Three Dark Crowns (21 page)

W
hen Arsinoe wakes, she knows there is something wrong with her face. At first she thinks that she has slept wrong, perhaps pressed too hard into the pillow. Except that she is lying on her back.

The room is quiet, and bright as midday; she does not know how long she has been asleep. The blue-and-white curtains are drawn closed. Plates of untouched food crowd the writing desk.

“The bear,” she whispers.

Jules appears beside her, tired, her brown hair a wavy mess of tangles.

“Don't move,” she says, but Arsinoe pushes herself onto her elbows. When she does, her right shoulder screams.

“Let me help at least.” Jules pulls her up and stacks pillows behind her back.

“Why aren't I dead?” Arsinoe asks. “Where is Camden?”

“She is all right,” Jules says. “She is there.”

She nods toward where the cougar lies on Jules's bed. The big cat appears to be lounging in relative ease. She has a few cuts, and one of her forelegs is wrapped and held in a sling, but it could have been worse.

“Her shoulder is broken,” Jules says quietly. “By the time anyone thought to tend to her . . . It will never heal right.”

“This is my fault,” Arsinoe says, and Jules looks down.

“You could have been killed,” Jules says. “Madrigal should never have taught you.”

“She was only trying to help me. It is not her fault that something went wrong. We all know that they do, sometimes, with low magic. We all know of the risk.”

“You say that like you are going to do it again, anyway.”

Arsinoe frowns. Or she tries to. Her mouth will not work properly. And her cheek is odd and heavy. There is a part of her face that she can no longer feel, as if a stone has grown into the skin.

“Will you open a window, Jules?”

“Of course.”

She walks to the other side of the room, to push back the curtains. The fresh air is a relief. The room smells stagnant, like blood and too much sleep.

“Luke was here,” Jules says. “He brought cookies.”

Arsinoe reaches up to her face and strips the bandages.

“Arsinoe, don't!”

“Get me a mirror.”

“You have to stay in bed,” Jules says.

“Don't be thick. Bring me one of Madrigal's.”

For a moment, it seems that Jules will refuse. That is when the first real fear sets in. But eventually she goes to ransack Madrigal's dresser until she finds a mirror with a pretty pearlescent handle.

Arsinoe runs her good hand over her black cap of hair, smoothing it where it sticks up from having rested on her pillow. Then she raises the mirror and looks.

She does not blink. Not even when Jules begins to cry behind her hand. She has to make herself see it. Every inch of stitched-together red. Every angry black knot that holds together what is left of her face.

Most of her right cheek is gone, hollow where it should be plump. Lines of dark stitches cross from the corner of her mouth to below the outside edge of her eye. Another, larger line of stitches covers the hollow of her cheekbone, all the way down to her chin.

“Well,” she says. “A hairsbreadth higher and I would have needed to wear an eye patch.” She starts to laugh.

“Arsinoe, stop.”

She watches the stitches pull in the mirror until blood spurts down her chin. Jules tries to calm her, and calls for Cait, and Ellis, but Arsinoe only laughs harder.

The cuts stretch open. The salt from her tears burns. It is a lucky thing that she never cared about what she looked like.

Jules finds Joseph in his family's shipyard, sifting through a tangled mess of rope and rigging. It is a warm day, and he has
taken his jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. She watches him dismally as he wipes sweat from his brow. He is the kind of handsome that draws every eye.

“Jules,” he says when he sees her, and sets down his pile of rigging. “How is she?”

“She is Arsinoe,” she says. “She tore her stitches out. They are putting them back in now. I couldn't stay. I couldn't take any more.”

He rubs his fingers clean on a handkerchief. He would take her hand if he thought she would let him.

“I was going to bring her flowers,” he says, and chuckles. “Can you imagine? I want to see her, but I don't know if she will want to see me. If she will want to be seen.”

“She will want to see you,” says Jules. “Arsinoe will never hide from anything.”

Jules turns to face the water, obscured by boats in dry dock, barely visible past the edge of the pier.

“I feel strange,” she says. “Without Camden. Without Arsinoe. As if I've lost my shadows.”

“They will be back,” Joseph says.

“Not like they were.”

Joseph wraps tentative fingers around her shoulder until she leans back into him. For a moment, it seems that he could hold her up, take all her weight in just one hand.

“I love her too, Jules,” he says. “Almost as much as I love you.”

Together, they look out at the cove. It is quiet, nothing there
but low waves and wind, and it seems like you could sail forever.

“Joseph . . . I wish we had gotten her off the island five years ago.”

Billy does not smile when he comes into the room, and that is good. Or better, at least, than the guilty, shaky, forced grins that the healers and the Milones have been trying to wear. He holds his hand up. He brought her flowers. Vibrant, yellow-orange blooms that do not come from any hothouse in Wolf Spring.

“My father sent for these,” he says. “All the way from my mother's favorite florist. He sent for them the moment we heard. Before we knew whether you would live or die. He said we could use them either way, for courting or condolences. Shall I stomp on them?”

“In a naturalist house?”

She takes them. They have small velvet petals, and smell a little like the oranges they import in the summer.

“They are lovely,” she says. “Jules will be able to keep them blooming for a long time.”

“But not you,” he says.

“No. Not me.”

She sets the flowers on her bedside table, near the windowsill and the dry, curled shell of her dead winter fern. Billy sets his jacket on a chair, but instead of sitting in it, takes a seat at the foot of her bed.

“How have you come to be here?” he asks. “If you are truly
without a . . . gift . . . then why place you with the Milones? Did they win some kind of lottery? Or lose one?”

Arsinoe chuckles and pain sparks up the side of her face. Billy leans forward as she holds her cheek, but there is nothing he can do. And besides, the laughter is worth it.

“It was never said that I was giftless,” Arsinoe says. “At least, not back then. None of us were branded as giftless.”

“Branded?”

“The queen knows what she has when she has them,” Arsinoe says. “Then she leaves us for the Midwife to raise. When we are old enough, our families come to claim us.

“For me, it was Jules. She was the only reason I wasn't terrified. She came along, holding Aunt Caragh's hand on one side and Matthew's hand on the other.”

“Ah,” Billy says, and leans back. “Aunt Caragh and Joseph's brother Matthew. From what I gather, they were a fairly serious item.”

“They were,” says Arsinoe. “Some people said she was too serious for him. That he was too young. But I will never forget his face when they took her away.”

Arsinoe clears her throat. How ridiculous she must look, bedridden and covered in bandages, talking about lost love.

“You jumped in front of that bear for me,” he says.

“You jumped in front of it for me, first.”

He smiles a little. “And then Jules killed it,” he says. “I used to think she was too strong for anyone's good. But we are so lucky that she was there.”

“Yes,” Arsinoe says. “I will make sure to have her with me when I try again.”

“Again? Arsinoe, you were nearly killed.”

“And if I don't try again, I will be for sure.”

They lock eyes. Billy looks away first.

“The queens just know,” he says. “What you are.” He shakes his head. “You are so strange, in so many ways.”

“You have heard it said that the queens are not really people,” she says. “So when we kill one another, it is not a person we are killing.” She looks down. “That's what they say. I don't know anymore if it is really true.”

But true or not, it does not matter. It is the island's way. And it is nearly time to begin. Beltane arrives with the melt. Soon, the island will begin to move, from the outside in, toward the heart. All the great houses packed together for three nights in Innisfuil Valley.

“A letter arrived from my father yesterday,” Billy says. “But I have not opened it. I know it will say that I am to go and meet Mirabella, and I don't want to.”

“You want me to win,” Arsinoe says. “You want to marry me.”

Billy grins. “I don't want to marry you. You have none of the proper makings of a wife. But I don't want you to die. You have become my friend, Arsinoe.”

He takes her hand and holds it, and she is surprised by how much that means. His words are sincere even though she knows that in the end, he will go to meet Mirabella, anyway.

“Do you want to see it?” She touches her face.

“Are we little boys now?” he asks. “Comparing scabs?”

“If we were, I would win.”

She turns her head and pulls off her bandages. The stitches pull at her cheek but do not bleed.

Billy takes his time. He sees it all.

“Should I lie and tell you that I have seen worse?” he asks, and she shakes her head. “There's a rhyme about you, you know,” he says. “Back home. Little girls sing it when they skip rope.

“Three Black Witches are born in a glen,

Sweet little triplets

Will never be friends.

“Three Black Witches, all fair to be seen.

Two to devour,

And one to be queen.

“That's what they call you, on the mainland. Witches. That's what my father says that you are. Monsters. Beasts. But you are not a monster.”

“No,” she says quietly. “And neither are the rest of us. But that doesn't change what we have to do.” She takes his hand and squeezes it softly. “Go back to the Sandrins', Junior. Go back and read your letter.”

P
ietyr Renard has never been invited inside the Volroy, but he has always dreamed of it. Ever since he was a child and his father told him stories. There is nothing in the halls to catch sound, he said. The Volroy defies adornment, as if there are too many other important things inside for it to be bothered with tapestries. Only the chamber where the council meets has anything but smooth black surfaces, and that is a relief sculpture depicting naturalist blooms and elemental fires, poisoner venoms and the warrior's carnage. He used to sketch the poisoner portion for Pietyr, charcoal on white paper, a knotted nest of vipers on a bed of oleander petals.

He promised to take Pietyr there as soon as he came of age. But that was before the house in the country, and his new wife.

“This way,” says an attendant, who leads Pietyr up the stairs of the East Tower, where Natalia waits.

He does not really need a guide. He has walked the Volroy a thousand times in his imagination.

As they pass a window, he looks out at the West Tower. Huge and hulking, it blots out everything else. Up close, it does not give the grand impression that it does at a distance, slicing into the sky like an engraved knife. From here, it only looks black and mean, and locked up tight until the new queen comes.

The attendant stops outside a small door and bows. Pietyr knocks and then enters.

The room is a small, circular study that looks almost like a priestess's hovel, an odd little space hollowed out of a rock. Beside its solitary window, Natalia seems nearly too big for it.

“Come,” she says.

“I was surprised that you summoned me here,” he says.

“I knew it was what you were waiting for,” she says. “A glimpse of your prize. Is it everything you imagined?”

Pietyr looks out the window and whistles.

“I must admit that I always thought there should be three towers instead of two. Three, for the queens. But now I see. The construction is astounding! Even two is a supreme achievement.”

Natalia walks across the room and bends before a small cupboard, her footsteps loud as a horse's hooves on a cobblestone drive. There are very few floor coverings. It must make the servants' legs ache terribly.

Natalia pours two glasses of straw-colored liquid. May wine. He can smell it from the window. It is a strange choice.
A drink for a poisoner child. He takes it and sniffs, but he does not detect any added toxins.

“What is the occasion?” he asks. “I have not had May wine in years. My stepmother used to make it for me and the cousins in the summer. Sweetened with honey and strawberry juice.”

“Just as I used to make it for Katharine,” Natalia says. “She was always so fond of it. Though at first it made her sick as a dog, the poor thing.”

Pietyr takes a sip. It is very good, even unsweetened.

“It is from a Wolf Spring vineyard,” Natalia says. “Naturalists may be a filthy lot, but they know how to grow a grape. A small sun in every fruit, they say.” She snorts.

“Aunt Natalia. What is the matter?”

She shakes her head. “Are you a pious boy, Pietyr? Do you know much of the temple?”

“Not overmuch,” he says. “Marguerite tried with me, after she and Father married. But it was too late.”

“It is never too late. She persuaded your father to leave the council, did she not? To give up the capital and his family.” She sighs. “I wish Paulina had not died. It was a great insult to her when Christophe married Marguerite.”

“Yes,” he says. “But this is not why you brought me here.”

Natalia chuckles.

“You are so like me. So direct. And you are right. I summoned you here because the temple is moving against us. Have you heard whispers of something called ‘the Sacrificial Year'?”

“No,” Pietyr says.

“I am not surprised. You are quite sequestered, with Katharine. The Sacrificial Year refers to a generation of queens where one is strong and two are weak.”

“A generation like this one.”

“Yes,” she says. “And that much of the story is true. Even I remember that—a story told to me by my grandmother, told to her by hers. But the temple has decided to deviate.”

“How?”

“They are saying that in Sacrificial Years, the two weaker queens are taken apart by a mob following the Quickening Ceremony.”

“What?” Pietyr asks. He sets down his wine unsteadily, and it sloshes onto the window ledge.

“They are saying that a great mob rose up and tore the arms and heads from their bodies and tossed them into the fires. And they intend to do it to Katharine and Arsinoe. They are trying to make Mirabella a White-Handed Queen.”

Pietyr holds his breath. White-Handed Queens are well-loved by the people. They are second only to a Blue Queen. But there has not been one in two hundred years.

“That part of the Sacrificial Year story is not true,” Natalia says. “At least not as I have ever heard it.”

“Is old Luca so desperate, then?” he asks. “There must be something wrong with their elemental.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps the temple is only seizing upon opportunity. It does not matter. What matters is that we know.”

“How do we know?” Pietyr asks.

“I was informed by a foolish bird from the mainland. He whispered it into my ear.”

Pietyr runs his hands over his face. Katharine. Sweet Katharine. They intend to take her arms and her head. They intend to burn her.

“Why am I the only one here, Natalia? Where are Genevieve and Lucian and Allegra?”

“I have not told them. There is nothing that they can do.” She looks out the window, across the city and into the countryside. “Nothing on this island happens without my knowing. Or so I thought. But I do know that every ceremonial blade that the temple possesses is on its way to Innisfuil. Every priestess will be armed.”

“So we will arm ourselves in kind!”

“We are not soldiers, Nephew. And even if we were, there is no time. We would need every poisoner in the city. At Innisfuil, the elementals and the temple priestesses will outnumber us three to one.”

Pietyr grasps his aunt by the arms and squeezes hard. He may not have seen her often growing up, but he knows enough from his father's stories to recognize when she is not herself. The matriarch of the Arrons does not just accept that she has been outplayed.

“We will not stand by and let them behead our queen,” Pietyr says. He softens his hands and his voice. “Not our Katharine. Not our Kat.”

“What would you do to save her, Pietyr?” Natalia asks.
“At Beltane, we are nearly powerless. The priestesses oversee everything, from the Hunt to the Quickening. It will be close to impossible to maneuver within them.”

“Close to impossible,” he corrects. “But not impossible. And I will do whatever I have to do. I will do anything.”

She curls her lip.

“You love her.”

“Yes,” he says. “And so do you.”