Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,91

the gathering onlookers. He looks pale and ill. Filthy.

“Billy Chatworth,” Jules says when they reach him. Then she stops. She does not know what else to say.

“They let me go,” he says quietly. “Luca let me go. She sent me, with a message for Arsinoe.”

“What kind of message?” Emilia asks, her eyes on the rolled blanket.

Billy’s face constricts. He lets go of his horse’s reins and adjusts the blanket in his arms. Then he uncovers Mirabella’s face.

Jules cannot believe what she is looking at. It does not seem possible.

“Jules!”

Arsinoe bursts through the gate, racing for them like Jules knew she would. Jules’s heart pounds. She maneuvers her horse in front of Billy’s.

“Don’t let her see, do you hear me?” She knows it is a ridiculous command. Something like this cannot be hidden.

Arsinoe reaches them and clasps her leg. “You were gone too long,” she says. “I didn’t know— Billy?”

Jules looks between them as Arsinoe half smiles.

“But how did you—how did you get him?” She pushes through the horses, and her smile disappears.

“Arsinoe,” he says softly. “I’m so sorry.”

“No.” She grabs at Mirabella’s body, trying to pull it to the ground. “No. What happened to her? What happened to my sister?”

“Arsinoe—” Billy leans back, struggling to control his horse, and Jules quickly dismounts. She grasps Arsinoe around the waist.

“Let go of me!” she shouts, and strikes Jules in the head. “How did you find them? You were supposed to be in Bastian City! I don’t understand!” Her voice is high. Strained, as Jules holds on tight. She does not know what happened, only that Mirabella is dead. And that for the rest of her life, she will never forget the sound of Arsinoe’s voice screaming that she does not understand.

In the room that they share in the castle, Arsinoe watches Billy put on a fresh shirt. It is quiet there; the whole city is quiet, in the wake of Mirabella’s death. Almost like they cared.

“Here, let me.” She stands up and helps him with the buttons. There are so many blisters on his fingers that a new one pops every time he makes a fist. She took a long time cleaning them, gently, with warm water and soothing herbs. Knowing they came from poison filled her with disgust. But even as she looked upon the welts and the cuts and the ligature marks at his wrists and ankles, the anger she felt was muted compared to what she felt when she thought of Mirabella.

They had murdered her. Impossible as that seemed, when she was so powerfully gifted. When she was the one who could battle the mist and win. Yet she was dead.

Before Jules dragged Arsinoe away, she had seen the clean cut across Mirabella’s throat like a second smile. She had seen the mess they had made of the back of her skull when they dashed it against something solid.

“Is the horse all right?” Billy asks quietly. “I rode him too hard from Indrid Down. I should have stopped, but I was afraid.”

“He’s fine,” Arsinoe says. She does not really know. But there are plenty of naturalists in the rebellion to look after him.

Billy turns to her and slips his injured hands up onto her neck. He rubs his thumb along her cheek, and she lets him press his forehead to hers for just a moment. Billy’s touch would make her soft. She would curl into it and cry, use him to forget where they are and what has happened.

“You should eat.” She turns away and gestures to an untouched plate. Some bread and cheese and one of the cakes Luke has started to bake after commandeering the ovens.

“We should eat,” Billy corrects her. “And we should sleep. But I don’t want to do either.”

She would be surprised if he could sleep at all, with the amount of pain he must be in. His right eye is so swollen, it is almost closed, the entire socket a deep and sinister purple. Someone without the poisoner gift would assume he had been struck. But she knows he was stung with something. Injected with some venom.

“I’ll brew you some willow bark tea,” she says. “Make you some salve.” She clenches her hands into angry fists. But Billy takes them and tugs them open.

“She didn’t betray you,” he says. “I accused her of it, but I believe her. She loved you, Arsinoe. Maybe she loved you both and just couldn’t see what Katharine was.”

“They’ll say she was stupid. Or a traitor. A stupid,