“You must be of some use!” Emilia shouts.
Billy steps between them. “You quiet down. If there’s anything Arsinoe can do, she’ll do it. But she doesn’t need your barking and threats. Where’s Mirabella?”
Emilia bares her teeth. She could skewer Billy like a cube of goat meat, but he does not waver. “Probably wandering the streets, basking in the adoration of the people. She showed herself during the attack. The queens’ secret is out. So you may as well lose that ridiculous scarf. Not that it was doing much anyway.”
Arsinoe turns to Mathilde. “Are there still healer’s stores here in the castle?”
“No. But there is a shop in the marketplace. I will take you.”
The shop is not far. Mathilde takes Arsinoe and Billy to it and gently moves the old proprietor to the side of the counter. Both she and Arsinoe frown when he bows.
“Old habits,” Arsinoe mutters, and then she gets to work, gathering bowls and ingredients with her uninjured hand, her mind focused and relaxed, so confident in the movements that it is almost like watching someone else navigate her body.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Billy whispers.
Arsinoe shrugs. “Seem to.” She opens a jar and sniffs. Elder flower. Not what she needs, but it does remind her to set Billy aside near the shopkeep. Most of the stock will be for healing, but some jars are bound to contain true poisons.
She pauses a moment and chews a fingernail, thinking of how best to administer the sedative. A salve perhaps? Something to rub into the skin? Though who was to say she would be able to get close enough to do the rubbing. Something to load into a dart, then? Or to coat the edge of a blade?
“No,” she murmurs. No matter what condition Jules is in, the thought of shooting her or cutting her makes Arsinoe sick to her stomach.
“Down the hatch it is,” she says, and begins. She grabs bundles of pale skullcap and strips the petals. Grinds root of valerian into a paste. Pushes the whole mess through a sieve with oil made from betel nut. At the last moment, she squeezes her fist, letting several thick droplets of blood fall from Camden’s scratches into the oil. “I need to thin it out with liquor.”
“A sedation?” The shopkeep nods and fetches a bottle down from a shelf. “Try this and a little sugar. Helps it go down.”
She uncorks the bottle and sniffs. It smells like Grandma Cait’s terrible anise cookies.
“That’ll do.” She pours it into the bowl and adds sugar, then transfers the mixture into a bottle and caps it. “Are you a poisoner, shopkeep?”
“No, my queen. I’m of no particular gift. Where did you learn the craft, if I may ask? Not many poisoners down in Wolf Spring.”
“I learned it nowhere, I guess.”
“So it’s true you are a poisoner, then. There was rumor after the Ascension that you had been a poisoner in naturalist garb.” He nods knowingly. “Amongst the healers, we hoped it was so. That maybe there had risen a poisoner somewhere who could be something other than wicked and corrupt.”
“I’m still no queen.” Arsinoe tucks the bottle into her sleeve. “But I thank you for the use of your shop.”
By the time they return to the castle, to Emilia guarding the locked door, they are out of breath.
“I thought you would never arrive.”
“Was it so long?” Arsinoe asks as Emilia picks up the end of a rope. The rope is attached to a noose that she has managed to loop around Camden’s neck. “That can’t have been easy.”
“Or safe,” Billy adds.
“The hard part comes now,” Emilia says, looping the length of rope around her hand. “Are you ready?”
“Should you—” Billy takes her arm. “Should you really go in there alone? I know it’s Jules, but . . . it doesn’t sound like Jules.”
“It will in a few minutes.” Arsinoe pulls out the bottle of greenish liquid. “All right, Emilia.”
“Pay no attention to her eyes,” Emilia says gravely. “It is only broken blood vessels.”
Arsinoe heads for the door, and Emilia jerks back on the rope. The sight of poor Camden struggling at the end of it, snarling and charging, reaching with her claws, makes her want to weep.
She turns the key in the lock and slips inside, closing it up and locking it tight again. Then she stops. And listens. Her belly pressed to the wall.
“Jules. It’s me.” She cannot hear anything. The screaming and crashing, even Camden’s struggles outside have stopped. She cannot even hear Jules breathing.
“Arsinoe.”
“Yes.” She sighs and turns around. “Thank the Goddess, Jules—” The plank of wood flies straight for her throat. She dives and hits the floor hard, covering her head and sliding through debris. Every piece of furniture is broken, bashed into pieces and strewn about, the remains so small that she cannot tell whether she is looking at what is left of a bed or a chair or a table.
And pressed against the opposite wall is Jules. They have managed to bind her arms and legs with heavy chain. Twisted and on the floor, small as always, she does not look a threat. Except for the hatred on her face and her bloodred eyes.
Only the burst vessels, Arsinoe thinks. But if it is, she has burst every one. Not a speck of white remains. Just pure, bright red, her pretty blue and green irises set in the centers like gems.
“Arsinoe, help me.”
“That’s what I’m here to do, Jules.”
“Help me!” she screams, and Arsinoe is blown back. Her head strikes against the stones hard enough to bounce, and her vision wavers. Using every ounce of courage, she scrambles across the floor and grasps Jules by the neck. She wraps her legs around her, too, and pulls out the bottle.
“This will not taste good,” she says, and forces it between Jules’s teeth, pink with blood. It takes Arsinoe a moment to realize that Jules has bitten part of her own lips off.
“Oh, Jules,” she whispers, and squeezes her tight. When the bottle is empty, she hooks both arms around Jules’s chest and hangs on as she convulses. By the time it is over, Arsinoe is weeping harder than she has ever wept in her life, but Jules’s eyes are closed. She is asleep.
The door to the room opens, and Camden bounds inside to lie beside Jules and lick her face. She licks Arsinoe’s hand, too, and grunts at her, as though ashamed.
“It’s all right, cat.”
“It worked,” she says to Billy at the door between Emilia and Mathilde.
“We know. Camden stopped fighting. Just all of a sudden, she stopped fighting the rope.”
Emilia shoves her way inside, wiping tears from her face and neck. She takes Jules from Arsinoe and nestles her onto her lap.
“Don’t take off the chains,” Arsinoe says. She starts to get up, and Emilia grasps her by the wrist.
“Thank you, Arsinoe.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Even if she didn’t do it for you,” Billy says, and puts his arm around Arsinoe’s shoulders as they leave. “Are you all right? She didn’t hurt you?”
“No.” She kisses his fingers. “But I need to go and find my sister.”
“Of course. I’ll . . . stay here. Keep an eye on Jules for you.”
She finds Mirabella in the rear cloister, seated on a stone bench with a cloth of cheese and bread. Daphne’s words echo through her mind. My elemental sister had to die to make the mist. And yours must die to unmake it.
“Arsinoe!” Mirabella sees her and comes quickly. “You are safe! And Billy?”
“He’s fine. Braddock, too. We brought him along.”
“To Sunpool?”
“No. To the mountain.” She presses her hand to her temple. She is exhausted, and still there is more to do. Find a way to ease Jules’s legion curse. Inform the people of Sunpool not to hunt for bear in the nearby woods. And kill her sister. “No,” she whispers. “Never. Not even for the entire island.”
“What for the entire island?”
Mirabella leads her back to the bench and they sit. She stuffs bread and cheese into Arsinoe’s hands. How Arsinoe would like to tell her what Daphne said, if only to promise that they will find another way. But until she finds one, she thinks it is best not to.