Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,68

the servants, who assumed she would be ravenous after the long day. But the soft, rich bread spread with oleander butter and the yew-smoked fish go untouched. Alone, she takes a deep breath and listens as she lets it out. There will be no visitors tonight; Bree and Elizabeth, who are sometimes kind, do not really approve of her treatment of the boy. And Mirabella—if Mirabella were to visit her, it would be to blow the door open and burn her up in a ball of fire.

Give her to us, the dead queens whisper. In her skin, we could defeat the mist.

“The mist,” Katharine murmurs. Even now she feels it, as if its eye is always upon her even through the thick walls of the Volroy.

With Mirabella, the dead queens could hold the mist in check forever. Perhaps they could even banish it for good and return the island to the world. An end to isolation.

An end to safety, Natalia would say.

Katharine makes a fist as the dead poisoners writhe in her stomach, their blackened tongues urging her toward the bowl of soft pennyroyal cheese.

She knows that Genevieve would have her act upon the information she uncovered, the journal pages written by the Blue Queen’s king-consort. Queen Illiann’s killing created the mist. Mirabella’s could destroy it. Except the more that Katharine thinks upon those pages, the more she doubts them. Illiann was in the company of this secret, long-lost sister for years. The very suitor she wed was at that sister’s recommendation. They had seemed to be . . . friends. Family amongst queens. Unthinkable, yet it had happened between Mirabella and Arsinoe. And despite her caution, it was happening between Mirabella and Katharine.

Katharine frowns. Maybe no one murdered Queen Illiann at all. If she is anything like Mirabella, she more likely sacrificed herself and jumped.

Give her to us. Weaken her. Give her to us.

“Weaken her. Shall I throw her into the Breccia Domain, as was done to me? No. I will not.”

Inside her skin, the dead queens are displeased, and she feels the shadow spread up her neck like a moving bruise. The skin of her wounded wrist and hand softens, as though it has suddenly shifted its course from healing to rot.

“You cannot have her,” Katharine says, and hears their hiss deep in her ears. “I have other plans for her.”

Other plans?

“Yes. I need her for more than just the mist. And I need her to remain . . . untainted.”

Inside they roil, their dead coils shifting like sea serpents beneath the waves. Katharine inhales sharply. It is not pleasant to share her skin with them. To have them in her blood. It is even less pleasant when they are angry.

“You are mine,” she whispers gently, though she wishes nothing more than to have them gone forever. “And with me you will stay. But I will let you out to play.”

Mirabella waits until the castle is asleep before sneaking into the throne room to see Billy. She brings a bowl of warm water and clean cloths to wash his wounds. She thinks she is prepared, but when she finds him, on his knees and tied to the arm of the throne, his head hanging and his whole face dark with blood, she knows she was wrong.

“I am no healer,” she says, voice shaking. “But I will do my best.”

She sets her lamp on the floor and dips an end of a cloth into the warm water, and starts to sponge his face.

“Mirabella.” He jerks away. His eyes are cold. “You left us.”

“Billy . . . you must know . . . how much I did not want to.”

“But you did. And you broke her heart. I’d hate you for that already, even if you hadn’t also broken part of mine.”

Mirabella goes on sponging his wounds, though the words cut. She takes special care around his bonds, not only because the poison on them has raised blisters as delicate as bubbles in honey, but because if she touches them, she will be blistered as well. And then Katharine will know for certain that she has been there.

“So many times I have thought of Arsinoe. And of you. How I wished you were safe. How I wished we were not apart.”

“Then why did you go?” He grimaces when he moves. He has been in the contorted position for so long. She slips her arms beneath his chest and helps him to lift his weight, to get his legs into a