known that would happen. Just as she should have known that the temple would condemn Elizabeth as a conspirator the moment Mirabella was found wearing her white cloak. Mirabella said she had stolen it when Elizabeth was not looking. No one believed her.
She should have found a way to keep them safe. It will be hard to face Elizabeth when she returns. As it will be hard to face Arsinoe at Beltane, unable to explain how it had all been a mistake. Mirabella grimaces. Thinking of what lies ahead makes her chest tighten. Her only comfort is to relive her nights with Joseph, and even those are sullied by his love for another girl.
“He ran to her,” she whispers, hardly realizing she is speaking aloud. “Like he had not seen her in a hundred years.”
“What?” Luca asks. “Mirabella, what did you say?”
“Nothing.” She holds her hand out toward the warmth of the lamp’s flame. One flicker of her finger and the fire jumps from the wick and onto the back of her hand. Luca observes, pleased as it inches up Mirabella’s wrist and around her arm like a curious worm. This is how it will start. Slow and warm. The drums will fill her ears. The fire will reach for her, and she will embrace it, let it have the run of her body as she spins with her arms flung out. She will wrap herself in it like chains and let it burn. Perhaps it will burn her love for her sisters right out of her heart.
Days later, Mirabella is walking through the woods near Westwood House when she hears a woodpecker rapping on a tree. She looks up. It is a small black-and-white tufted. Perhaps it is Pepper. She thinks it is him, though to her, one woodpecker tends to look much like the next.
“Keep to the path, Queen Mirabella.”
One of her priestess escort nudges her back to the center. As if she would try to run, surrounded as she is. There are six of them now, and all young and fit. When the wind moves their cloaks, it reveals the silver glint of their mean, serrated knives. Had the priestesses always carried those? Mirabella does not think so. Certainly not so many and not so often. Now, it seems that every initiated priestess wears them.
“How things have changed,” she says.
“They have, indeed,” the priestess says. “And whose fault would that be?”
Ahead, the gabled roof of Westwood House rises through the trees, dotted with lightning rods like so many hairs. She cannot wait to get inside. There, she will be free at least to walk the halls. Perhaps she will take tea in to Sara, as a peace offering. Sara worried so severely when she ran away. There is so much white now, in her twisted bun. And when Mirabella was returned, she held her so tightly.
“Mira!”
Bree dashes up to them on the path, brown braids swinging. Her eyes are red as though she has been crying.
“Bree? What is the matter?”
Bree shoulders past the priestesses and takes hold of Mirabella’s hands.
“Nothing,” she says. But she cannot mask it. Her expression crumples.
“Bree, what is it?”
“It is Elizabeth,” she says, and rounds on the priestesses with her teeth bared. “I ought to set your robes on fire!” she shouts. “I ought to murder you in your sleep!”
“Bree!”
Mirabella tugs her friend tight to her side.
“We told you she did not have anything to do with it!” Bree sobs. “We told you that the cloak was stolen!”
“What did you do?” Mirabella asks the priestesses. But they seem to be as alarmed as she is.
Mirabella and Bree start to run, pushing through the escort.
“Do not run, Queen Mirabella!”
Several try to grab her arms, but the effort is halfhearted, and she wrenches loose. They know where she is going. She and Bree race the rest of the way up the path, out of the trees, and around the side of the house.
Elizabeth is there in the drive. She stands with her back to them beside the stagnant stone fountain. The priestesses who accompanied her lower their eyes when Mirabella approaches.
Mirabella breathes a sigh of relief. Elizabeth is home. She seems stiff, but she is alive.
“Elizabeth?” Mirabella steps closer.
The young priestess half turns.
“I am all right,” she says. “It is not so bad.”
“What is not so bad?” Mirabella asks, and Elizabeth allows the sleeves of her robes to fall away.
They have cut off her left hand.
The stump is wrapped in rough white bandages, and blood