Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) - Kendare Blake Page 0,79
her hand.
“Arsinoe!”
But before she can change her mind, she pulls the blade out of her skin and brings it down hard into Pietyr’s. Their blood pools, and she seals their hands together. Their mingling blood releases magic in a jolt; it makes her head spin as whatever remains of what Pietyr did tries to invade her. She feels their hands jerk and feels the skin of his palm burst open wider. His fingers close around hers, and he pulls hard. Their blood smears across the white blankets and sheets. Whispers fill her head like wind, babbling whispers so loud that she drops her knife and plugs her ear with her free finger.
They are seeping into her head. “Jules, get him off me!”
Camden bites gently onto her arm to pull, but when she tastes Arsinoe’s blood, she leaps off the bed and cowers in a corner. With a grimace, Jules grasps on to their joined hands. She pries on their fingers. It should be easy to part hands that are so slick with blood. But they do not release until Jules wraps both arms around Arsinoe’s waist and heaves her away.
When the connection breaks, Pietyr Renard wakes with a shout. He grips his wrist and stares down at the deep, broken open wound in his hand. Then he peers around the room, at the cougar and at Arsinoe and Jules. Despite being in pain, startled, and unconscious for months, it takes him no more than two blinks to recognize the naturalist pretender and the Legion Queen.
“How did I get here?” he asks.
“Do you know where ‘here’ is?” asks Jules.
“I could make an educated guess.”
“And . . . do you know who you are?”
His eyes flicker, the slightest movement, as he considers whether or not to lie. “I am Pietyr Arron,” he says flatly.
“Good,” Arsinoe says, and sighs. “Because that makes you someone worth keeping.”
THE VOLROY
In the throne room, the suitor is facedown on the floor. His eyes are open but blank, his sand-colored hair dark and stringy with sweat. The only sign of life he gives at Katharine’s approach is a small puff of breath that fogs the dark marble. The Black Council has been having too much fun with him. They have broken him down too fast, and spoiled their own game.
Katharine draws one of her poisoned daggers and slices through the rope that binds him to the throne. He moans gratefully as his arms fall free.
“Behave yourself,” she cautions as he eyes the guards near the door. “I could slide this knife between your ribs faster than they could reach you with a spear.”
“Is that any way to treat the boy to whom you gave your first kiss?” he asks, and winces as the feeling returns to his fingers.
“My first kiss. Is that what I conspired to have you believe or simply what you assumed with your inflated mainland ego?”
He glares at her, stretching his stiff shoulders and gingerly touching the angry red blisters at his wrists.
“The poison has a bite, does it not?” She motions for a tray of tea and biscuits to be brought to the table nearby. “But you will get no sympathy from me. I have been made to endure much worse. And I endured it better. Fetch the biscuits.”
He climbs to his feet and shuffles to the table. “Ah yes. The abuse you suffered at the hands of the Arrons. Is that how you enticed Mira to come to you? By playing the wounded girl?”
“My sister is a queen. She comes to her queen’s aid.”
“Mirabella is good. Not like you.”
“Who says I am not good? I take no joy in seeing you this way. Filthy and scarred. Scarred like your Arsinoe.”
“Shut your mouth.”
She draws back. She nearly apologizes. Since the dead queens have been gone, she has felt no real malice toward Arsinoe, though she is a fool and a traitor to ally with Jules Milone. It is the dead sisters who keep all her rage and all her morbid indulgences. Every gift Katharine borrows from them has been corrupted by their endless hunger for more blood, more pain, more flesh torn apart. But just now they are far away, with Rho, and she is free to be merciful.
“You should not speak so to the Queen Crowned, Master Chatworth.”
“You’re no real queen.”
“I am the only true queen of Fennbirn.”
“Then why have people been trying to snatch the crown off your head from the minute they put it there? Do you think they’d have done