A fat tear rolls down Katharine’s face. Too late. And the murderer dead as well, so she cannot have her vengeance, cannot poison him for days, for weeks, like he deserved. She would have crafted something for him to make him spasm so hard he broke his own back.
Katharine clutches at her stomach. Such pain, such anger boils up inside of her that she can feel even the dead queens cower.
“Natalia,” she whispers. “My mother.”
“Where is she?” Pietyr asks. “We would see her.”
“She is at the Volroy, being guarded by priestesses. Perhaps they will let you in.” Genevieve wipes at her own tears. “Before they execute Katharine as an abomination.”
“You are a disgrace,” Pietyr says suddenly. He had been staring out the window toward the Volroy as they spoke. Now he shoves Genevieve down onto the bed beside the dead king-consort. “No one is going to execute our queen. No true Arron would allow it.”
Genevieve jumps to her feet, fists trembling. “Natalia is dead!” she shouts. “Do you not hear what I am saying?”
Outside, below the window, the sound of hoofbeats announces another rider. It is a messenger. “They have escaped!” he calls up to the house. “The queens! They have escaped the cells and are gone!”
“Queens?” Katharine asks. “How is it ‘queens’? I poisoned Arsinoe myself.”
“What are we to do?” Genevieve moans. “I am not Natalia. . . . I do not—”
“Be silent, Genevieve, and listen to me,” Pietyr says. “Kat, listen. No one can be allowed inside here, do you understand? No one can see this body.”
“What will we do with it?” Katharine asks. “With him?”
“We will make up a tale.” Pietyr takes her face in his hands. “And you will be the Queen Crowned like we planned.” He looks at Genevieve. “Like we promised.”
He straightens his clothes and smooths his hair. He goes to bar the door.
“We will find Mirabella. And Arsinoe if she indeed still lives. And we will kill them. With no queens left, the temple will have no choice.”
“I do not understand,” Genevieve says. “If she still cannot bear the triplets . . .”
“That does not matter.” Pietyr closes the door and turns the key in the lock.
“Katharine will be the Queen Crowned,” he says. “It is just that she will be the last.”
THE INDRID DOWN WOODS
Arsinoe’s bear greets their running party by standing on his hind legs. He hardly knows these fast people in red-lined cloaks and swats at them defensively as they pass. Arsinoe stops below his chest. She is too out of breath to say his name, but his nose sniffs the air eagerly, and he lowers onto her shoulders, smothering her in bear fur and rolling her roughly around on the ground.
“Braddock,” she says when she is able. “You’re safe.”
He is safe but not the same. He is fur and bones. Those poisoners had not known how to feed him properly.
“We should not tarry here long,” says Emilia, and looks meaningfully at the queens. She is far more used to giving orders than taking them, Arsinoe could tell that at first glance.
“Jules!”
“Caragh!”
Jules and her aunt embrace beneath the weight of Joseph’s arm. It took Jules and Billy both to support him and help him through the forest.
“Can you help him?” Jules asks, but Joseph tugs free.
“I’m all right,” he says. “Just bind it tighter.”
Arsinoe gets to her feet. She turns Joseph into the moonlight and slaps his hands away when he tries to stop her. She lifts the bandage. Caragh leans down and looks for only a moment before straightening again.
“You see?” Joseph smiles. “It’s nothing. A scratch.”
Caragh’s eyes are wide and soft.
“Good,” Jules says, but she kisses Joseph very hard. One sob escapes her as she takes his hand and holds him up. But one sob only. She presses her forehead to his.
Arsinoe turns to Mirabella. Of course she has been listening. Her knuckles are pressed to her lips.
“What if we took him back into the city?” Arsinoe asks. “It’s Indrid Down. They have the best healers there. They must.”
“No,” says Joseph. “I’m fine. I’m going with you, wherever that is. So where is it?”
Arsinoe touches his face. He will be all right. He must be. Joseph Sandrin is one half of Jules.
“There are doctors on the mainland,” Billy suggests. “Good ones. Surgeons, far better than here. And it’s a short sail through the mist. We can come back and find you,” he adds when Joseph starts to protest.
“No,” Arsinoe says. “That’s good. That’s where we’re going anyway.”
Everyone stops and stares at her. Even Mirabella.
“You could return to your cities,” Madrigal suggests. “And gather support there. Not everyone will back the Council’s decision to execute you.”
“We could take you,” says Emilia. “Hide you in Bastian City. We would welcome you, Juillenne. You and anyone whom you wished us to protect.”
Jules looks from Emilia to Arsinoe. Then she looks down.
Before the Ascension began, Arsinoe always thought she would find her way back to Wolf Spring. That the madness of the year would pass, and everything would return to normal. Days spent with Jules at the Milone house. Nights beside a warm fire inside the Lion’s Head with Billy and Joseph. With Cait and Ellis. Luke and his handsome rooster, Hank. But that life—that good, familiar, and precious time—is over.
The alliance between queens might hold long enough to topple Katharine. But afterward, the people would want them to start all over again. It would be Mirabella or herself. One to kill the other. That is how it has always been.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Arsinoe asks her sister.
“I will not go back,” Mirabella says solemnly. “The Council ordered my death, and they went along with it. Luca went along with it.”
Arsinoe takes a deep breath. A queen sits upon the throne. The island has no more need of them. She must let them go. She has to.
“So we make for Bardon Harbor,” says Arsinoe. “Let’s steal a boat big enough to get us off this Goddess-forsaken island.”
BARDON HARBOR
Jules helped the warriors call the small river barge that took them into Bardon Harbor. It was not much, barely large enough to fit them all, and nowhere near sturdy enough to brave the rough waters of the sea, but they climbed aboard. Now Jules stands beside the warriors, pushing it with her mind. Joseph chuckles watching Camden at Jules’s knee, training all her cougar-focus on the barge as well.
“Look at our girl,” he says to Arsinoe, sitting beside him on the barge with her hand pressed hard to the wound in his side. “She’s outgrowing us.”
“That’s not true.” But she supposes that it is. She and Joseph have both been chasing after Jules since they were children.
He chuckles again and winces.
“Here,” she says. “Let me bind that tighter.”
“No, Arsinoe. It’s fine.”
“Joseph, you have bled through the bandage. You should have stayed behind with Aunt Caragh. Found a healer.”
“And miss the adventure?” He smiles his lopsided Joseph smile.
“You’re wincing.”