Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,114
unaware death. But he is still an Arron, and she half expects that his next move will be to leap upon her and try to cut her throat.
“They’ve taken Katharine behind the lines,” she says.
“Probably all the way into the Volroy, to get away from that.” Pietyr nods to the southwest, where the mist creeps through soldiers, swallowing them whole and spitting them out in pieces.
“What does it want?” Pietyr asks with disgust.
Arsinoe watches as retreating queensguard fighters run straight into it in a panic. Not all come out the other side. After the battle ends, she wonders whether they will be able to tell which of the soldiers fell from a blade and which to the mist.
“You can’t have thought it would sit this one out,” Arsinoe says.
“You cannot have thought that I would,” says Pietyr.
Arsinoe looks ahead grimly. The mist lies directly in her path, a white shroud biting at the edges of the battle like a dog pulling at the edge of a tablecloth.
“Jules and Emilia hoped it was Katharine that the mist was after. But if that’s true, it doesn’t seem opposed to snacking along the way.” She glances at him. “You don’t seem afraid.”
“Nor do you.”
“I think Mirabella is there. I think she’ll protect me. You know what I mean to do, Renard.”
“I do.”
“And you won’t try and stop me?”
“I mean to come with you. Whatever happens, I need to be there.”
She smiles without showing her teeth. “Ready to jump onto the winning side, of course.”
“Believe what you wish.”
Arsinoe hesitates, her hand on her sword.
“Please,” he says softly. “I have earned this. There will be no peace for me if I am not there.”
She motions to the back of her horse. “Climb on if you’re coming.”
After a beat of disbelief, he holds his hand out, and she helps him up. The mist has crept over the ground between them and the Volroy like a blanket. There is no way to go but through.
“We might be torn inside out the moment we step inside it,” Arsinoe says. “Or at least you might. Did Mirabella like you?”
“Your sister is not in the mist,” Pietyr says in her ear. He clutches her around the waist. “But no. Though we never really spoke.”
“I don’t know that would have made much of a difference.” Arsinoe kicks her horse forward, and wishes she had the naturalist gift to make him brave.
Mirabella, if you’re there, look after me one last time.
Emilia can hardly breathe. The blood leaking down her forearm and the ache in her chest mean nothing.
Jules cut the legion curse free.
She crawls across the ground, getting to her feet as fast as she can after Jules shoved her down. Jules and Camden are already halfway down the hill.
“Jules. Jules, look at me!” But she does not really want her to. Jules’s spine and shoulders jerk with the curse, and when her head turns, Emilia sees her lips stretched so far over her teeth that it seems that they must tear.
If Jules and Camden were to turn back, they would rip her to shreds, drive steel and claws deep into her chest. But she is not the most enticing target on the field. It is only thanks to Rho Murtra that Emilia is still alive.
“Jules!” she shouts weakly. “Jules, don’t!”
Down the hill, Camden leaps upon the first person she reaches. The poor queensguard soldier does not even have time to scream. Jules draws her sword but does not seem keen to use it. Instead, she appears to be driving her horse directly into Rho’s, and between his terror and her naturalist gift, the gelding will obey.
There is something both terrible and beautiful about watching Jules race toward all that blood and pain, so fearless and full of anger. And lacking in a plan, just like her friend Arsinoe. Emilia does not know how the two of them survived together for so long.
As Jules and Rho meet, Jules urges her horse to make one final leap, and Emilia opens her mouth to scream.
She wakes up on the ground. And she is not alone—the blast leveled every nearby soldier in a broad circle. Warm blood drips from her nose and runs down to her lip. After a moment, she can hear again, sounds muffled behind the ringing, and she gets to her feet on legs that feel like she has drunk a barrel of ale. The brief pause in the battle is over and stunned sword arms begin to swing. She has to