“Have you seen Jules?” Mirabella asks. “Is she still . . . ?”
“I crafted a tonic. A sedative. She’s resting now.”
“Good,” Mirabella says. “I knew she would be fine.”
“She’s not fine. She’s not better.” Arsinoe starts to cry again, and Mirabella pulls her close. “I don’t know what to do.” Arsinoe gasps. “She’s not even Jules: her eyes are full of blood. She doesn’t even know me.”
Mirabella rocks her gently, and Arsinoe clings to her.
“Everything is going wrong, Mira, and I don’t know what to do.”
“No, no, no,” Emilia says to the people gathered in the street before the castle. “Our Legion Queen is well. She was injured in the attack by Katharine the Undead but only slightly. She is shut up now in grief for her mother, who was murdered by the Undead Queen herself.”
“And what of the elemental? The naturalist?”
“They have long been allies of Juillenne Milone. But they have abdicated, and that abdication stands. Be patient, friends, and be ready. Continue your work. They have struck first blood, but we shall have answer for it soon enough.”
Mirabella watches from behind the cracked open door. When Emilia comes back inside, she jumps at the sight of her in the shadows.
“They strip us of our proper title,” Mirabella says. “The elemental? The naturalist? Do we not even have names anymore?”
“No names that matter. No titles of importance. Isn’t that the way you wanted it?” Emilia stalks deeper into the fortress, her gait fast and lithe but no trouble for Mirabella to keep up with.
“It is. It is only strange to hear. You are a very fine orator. No doubt you had plenty of practice, spreading the legend these past months.”
“Was there something you wanted, Mirabella? I am very busy, as you can see. Walls to fortify. Grain to unload. And this afternoon, the queen’s mother to burn.”
“But Jules is not yet out of her room. You would burn Madrigal before she is well enough to say a proper goodbye?”
Emilia stops. She turns and presses Mirabella backward, down into a shadowy corridor until her back is against the stones, and Emilia’s hand is hot on her shoulder.
“Out with it, then,” Emilia snaps.
“I want to know what your plans are now.”
“Now what?”
“Now that everything is changed. Jules is . . . unwell. I have not been able to speak to my sister for days because all she has done is concoct more potions and tonics to help her. Yet you tell these people—who risk their lives and have left their homes—that she is unhurt and in mourning?”
“Jules will be fine. She will be our queen.”
“Perhaps once,” Mirabella hisses. “But you and I both saw what we saw at Innisfuil. You cannot put that on the throne. Let us take her away to the mainland. The curse may be eased, away from the island.”
“No.” Emilia presses a finger to Mirabella’s chest. “Your sister would never allow it.”
“Arsinoe will do anything that might help.”
“And what of the mist? Since the day the temple took you, they have said that you were for the island. Its great protector. Will you leave us to it after what we both saw?”
“But when did the mist start to rise, Emilia? Was it the moment Katharine stepped into the crown? Or was it weeks and weeks later, when you sought to elevate Jules above her station?”
Emilia bares her teeth, and Mirabella braces for anything: a strike to the head or an unseen blade slipped between her ribs. But in the end, the warrior merely spits on the ground and walks away, and Mirabella lets out her breath.
It takes a few moments to collect herself before she can go up to the room they have designated as hers. It was meant to be shared with Arsinoe, but since she returned from the mountain, Arsinoe has not slept there, if she has slept at all.
She turns her head at a knock, and Billy pokes his head in.
“Have you seen Arsinoe? She’s not with Jules.”
“No. And even when I seek her out, she does not want to see me. Has she . . . Is she angry with me because of what I let happen to Jules?”
“Of course not. What happened to Jules was not your fault. She’s relieved that you’re safe. It’ll be better once Jules is better.” He smiles, covering up the words that echo through both of their heads.
But we are not leaving anytime soon.
“Do you need anything?” he asks.
“No. Thank you.”
He closes the door, and Mirabella hears a familiar trill come from the window.
“Pepper.”
The little woodpecker flies from the stone sill to her shoulder and pokes a bit at her hair. Then he sticks out his leg. Another note has been tied to him, this time labeled with an M in familiar scrawling script. She unrolls it and reads.
We have spoken with the queen, and we too believe she is true. We have departed for Indrid Down. The decision is yours, but we will be here if you need us.
-B&E
Mirabella takes a deep breath. She strokes the woodpecker’s chest feathers. Then she sets the message down, unrolled, upon the table.
GREAVESDRAKE MANOR
Pietyr lays the stones he took from the Breccia Domain onto the floor of Katharine’s old bedroom, inside the circle of thin rope he has soaked with his own blood.
“The rope looks so fragile,” says Katharine as another stone knocks hollowly against the wood.
“It should not matter. That it is joined from end to end is what is important.” He had been soaking and staining it little by little, day by day, until the entire length was crimson and brown. Stiff to the touch. He has little more blood to spare, but spare he must when he reopens the rune that Madrigal carved into his palm.
Katharine wanders toward the windows. Her hand slips over the back of the sofa and over the desk. All her old, childhood things.
“Do you think Mirabella is on her way to me?” she asks softly.
“I do not know, Kat.”
“Do you think if she comes, Arsinoe might come, too? That they might stand behind me, united?”
“I do not know, Kat.”
Pietyr steps back, surveying his work. He wishes bitterly that Madrigal had not died. He does not know what he is doing. Perhaps she lied to him, and he is not doing anything at all. Katharine cocks her head at his crude circle, the ends of the rope set apart to allow them to step inside.
“Is that it?”
“Seems to be. Do you feel anything?”
Katharine rubs her arms and grimaces. “Only for the stones. They do not like them. They do not want them here.”
He looks at her. Fetching and queenly in black riding breeches, a smart black jacket, ready to do as he instructs.
“Do you trust me, Kat?”
She looks up at him in surprise. “Of course I do.”
“Even after . . .” he says, and looks down in shame.
“Even after,” she says, and smiles. Her smile, not the dead queens’. They were his doing—he was the one who pushed her down and let them in—but now he will make it right. He holds out his hand and leads her inside the circle. When he joins the ends of the rope, he thinks he feels something ripple through the room. Some slight shift in the air. Then it disappears, and he is not sure.
Perhaps he should have chosen another place to perform the ritual. The temple, perhaps, before the Goddess Stone. Or somewhere on the grounds of the Volroy. Sacred spaces. But Madrigal never mentioned any particular place, and Greavesdrake was somewhere private, where they would not be interrupted. The place where they first met. And to Katharine, the place that still feels the most like home. Greavesdrake has been the seat of Arron power for a hundred years. It must be good enough.
“Will it hurt, Pietyr?” she whispers.
“I think so.” He shows her the rune cut into his palm. “You are not afraid of that?”
She shakes her head, but her eyes are full of fear, even as she keeps her voice resolute.
“After that boy by the harbor,” she murmurs. “After Madrigal. We have no choice.”
He bends down to kiss her hand and slides a blade from his belt.