Three Dark Crowns (14 page)

T
he dream is a bad one. Mirabella wakes to the sound of her own cry. It is a sudden waking; the edges of the dream blur into the familiar air of her bedroom, her body trapped half inside each consciousness and her legs tangled in damp sheets. She sits up and touches her face. In the dream, she had been crying. Crying and laughing.

Her door clicks open softly, and Elizabeth pokes her head in. She has taken over much of Mirabella's personal escort, and Mirabella exhales, relieved that it is her outside her door tonight.

“Are you all right?” Elizabeth asks. “I heard you shouting.”

Pepper the woodpecker flies from her shoulder and flits around the queen from hip to head, making sure she is safe.

“I heard it too,” Bree says. She pushes the door wider, and both girls go inside and close it tight behind them. Mirabella tugs her knees up to her chest, and Bree and Elizabeth climb
onto the bed. Bree flicks her wrist and lights the candles on the dresser.

“I am sorry,” says Mirabella. “Do you think I woke anyone else?”

Bree shakes her head. “Uncle Miles could sleep through the battle of Bardon Harbor.”

Sara's and young Nico's rooms are too far away. So is the servants' quarter on the first floor. It is only the three of them, one wakeful spot in a darkened house.

“Mira,” Bree says, “you are trembling.”

“I'll get some water,” says Elizabeth, and Pepper lands beside the pitcher and chirps to guide the way.

“No,” Mirabella says. “No water.”

She stands up to pace. The dreams of her sisters cling to her, sometimes for days. They do not fade like other dreams do.

“What was it?” Bree asks.

Mirabella closes her eyes. This one was not a memory but a series of images.

“It would be impossible to describe,” she says.

“Was it about,” Elizabeth asks hesitantly, “the other queens?”

The other queens, yes. Her sweet sisters, dead and stuffed upright in chairs with greening skin and stitched-shut mouths. Then a flash of Katharine, lying on her back with her chest cracked open, nothing inside but a dry, red hole. Finally Arsinoe, screaming at her without sound because her throat is too clogged with thick, dark blood.

Mirabella
, they said.
Mirabella, Mirabella.

“I held them underwater,” Mirabella whispers. “In the stream beside the cottage. The water was so cold. Ink came out of their mouths. They were only children.”

“Oh, Mira,” Bree says. “That is awful, but it is only a dream. They are not children.”

“They will always be children, to me,” Mirabella says.

She thinks of what it felt like when Arsinoe and Katharine went limp, and rubs her hands together as though filthy.

“I cannot do this anymore.”

Luca will be disappointed. She has put faith in her and raised her to rule. So have the Westwoods, and the city, and the Goddess herself. She was created to rule. To become the queen the island needs. If she goes to see Luca in the temple, she will tell Mirabella that exact thing. That these dreams, and these feelings, have been put in her path for a reason. As a test.

“I have to leave,” Mirabella says. “I have to get away from here.”

“Mirabella,” says Elizabeth. “Be calm. Take some water.”

She accepts the glass, and drinks, if only to please her friend. But it is hard to swallow. The water tastes like something has died in it.

“No. I have to go. I have to leave.” She goes to her closet and pushes open the doors. She rifles through cloaks and dresses, all black, black, black.

Bree and Elizabeth stand up. They hold their hands out to try to stop her, to try to soothe her.

“You can't go,” says Elizabeth. “It's the middle of the night!”

“Mira, you will not be safe,” Bree adds.

Mirabella selects a dress of lined wool. She puts it on over her nightclothes and opens a drawer for long stockings.

“I will go south. I will not be seen.”

“You will be!” Elizabeth says. “They will send a party after you.”

Mirabella pauses, still trembling. They are right. Of course they are right. But she has to try.

“I have to go,” she says. “Please. I cannot stay here anymore and dream of my sisters talking to me from dead bodies. I cannot kill them. I know that you need me to; I know that is what I am meant to do . . .”

“Mira,” says Bree. “You can.”

“I won't,” she says fiercely.

Elizabeth and Bree have moved to block the door. They are sad, and worried, and moments from waking Sara and alerting the temple. Mirabella will spend the rest of her time until Beltane locked in Luca's rooms and under constant guard.

Mirabella steps into her boots and laces them. Whoever they send after her will certainly catch her, but they will have to work for it.

She steps forward, ready to force her way through her friends.

“Wait,” Elizabeth says. She holds up one hand and goes out the door. If she calls down the hall, there may not be time for Mirabella to run. But Elizabeth does not call out. She comes
back into the bedroom carrying her white priestess's cloak.

“Take this,” she says. “Keep the hood up and your hair covered.” She smiles her sweet, gentle smile. “No one looks twice at a priestess. They only bow and get out of the way.”

Mirabella hugs her gratefully. The cloak is a little short. But it is large, cut to cover Elizabeth's ample curves, and covers Mirabella's dress completely.

“Elizabeth,” Bree says but then stops. She takes Mirabella by the arm. “Let us come with you, at least.”

“No, Bree,” Mirabella says gently. “I would not have you know anything of this. When they find me gone, they will seek someone to blame. Someone to punish. Do not let it be you or Elizabeth.”

“I promise,” Bree says. “We will look after each other.”

Mirabella smiles sadly and touches Bree's face.

“I have never seen you look so frightened,” she says, and hugs her tightly. “Please understand, Bree. I love them. Just like I love you. And I cannot stay here and let the temple force me to kill them.”

She releases Bree and holds her arm out for Elizabeth. She has been lucky to have them.

By the time Mirabella makes her way south, through and out of the Westwoods' grounds, dawn has started to pink in the east. It must have been later than she thought, when the dream woke her. Already, fires and lamps burn in the city as early tradespeople and smiths prepare for the day. She tugs the white cloak down to conceal her face.

She takes the main road into Rolanth. It might be wiser to keep to the secondary passages, but that is the way she knows by coach, and a slightly greater risk of being seen is better than becoming lost.

When the road turns toward the locks and the city center, Mirabella holds her breath at the sound of people. Ahead on the sidewalk, a woman beats dust from a rug and calls a morning greeting to a neighbor emptying a bucket into the gutter. Mirabella keeps her head low, but Elizabeth was right. The woman does no more than nod before stepping out of her way. If anyone wonders what a priestess is doing in the city at such an hour, none of them stop her to ask.

As she leaves Rolanth, she looks back once, across the rooftops and the softly smoking chimneys, her city in the growing light. Beyond that, settled back in the tall evergreens, Sara and the rest of Westwood House will be waking. In the temple, Luca is probably already having tea.

It is difficult to leave them, but getting out was easier than she thought it would be, all things considered.

B
eside the fire, beneath the bent-over tree, Arsinoe's head spins. Madrigal has cut deep into her arm this time, to let enough blood to soak three lengths of cord. The cord will keep the blood until they have need of it. And for low magic strong enough to kill another queen, they will need all that Arsinoe can spare.

They have not discussed yet what that magic will be. A curse, perhaps. Or an unlucky charm. It does not matter. All Arsinoe knows is that she grows stronger every day.

“That's enough,” Madrigal says. She lowers the cords carefully into a glass jar. “These will not keep forever. We should put them to use right after Beltane.”

Madrigal slides the jar into a sack of black cloth and slings the strap across her body. “Here,” she says, and presses a cup of something to Arsinoe's lips. “Cider. Take some.”

“Did you bring any nuts?” Arsinoe asks. “Bread? Anything to eat?”

She holds the cup shakily and sips. The sides of the cup are sticky and smeared with Madrigal's fingerprints in Arsinoe's blood.

“Jules is right,” Madrigal mutters. “You are mostly stomach.”

She hands the queen a small packet: cheese and a dozen naturalist-ripened blackberries.

“Thank you,” says Arsinoe. Her arm throbs and stings as Madrigal cleans and binds it, but it is a good sting. In fact, Arsinoe has not felt this hopeful in her entire life.

“I never would have guessed,” Arsinoe says, “that you would be the one to help me. With anything.”

Madrigal scrunches up her nose. On her, even that is pretty.

“Yes,” Madrigal says. “I know.”

She sits back, and wraps herself in a warm fur, sulking for never being appreciated. But no one can blame Cait and Ellis. Since she was a girl, Madrigal has preferred comfort to work. Caragh used to tell of a time when Madrigal made flowers grow in a swirling pattern, only to pluck them to put in her hair. And this all while cucumbers were dying in the garden.

“Where is my Juillenne today?” Madrigal asks.

“Saying farewell to Joseph. He sails northwest up the coast for Trignor.”

Madrigal stares into the fire. “Lucky Jules,” she says, “to have a boy like that. I didn't think she had it in her, what with those funny eyes of hers. And looking like her father the way she does.”

“Her father?” Arsinoe asks. “I didn't think you remembered Jules's father.”

“I don't. Not really. I remember the fires of Beltane. And thinking how wonderful it would be if I conceived a baby on that sacred night. How strong she would be. How much she would love me.” She snorts. “I don't remember who her father was. But she does not look a thing like me, so she must look like him.”

“Do you think he knows?” Arsinoe asks.

“Knows what?”

“That he has a daughter and that she is the strongest naturalist on the island.”

Madrigal shrugs. It is not likely. And if he did, it would not matter. Beltane Begots are sacred in the eyes of the temple. And much like the queens, in the eyes of the temple, they have no recognized fathers.

Arsinoe leans back. With the cheese and fruit in her belly, she is warm again and no longer shaky. She stretches her legs out and pushes the soles of her shoes near the coals.

“Joseph is so handsome,” Madrigal says wistfully.

“He is,” Arsinoe agrees.

“Seeing him and Jules together makes me realize how long I have been on my own. Perhaps I ought to work a spell. To bring a lover like that to me.”

“Hmph,” Arsinoe snorts, eyes half closed. “You don't need low magic for that, Madrigal.”

“Perhaps not. But if I used just an inch off one of these
cords,” she says, and pats the black bag in her lap, “I could have the best-looking man on the island.”

Arsinoe eyes her sideways, to make sure she is joking before beginning to chuckle. Before long the chuckle becomes a laugh, and then they are both laughing. But even had they not been, they would still not have heard Camden and Jules's silent approach.

The mountain cat arrives at the fire before Jules does, but it is not enough warning to try to feign innocence.

Jules looks from her mother to Arsinoe.

“What is this?” she asks.

Arsinoe grimaces. They sit below the sacred stones, surrounded by rags soiled by queen's blood. Arsinoe's sleeve is drawn up above her elbow and shows the bandage clearly.

“This is what you do?” Jules half shouts at her mother. “The moment I turn my back? You bring her here and cut her open? You teach her low magic?”

“Jules,” Arsinoe says, and stands. She stretches an arm out, as if to shield Madrigal, which only makes Jules angrier. Camden begins to growl.

“I am helping her,” Madrigal says.

“Helping her?” Jules reaches for Arsinoe and tugs her so hard Arsinoe nearly trips over the log she was seated on. “You cannot do this. It is dangerous.”

Madrigal shakes her head. “You don't understand it. You don't know anything about it.”

“I know that there's always a price,” Jules says. “I know it is
for the simple, and the desperate, and the weak.”

“Then it is for me.” Arsinoe rolls her sleeve down to cover the bandage and the cuts of the runes on her palm.

“Arsinoe, that is not true.”

“It is true. And I will use it. It's all I have.”

“But you don't know what it will cost.”

“It will be fine, Jules. Madrigal used it when she was on the mainland, and she is safe.”

“Those who speak against it are only coughing up temple superstition,” Madrigal agrees as she douses the fire.

She and Arsinoe walk around the hill silently, eager to get Jules out of their sacred place. Jules follows behind, angry.

For as long as Arsinoe can remember, she and Jules have not quarreled over anything more important than the size of a slice of cake. Her shoulders slump.

“It will take time,” Madrigal says softly. “But she will come around.”