Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,55
something of him soon. I’m sure of it.”
Jules nods, and Arsinoe leans against her on the other side. Camden leans against her legs. Despite words of reassurance, many boats have already left the Sealhead to go out searching, including Matthew on the Whistler, and Ms. Baxter said she would take her Edna out into deeper waters.
Jules looks out at the cove. From where she stands on the pier, the sea looks vast and mean. For the first time in Jules’s life, it looks ugly. Indifferent and unblinking, nothing but grasping waves and a seafloor sated by bones.
She has hated the sea only one time before: the night they tried to escape and it refused to release its hold on Arsinoe. Bobbing against that mist, thick as a net, she had hated it so much she had spit in it.
But she had only been a child. Surely the Goddess would not hold on to that one bitter spell and wait all these cruel years to send it back on her.
“I don’t know why we’re doing so much,” someone whispers, “for an upstart boy who smells of the mainland.”
Jules rounds on the small crowd. “What did you say?” she asks. Her teacup shatters in her fist.
“Easy, Jules,” Arsinoe says, and drags down her arm. “We’ll find him.”
“I won’t hear any word spoken against Joseph,” Jules growls. “Not until he’s returned. Not until you can be brave enough to say it to his face.”
“Come away, Jules,” Arsinoe says as the crowd backs down from Jules’s fists. “We’ll find him.”
“How?” Jules asks. But she lets Arsinoe lead her off the pier. “Arsinoe, I’ve never been so scared.”
“Don’t be,” the queen says. “I have a plan.”
“Why does that frighten me?” Billy mutters, and follows them off the docks.
Arsinoe, Jules, and Billy leave Wolf Spring within the hour on three of Reed Anderson’s saddle horses. Arsinoe’s and Billy’s are long-legged and finely boned. Jules’s mount is thicker, stronger, so that it can occasionally support the extra weight of a mountain cat.
A change of Joseph’s clothes is tucked into a bag behind Arsinoe’s saddle, along with a sharp silver knife.
THE WESTERN COAST
When Mirabella wakes, she is alone beneath Elizabeth’s cloak. The storm has passed, and the fire has burned down, but she is still warm enough from the memory of the boy’s embraces. He was her first. How excited Bree will be to find out . . . if Mirabella can ever return to Rolanth to tell her.
She pokes her head out. It is still early. The water does not yet sparkle, but day has begun to coat the beach with gray, hazy light. The boy sits with his back to her, dressed again in his trousers and shirt, his head in his hands.
Mirabella pushes up onto one elbow. Her dress is somewhere underneath her. She considers trying to discreetly slip back into it.
“Are you well?” she asks quietly.
He turns slightly.
“I am,” he says. He closes his eyes. “Thank you.”
Mirabella blushes. He is just as handsome in the day as he was beside the fire. She wishes he would come back and lie with her. He seems so far away.
“What,” he says, still half turned. “What happened?”
“You do not remember?”
“I remember the storm, and you and me,” he says, and stops. “I just don’t understand how it . . . How I could have done this.”
Mirabella sits up and tugs the cloak around her. “You did not want to,” she says, alarmed. “You did not like it.”
“I did like it,” he says. “It was wonderful. None of this . . . None of it is your fault.”
She sighs, relieved, and moves close to wrap them both in the cloak. She kisses his shoulder and then his neck. “Come back to me, then,” she whispers. “It is not day yet.”
He closes his eyes when her lips touch his temple. For a moment she thinks he might resist her altogether, but then he turns and takes her in his arms. He kisses her fiercely and presses her into the sand beside the spent coals.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he whispers.
“You seem to know very well what you are doing,” Mirabella says, and smiles. “And you may do it again.”
“I want to. God damn it all but I want to.”
He pulls back to look into her eyes.
She watches his expression change from disbelief to despair.
“No,” he says. “Oh no.”
“What is it?” she asks. “What is the matter?”
“You’re a queen,” he croaks. “You’re Mirabella.” He backs away.