Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,8
still green.
“Focus,” she says. “Join me.”
“Mm-hmm.” Arsinoe nods.
It does not take much. Hardly a thought. A whisper. The rosebud pops like a bean skin in hot oil, and a fat, fancy-petaled red rose uncurls in Arsinoe’s hand. It is bright as blood, and smells of summer.
“Done,” Arsinoe declares, and sets the rose on top of the snow. “And not bad, either. I think I did most of those petals at the center.”
“Let’s do another,” says Jules, fairly certain that she did it all. Perhaps they should try something else. She heard starlings while on the path up from the house. They could call them until they filled the bare branches around the clearing. Thousands of them, until not a single starling remained anywhere else in Wolf Spring, and the trees seethed with black, speckled bodies.
Arsinoe’s snowball hits Camden in the face, but Jules feels it as well: the surprise and a flicker of irritation as the cat shakes the flakes from her fur. The second ball hits Jules on the shoulder, just high enough for the exploding snow to find its way into the warm neck of her coat. Arsinoe laughs.
“You are such a child!” Jules shouts angrily, and Camden snarls and jumps.
Arsinoe barely dodges the attack. She covers her face with her arm and ducks, and the cougar’s claws sail over her back.
“Arsinoe!”
Camden backs off and slinks away, ashamed. But it is not her fault. She feels what Jules feels. Her actions are Jules’s actions.
Jules rushes to the queen and inspects her quickly. There is no blood. No claw marks or tears in Arsinoe’s coat.
“I’m sorry!”
“It’s all right, Jules.” Arsinoe rests a steadying hand on Jules’s forearm, but her fingers tremble. “It was nothing. How many times did we push each other out of trees as children?”
“That is not the same. Those were games.” Jules looks at her cougar regretfully. “Cam is not a cub anymore. Her claws and teeth are sharp, and fast. I have to be more careful from now on. I will be.” Her eyes widen. “Is that blood on your ear?”
Arsinoe takes off her black cap and pulls back her short, shaggy black hair. “No. See? She didn’t come close. I know you would never hurt me, Jules. Neither of you.”
She holds her hand out, and Cam slides under it. Her big, deep purr is the cougar’s apology.
“I really didn’t mean to,” says Jules.
“I know. We are all under strain. Don’t think on it.” Arsinoe slips her black cap back on. “And don’t tell Grandma Cait. She has enough to worry about.”
Jules nods. She does not need to tell Grandma Cait to know what she would say. Or to imagine the disappointment and worry on her face.
After leaving the clearing, Jules and Arsinoe walk down past the docks, through the square toward the winter market. As they pass the cove, Jules raises her arm to Shad Millner standing in the back of his boat, just returned from a run. He nods hello and shows off a fat brown sole. His familiar, a seagull, flaps its wings with pride, though she doubts that the bird was the one who caught the fish.
“I hope I don’t get one of those,” Arsinoe says, and nods at the gull. This morning, she called for her familiar. Like she has every morning since leaving the Black Cottage as a child. But nothing has come.
They continue through the square, Arsinoe kicking through slush puddles and Camden lollygagging behind, unhappy about leaving the powdery wild for the cold stone town. Winter ugliness holds Wolf Spring in a firm grip. Months of freezing and partial thaws have coated the cobblestones with grit. Fog covers the windows, and the snow is mottled brown after being walked through by so many mud-covered feet. With the clouds hanging heavy overhead, the entirety of the town looks as though it is being viewed through a dirty glass.
“Take care,” Jules mutters as they pass Martinson Sisters’ Grocery. She nods toward empty fruit crates. Three troublesome children are ducked down behind them. One is Polly Nichols, wearing her father’s old tweed cap. The two boys she does not know. But she knows what they are up to.
They each have a rock in their hands.
Camden comes to Jules’s side and growls loudly. The children hear. They look at Jules and duck lower. The two boys cower, but Polly Nichols narrows her eyes. She has done one naughty thing for every freckle on her face, and even her mother knows it.