Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,49

dead queen Daphne told you. What Mirabella’s death might mean. For an end to the mist, it would be worth it.”

“Emilia,” Jules says, still leaning over the table, “that’s already been decided. We won’t pursue Mirabella’s death.” She stands up. “And without her, we lose the whole of Rolanth.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t be entertaining this at all,” Cait says. “If what the oracles saw is true, what will it mean for you, Jules? Perhaps you should leave it alone. Let the moment pass.”

Jules rests her hands on the table, and beneath her hands, the wood begins to shake.

“Jules?” Arsinoe says, and Jules steps back.

“I’m fine.” She swallows and then she moves her wine cup with her war gift just to prove it, hopping it across the table like a rabbit as her grandmother watches with a stern expression.

“You’ve been practicing.”

“I had to be sure that both gifts were safe,” Jules says, sounding slightly ashamed.

Arsinoe looks at Emilia. The warrior is cradling her arm, the one with the low-magic cuts. When she sees Arsinoe looking, she quickly lets go. But Arsinoe knows she felt something when the table began to rattle. When Jules’s war gift flared, the tether between them was pulled taut.

“We will let it go,” Jules says. “We’ll wait for another chance. Another vision.”

“There might be no other chance,” Emilia says. “I am afraid for you, too. But the opportunity to remove Mirabella from the field of battle—”

“I’m not afraid for me. That I’m not at the battle of the Volroy could mean anything. But I won’t risk anyone else. Not on something with such poor odds. I won’t have a repeat of what happened to my mother!”

She steps back again as the table shakes and her wine cup spills red across it. Camden leans against her good leg. Cait catches Arsinoe’s eye and shakes her head once, sternly. She is worried. Afraid that Jules is not ready for this.

Arsinoe stares down at the table, an invisible version of the Volroy forming across it as if she too had the war-gifted’s talent for maps. “What if there was a way to get Mirabella out without anyone needing to do anything?”

“What way is that?” Jules asks warily.

“I will sneak into the Volroy and find her. I’ll tell her we’re there. We can lay a distraction somewhere along the parade route where she can break free and escape. We’ll arrange a meeting point, and Emilia and the warriors can get us all out of the city.”

“How will you sneak into the Volroy unnoticed?” Emilia asks. “You are not exactly easy to miss when you are either scarred or have a scarf wrapped around your face.”

“I know the back ways through the fortress. All the hidden passageways. Even the ones in the Queen’s Tower.”

“How do you know those?” asks Jules.

Arsinoe shrugs. “Because I dreamed them through Daphne’s eyes.”

Jules and Emilia look at each other, Jules’s expression doubtful.

From outside the door, there comes a loud squawk that gradually turns into a crowing: Hank, Luke’s black-and-green rooster. Such a great sound from such a small beak. It practically shakes the wood.

“There’s Hank,” Arsinoe says. “Luke must be getting impatient. So what do you say, Jules? And bear in mind that if you say no, I’m probably just going to do it anyway.”

THE VOLROY

In the capital, preparations for the parade take up most of Katharine’s time.

“A deeper blue for the cape,” Genevieve says to the attendants as they show her the garments that the elementals will wear. She touches a jacket with silver buttons and caresses the collar. “And more silver thread. Here. I want every elemental in black and blue and silver, just like she is. I want them recognized, these dutiful subjects of the crown.”

Those elementals who survived the encounter with the mist in Bardon Harbor will ride at the head, out in front of the queens. Genevieve has also spread word that every elemental is invited to wear the colors, to show their gift with pride. The survivors will look very fine, outfitted in black wool and capes of deep blue, daggers at their hips each with a polished silver handle and capped with a fat river pearl. Mirabella will also wear mostly blue, to show that she is different from the queen, and the custom silver breastplate that Katharine has ordered. Katharine will of course be in all black, except for a breastplate of gold and skulls.

“You are very good at this, Genevieve,” Katharine says as Genevieve runs her hands over the