Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,109

longer seems to matter. Out on the field, the queensguard soldiers follow Rho. They follow her because she will be victorious. Because she will keep them alive.

“The king-consort,” Genevieve says, her eyes searching Katharine’s skin for any sign, any glimmers of gray and rot. “And Pietyr. Did Natalia know?”

“That I was truly Katharine the Undead?” She shakes her head. Though she does wonder if Natalia had suspected. She must have sensed that something was wrong. That she was not the same girl for whom she had needed to fake an entire poisoned feast.

Katharine looks again to the fighting, where the cobbled-together rebels are no match against the accurate arrows of the queensguard, their formations of spears. Her soldiers stop haphazard attacks of elemental fire by putting crossbow bolts into elemental chests. They break the ranks of naturalists by cutting their birds down out of the sky. Already her army has bowed the rebel lines. And Rho has sighted Jules Milone and will be upon her within minutes.

“What kind of ruin am I watching?” Katharine murmurs gravely.

“We must raise the order for reinforcements to the flank,” says Paola Vend.

“No.” Katharine unsheathes her sword. “Hold the rest in reserve. I will go out myself.”

“Katharine,” says Genevieve. “You should not.”

“If I do not, then how will my sister find me?” She looks Genevieve in the eyes and puts heels to her stallion, knowing that neither Genevieve nor Paola will ride alongside. When she next looks back, they will be gone, retreated into the fortress of the Volroy. It is the last place they should go. For that is where she intends to lead Arsinoe.

Her stallion gamely rushes down the hill, a proper warhorse keen to the sounds of screams and clashing steel. But Katharine’s heart pounds. The battle is vast. She hardly knows where to begin. And then she sees him across the field to the north. Pietyr, upright and breathing. Conscious.

Pietyr’s sword and shield are streaked with red. Even his pale hair is sheeted pink and dripping down the side of his face. He is not a great warrior like her king-consort Nicolas was. But he is doing his best.

“Pietyr!” she shouts, and somehow he hears her. He turns, and for a moment, his eyes alight and they are the only two people on the island. But then his expression turns dark and hard. He raises his sword and goes back to fighting.

“Raise the signal for the eastern flank!”

Horses and soldiers fly past as Emilia barks orders, and Jules’s horse spins a hole into the mud and young grass. She feels every battle cry and every strike of every hoof against the newly thawed ground. Emilia has not stopped shouting since the queen’s army charged behind the black mist-shrouded monster in the queensguard commander’s uniform. Jules does not remember Rho Murtra being so large. But perhaps it was only the white priestess robes that had made her seem smaller.

The clash of the armies had not been anything like Jules expected: a terrible boom and then a worse flash of silence before the screams and metallic crossing of swords.

“Go!” Emilia wrenches a flag away from a frightened soldier and waves it back and forth, signaling to both sides of the rebel force before dropping it and wheeling her horse beside Jules’s. “We have to go! Another moment and we’ll be trampled.” She grasps on to Jules’s arm. For the first time since they met, Jules sees fear in her eyes.

Camden leaps up behind the saddle to avoid the careless feet of people and horses. She is clunky in her armor, and Jules wishes she had not buckled her into it. Better for the cat to be fast and lithe than bound and distracted.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Jules asks angrily.

Rho Murtra, or the thing that used to be her, barrels through the fray like a rolling boulder. One slash of her steel cleaves three rebels through the middle and leaves them in pieces and trailing pink innards.

“Are we to leave our people alone to face that?”

“I was wrong,” Emilia cries. “We cannot face her. There is no queen strong enough. Not even Mirabella.”

“I’m not running away!”

“You must!”

“What about the rebellion?”

Emilia looks back to the fighting. “There is no rebellion. As there is no Bastian City. And I would not have what happened to Margaret Beaulin happen to you. I will not lose you!”

Jules looks out across the fields of battle, where people lie dying. She watches Rho as she cuts toward them