“Not the bear, but the mountain cat is often with her,” Bree says. “And the Milone girl. Often”—Bree hesitates—“Joseph as well.”
Mirabella’s eyes flash to her, and Bree drops her gaze. Mirabella will not harm Joseph. She has no wish to harm Juillenne. But if Juillenne interferes, if she sends her cougar, then she and the cat will have to die with the queen.
WOLF SPRING
Arsinoe leaves Wolf Spring by way of the Valleywood Road. It is the most common route to the capital, a nice, wide road covered over with trees that passes through Ashburn and Highgate on its way through the Stonegall Hills. If Luke’s spy is right, she should run into Mirabella somewhere in the Ashburn Woods.
Perhaps Luke and his tailor friend were wrong and she will walk the Valleywood all the way to Indrid Down.
But somehow she does not think so. It is as if she can sense Mirabella advancing through the hills. She can almost smell her, like the coming of summer rain.
“You can’t go after her! You can’t interfere!”
“I’m not going to interfere,” Jules says. It is difficult to pack with her mother in the room. Everything Jules tries to pack, Madrigal takes back out. Her scarf. An apple. A roll of bandage. Madrigal takes them and holds them behind her back. As if that will stop Jules. As if she will not go anyway, even empty-handed.
“If you’re not going to try to save her, then why go? Stay here. Wait with us. You are not the only one who’s worried!”
“She’s my best friend,” Jules says quietly. The image of Arsinoe walking away that afternoon haunts her. It was so hard to let her go, even knowing that she intended to follow.
“You’ve been practically in my shadow since Beltane,” Jules says. “Why? Because you want me to forgive you for being with Matthew?”
“No,” Madrigal says, her face full of hurt. But Madrigal can twist her face in an instant, into any expression that she thinks will earn her the most sympathy.
“Don’t bother playing the concerned mother now. And don’t tell me not to help. You helped plenty, teaching Arsinoe low magic. And you assisted with the spell to charm the bear onto the stage at the Quickening.”
“That was different. That was a show. That was not the Ascension. Now it is up to her.”
“Now our role ends,” Jules says, her lip curled. “I know you haven’t been here, Madrigal, but even you should have seen. Arsinoe lives or we both die, and that is always the way it was going to be.”
The boards in the hall creak. Cait appears outside the door to Jules and Arsinoe’s bedroom, her gray hair tied tight at the nape of her neck and her eyes wary.
“I’m sorry for the noise, Grandma. Everything is all right.”
“She’s going to go after the queens,” Madrigal mutters. “You should never have kept her here, so close to all this.”
“You weren’t around to give an opinion,” Cait replies in her calm, deep voice. “But maybe we shouldn’t have. We knew it meant heartbreak when Arsinoe would die. But that’s what comes of fostering a queen.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Jules growls. “Like she’s finished.”
“You should have sent Jules away,” Madrigal says.
“‘Away.’ Not ‘to you.’” Jules nods. “I suppose I’m glad you’re not lying and pretending you wanted me then.” She edges past her grandmother and runs down the stairs, with Camden grumbling at her heels.
Cait and Madrigal wait until the front door slams before they speak again.
“We should have told her,” Madrigal says.
“No.”
“She will find out anyway. You’re not blind. You’ve seen what’s happened since the Ascension Year began. How her temper grows. The bear she killed by the bent-over tree . . . the one she killed without touching! And how many broken plates have there been? How many vases knocked off tables? You tried to bind it, but it didn’t work.”
“Madrigal,” Cait says, her voice weary. “Be calm.”
Madrigal laughs.
“How many times have you said that to her? Be calm. Don’t worry. Control your temper. The oracle said that she was cursed. That she would bring about the fall of the island. And you believed her.”
Cait stares at her daughter quietly. It has been a long time since anyone spoke such words aloud. But it was true. When Jules was born a blessed, Beltane Begot, and a girl, the first girl of a new generation of Milones, Cait sent for a seer, as was the old custom. But the moment the seer took one look at Jules, she spat upon the ground.
“Drown her,” she said. “She carries the legion curse. Her naturalist gift will be touched with war. Drown her now, before she goes mad with it.”
When Madrigal refused, the seer tried to take Jules from her arms, and when she touched the baby, fell into a trance, babbling about things to come.
“It must be drowned. It must not live. She is ruin, and the fall . . .” She went on and on, eyes rolled back to the whites, and Madrigal screamed, and the baby wailed, until Cait and Ellis ordered the oracle out.
They could not drown little Jules. They would not. So they bound her legion curse with low magic, a binding in her mother’s blood. What they did to the fleeing seer, Cait cannot bear to think about. But after it was over, they all agreed to forget.
Cait blinks at Madrigal and shakes her head.
“That is not why. You know why we bound it. Not because she would destroy Fennbirn. Because she would destroy herself.”
“But she hasn’t destroyed herself. She’s ready now.”
“You are never ready. The legion curse drives people mad. More than one gift is too much for a mind to bear.”
“So they say,” Madrigal counters. “But they also say that the gifts under a legion curse are weak. And my Jules is the strongest naturalist anyone has ever seen. Just think what her war gift might be beside it.”
On the banister, Cait’s crow familiar croaks and shifts angrily from foot to foot. Madrigal was always ambitious. No doubt some part of her was excited that a child of hers had received such a prophecy.
“Is that what this is about?” Cait asks. “Your daughter. Your daughter. Being a part of this. Having a great destiny. But it is still really about you, Madrigal. You being a part of this. Hoping for your own great destiny.”
“What an ugly thing to say, Mother.” For an almost imperceptible moment, Madrigal’s eyes narrow. Anyone who knew her any less would have missed it completely. And then her eyes are wide again, and imploring.
“I know we had to bind it,” she says gently. “Sufferers of the legion curse were burned once. They were drowned. The Council would have demanded I leave her in the woods to die.” She touches her mother on the shoulder. “But she has grown up. Strong. And sane.”
“We bound Jules’s war gift for her own good,” Cait says. “And”—she hesitates to say what she has never wanted to believe—“as the seer was right about the legion curse, it must have occurred to you that she could also be right about the rest of it.”
“That Jules will bring about the fall of the island?” Madrigal scoffs. “That oracle was mad, like so many oracles before her.”