Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,39
indecent. Monstrous.
“Get out,” she orders.
They crowd inside her body, and her skin crawls with their soothing touches, their whispered apologies. So many excuses. So many cold embraces in the hopes that she will forgive them. But behind the comfort there is always the threat: Without us, sweet queen, you are a weak child. Without us, you will lose your crown, and then your head.
“If you do not recede to the deepest, darkest corner of me,” Katharine shouts, “so help me, I will cut you out and put you back into the stones myself!”
At her words, the dead sisters constrict in her blood so fast that it feels like a punch to the gut. She takes a deep, shaky breath. She must be more careful. Controlling her temper is better to manage them. But in the room with Pietyr, she only wanted them gone.
Katharine runs a hand across Pietyr’s forehead. It is dry, not clammy or feverish. She brushes his ice-blond hair back from his eyes. She is tired. The dead sisters, Mirabella, and the Black Council have left her weary, and she allows herself a moment to climb onto the bed with him. To snuggle down into the warm crook of his shoulder and listen to him breathe.
“Please wake up,” she whispers. She presses her lips to his and tries to will him to stir for a moment, she imagines that she feels his lips open against hers. But it is only pretend. She kisses him again and again, harder, on his mouth and cheeks and collarbone.
“Queen Katharine.”
She jumps and turns to see Genevieve standing in the doorway.
“Genevieve.” Katharine extricates herself from the bed and straightens her apron. “What do you want?”
“To look in on my nephew,” she says. “And to look in on you.”
“You were never so concerned with his well-being before.” Katharine returns to the tray of food. It is soft, near liquid. Edmund has added warm milk to help it go down easier. In his unconscious state, Pietyr must be fed through a long, flexible tube.
Genevieve comes to Pietyr and leans down to kiss him on the head. Her long, blond braid falls from her shoulder and thumps against his cheek. She picks a bit of lint off her dark brown trousers before glancing at the bowl of cooling food. “Shall I help you?”
“No, I will do it,” Katharine says, and takes up the tubing in her hand.
“Look how you are trembling. Let me do it. I am very deft, I promise.”
Reluctantly, Katharine gives it over, and Genevieve lubricates the tube with oil. She tilts Pietyr’s head back, and Katharine holds her breath as Genevieve guides it smoothly down his throat. He does not fight it much before the reflex swallows it down.
“The funnel.”
Katharine hands it to her, and she affixes it to the end of the tube.
“How are you faring with Mirabella, Katharine?” Genevieve asks as she spoons the vegetable mash. “You say she is here by your invitation, but I know you. I am surprised you have not killed her already.”
“Perhaps you do not know me as well as you think. I am not so bloodthirsty as to place my own vengeance above the interests of my island.”
“And what if your bloodthirst is at the very heart of the island’s interests?”
“What are you talking about?” Genevieve knows something. Her lilac eyes are narrowed with contentment.
“There,” she says as the last of the mash goes down the tube. She reaches for the goblet of water and sniffs. It has been infused with hemlock.
“It is Pietyr’s favorite.”
“A nice addition. It is important to nurture his poison gift as he recovers.” Genevieve pours it slowly, flushing the last of the food down into Pietyr’s stomach. Then she carefully removes the tube and wipes his mouth.
“I have received an interesting report from my spies in Sunpool. It seems the rebellion has found a solution for the problem of the attacking mist.”
“What solution?”
“The death of an elemental queen.”
Katharine scoffs. “What are you talking about?”
“I would not have believed it either, had I not also previously discovered this during my research into the Blue Queen.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out pages of ancient-looking parchment. She hands them to Katharine. “But the call for the death of an elemental queen, when put together with this, makes the puzzle complete.”
Katharine unfolds the pages. They appear to be from a journal of some kind. “This is from the journal of Henry Redville,” she says. “Queen Illiann’s king-consort.”