Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,100
is warm on her back when Arsinoe climbs the trail up the slope of Mount Horn with her bear. Though most of the snow has melted in the lowland meadows, the trail itself is still coated in white.
Behind her in Sunpool, the rebel army leaks from the city gate in a steady stream. She will catch up when she is finished. They will have not gotten far, an army that size and unused to marching. The first night that they make camp, Emilia will scream herself hoarse getting them organized. But Arsinoe must admit, it is impressive how quickly they moved once Jules gave the order.
Arsinoe keeps her pace steady and leans into her bear. She squints her eyes and tries to see Jules riding her black gelding at the head or Emilia on her bright red charger but does not find them. Billy is there, too, somewhere, on a borrowed horse. Carrying borrowed weapons. To fight in a borrowed war.
Before she left for the mountain, Billy asked if he could accompany her.
“It’s queens’ business,” she had said.
“Like you have with Katharine.”
“Yes. Like I have with Katharine.”
He had not argued, as if even asking had been only an act, a line he was supposed to say. At night, he still held her like he would never let her go. But something had changed. Since his time as Katharine’s prisoner, Billy has not been the same.
“There is no future for queens,” she murmurs, and Braddock nudges her gently with his head.
When they step inside the cave, the air smells of the stone of the mountain and the thawing earth. She reaches into her pack for wood, to start a fire to warm her chilled hands, and for a piece of dried fish to thank the bear for his company. It takes some time to get the wood lit; her fingers fumble with the matches and she has never been as good at assembling the wood as Jules. But soon enough, the cave is lit by orange light, and she sits down beside Braddock, her eyes on the shadows in the rear, where the cave plummets to the center of the mountain.
She is not afraid, this time. Not wary or even apprehensive. This time, she knows why she has come.
“Don’t be shy, Daphne,” Arsinoe whispers. “You owe me.”
She stares into the blackness at the shape of the stones. Finally, she gets up and stalks into the dark.
“I didn’t come all this way to speak to a hole in the ground.” She waits. Any moment, Daphne will appear: a dripping shape, fingers tipped in sharp points and legs that stretch too long and bend in unnatural directions.
Except that she does not. Arsinoe leans over the side of the stones, suspending herself above the abyss. Once, in her dreams, she had thought of Daphne as a friend. Perhaps she had even thought of her as a part of herself. She does not anymore.
“Come out of there!” she shouts, and listens to her voice ring off the depths. “Mirabella is dead! And the mist remains! Did you ever really think it could be quieted? Or did you only want to see another dead elemental queen?” The questions hang in the air and echo back to her unanswered. She sees no movement in the shadows, no drifting bits of smoke. Nor does she sense her hidden behind the stones.
Arsinoe reaches for her small sharp knife. She makes a shallow cut on the side of her hand and smears it against the cave wall. She squeezes her fist and lets her queensblood drip down, down, down to the heart of the island. But the mountain is empty. Daphne is gone and whatever force raised her is once again silent. She will be of no help to them.
They are on their own.
THE REBEL CAMP
“It wasn’t easy,” Jules says as she and Caragh look down upon the army from Jules’s campsite on the knoll. “But we did it.” They moved an entire fighting force through the mountains. Below, rebels set up tents and construct temporary paddocks for the horses. Thanks to the naturalists, almost none were lost to lameness despite the uncertain and rocky terrain.
“The rebels are rebels no more,” says Caragh. “They’re soldiers.” She inclines her head toward Jules. “Arsinoe should have caught up with us by now. Maybe she’s just lingering with Braddock.”
“Maybe you should go back and see.” Jules looks at her aunt from the corner of her eye.