One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake
She looks up. He knows.
The dead queens had gnawed on the bones of their injustices for centuries before he had dropped Katharine right into their laps. That they were able to pour their wishes into her, filling her up with ambition and twisted strength, was his fault.
“At least I was not afraid for you anymore,” he says quietly. “The old sisters would never have let you be killed. Not when you were their way into the crown. Out of that hole.”
“But it was all for nothing.” She stares helplessly at Nicolas graying beneath the sheet. She has become poison. No mainland king may lie with her and survive. No mainland-fathered children could survive the long months in her belly.
“I cannot bear the triplets,” she whispers. “I cannot be the queen.”
She begins to weep, and Pietyr gathers her to him. “Natalia. How disappointed she will be. How disappointed you must be . . . how disgusted. . . .”
“Never.” Pietyr kisses her smeared crown. He kisses her cheeks and kisses away the tears that slip down them.
“Pietyr, I am poison.”
“And I am a poisoner. And you have never been more precious to me than you are right now.” He raises his head at the sound of an approaching carriage and wraps his arms around her tighter.
“I failed you once. I betrayed you once. But I will not again. From now on, I will protect you, Kat, whatever happens.”
INDRID DOWN
The warriors in the red-lined cloaks are led by a girl named Emilia Vatros and her father. She has the quick, dispassionate eyes of a hunting bird, and Jules likes her immediately.
“Why are you really helping us?” Jules asks.
“It is like I said,” Emilia replies, and Madrigal seconds her.
“It wasn’t hard to get them to come. You were the whole reason they were in the capital.”
“She should have been sent to us anyway,” says Emilia’s father, eyeing Madrigal. “You should have let her choose, to be yours or to be ours.”
“She was mine,” Madrigal says. “She was born to me.”
“The Goddess feels different.”
“How do you know what the Goddess feels?” Madrigal snaps, but Jules shushes her. Emilia’s father stands as straight as Cait, his hair dark brown and face lightly lined. And if Madrigal engages him in debate, they will stand in the shadows bickering until the sun comes up and their entire party is discovered.
“Let’s get moving, then,” Arsinoe says. Two warriors come to take Joseph from Jules’s shoulders. Jules looks to Arsinoe, and she nods. They will accept help now, and ask questions later.
Quickly and quietly, they slip through the main level of the Volroy, running and ducking through the castle keep and the inner cloister until they reach the arched, exterior gateway and hunch in the shadows.
Jules swallows nervously. Emilia has dragged her to the fore, and she cannot help but feel as though her war gift is being tested.
“There they are,” Emilia whispers, and Jules pushes away from the stone wall of the arch to see what she sees: four fast flashes in the dark, from their compatriots scouting ahead.
“Four flashes,” Jules says. “Four guards between us and the edge of the courtyard.”
“Yes. Do you see them?”
Jules creeps forward and looks up to the battlements. She sees two. “Where?”
“The other two are along the hedge. Too close together to take separately. Whichever died last would shout, raise an alarm.”
Emilia unslings her bow.
“Can’t we wait until they leave?” Jules asks. “And then slip out toward the forest?” Once they are in the nighttime streets, it will be easy. Jules still remembers the map of Indrid Down. It is not more than a twenty-minute run before they find the meadow and then the trees for good cover.
“We have waited too long as it is. It is a wonder someone has not awoken the entire guard already.” Emilia nocks an arrow and whistles. Across the corridor, another warrior does the same. Both take aim at the guards, chatting near the hedge.
“Guide my arrow,” Emilia whispers.
“What? I can’t!”
Emilia grins. “Yes you can,” she says. “But it’s all right. I can make the shot without you.”
Another whistle and the arrows fly. Both guards fall with nary a sound.
“Hey,” Jules growls, and grabs Emilia’s arm. “Don’t do that. We have queens here. Don’t waste time by messing about with me!”
Emilia cocks her head. Then her eyes dart to the battlements when another warrior whistles.
“The battlements! They’ve seen us!”
Jules looks up just as one of the guards fires a crossbow. She flinches and pushes her mind hard, and the bolt bounces off the stones to Emilia’s right.
“Go, now!” Jules waves for Arsinoe to come. They dash through the courtyard. Guards at the battlements have alerted others, and arrows strike the ground, too close for Jules’s liking. She turns back and pushes out, out, sending as many as she can off course. Even with the blood pounding in her ears, the effort is exhausting.
A warrior fires an arrow beside her, and she watches a guard tumble down the wall.
“Jules!” Arsinoe calls. “Come on!”
Jules and Emilia turn to run, helped by the cover of the other warriors. As they pass the guards fallen by the hedge, an arm shoots out and grasps Jules’s ankle. She flies face first onto the path and rolls to kick, but Emilia leaps over the top of him. She takes his head in the crook of her arm and twists.
“Dead now,” she says. “Let’s go!”
The fleeing queens and their rescue party dissolve into the streets, some going one way, some another. The layout of the city memorized, they meet in alleys to cross paths, running breathless and silent until they break into the meadow in twos and threes to dissipate like drops of ink into water.
“You were good back there.” Emilia grins. “I do not like to think of how many poisoned arrows your executioner would have needed to pierce your gift.”
“How can you say that to her and smile?” Arsinoe asks.
“How can you talk at all?” Billy asks, panting. He has taken over helping Joseph and struggles beneath the extra weight.
Jules reaches out, but Joseph waves his hand.
“I’m fine, Jules, I’m fine.” She steps close and kisses his face. It is cool to the touch and drenched in sweat.
“We have to get him to a healer.”
“We came on a barge,” says Emilia’s father. “It will carry you wherever you wish to go.”
GREAVESDRAKE MANOR
Katharine’s door opens, but the person who bursts in is not who they expect. It is not Natalia. It is Genevieve.
“Forgive me, Queen Katharine. I do not wish to interrupt but I felt you should know—”
Genevieve stops when she sees Pietyr with Katharine in his arms. Then her mouth drops open at the sight of Nicolas lying dead in the bed.
“What . . . ?”
Genevieve rushes past Katharine and Pietyr and stares down at the body. She does not ask whether someone else could have poisoned him. She is enough of a poisoner herself to see what has happened.
“Katharine, what have you done?”
“I did not mean it!” Katharine cries.
“It will be all right,” Pietyr whispers into her hair.
“How will it be all right?” Genevieve asks, her lilac eyes wild. “We have made her into poison!”
“We have made her a Queen Crowned,” says Pietyr.
“No,” Katharine says. “How can I be, Pietyr, if I can take no king-consort? If I cannot bear the triplets?”
“The poison may fade in time,” says Pietyr, but his voice is doubtful.
Genevieve slumps against the bed. Her hand slides in a puddle of cooling blood, and she shakes it off, splattering the sheets. As she leans toward the lamp for something to wipe herself clean with, the light shows her face, swollen from crying.
“Genevieve,” Katharine says. “
Genevieve’s arms fall to her lap. She seems to shrink right in front of them.
“Natalia is dead. Murdered.”
Katharine freezes. That cannot be right. Natalia, murdered? No one would dare. No one could.
“There must be some mistake,” says Pietyr. “Who? Who did it?”
“It does not matter who. We are over. Finished.” Genevieve’s fingers wrap around the corner of the bedsheets, shaking. “Look at this dead king! The temple will not have this . . . nor the Council. . . .” She looks around desperately as if she will find Natalia there somewhere, hiding. “What are we to do? We will have to stop Mirabella’s execution! Give her the crown instead! How those Westwoods are going to laugh—”
“Stop it!” Pietyr storms across the room. He grabs Genevieve by the arm and drags her to her feet. “Tell us what happened to Natalia. Tell us now.”
“William Chatworth strangled her,” Genevieve says. “The war priestess found him and put her knife into his chest. But by then, it was too late.”
A fat tear rolls down Katharine’s face. Too late. And the murderer dead as well, so she cannot have her vengeance, cannot poison him for days, for weeks, like he deserved. She would have crafted something for him to make him spasm so hard he broke his own back.
Katharine clutches at her stomach. Such pain, such anger boils up inside of her that she can feel even the dead queens cower.
“Natalia,” she whispers. “My mother.”
“Where is she?” Pietyr asks. “We would see her.”
“She is at the Volroy, being guarded by priestesses. Perhaps they will let you in.” Genevieve wipes at her own tears. “Before they execute Katharine as an abomination.”
“You are a disgrace,” Pietyr says suddenly. He had been staring out the window toward the Volroy as they spoke. Now he shoves Genevieve down onto the bed beside the dead king-consort. “No one is going to execute our queen. No true Arron would allow it.”
Genevieve jumps to her feet, fists trembling. “Natalia is dead!” she shouts. “Do you not hear what I am saying?”
Outside, below the window, the sound of hoofbeats announces another rider. It is a messenger. “They have escaped!” he calls up to the house. “The queens! They have escaped the cells and are gone!”
“Queens?” Katharine asks. “How is it ‘queens’? I poisoned Arsinoe myself.”
“What are we to do?” Genevieve moans. “I am not Natalia. . . . I do not—”
“Be silent, Genevieve, and listen to me,” Pietyr says. “Kat, listen. No one can be allowed inside here, do you understand? No one can see this body.”
“What will we do with it?” Katharine asks. “With him?”
“We will make up a tale.” Pietyr takes her face in his hands. “And you will be the Queen Crowned like we planned.” He looks at Genevieve. “Like we promised.”
He straightens his clothes and smooths his hair. He goes to bar the door.
“We will find Mirabella. And Arsinoe if she indeed still lives. And we will kill them. With no queens left, the temple will have no choice.”
“I do not understand,” Genevieve says. “If she still cannot bear the triplets . . .”
“That does not matter.” Pietyr closes the door and turns the key in the lock.
“Katharine will be the Queen Crowned,” he says. “It is just that she will be the last.”
THE INDRID DOWN WOODS
Arsinoe’s bear greets their running party by standing on his hind legs. He hardly knows these fast people in red-lined cloaks and swats at them defensively as they pass. Arsinoe stops below his chest. She is too out of breath to say his name, but his nose sniffs the air eagerly, and he lowers onto her shoulders, smothering her in bear fur and rolling her roughly around on the ground.
“Braddock,” she says when she is able. “You’re safe.”
He is safe but not the same. He is fur and bones. Those poisoners had not known how to feed him properly.
“We should not tarry here long,” says Emilia, and looks meaningfully at the queens. She is far more used to giving orders than taking them, Arsinoe could tell that at first glance.
“Jules!”
“Caragh!”
Jules and her aunt embrace beneath the weight of Joseph’s arm. It took Jules and Billy both to support him and help him through the forest.
“Can you help him?” Jules asks, but Joseph tugs free.
“I’m all right,” he says. “Just bind it tighter.”
Arsinoe gets to her feet. She turns Joseph into the moonlight and slaps his hands away when he tries to stop her. She lifts the bandage. Caragh leans down and looks for only a moment before straightening again.
“You see?” Joseph smiles. “It’s nothing. A scratch.”
Caragh’s eyes are wide and soft.
“Good,” Jules says, but she kisses Joseph very hard. One sob escapes her as she takes his hand and holds him up. But one sob only. She presses her forehead to his.
Arsinoe turns to Mirabella. Of course she has been listening. Her knuckles are pressed to her lips.
“What if we took him back into the city?” Arsinoe asks. “It’s Indrid Down. They have the best healers there. They must.”
“No,” says Joseph. “I’m fine. I’m going with you, wherever that is. So where is it?”
Arsinoe touches his face. He will be all right. He must be. Joseph Sandrin is one half of Jules.
“There are doctors on the mainland,” Billy suggests. “Good ones. Surgeons, far better than here. And it’s a short sail through the mist. We can come back and find you,” he adds when Joseph starts to protest.
“No,” Arsinoe says. “That’s good. That’s where we’re going anyway.”
Everyone stops and stares at her. Even Mirabella.
“You could return to your cities,” Madrigal suggests. “And gather support there. Not everyone will back the Council’s decision to execute you.”
“We could take you,” says Emilia. “Hide you in Bastian City. We would welcome you, Juillenne. You and anyone whom you wished us to protect.”
Jules looks from Emilia to Arsinoe. Then she looks down.
Before the Ascension began, Arsinoe always thought she would find her way back to Wolf Spring. That the madness of the year would pass, and everything would return to normal. Days spent with Jules at the Milone house. Nights beside a warm fire inside the Lion’s Head with Billy and Joseph. With Cait and Ellis. Luke and his handsome rooster, Hank. But that life—that good, familiar, and precious time—is over.
The alliance between queens might hold long enough to topple Katharine. But afterward, the people would want them to start all over again. It would be Mirabella or herself. One to kill the other. That is how it has always been.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Arsinoe asks her sister.
“I will not go back,” Mirabella says solemnly. “The Council ordered my death, and they went along with it. Luca went along with it.”
Arsinoe takes a deep breath. A queen sits upon the throne. The island has no more need of them. She must let them go. She has to.
“So we make for Bardon Harbor,” says Arsinoe. “Let’s steal a boat big enough to get us off this Goddess-forsaken island.”
BARDON HARBOR
Jules helped the warriors call the small river barge that took them into Bardon Harbor. It was not much, barely large enough to fit them all, and nowhere near sturdy enough to brave the rough waters of the sea, but they climbed aboard. Now Jules stands beside the warriors, pushing it with her mind. Joseph chuckles watching Camden at Jules’s knee, training all her cougar-focus on the barge as well.
“Look at our girl,” he says to Arsinoe, sitting beside him on the barge with her hand pressed hard to the wound in his side. “She’s outgrowing us.”
“That’s not true.” But she supposes that it is. She and Joseph have both been chasing after Jules since they were children.
He chuckles again and winces
“Here,” she says. “Let me bind that tighter.”
“No, Arsinoe. It’s fine.”
“Joseph, you have bled through the bandage. You should have stayed behind with Aunt Caragh. Found a healer.”
“And miss the adventure?” He smiles his lopsided Joseph smile.
“You’re wincing.”
“Yes. My side is sore because there’s a hole in it. Once we reach the mainland, Billy’ll take me to a doctor. And they’ll sew me up right and proper.”
The barge continues through the moonlight, skimming across the dark surface of the river. Arsinoe looks back. Warriors stayed behind, to run decoy in case of pursuit. Caragh and Braddock stayed behind as well.
“There was no getting the bear on the barge, Arsinoe,” Joseph says, reading her thoughts.
“I know.”
“You did save him. And Caragh will take good care of him at the Black Cottage.”
Stream-caught fish and berries for the rest of his days. And he will be safe. But she will never see him again.
Jules leaves the warriors and comes to squat beside them. She touches Joseph’s cheek and Camden climbs atop his legs to keep him warm. “Is he all right?”
“He is still conscious and can answer for himself,” he says.
“It’s not much longer now,” Jules says, and as she looks out worriedly at the river, the small barge seems to move faster. If the warriors notice, they do not acknowledge it, but Madrigal, Mirabella, and Billy all look over their shoulders.
“Good,” Joseph says. “Fishers are up early. If we want to steal a boat, we won’t have much time.”
They reach the mouth of the river, and Bardon Harbor slides into view. The boats docked at the port are much larger than the vessels in Sealhead Cove. Their masts rise through the predawn fog. These are far-ranging ships, built to chase frothbacks across the open sea, with smaller whale boats lashed to their sides. They are too big to be sailed with such a skeleton crew, but that is what Mirabella is for. And they will need a large vessel if the sea decides to put up any kind of fight.