Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,120

it deeper. “When she loved us more than the crown. More than the island!”

From the corner of Katharine’s eye, she sees Pietyr, looking on in misery. “Queens do not get to have loves like that,” Katharine shouts.

As they struggle, she feels the pain in Arsinoe’s eyes like it is her own. She wants to tell her what happened to Mirabella. That Mirabella had asked Katharine to kill her, to protect her from the invasion of the dead queens. She wants to tell her that it was still her fault because she could not protect her. But if she does, Arsinoe will lose her nerve. She is more like their older sister in that way. And besides, despite the blade in her hand, Katharine almost enjoys the fight. This is what she and Arsinoe do, without Mirabella to mediate between them. It is what they have always done, even back at the Black Cottage.

Arsinoe shoves Katharine back, and wrenches the knife free.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Arsinoe pants. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Cut me,” Katharine cries. “Kill me or cut them out of me. There has to be an end to it. An end to the line of queens.”

She cradles her hand as blood runs freely down her arm. Arsinoe stares at her in exasperation, exhausted already from the stairs and from whatever she faced upon the battlefield. Below them, and all around them, the mist blankets entire buildings like a covering of snow. Coming ever closer to devour them.

“You brought this on yourself, Katharine. All of it.”

Katharine’s face falls. Not all of it. She had begun the game as much a pawn as the others. But enough of it is her doing that the rest does not matter.

“I wish we had not been born here, Arsinoe. I wish things could have been different. But I think Mirabella was right. And we were put here for a reason.”

“Why didn’t you say this before?” Arsinoe asks. The knife hangs in her hand. “Why not when she was still alive and we could have done something?”

“I did not feel it before. I am a queen. It is not in my nature to admit defeat. It is not in yours either.”

Before she can say more, there rises such a cry from the battlefield that she and Arsinoe both turn. She knows what that sound was. So do the dead sisters, who swell in her blood, preparing to welcome home their kin. Katharine turns to Arsinoe with wide eyes.

“You must do it now! We are out of time!”

“What are you talking about?”

“If they return to me, I will not be able to control them!”

“Listen to her, Arsinoe!” Pietyr shouts. “Banish them, now!”

Arsinoe unwraps the bandage around her palm as the dead queens arrive in a whirlwind. The black fury of them swirls around Katharine like a horde of stinging insects. Katharine clamps her mouth shut and squeezes her eyes closed. But they always find a way back in.

Katharine drops to her knees. The dead queens are so angry. They tear at her face and arms, trying to claw their way in. They will swarm her mind and steal her body for good.

“Get away from her.”

The pain eases. It disappears from her neck and chest, bringing relief like a cool breeze. Katharine opens her eyes. Arsinoe is coming to her across the rooftop, her hand extended and bleeding, parting the cloud of dead queens like smoke. She has carved into her hand the same rune that Pietyr had carved into his when he tried to banish the queens back into the stones.

“That will not work,” she says as Arsinoe kneels beside her.

“It will when I do it.” Arsinoe takes Katharine’s hand. She works fast with her knife, carving the rune upside down, so the two will seal together. She holds out her palm.

Katharine grips her sister’s hand. The feeling of the queensblood mingling is unlike anything she has felt before. Beyond the dead queens’ gifts. Beyond the elation of the crown etched into her forehead. Her body convulses as the last of the dead are thrown out past her lips to flow onto the rooftop. They slither like ink to rejoin the others, and Arsinoe and Katharine rise.

The dead queens are not strong enough to take form. They linger in the air, boiling like water, and for the first time, Katharine is able to glimpse who they once were. Faces and hands fight to remain, pressing out from the cloud. Echoes of black hair