Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,40

Joseph replies.

He moves closer to her on the damp, snowy log. He is warm, and the fire is warm. Jules fidgets with the green stone on her finger. On the mainland, it would have meant he wanted to marry her, he said. But on the island, it is only a ring. She has not yet found the courage to ask him which way he meant it.

“It is a bit early to say so,” says Jules. “She might not even like him. And he still has to meet the other queens.”

“He does. And he will. But he won’t want to. After all the stories I’ve told him about Arsinoe, I think he is half in love with her already.”

Jules does not know what stories Joseph could tell about Arsinoe to make someone fall in love, as they were only children when they were parted. But if they were lies or embellishments, Billy will discover the truth soon enough.

“It will be strange, after she’s crowned,” Joseph says. “Having to bow my head when she speaks.”

“We will only have to do that in front of people,” Jules says.

“I suppose so. But it will be hard to bow my head at all, after being so long away. I’ll probably forget to bow to the High Priestess and get myself banished again.”

“Joseph,” Jules laughs. “They wouldn’t banish you for that.”

“No,” he says. “But it’s so different out there, Jules. Out there, men don’t tremble when women speak.”

“No one ought to tremble. That is why the island needs change in the Black Council.”

“I know. And it will have it.”

He puts his arm around her and then touches first the ring he gave her and then her hair.

“Jules,” he says, and leans in to kiss her.

She jumps when their lips touch. Joseph moves back, confused.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“It’s all right.”

It feels anything but all right. But Joseph does not move away. He stays and holds her tighter.

“Jules, has there been anyone? Since I left?”

She shakes her head. She has never been ashamed of that before, but she is ashamed of it now.

“No one at all?”

“No.”

No one has ever looked at her the way that Joseph looks at her. Not even Joseph, before he returned. She is not beautiful, like her mother or her aunt Caragh. She has always felt small and plain and strange. But she will not say so to him.

“I think,” she says instead, “that the boys have been afraid of me.”

“I would not doubt that,” Joseph says. “They were afraid of you when we were young, just because of your temper. The cougar cannot have helped.”

Jules smiles at Camden.

“I should be sorry,” Joseph says. “But I don’t like to think about anyone else touching you. I thought of it sometimes, when I was away. And then Billy would take me out to get drunk.”

Jules laughs and rests her forehead against his. There beside the pond, he feels like the boy she has known for so long. Her Joseph. He only looks different on the outside, all that dark hair and the new angles in his face. The broadness of his chest and shoulders.

“We are not the same,” Jules says. “But I don’t want us to have changed.”

“But we have, Jules,” Joseph says softly. “We’ve grown up. I loved you when I was a child. The way a child loves his friend. But I fell in love with you, for real, while I was away. Things can’t stay the way they were before.”

He leans close again, and their lips touch. He is gentle and slow. Every movement tells her that he will stop, even as his arms tighten around her waist. He will stop, if it is not what she wants.

Jules slips her arms around his neck and kisses him deeply. It is exactly what she wants. It is all she has ever wanted.

ROLANTH

“They will come to part us soon,” Arsinoe says. She has been in the brush, after the berries again. Bright red juice is streaked across her cheek. Or perhaps it is a cut from a thorn.

“Willa won’t let us go,” says Katharine. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay here.”

Mirabella would like to stay there as well. It is a warm day, newly spring. Now and again, when they grow too hot, she calls the wind to prickle their skin and to make Katharine giggle.

They are on the far side of the brook, divided from the cottage, and Willa will not cross the