Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,55
out from behind the tapestry of the interior wall.
“Arsinoe!”
She shakes the fire out and runs to her sister, embracing her before the vision can dissolve. But Arsinoe holds firm. If indeed it is really Arsinoe; she hardly looks like herself in a bright yellow vest and her hair twisted prettily onto the back of her head.
“Thank the Goddess, you’re still breathing!” Arsinoe says, and pushes her away. “I half expected to arrive and find parts missing.”
“How?” Mirabella asks, and peers at the tapestry. “Where did you come from?”
“Remember I told you I know the hidden passageways in the Volroy?” Arsinoe taps her temple. “Daphne’s dreams.”
“But what are you doing here? You’re in danger every moment.” Mirabella’s stomach sinks. There could be an army of rebels hiding in the southern woods along the river. “She will know you have come. I have heard she has spies in Sunpool.”
“We know about the spies. They’ve been handled. Is that why you came? To be our spy? I’ve been trying to figure it out since we discovered you gone. And I can’t.” Arsinoe waits. The frustration in her eyes grows by the second. “Never mind. What matters is we’re here now, and we’ve got a way to get you out.”
“No. You cannot.”
“Of course I can. Grab some kind of disguise, and let’s get out of here! I can get us close to the servants’ entrance, almost all the way outside!”
“Arsinoe, the guards check my room constantly. More often if they do not hear me. We will be caught, and you will be killed!”
Undeterred, Arsinoe reaches out with pursed lips and tries to drag her. But Mirabella digs in her heels.
“If you don’t come with me now,” Arsinoe growls, “Billy’s going to create a diversion along the parade route. Just past the marketplace. When you see it, bolt for the market. Make it to the north end of the city on the main road toward Prynn. When you reach the old gate, Jules and Emilia will join you. And then you disappear.”
She shakes her head. “You have to stop him. I am to have my own detail of queensguard.”
“You’re telling me you can’t blow back a couple of queensguard?”
“Arsinoe . . . I left the note for you to find so you would not follow me!”
“Well, you should’ve known that wouldn’t work!”
Mirabella looks at her sister sadly. She should have known. She could have left a dozen notes from the capital scattered around her room. She could have written a goodbye letter in her own hand. It would not have mattered.
“What I said to Emilia before I left, the argument we had about Jules—”
“You didn’t mean it!”
“I didn’t mean it as much as I made it seem. But I did mean it. A little.”
Arsinoe steps back. “All right. Fine. But it’s time to stop messing about now. I can’t stay for much longer.”
Mirabella smiles. She has wanted to see Arsinoe for so long; she refuses to waste time arguing. “You are shivering.” She pulls a blanket off her bed and wraps it around Arsinoe’s rather dusty shoulders. “Those passageways must be freezing.”
“They are, in places. And they’re dark. I was sure I was going to get lost and die and Billy would have to tear this whole place down searching for my corpse.”
“How did you find your way?”
“I told you: I knew the way. And when I was in doubt . . . I just followed the rats. Them and me, we’re the only ones who know about the hidden passageways anymore.”
Mirabella glances at the tapestry hanging on the wall. It is old but not so old as the Blue Queen. Lucky that it was there for Arsinoe to hide behind.
“Brr,” Arsinoe says. “It doesn’t feel any warmer in here than it did in the walls. Don’t you like fire? Why isn’t there one burning?”
“Too much fire at my disposal makes the guards nervous.” But they have left her one log. One, lonely log. She turns her attention to it, and immediately it begins to smoke and then catches with a whoosh, flames licking hungrily up all sides.
“That’s better.” Arsinoe shrugs out of the blanket and goes to warm her fingers. “I suppose they don’t think you can freeze. You never shiver.”
“I never shiver,” Mirabella repeats. Then she stops. Katharine has visited her many times, and she does not shiver either. Bree is an elemental and almost equally resistant to the cold, but the guards are always in heavy cloaks, and poor little Elizabeth huddles