “We’ll climb over the top of him and help him to back up. Is it hard to breathe? It seems harder to breathe.”

She sucks in cold air. They are far enough up the mountain that the air could truly be thinner, but she thinks it is only her nerves. They have been above the snow line for the better part of the morning, making slow progress. The cave cannot be much farther.

“I think I see it.” Billy jumps, and she grabs his arm to make sure he does not lose his balance and fall over the edge. “We’re almost there. Are you all right? You’re looking green.”

“I don’t know what it is about this place. I used to climb the high hills of Wolf Spring and look down all the time. But I think if I looked over the edge now I’d pass right out.”

“Don’t look, then.” He presses her against the cliff face protectively. “Just keep moving and focus on the bear behind.”

“It’s hard to miss,” Arsinoe says, and he laughs.

They trudge along, and after what feels like an age, Arsinoe lifts her head to peek over Braddock. She does not see any sign of a cave, and the snow is falling harder, blotting everything out.

“I thought you said you saw it!”

“I thought I did!” He wipes his eyes free of ice and tries to look again. “This mountain doesn’t want us to— Whoops!”

Braddock turns into the cave so quickly that they both fall forward onto their hands. But they waste no time scrambling inside, and Billy digs the stash of firewood from his pack and lays it out, deep in the cave where the wind does not reach. He strikes a match with trembling fingers and touches it to the wood. It goes out.

“Oh, I wish Mira were here,” Billy grumbles, and Braddock seems to agree. He snuffles doubtfully at the fire and shakes snow from his back. “Don’t get the wood wet, you big oaf!”

“Billy!”

“You know I love him. But I’m freezing.” He strikes another match and another, until finally the curls of bark and kindling begin to catch. The cave brightens with a warm yellow glow, and they can see the length of it. The cave opening is large, plenty of room to sleep a bear and several people. It tapers to the rear until it disappears in shadow, far down into the depths of Mount Horn.

“All right,” Billy says as they huddle close to the fire warming their hands. “What do we do now?”

Arsinoe walks farther into the cave. She listens to the hollow sound of her boots against the cave floor. Listens to the silence, and the lack of echoes. The way the wind dies and disappears. This cave is like the ancient clearing near the bent-over tree. It is like the chasm of the Breccia Domain. Another one of the many places on Fennbirn where the Goddess’s eye is always open, though this is perhaps the greatest: stone stretched into the sky and struck deep in the earth, to press against the Goddess’s pulse.