longer we can keep this secret. The servants begin to suspect.”
“They will have no proof, once Mirabella is returned. Do not worry. No one will ever know that she was gone.”
“What if it is not Rho who locates her? What if—”
Luca grasps her arm. If the High Priestess’s touch has been good for anything, it has always been good at stemming panic. And Luca has no time for panic today. She did not ask Sara to come all this way just to calm her fears.
She leads Sara up the bank, to a copse of evergreens and a large stone, dark and weathered and flat as a table. Her priestesses have set it with tea and bread and soup reheated over a small cooking fire.
Luca readies her old bones and climbs onto the rock. She is pleased to discover it is not a difficult climb, and they have set out a pillow for her, along with a soft folded blanket.
“Will you sit with me?” she asks. “And eat?”
“I will eat,” Sara says, looking gravely at the stone table. “But I will not sit, High Priestess, if it is all the same to you.”
“Why not?”
“That stone is sacred,” Sara explains. “Elemental priestesses once sacrificed hares on it and threw their hearts into the lake.”
Luca runs her hand across the rock. It seems more than just a rock now, knowing all the blood it has drunk. And it is not only rabbits’ blood it has tasted, she is sure. So many things on the island are more than what they seem. So many places where the Goddess’s eye is always open. It is fitting that Luca has come to this one, to discuss the sacrifice of queens.
Luca tears the bread in half and hands a piece to Sara. It is a good, soft bread, with an oat crust, but Sara does not take a bite. She worries it between her fingers until it turns to crumb.
“I never thought she would do something like this,” Sara says. “She has always been so dutiful.”
“Not always,” Luca notes, and chews. There was a time when Mirabella listened to no one, and nothing. But that was long ago, and far away from the dignified young queen she has become.
“What are we to do?”
Luca swallows her tea and fights the urge to slap Sara across the face. Sara is a good woman, and her friend these many years. But there is no firmness in her jaw. It will take a backbone of steel to hold together a Black Council led by her. Sometimes, Luca pities the High Priestess who comes after, for she will be the one who has to do it.
“What are we to do,” Luca says. “Indeed. Tell me, Sara, what do you know about the White-Handed Queens?”
“They are blessed,” she says hesitantly. “Fourth-borns.”
“Yes, but not only that. A queen is said to be White-Handed any time her sisters are killed by means other than her own doing. Be that by being drowned by the Midwife before they come of age, or put to death for some unfortunate curse, or,” Luca says slowly, “being sacrificed by the island, for the one true queen.”
“I had not heard of that,” says Sara.
“It is an old legend. Or at least, I thought it was only a legend. Something of a whisper, about the Sacrificial Years. It is so old, it is no wonder we have overlooked the signs.”
“What signs?”
“The weakness of Arsinoe and Katharine. The boundless strength of our Mira. And of course, Mirabella’s own reluctance to kill.” Luca presses her hand to her forehead. “I am ashamed to say that all this time, I thought that her only flaw.”
“I do not understand,” Sara says. “You believe that Mirabella is reluctant to kill because she is meant to be White-Handed? And Arsinoe and Katharine . . . will be sacrificed?”
“They are made as sacred offerings on the night of the Quickening.”
Luca drums her fingers on the stone. It vibrates down deep, like a heartbeat.
“These are old tales,” she says. “Tales that tell of a queen, born much stronger than her sisters. The only true queen born to that cycle. On the night of the Quickening, the people recognize this, and feed the other queens into the fires.”
Luca waits tensely. Sara does not speak for a long time. She stands still, her hands clasped piously over her stomach.
“That would be much easier,” she says finally, and Luca relaxes. Sara’s eyes are downcast, but whether she truly believes the tale does