her then, last night. A part of her had wondered, feared that he would return her to Rolanth. But a larger part had not cared.
“No,” he says again, and she laughs.
“It is all right. It is not wrong, to lie with a queen. You will not be punished. You will not die.”
“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Why aren’t you in Rolanth? Why do you have a white cloak?”
She studies him warily. It is not the fact that she is a queen that he regrets.
“What is your name?” she asks.
He is not an Arron; he does not have the coloring. And his clothes have the look of a craftsman, well-worn and many times mended. He must have sailed from a great distance. His accent is different from any she has ever heard.
“My name is Joseph Sandrin.”
Mirabella’s blood runs cold. She knows that name. He is the boy who loves Arsinoe. The one who was banished for trying to help her escape.
She takes up her dress from the sand and slips into it quickly while underneath Elizabeth’s cloak. She has slept with the boy her sister loves. Her stomach lurches.
“Did you think that I was her?” she asks, finishing the fastenings of her dress. “Did you think that I was Arsinoe?”
Given his confusion from the storm and the cold, that might absolve him at least.
“What?” he asks. “No!”
And then he laughs in surprise.
“If I had touched Arsinoe the way I touched you”—he stops and turns solemn once again—“she’d have hit me.”
Hit him. Yes. Arsinoe always hit first when they were children. Especially if she really cared for you.
Joseph stares out at the waves. The water is quiet now. Shimmering and calm, playing innocent after last night’s rages and mischief.
“Why did this have to happen?” he asks. “After I waited so long for her.”
“For who?”
“For the girl I’ve loved my whole life.” He does not give Mirabella her name. Fine, then. Let him keep it.
“She does not ever need to know,” Mirabella says. “You are unhurt. You are alive. You can go home.”
Joseph shakes his head. “I will know.” He looks at her and touches her cheek. “The damage has already been done.”
“Do not say that. Damage, like what happened was something terrible. We did not know!”
Joseph does not look at her. He stares sadly at the sea. “Mirabella. It might have been better if you had let me drown.”
They cannot stay on the beach forever. They dig in the low tide’s sand for cockles and clams and then dry their rewetted clothes beside a fresh fire, but they are lingering. Their time is up.
“Where will you go?” Mirabella asks.
“Inland, to the road. I was to ride the coaches back to Wolf Spring. I suppose I still will.”
Joseph looks at the queen by his side. She is nothing at all like Arsinoe. And nothing at all like he expected. He has heard that Mirabella lives as though she is already crowned, that you must drop to your knees if she passes in the street. He has heard she is locked away in the Westwood estate or kept carefully hidden in the temple. In his mind, she became a holiday ornament, only taken out during celebrations and never to be played with.
This Mirabella is not like that. She is wild and brave. Her black hair is not braided or pinned to her head. He wonders if this is the queen who everyone in Rolanth sees. If all the rumors have been untrue. Or perhaps this Mirabella only appears on beaches, after a storm. If that is so, then she is his and his alone.
They kick sand over the remains of the dead fire, and Mirabella leads Joseph up the path to the top of the cliffs.
“It is easier going up than down,” she says, and shows him the cuts on her palms.
When they reach the top, they walk together through the trees, toward the road.
“You will probably have to walk to the next town to find a coach,” Mirabella says. “I had been following this road for at least a day and I did not hear many pass me by.”
Joseph stops. “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you in Rolanth, surrounded by your future court?”
It sounds like mocking, the way he says that. But that is not the way he means it. He takes her hand. “It is not safe to be out here alone.”
“You sound like my friend Bree,” she says. “I will be fine.”
“It has occurred to me