Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,96

and I,” Luca says. “A great distance and many years from Rolanth. Back when you loved me. Whatever happens at the end of my life, I am glad that I will leave it with you loving me again.”

Bree frowns. Her feelings for the High Priestess are not so simple as love and hate. But it is true that she has never really stopped caring for her.

“Did Mira love you again, at the end?”

“I think so,” Luca replies. “But I did not deserve it.”

“She wasn’t right, was she, Bree?” Elizabeth asks as they return to the Volroy. “When she said she would die there or they would kill her? There has to be some way that Luca can survive.”

“She usually manages to find one,” Bree says. “But this time I am not so sure.”

SUNPOOL

There is not enough room around the table in Jules’s chamber for everyone to sit. Mathilde, Billy, and Gilbert Lermont stand in a semicircle starting behind Arsinoe’s left shoulder, an imaginary extension of this “new council.” For this is how it will be, if the rebellion succeeds and topples the crown. Jules and Emilia seated at the heads of the table with Caragh in between. Pietyr Renard somehow managing to sit across from them.

“Don’t worry,” Emilia says as they jostle. “The Black Council chamber will be much larger.”

A few in the party chuckle. But not Arsinoe. “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourselves?”

“Even we must have a council,” says Mathilde.

“But will this be who sits upon it? What about someone from Rolanth? Or the temple? Maybe even Renata Hargrove, to unite the old with the new. Or do you intend to roll the army over the top of everyone in Indrid Down?”

The new council members glance amongst themselves.

“Maybe Queen Arsinoe is right,” says Jules. “Maybe we’ll even take the High Priestess if she survives. She’s certainly earned it.”

“Does anybody want to tell me what he’s doing here?” Billy asks, and juts his chin toward Pietyr.

“Perhaps we should better ask why you are here,” Emilia replies. “This is not your fight, mainlander.”

“His father was killed by Rho Murtra,” says Arsinoe. “And he was taken captive and tortured.”

“He’s been in this since the moment he jumped between Arsinoe and a bear,” Jules agrees. “This has cost him as much as anyone.”

Emilia sighs. “Pietyr Renard is here because he knows the capital and the ways of the Undead Queen better than any other.”

“So you give him a seat at the table?” Billy asks. “Isn’t he a prisoner? Couldn’t he provide that information just as easily from the confines of a cell?”

“I was never in a cell,” Pietyr says. “I was in a spacious, comfortable room at the Lermont house.”

Billy clenches his jaw, and Arsinoe puts an arm out before he can launch himself across the table. “I don’t trust him either, but he is the reason we know what Katharine is.”

“That she’s full of dead queens,” Billy says. “That was the secret that Mirabella was after.”

“She would never have discovered it. Katharine hides them well.” Even after she nearly killed him, Pietyr’s voice is full of pride. He is an Arron, after all, and they are a twisted, morbid lot. Arsinoe removes her arm from Billy’s path. Let him launch across the table. Let him tackle Pietyr to the floor and wipe that Arron smirk off his face. Truthfully, she would not mind watching them roll around for a while.

“But what does that mean?” Gilbert Lermont leans forward, his long-fingered hands folded atop one another. “‘She is full of dead queens.’ What is it, really, that we face?”

“More than you think,” Jules says darkly. “After what we saw in Bastian City.”

“You said she sent the dead queens into you,” Mathilde says to Pietyr. “Can she do that often? Is that all she can do?”

“I think she is constantly learning new ways to use them.” His blue eyes drop to his lap. “Or that they can use her.”

Jules pushes away from the table and gets up to pace.

“Jules,” Emilia says. “Do not worry. We have numbers to match hers.”

“Numbers to match. But that is not enough.”

“Every war-gifted fighter is worth five regular soldiers. Strongly gifted ones, like you and I, are worth twenty.”

“And what of the war-gifted who fought to defend Bastian? What of Margaret Beaulin? She was strongly gifted, too, and she was—” Jules stops. She and Emilia have not told many of the carnage they found in an effort not to frighten the soldiers. But even Emilia is afraid. Arsinoe saw