Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,71
lips curl in a sneer. “Speak plain.”
“Very well,” Luca says. Fast as a striking snake, she grasps one of Rho’s wrists and holds it up. “Do you see these black bracelets you wear? They are as permanent as the crown that I placed on her head.” She lets go. “And you must not forget that.”
Rho lowers her head. She nods. Then she goes, to follow the queen’s orders, her steps far too fast for Luca to ever keep up.
SUNPOOL
Arsinoe leaves through the main gate and finds her bear surrounded by townsfolk. While they were away, Caragh used her gift to call him closer, and now he waits outside the walls for easy meals and a few pats from those who are bold enough to try. When the people see her coming, they bow and return to the city, leaving the bear to his queen.
“Shall we go to the woods, boy?” she asks, but Jules and Camden catch them before they can leave the road.
“Can we join you?” Jules asks. She has a huge silver fish in her arms and her cougar trotting beside, looking up at the fish with happy, slitted eyes.
“Fine,” says Arsinoe. They walk in silence out into the snow. When they reach the crest of a far-enough hill, Jules tosses the fish onto the ground and lets the bear and the cougar decide who gets which end.
Watching the two of them—Camden crouched, tail twitching, and Braddock on all fours with his head bobbing like a bird’s—Arsinoe almost smiles. But it is no good, being back in Sunpool without Mirabella. It is no good with Billy taken hostage.
“Were you able to get some rest?”
“Some,” Arsinoe replies.
“And something to eat?”
“Plenty.”
“Are you going to be mad at me for another day?”
“I’m going to be mad at you for as long as I want,” Arsinoe snaps. “You don’t just get to drag me out of places.”
“Sometimes I have to. When you’re upset, you don’t always think clearly.”
“You’re the one with the war-gifted legion curse. But I’m the one who doesn’t think clearly.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Well, what is?” Arsinoe crosses her arms. “I can’t stop thinking about what Katharine is doing to him. I should never have come back here.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know!”
“But I’m glad you are.” Jules reaches out to tentatively tug on her sleeve. “I’m sorry about Billy. We’ll get him back.”
“How?” Arsinoe asks. However they manage it, it will not be soon enough.
Before Jules can answer, a familiar whistle cuts through the air, and Emilia, Mathilde, and the warriors burst up over the hills.
“They’re back,” Jules says with relief as they hurry to the road. Emilia charges her mount nearly over the top of them before pulling up to rear. Her face is ablaze, dark hair loose and wild for once. Jules puts her hand on the horse’s shoulder.
“You’re back,” she says breathlessly as the horse quiets. “And no others lost. I was worried you would do something stupid.”
“Who says she did not?” Mathilde asks, and dismounts to greet Arsinoe, and the bear and the cougar.
Arsinoe does a fast count of the party. All of the warriors except those who fell in the raid or to Katharine’s poison are present. But there are three bodies wrapped in blankets and slung over the backs of the horses. Two will be Bea and the other poisoned warrior. The third is draped across the front of Emilia’s saddle.
“If you’re all here, then who is that?” Arsinoe points at the body. She sees Billy in her mind’s eye, lost and poisoned in the dark, falling down beside the road, trying to get back to her.
“See for yourself,” Emilia says, and slides the body off.
Jules kneels over it cautiously and draws the blanket back away from the face. “Good Goddess.”
“What? Who is it?” Arsinoe rushes to her and grasps Jules’s arm. But the body is not Billy. The boy who lies in the snow, wrapped in a blanket, not dead but certainly not conscious, is Pietyr Renard.
“She takes our boy,” Emilia says, and grins. “So we take hers. I told you I would make it right.”
GREAVESDRAKE MANOR
Mirabella takes a deep breath as she arrives at Greavesdrake Manor. At the queen’s request, she took the carriage west from Indrid Down, through the hills to the Arron estate. Though the Arrons are rarely there these days. Not even Genevieve.
Her eyes drift skyward, up the vast face of red brick to the pitched roof of black. Such grandness. Such solid, monumental weight. As she walks to