One Dark Throne

by Kendare Blake

  “Madrigal,” Cait says, her voice weary. “Be calm.”

  Madrigal laughs.

  “How many times have you said that to her? Be calm. Don’t worry. Control your temper. The oracle said that she was cursed. That she would bring about the fall of the island. And you believed her.”

  Cait stares at her daughter quietly. It has been a long time since anyone spoke such words aloud. But it was true. When Jules was born a blessed, Beltane Begot, and a girl, the first girl of a new generation of Milones, Cait sent for a seer, as was the old custom. But the moment the seer took one look at Jules, she spat upon the ground.

  “Drown her,” she said. “She carries the legion curse. Her naturalist gift will be touched with war. Drown her now, before she goes mad with it.”

  When Madrigal refused, the seer tried to take Jules from her arms, and when she touched the baby, fell into a trance, babbling about things to come.

  “It must be drowned. It must not live. She is ruin, and the fall . . .” She went on and on, eyes rolled back to the whites, and Madrigal screamed, and the baby wailed, until Cait and Ellis ordered the oracle out.

  They could not drown little Jules. They would not. So they bound her legion curse with low magic, a binding in her mother’s blood. What they did to the fleeing seer, Cait cannot bear to think about. But after it was over, they all agreed to forget.

  Cait blinks at Madrigal and shakes her head.

  “That is not why. You know why we bound it. Not because she would destroy Fennbirn. Because she would destroy herself.”

  “But she hasn’t destroyed herself. She’s ready now.”

  “You are never ready. The legion curse drives people mad. More than one gift is too much for a mind to bear.”

  “So they say,” Madrigal counters. “But they also say that the gifts under a legion curse are weak. And my Jules is the strongest naturalist anyone has ever seen. Just think what her war gift might be beside it.”

  On the banister, Cait’s crow familiar croaks and shifts angrily from foot to foot. Madrigal was always ambitious. No doubt some part of her was excited that a child of hers had received such a prophecy.

  “Is that what this is about?” Cait asks. “Your daughter. Your daughter. Being a part of this. Having a great destiny. But it is still really about you, Madrigal. You being a part of this. Hoping for your own great destiny.”

  “What an ugly thing to say, Mother.” For an almost imperceptible moment, Madrigal’s eyes narrow. Anyone who knew her any less would have missed it completely. And then her eyes are wide again, and imploring.

  “I know we had to bind it,” she says gently. “Sufferers of the legion curse were burned once. They were drowned. The Council would have demanded I leave her in the woods to die.” She touches her mother on the shoulder. “But she has grown up. Strong. And sane.”

  “We bound Jules’s war gift for her own good,” Cait says. “And”—she hesitates to say what she has never wanted to believe—“as the seer was right about the legion curse, it must have occurred to you that she could also be right about the rest of it.”

  “That Jules will bring about the fall of the island?” Madrigal scoffs. “That oracle was mad, like so many oracles before her.”

  “Perhaps. But, Madrigal, the binding will stay.”

  “Stay. But it will not hold. It weakens even now. I could release it if I chose. Her blood is my blood. I am her mother. And I will do what I think is best.”

  THE ASHBURN WOODS

  When Arsinoe gets tired of walking, she stops and builds a sizable campfire by the side of the road. Mirabella’s scout comes upon her as she lies beside it, her head resting on her sack of clothes.

  She or he is fairly good at stealth. Arsinoe does not hear them until they are so close that she does not need to shout to be heard. Of course, a truly stealthy scout would not have come so close in the first place.

  “Tell my sister I’m here,” Arsinoe says without moving. “Tell her I’m waiting.”

  “Mirabella.” Elizabeth shakes her shoulder gently. “Mira, wake up. The scout has returned.”

  It is still too dark in the deep woods to see anything but a shape. Mirabella thought she had fallen asleep against the trunk of a tree, but as she dozed, she must have fallen over into the dirt. Her cheek is gritty with it.

  Somewhere to her right, Bree grumbles, and then her face is illuminated by orange flames as she lights a small pile of sticks on fire.

  “Well,” Bree says, her eyes puffy. She flicks her wrist and the fire grows. “What’s so important that we must wake from our spots on the hard ground?”

  The scout dismounts and takes a knee. He seems nervous. Confused.

  “What is it?” Mirabella asks. “Is the way through to Wolf Spring barred?”

  “That is unlikely.” Bree yawns.

  “It is Queen Arsinoe,” the scout says. “She is waiting for you on the main road.”

  No one reacts, except for Bree, who comes fully awake and inadvertently sends her small flames rushing into the air.

  “How did she know we were coming?” Elizabeth wonders. “She must have better spies than we thought.”

  “Did you see the bear?” asks Mirabella.

  “I did not. I looked for it everywhere, but not even my horse ever seemed to catch its scent.”

  Mirabella looks eastward. Dawn is beginning to gray through the trees. The thought of the bear is like ice in her stomach. She remembers claws and roars and screams, and swallows hard.

  “I will leave as soon as it is light enough to keep from tripping over roots,” she says. “Do I need Crackle, or is it walkable?”

  “Mira!” Bree and Elizabeth exclaim together.

  “You cannot go if we do not know where the bear is,” says Bree.

  “Let us scout ahead more, in the daylight.”

  “No,” Mirabella says. “If she has hidden her bear, then she has hidden it. I will be ready.” She looks at her friends’ faces in the firelight and is careful not to show her own fear. “She is here. It is time.”

  Joseph travels as fast as he can along the dark, tree-covered stretch of the Valleywood Road. He is exhausted after a long day working the boats and had barely closed his eyes to sleep when Madrigal started throwing pebbles at his bedroom window.

  He thought she was looking for his brother Matthew, but when he opened the sash, she called to him and waved her arms. So now he is running through the dark, hoping that he has gone the right way after Jules and Camden. They do not have much of a head start, and the pain in Jules’s legs may slow her down after a while.

  But what Madrigal told him about Jules cannot be true. That Jules is legion cursed and touched with war. Joseph saw a legion-cursed child once, and the poor boy was half mad, holding his hands over his ears and dashing his shoulder against a wall. Joseph and Matthew had come across them in Highgate as the boy’s family was traveling to Indrid Down Temple, where the boy would be mercifully poisoned and put out of his misery.

  That is not Jules. To hear Madrigal tell it, the low magic spell that bound Jules’s curse is weakening, and the war gift may show itself any time she loses her temper. But Jules has lost her temper often, and he has seen no evidence of that.

  He does not know what Madrigal is up to, telling him such lies. But he went after Jules anyway, to keep her out of the queens’ business. Because if she intervenes, the Council will have her hide, legion cursed or not.

  Arsinoe screams when Mirabella brings her dying campfire roaring back to life. She cannot help it. The flames are so hot. The wood is charred to embers in seconds, and when she rolls away, she smells burned hair, and her mask is so hot for a moment she fears it melted to her cheek.

  “You,” Arsinoe sputters. She rolls up against a tree trunk and scrambles to her feet. Mirabella is barely on the other side of the road. Arsinoe did not hear so much as a footstep or a snapped twig. “You’ve gotten quieter.”

  “Perhaps you just sleep harder.”

  A
rsinoe glances down at her makeshift pillow, singed black now and full of lumpy clothes and hard cheese.

  “That’s not likely.”

  “Where is your bear?” Mirabella asks.

  “I left him behind.”

  “You are lying.”

  Arsinoe swallows. The poisoned knife is a comforting weight in her vest, but she does not want to use it. She will have a hard time getting close enough to use it, anyway. That blast of fire was no trifle. Mirabella has found her nerve.

  “You had better bring him out,” Mirabella warns, and a strange pulse settles over Arsinoe’s skin. She looks down. The hair on her arms is standing straight up.

  The bolt of lightning shines bright white in the foggy morning, and the tree behind Arsinoe erupts in sparks. The jolt goes through the bottoms of her feet, and she drops into a tight crouch as it slams her teeth together. Pain rushes from her toes to the roots of her hair.

  Talk, she thinks, but she can barely force her jaw apart. So she runs instead, one leg dragging as she makes for the cover of the trees. She hurls herself over a low shrub, and Mirabella’s fire eats it away behind her in an explosion of orange and hissing steam.

  “Stop, stop!” Arsinoe shouts.

  “You had your chance to stop,” Mirabella shouts back. “And you sent a bear for me instead.”

  The wind changes direction, circling around Arsinoe’s collar, tossing her hair into her eyes. Mirabella is gathering a great storm overhead. The first gust shoves Arsinoe against a tree. A branch whips into her eyes, and a section of the burning shrub cracks loose and strikes her in the side, singing a hole through her vest and shirt. She winces, and looks down into the carved rune of low magic in her hand. She can feel the bear is on his way. She should have called him long ago.

  The next bolt of lightning knocks Arsinoe off her feet. Pain, then stars, then blackness before her eyes, and she rolls bonelessly back into the road.

  Jules is not far away when the first lightning strikes. The ground shakes, and the wind follows soon after.

  Jules and Camden start to run.

  “Jules, wait!”

  She turns. Joseph hurries toward her in a wrinkled shirt.

  “I can’t,” Jules calls. She points to the rising smoke. Arsinoe needs them.

  Mirabella walks cautiously toward Arsinoe lying in the road. She holds the storm at the ready, to lash out on command, and keeps one eye on the woods. Her heart hammers in her chest, but so far, no great brown bear has come rushing out, roaring, and slashing its claws.

  It must be there. Arsinoe said that she left it behind. A lie. It is only waiting until Mirabella drops her guard.

  Arsinoe lies on her back in the road, one arm extended past her head. She is not moving. She looks like a dirty pile of twigs and rags. Mirabella nudges her with a toe.

  “Get up.”

  Arsinoe is completely still. Mirabella edges closer. Could it really be as easy as that?

  “Arsinoe?”

  She thinks she hears a mumble and flinches, looking about wildly for the bear. But still it does not come.

  “What did you say?” Mirabella asks, and Arsinoe rolls over.

  “I said, ‘one.’ Fire, lightning, wind . . . It would be nice if you would just choose one.”

  Mirabella straightens. “Just because you have only one trick does not mean I must.”

  “You don’t know anything about my tricks.” Arsinoe stares up at her from behind that infuriating mask. Her nostrils are ringed with blood. Her hand twitches toward the interior of her vest. There are old cuts on her palm. “You look different.” She glances at Mirabella’s brown cloak and her black hair held tight in a long braid. “All dressed up for your crown.” Arsinoe coughs and her eyes wobble. It is a wonder she is still conscious.

  “Why did you come here?” Mirabella asks. “Are you giving up? Do you want me to turn you into a lump of charcoal?”

  “Maybe? I’m not sure. I wasn’t raised like you were. We never made any plans. So now I just do things.”

  “Is that right?” Mirabella says through her teeth. “You just do things. Like what you did at the Quickening, when you sent your beast to slice me open?”

  Arsinoe swallows and grimaces, her teeth tinged pink with blood. Then, to Mirabella’s astonishment, she actually chuckles, and her hand slides away from her vest to fall in the dirt.

  “You thought I sent him for you.” She chuckles again. “Of course you would.”

  “You did.”

  “Did or didn’t, I haven’t sent him at you today, now have I?”

  “You tried to kill me not two days after I saved you. You ungrateful brat!” Mirabella clenches her fists, careful to keep control of her elements. She wants to throttle her sister. Box her ears. Beat every last chuckle out of her. She could strike her with lightning now and be done with it. Arsinoe is an easy, immobile target.

  “What are you doing here?” Mirabella shouts. “Why did you come out here?”

  “To keep you out of Wolf Spring,” Arsinoe replies. “Away from the people I love.”

  “I would never harm them.”

  “They’re not so sure. Ascensions turn ugly. Ascensions are ugly.” Arsinoe pauses. “We could walk away. Let Katharine and the Arrons win. The poisoners have won three times before. Nothing much will change with a fourth, no matter what the temple lackeys say.”

  “Abdicate?” Mirabella barks a sad laugh. “They would never let us. Stop trying to bargain when you have been beaten. You are the one who said it was the way things are. We kill or we are killed.”

  Arsinoe breathes in slowly. She looks at the trees, and the light streaming through the clouds.

  Mirabella’s mouth twists downward. Her eyes blur. She does not want to talk anymore. One fast bolt of lightning is all it will take, and if she looks away, maybe she will not be haunted by it afterward.

  “Mirabella,” Arsinoe whispers.

  “Yes?”

  “When you go after Katharine, don’t hesitate. I know she was our little girl whose hair we braided full of daisies, but she isn’t anymore.”

  “Jules, stop!” Joseph grabs Jules by the arm.

  “We can’t stop! Can’t you see that storm? Didn’t you see the lightning?”

  “Arsinoe is clever,” Joseph reasons. “She would never walk into this fight without a plan. Let her do it.”

  “Let her do it. You would let her kill your Mirabella? Or are you hoping that she’ll lose?”

  Jules jerks free, and Joseph does the only thing he can think of. He tackles her to the ground.

  Her response is immediate and fierce. She elbows him in the temple and Joseph’s vision swims. But he does not let go. Not even when Camden’s formidable weight crashes into him and sends them all rolling.

  “Joseph, let me go! Let go!”

  “No, Jules, I can’t!”

  She screams and strikes out with everything she has. The sound of their struggle has to be loud enough to reach the queens. If Arsinoe falls, at least she will know that Jules was there.

  Camden’s teeth sink into Joseph’s shoulder and she jerks hard, trying to wrench him off.

  “Ah!” he yelps. “Jules, please!”

  “No!” she screams. “NO!”

  It is so hard to keep his grip on her that he does not notice the quaking of the trees. He does not hear the branches rattling, not until the first one snaps and flies toward the ground to embed itself deep into the dirt.

  Joseph ducks his head as more branches rain down, stabbing into the ground like knives. He lets go of Jules and covers his head with his arms.

  At once, the branches stop. The trees stop quaking, and the only sound is of their frightened breath, and Camden’s nervous groans.

  “What was that?” Jules asks. She struggles to her knees and gathers her mountain cat close, feeling all over her coat to make sure she was not cut or stabbed.

  “I think,” Joseph pants, “that was you.”

  “What was that?” Mirabella asks.
“Did you hear that?” But of course Arsinoe heard it. And she knows those screams.

  “That was Jules,” Arsinoe says, and struggles up onto her elbow, spitting blood. “Something’s happened to her! Did your priestesses do something?”

  Arsinoe reaches into her vest, and her hand wraps around the handle of the poisoned knife. She does not want to do it. Mirabella saved her at Beltane. Mirabella loves her. But if Jules was hurt, they will all be hurt.

  “No,” Mirabella says quickly. “They would not! And they are not that way. They are there,” she turns and points toward Highgate. Then she scowls. “Is this meant as distraction? It will not work!”

  The storm grows dark again overhead, and Arsinoe considers her options. Perhaps she could still throw the knife, slide it into Mirabella’s heart. Poisoners are naturally good at those arts, or so she has heard. But even if they are, she has never practiced.

  The rune in her hand begins to burn.

  A tingling rune is not much of a warning, and Arsinoe screams right along with her sister when the bear crashes through the trees onto the road. He bellows, louder even than the thunder, and his strides are as long as a horse’s and just as fast.

  “Wait!” Arsinoe shouts, and the bear hesitates just enough to keep him from slashing his claws across Mirabella’s chest.

  Mirabella falls back on her haunches, her courage broken. She scrambles away, cheeks wet with panicked tears, no doubt reliving the last moments on the Quickening stage, when she watched as the bear tore apart priestesses on his way to kill her.

  “Wait, wait, come to me,” Arsinoe says urgently, and holds her rune hand out.

  The bear is not her familiar. The charm that binds them together is only low magic. But Arsinoe is a queen. Her low magic is strong, and the bear does as she asks. She smears blood from her nose onto her palm and presses it to the great beast’s forehead, and he licks her face.

  “Let’s go,” she says. She holds on to the bear’s fur as he takes her burned shirt in his teeth and drags her down the ditch and into the cover of the trees. He is fast, and shockingly quiet, and they are deep into the woodland before Mirabella recovers.