Mirabella exhales. After their first meeting on the banks of Starfall Lake, Luca did not know if she could be controlled. But the key to taming Mirabella has been to use a soft hand. Not to try to drive the thoughts of her sisters from her head, but to understand them. To educate her in the ways of a queen and devote her to the Goddess completely. To make her a servant.
Sara Westwood still foolishly hopes that one day Mirabella will forget, like other queens do. But Mirabella will never forget. Perhaps it is because she is such a rare queen, of such tremendous power, and the memories are the way the Goddess has chosen to test her. Or perhaps it is because her sisters were burned into her mind after being locked in a dark basement for three long years.
It will take time, and more education, but Mirabella will be the queen that the island needs. She is chosen. Luca knows that as surely as she has known anything since the day she took the bracelets and entered the temple.
“You are still wild.” Luca reaches out and flicks a long lock of tangled black hair from the queen’s shoulder. “Have you been out in the wind, running along Shannon’s Blackway again, with Bree?”
“Only before prayer this morning. We were both so restless, awaiting your return.”
“Come, then. I am restless as well after days in the carriage. Will you walk with an old woman, down toward the city? On the evergreen path?”
“Of course, High Priestess.” Mirabella offers her arm.
Luca does not really need the arm. Not yet. Her old legs are still sturdy and show no sign that they will fail her for years to come. But it is good for the queen to feel necessary. Like a caretaker. They wander down the evergreen path, in the hills that overlook the city of Rolanth. Not too far, Luca hopes, for the way back will not be quite so easy, but luckily, they come across the funeral procession just after the third curve.
“What’s this now?” Luca asks, and holds up her arm.
The carriages draped in crimson slow and stop, the horses bracing against the slope of the hill as their drivers set the brake. Three carriages, of average quality, the crimson hanging in dyed wool and not something finer like silk or even muslin. They are local folk, Rolanth people. Shopkeepers or weavers. Luca does not know for sure. She only knows that one of their own committed a crime and was poisoned to death for it.
A woman steps down from the first carriage and immediately kneels before Luca. She is cloaked all in crimson and her cheeks are tear-streaked.
“High Priestess, will you bless us?”
“Of course, of course,” says Luca as Mirabella looks on. “But what has happened?”
“My oldest boy, put to death for theft,” the woman says. “The Black Council is cruel. Unfeeling. They tortured him with their vile concoctions!” The woman begins to wail, and Mirabella touches her shoulder.
“Theft?” the queen asks. “But that is monstrous! To put someone to death for theft!”
Monstrous indeed. Also untrue. Luca knows the boy was tried for murder, just as she knew his funeral procession was to pass by this way, for blessings upon his body at the temple before being burned atop the Blackway Cliffs. She walks to the second carriage, the hearse carriage where the boy’s body is held, and says, “Stay back, Mirabella,” knowing full well that she will follow.
Luca opens the door. The corpse is covered in crimson cloth and perfumed against the scent of rot. But the scent is still there, after so many days traveling from Indrid Down. She raises her chin and pulls back the sheet.
Behind her, Mirabella gasps.
He is nothing but blisters. Broken, red blisters and deep, angry claw marks from his own fingers as he tried to dig the poison out of himself. Luca lets the queen look just a few moments longer, but covers the boy before Mirabella begins to weep. She is still young, after all. Not even twelve years old.
Luca makes sure that her face is strained as she goes back to the grieving mother, who must truly be his mother, or at least a very talented actress. She places her hands on the woman’s shoulders and draws her to her feet.
“Blessings upon your boy as he rejoins the fold of the Goddess.” Luca presses her thumb to the woman’s forehead. “Blessings upon you. Blessings upon your family.”
“It is not fair,” the woman cries. “The Black Council! The poisoners!”
“I know. It is horrible. But it will not remain so. The next queen will change it.”
“She must,” says the woman. “This cannot stand. We cannot take it.”
Luca turns sadly to Mirabella, whose eyes are wide and shining. The queen holds her head high, angry as well as horrified, just as Luca wants.
“I will change it,” Mirabella says. “I promise I will change it.”
EPILOGUE:
WOLF SPRING
Two Years Later
Arsinoe and Jules walk through the meadow beside Dogwood Pond. There is no one watching them. They have no escort. They have not even told anyone where they are going or when they will be home. Arsinoe thought that after what happened, after Jules and Joseph stole that boat and tried to flee the island with her, they would be guarded night and day. Instead, it is the opposite, as if they are barely seen.
Since Caragh departed for the Black Cottage, and Joseph sailed away to his banishment, so much sadness emanates through the Milone house, and all of Wolf Spring, that it is like the peoples’ hearts have slowed their beating.
“What do you want to do?” Arsinoe asks. “Go fishing? Swimming? The water’s still warm enough. Look for berries left in Pace’s ditch?”
“Sure,” Jules says. But she does not say which. And there is no fire in her voice, though she does turn to Arsinoe and smile. Good Jules. She has done everything she can to let Arsinoe know that she does not blame her. But Jules’s blame does not matter. Arsinoe knows that what happened to Caragh and Joseph was her fault. They were punished because they tried to save her.
Late at night, when she lies in her bed in the room she shares with Jules, Arsinoe still thinks about that day in the capital. That look on Natalia Arron’s face when she banished Joseph and Caragh. How Arsinoe hates the Arrons, every one of them, with their cold, blond coloring and imperious eyes. She would like to ruin everything for them, like they have ruined everything for Jules and the Milones. She does not know how she will do it yet, but she has time. The queens’ Ascension does not begin for another three years.
“I’m tired of the same old paths,” Jules says suddenly, and stops short. “Let’s go into the woods. Northeast, into the woods.”
“All right.”
Arsinoe does not like the northeastern woods. They are dark and too heavily shaded. Large creatures dwell there, safe from the noises and people in town, and whenever they go there, they hear many, lumbering or crashing through the brush, just out of sight. Of course she does not say so to Jules. They would be the most unnaturalist words ever uttered by a naturalist.
Jules leads her deeper and deeper into the forest, walking so fast that she may have forgotten that Arsinoe is with her at all. In the thick trees, Arsinoe loses track of the sun in the sky, and all the light seems slanting. Now and then, Jules stops to sniff the air and listen, but all Arsinoe hears are the whisper of leaves and the low, irritating buzz of insects. Where are the birds? Why is Madrigal’s familiar, Aria, not flapping somewhere overhead, cawing in the branches?
“Look.” Jules points.
Without Arsinoe noticing, they have come upon a clearing. The sun beams down upon an oblong stretch of green grass and moss, and shrub bushes with shiny, waxen leaves. In the center of it is a large, flat stone, just tall enough to climb on.
“I’ve never seen that before,” Arsinoe remarks.
Jules does not reply. Her face is set in concentration, her blue and green eyes intent on the stone. She wipes a bit of sweat from her upper lip. Bits of her wavy brown hair have come loose from her braid, and she looks as wild as anything in the woods.
Jules walks toward the stone. Arsinoe follows and watches as she scrambles up it to stand. Jules looks around, but it does not really make her that much taller, and certainly not tall enough to see over the trees.