Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,93

wanted to bring Arsinoe here. She would have brought Jules Milone. She would have had us fight beside them, had me stand aside and put the crown on the Legion Queen’s head. Perhaps that is still what I should do.”

Genevieve studies her carefully.

“Do not worry,” Katharine says. “I would only be that brave if she were still here. Now I will be a coward and let them bite and claw and scratch until there is nothing left.”

“Kat,” Genevieve says, but Katharine turns away. “Very well. What, then, do we do with the High Priestess? I never thought I would plead for mercy, but . . . seeing Luca’s eyes as she confessed . . . Her heart has broken, and her influence wanes. I think this was the last disappointment her old heart can bear.”

“Let the High Priestess remain in her rooms under guard. Let her stay there until it is over.”

“Over?”

“If you do not think that Arsinoe will come for me now, you are a fool. She will come. And the mist will come. And the Legion Queen will come. And then there will be an ending.”

SUNPOOL

Jules and Billy try to keep Arsinoe from preparing Mirabella’s body herself. But who else could do it? Who else knows the way she liked to wear her hair or which perfumed oils she preferred? Only Arsinoe. So the morning of the funeral, she stands before her sister’s broken body and tries to work up the courage for that first touch.

She will be cold. A shell. And the bits of dried pink matted into her hair make Arsinoe’s stomach wobble. No one else should see her like this.

She places her hands atop Mirabella’s shoulders.

“There,” she whispers, as if it is done, but despite herself, she is disappointed that Mirabella does not sit up and tell her it was all a ruse.

“Do you do this alone?” Pietyr Renard asks from the shadows behind her.

“Get out.”

“I only thought to share the load.”

“I don’t care what you thought. No one else can see her this way. Especially not you.”

“I can help you reset the bones. Help you to restore her.”

“There is no restoring her,” Arsinoe half shouts, and Pietyr, with typical Arron boldness, walks closer, uninvited. As he looks upon Mirabella’s wounds, all Arsinoe wants to do is give him wounds to match. Cave in his skull. Break his ribs and legs. Cut his throat and send him back to Katharine wrapped in a blanket. And then he touches Mirabella’s face so tenderly that Arsinoe’s tears pause in surprise.

“She was so lovely,” he says. “And so strong. How we feared her.”

“Then how did this happen?” Arsinoe asks.

Pietyr’s finger hovers over the dark red cut across her throat. “Perhaps the same way it nearly happened to me.” He glances at Arsinoe as if ashamed. “Or perhaps not. I cannot pretend to have any answers or to know the truth.” With slow hands, he moves Mirabella’s arm so it lies bent, her hand atop her stomach. He moves her shattered leg beneath her gown so that it looks straight and strong again.

Without a word, Arsinoe joins him, and they reset every broken bone. They clean every bit of redness out of her hair. She wraps the wound at Mirabella’s throat with a blue silk scarf, and Pietyr drapes her in a fine embroidered blanket of black. When they are finished, Mirabella is beautiful again.

“I will not say she looks like she is sleeping,” Pietyr whispers. “I have always hated that lie.”

“Not sleeping,” Arsinoe agrees. “But better. Almost like I remember her.”

He nods and turns away to go.

“Renard.”

“Yes?”

“You know we are going to kill your queen.”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t try and save her?”

“I already tried,” he says quietly. “I failed.”

After the body has burned, Jules and Emilia stand in the dunes of brown-green winter grass and look down on the beach at the remains of Mirabella’s funeral. It had not been, perhaps, fit for a queen, but the people of the rebellion had worn what crimson they had, even if that was only a bright red scarf wetted dark. They left offerings to Mirabella in the waves: paper lanterns painted with thunderheads, braided ribbon soaked in scented oil. The elementals called the wind and moved the currents to carry them out to sea. After Arsinoe had lit the fire, Camden walked the edge of the surf, pausing now and then to call through the smoke, making the sound that mother mountain cats make when they call to their hidden cubs.