Three Dark Crowns (29 page)

T
he High Priestess watches the girl embrace the bear, and claps with the others. She has no choice. Amid the cheers and celebration, her eyes seek Rho, who faces her with eyes full of blood. Luca shakes her head. It is over. They have lost.

Rho shakes her head. She bares her teeth and reaches for the handle of the knife at her side.

“N
o one expected such a showing from Katharine and Arsinoe,” Sara Westwood says as she adjusts the fall of Mirabella's cloak. “But it does not matter. It is still you they have come to see.”

Mirabella cranes her neck toward where Katharine sits on her stage, in the middle of a poisoned table, and farther right, where Arsinoe stands, calmly stroking an enormous brown bear. She is not so sure that Sara is correct. But she can only do what she can do.

The drums start before the priestesses call her to the stage. They extinguish all the torches, so her stage is dark, except for the warm, red glow of one brazier.

Mirabella climbs the steps in three fast strides. She throws aside her cloak, and the crowd hushes. The quiet is absolute.

The drums beat faster in time with her pulse. She reaches for the fire, and it leaps onto her hands. A murmur passes
through the crowd as the flames stretch up her arms and roll across her belly.

Working the fire is slow and sensuous. More controlled than when she calls the wind and the storms. The flames are bright. They do not burn her, but her blood still feels like it is boiling.

She spins. The crowd gasps, and fire crackles in her ears.

In the midst of the people straining toward her is Joseph. Seeing him nearly makes her take a misstep. His face is the face he wore on the night they met, lit by flames on a darkened beach. How she longs to pull him up onto the stage. She would clothe them both in fire. Burn them up together rather than far apart.

She throws her head back as he calls her name.

“Mirabella.”

N
atalia watches the girl spin, on fire. The crowd is a sea of blank, enthralled faces. Mirabella has them in the palm of her hand.

Something is shifting in the many rows of priestesses that line the stages. Their fingers slip inside their cloaks, to rest on the hilts of their knives. One priestess with hair as red as blood stares at Natalia with a gaze so intense that she has to look away.

The strength of Mirabella's performance is difficult to believe. Even Natalia feels the pull, the draw to move toward her on the stage.

She blinks and turns toward Luca and the old woman's dark, burning eyes. The ruses that Natalia and the naturalists carried off do not matter. The temple will not waver. They will make the Sacrificial Year come true.

J
ules can hardly hold the bear and watch Mirabella dance at the same time. The noise and movement of the crowd make him nervous, and beside Arsinoe, he begins to bob his head and scratch at the boards.

Jules refocuses.

“It is all right,” she whispers, with beads of sweat upon her brow, and in her mind, the bear tugs. He tugs hard.

The crowd surges toward Mirabella, and Jules grits her teeth. When will the girl be done? The dance feels like it has gone on forever, though the people do not seem to mind. Jules takes a deep breath, and searches for Joseph. He will be somewhere watching, proud of her for what she has done with the bear.

Only he is not looking at Jules at all. He is at the very front of Mirabella's stage. Pressing toward her with the crowd.

Jules can hardly believe the look in his eyes. If she were to
shout his name at the top of her lungs, he would not hear her. He would not hear her if she were standing right beside his ear. The lust on his face sickens Jules's stomach. He has never looked at her the way he looks at Mirabella.

In the midst of her dance, Mirabella reaches toward Joseph through the flames. Everyone can see. They must all know that they are together. That Jules is a fool.

In her chest, Jules's heart turns sharp as a shard of glass, and something snaps. As it does, so does her hold on the bear.

Arsinoe knows that something is wrong when the bear starts shaking his head. His eyes change from serene to frightened and then to angry.

She steps back.

“Jules,” she says, but when she tries to get Jules's attention, she cannot. Jules is staring intently toward Mirabella's stage like everyone else.

The bear paws the wooden boards.

“Easy,” Arsinoe says, but she can do nothing. The low magic that binds them is not the same as a familiar-bond. The bear is afraid, and Jules has lost control.

There is no time to warn anyone as he roars and leaps from the stage and into the people, swiping sharp claws and throwing his head back and forth. No one can scatter. They are crowded together too tightly as they strain for Mirabella's stage. Not even his claws cutting them down parts enough of a path, and the bear turns back for the stages.

“Jules!” Arsinoe shouts. But her shout is lost within the rest as the crowd begins to realize what is happening.

The bear climbs onto the middle stage, and Katharine screams. He barrels through the table of the
Gave Noir
, dashing it to pieces and sending it tumbling down to the sand. But he does not make it to Katharine. She is quick, and dives off the side to safety.

Priestesses draw their knives and advance with terrified faces. The bear slashes at the nearest one, and her white robes do nothing to hide all the red and loops of entrails that its claws rake out of her. At the sight of so much blood, the courage of the others fails, and they turn to flee with the crowd.

High Priestess Luca stands and shouts. The suitors watch in horror.

On the far stage, Mirabella has stopped dancing, but fire still burns across her chest and hips. It does not take the bear long to focus on her. He charges, tearing down torches and anyone who happens to be in his way. Mirabella cannot move. She cannot even scream.

Joseph leaps onto the stage, right in the bear's path. He covers Mirabella with his body.

“No,” Arsinoe says. “No!”

Jules must know that it is Joseph. She must see. But it may be too late to call the bear back.

P
riestesses shout to protect the queen. But all Mirabella hears is the bellowing of the bear. All she feels are Joseph's arms around her.

The bear did not strike them. It reared up on its hind legs. It roared. But in the end, it pawed at its face as though in pain and then dived off the stage to run down the beach.

Mirabella lifts her head and looks down at the scattered, panicked crowd. Most have found their way to safety through the cliffs and back into the valley. But several bodies lie motionless before the stages. The young priestess who attended Katharine's stage lies now at the foot of it, her arms bent, her robes and her abdomen laid open for all to see. And so many more have been wounded.

“Are you all right?” Joseph whispers into her ear.

“Yes,” she says, and clings to him.

He kisses her hair and her shoulder. White-robed priestesses
surround them with knives drawn.

“Calm yourselves!” Luca shouts, standing on the dais beside two shaky suitors. “It has gone!”

Mirabella peers over Joseph's arm at the ruined stages. Arsinoe stands alone, her arms fluttering at her sides. Perhaps she did not realize the extent of the carnage she would cause.

“She sent that bear for me,” Mirabella says. “After everything I did to save her. She would have let it tear me apart if not for you.”

“It doesn't matter,” Joseph says. “You're safe. You're all right.” He holds her face in her hands. He kisses her.

“Where is Queen Katharine?” Natalia Arron shouts. “Luca! Where is she?”

“Do not panic,” says the High Priestess. “We will find her. She is not amongst the fallen.”

Natalia looks around wildly, perhaps to form her own search party. But all her poisoners have fled. Moans erupt from the foot of her stage, and she grimaces.

The bear knocked the
Gave Noir
off the edge, at the foot of the crowd. The poisoned food lies dashed across the sand. Several dog familiars lap eagerly at it.

“They have eaten some,” a woman weeps. “Stop them! Call them back!”

Natalia steps quickly to the front. “Isolate the food,” she orders, her composure regained and her voice even and deep. “The dogs must be brought to my tent for treatment. Quickly. Gather them up and keep the rest of them clear.”

Across the stages, Arsinoe retreats in the company of the Milones. The mask she wears makes any expression unreadable.

“How could she?” Mirabella asks, heartbroken. But even to her ears, it seems a foolish question for a queen to ask.

Joseph shushes her as he kisses her hair.

“Away from her now, naturalist.” Rho reaches out and drags Joseph back without effort. He does not struggle much when he sees the serrated knife in her hand.

“Leave him alone, Rho,” Mirabella says. “He saved me.”

“From his own queen's attempt,” Rho says. She jerks her head, and three more priestesses come forward to lead Joseph away. Rho grabs Mirabella by the arm. Her fingers dig in deep, until Mirabella yelps.

“Back to your tent now, my queen. The Quickening is over. The Ascension Year has begun.”