Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,81
Luca runs her fingertips across the seam of a blue silk pillow. Her quarters are always furnished with wide chairs and sofas piled high with soft pillows and blankets. Yet Mirabella has rarely seen her sit upon them. “Even after I watched and suspected, I would not have believed. Had I not seen the way the mist circled her at Innisfuil. And had I not followed Pietyr Renard to the Breccia Domain and watched him strip stones from inside it.
“The dead queens. Who would have thought they would be lying there in wait? Who could have imagined the force that was being created every time another was thrown into the pit?”
“Who can imagine anything about the power of queens?” Mirabella murmurs. “We do not even know it ourselves, what we are capable of. Not until we are needed.”
“And what will you do now?” Luca asks. “Now that you know?”
“She wants me to carry the triplets. She wants me to continue the line.” She looks at Luca. Is she surprised? Horrified? Hopeful that Mirabella will say yes? She cannot tell. The High Priestess is impossible to read. “But no matter what is to be done, the dead queens and the mist must be dealt with first.”
“They are headed for a confrontation,” Luca agrees. “And I cannot guess the outcome.”
“The mist will overtake the dead queens. The mist is our protector.”
“You are certain?”
Mirabella shakes her head. “How can one be certain of anything? I only know that we—my sisters and I—are at the heart of this conflict. And if we come together, I believe we can put an end to it. I would write to Arsinoe.”
Luca turns away. She waves her hand and walks behind her desk.
“Arsinoe is a rogue. She has chosen the side of the Legion Queen. If she sets foot in Indrid Down, she will be executed immediately. And besides, what could she do? What use is she? A bear? Against the dead?”
“I have seen Arsinoe do things with low magic that you could not even dream of. And do not,” Mirabella adds when Luca’s eyes widen, “come at me with temple rhetoric about low magic. Arsinoe can oust the dead queens from Katharine and serve them up to the mist on a platter.”
She waits as Luca imagines it. As she rolls the possibilities in her mind.
“And then what?” Luca asks. “If the dead queens are vanquished and the mist is quiet? What will we do then?”
“Then Katharine will rule. The true Katharine. My little sister, as good a Queen Crowned as I ever would have been.”
Luca stares down at her desk and at her hands, hands which have shaped the course of the island for many years. Mirabella hopes that she will agree. But she did not come to ask the High Priestess’s permission.
“You think that Arsinoe will come?”
“I know she will.”
“Then write your letter. Send it with Pepper. But you must tell Katharine that you are doing it.”
“Of course. I know.” Mirabella smiles. She relaxes her shoulders. Every bone in her body feels like it has been overcooked, like she has danced with lightning for hours.
“There is one more thing I would ask of you,” she says, and Luca smirks.
“I am almost afraid to hear it.”
“What do you know of the original temple? The first temple that was built here in Indrid Down, before the capital was the capital?”
“I do not know much,” Luca replies, surprised. “Why do you seek it?”
“It is just a sense I have,” Mirabella says. “So many old queens return. Old queens and old tales brought to light. If we are to face them, I would know as much of our history as I can.”
“Very well,” says Luca. “I will see what I can find.”
SUNPOOL
Arsinoe watches as Jules’s ax comes down in a graceful arc and cleaves the log in two. A clean, fast cut through a fallen trunk as thick as Braddock’s back leg. It should have taken many more swings than that. It would have taken Arsinoe the better part of the morning. But the strength in Jules’s ax does not come from her arms. It comes from her war gift. She did not really even need the ax at all.
Arsinoe goes to the pile and takes a log in her arms to load onto the cart. They have come fairly far into the forest to cut wood, so far that Braddock got bored and stopped following. But she hears him, off somewhere not far away, rustling through brush for old