Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,3

it had been torn apart. But sweet Pietyr had not been awake by then. He had not felt it.

“The wound on his hand continues to heal. Though it is still impossible to tell what caused it. And it does not seem to be the source of his illness. There are no dark lines stemming from the cuts, no foul odor—”

“Yes, yes,” says Katharine. “So you have said before.”

“We think it likely a trauma inside the skull. An unlucky vessel that burst or became clotted. It would leave no outward sign and would require no external impact. You said you found him lying on the floor. It is likely that, when the vessel burst, he simply fell there. There was probably little pain or what there was would have been brief.”

Katharine stares at his sleeping face. He is still handsome when he sleeps. But he is not himself. What makes Pietyr Pietyr is the glint in his eye, the clever and cutting curve of his mouth. And his voice. It has been too many days since she heard his voice. Nearly weeks.

“When will he wake?”

“I do not know, Queen Katharine. That he continues to breathe is a good sign. But he is unresponsive to stimuli.”

“So much blood . . .” When Katharine returned to her senses after the failed spell and found Pietyr lying beside her on the floor, his face was a mask of red.

“There is no way to tell the extent of the damage,” the healer says. “We can only wait. He will need round-the-clock monitoring . . . care and feeding—”

“Leave us,” Katharine says, and listens to their footsteps shuffle into the hall. She takes his hand and kisses it gently. She should have banished the dead queens when he gave her the chance. If only she had not been such a coward. They know she cannot oust them now, not with her reign assailed from all sides: the mist, the Legion Queen, her sisters’ return. She used to think that the dead queens had made her strong. Now, too late, she knows the truth: the strength was theirs and theirs alone. And they would see her weak forever, to keep her as their puppet.

“I did not know,” she whispers against Pietyr’s cheek. “I did not know that this is what they would do.”

When Katharine walks out of Pietyr’s sickroom an hour later, tired and dazed, she stumbles directly into Edmund, Natalia’s old butler, carrying a tray of tea.

“I thought it might be welcome,” he says softly.

“It is,” Katharine says. “But I have had enough of sitting in that room. Perhaps in the drawing room or the solarium.” She trails off and puts her hand to her eyes.

“Perhaps right here on the floor. It is still your home if you wish it. A tea party on the carpet.”

“Just like we never used to have,” Katharine says. But she smiles at him, and they step aside as a maid enters Pietyr’s room. “Where are the healers?”

“They have clustered in the library,” Edmund replies. “And are demanding lunch.”

“I suppose that they will need to eat.” Katharine and the butler fall in step beside each other down the hall. “Poor Edmund. I have turned your household upside down.”

“Nonsense, my queen. It is good to have heartbeats in Greavesdrake again. Even the heartbeats of new staff and strangers. Since Natalia was killed, it has not felt like a great house so much as a shrine.”

How right he is. As they ascend the stairs, the sounds of people in its farthest corners, the bustle and occasional laughter of servants, make Greavesdrake feel alive again. Still draughty and dark, of course. But alive and no longer haunted.

It will feel haunted forever if Pietyr dies upstairs.

In the main floor dining room, they find Genevieve, reading a book over a half-eaten bowl of soup.

“How is he?” she asks, and sets the book down.

“Unchanged.” Katharine sits across from her as Edmund readies the tea.

“Unchanged,” Genevieve repeats, and sighs.

Katharine watches her carefully. Katharine was the one who “found” Pietyr, unconscious and covered in blood, just as she was with Nicolas the night her poisoned body killed him. Two lovers, one dead and the other unable to wake. Though Katharine was careful to dispose of all evidence of the low magic, Genevieve must still have her suspicions.

“He will wake,” Genevieve says, and tries to bolster Katharine with a smile. “He is too meddlesome not to.”

Katharine nods. She is about to bite into one of Edmund’s excellent crumbly shortbreads when