Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,79

other.”

“Ah,” Billy says, and leans back. “Aunt Caragh and Joseph’s brother Matthew. From what I gather, they were a fairly serious item.”

“They were,” says Arsinoe. “Some people said she was too serious for him. That he was too young. But I will never forget his face when they took her away.”

Arsinoe clears her throat. How ridiculous she must look, bedridden and covered in bandages, talking about lost love.

“You jumped in front of that bear for me,” he says.

“You jumped in front of it for me, first.”

He smiles a little. “And then Jules killed it,” he says. “I used to think she was too strong for anyone’s good. But we are so lucky that she was there.”

“Yes,” Arsinoe says. “I will make sure to have her with me when I try again.”

“Again? Arsinoe, you were nearly killed.”

“And if I don’t try again, I will be for sure.”

They lock eyes. Billy looks away first.

“The queens just know,” he says. “What you are.” He shakes his head. “You are so strange, in so many ways.”

“You have heard it said that the queens are not really people,” she says. “So when we kill one another, it is not a person we are killing.” She looks down. “That’s what they say. I don’t know anymore if it is really true.”

But true or not, it does not matter. It is the island’s way. And it is nearly time to begin. Beltane arrives with the melt. Soon, the island will begin to move, from the outside in, toward the heart. All the great houses packed together for three nights in Innisfuil Valley.

“A letter arrived from my father yesterday,” Billy says. “But I have not opened it. I know it will say that I am to go and meet Mirabella, and I don’t want to.”

“You want me to win,” Arsinoe says. “You want to marry me.”

Billy grins. “I don’t want to marry you. You have none of the proper makings of a wife. But I don’t want you to die. You have become my friend, Arsinoe.”

He takes her hand and holds it, and she is surprised by how much that means. His words are sincere even though she knows that in the end, he will go to meet Mirabella, anyway.

“Do you want to see it?” She touches her face.

“Are we little boys now?” he asks. “Comparing scabs?”

“If we were, I would win.”

She turns her head and pulls off her bandages. The stitches pull at her cheek but do not bleed.

Billy takes his time. He sees it all.

“Should I lie and tell you that I have seen worse?” he asks, and she shakes her head. “There’s a rhyme about you, you know,” he says. “Back home. Little girls sing it when they skip rope.

“Three Black Witches are born in a glen,

Sweet little triplets

Will never be friends.

“Three Black Witches, all fair to be seen.

Two to devour,

And one to be queen.

“That’s what they call you, on the mainland. Witches. That’s what my father says that you are. Monsters. Beasts. But you are not a monster.”

“No,” she says quietly. “And neither are the rest of us. But that doesn’t change what we have to do.” She takes his hand and squeezes it softly. “Go back to the Sandrins’, Junior. Go back and read your letter.”

INDRID DOWN

Pietyr Renard has never been invited inside the Volroy, but he has always dreamed of it. Ever since he was a child and his father told him stories. There is nothing in the halls to catch sound, he said. The Volroy defies adornment, as if there are too many other important things inside for it to be bothered with tapestries. Only the chamber where the council meets has anything but smooth black surfaces, and that is a relief sculpture depicting naturalist blooms and elemental fires, poisoner venoms and the warrior’s carnage. He used to sketch the poisoner portion for Pietyr, charcoal on white paper, a knotted nest of vipers on a bed of oleander petals.

He promised to take Pietyr there as soon as he came of age. But that was before the house in the country, and his new wife.

“This way,” says an attendant, who leads Pietyr up the stairs of the East Tower, where Natalia waits.

He does not really need a guide. He has walked the Volroy a thousand times in his imagination.

As they pass a window, he looks out at the West Tower. Huge and hulking, it blots out everything else. Up close, it does not give the grand impression that it does at a