One Dark Throne

by Kendare Blake

  “Did I tell you how sorry I am? How I didn’t know what my low magic could do?”

  “You did. And it doesn’t matter. We’ll never really know whether it was your magic, or Mirabella’s beauty, or Joseph being half-dead and easily aroused.”

  Arsinoe chuckles.

  “Besides. I’ve forgiven him.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly.” Jules says, and nods.

  Camden’s ears prick.

  “What is it?” Arsinoe asks. They listen. Hoofbeats, from the direction of the mountains. Jules springs for the window. If it is riders from the Black Council, there is no time to run.

  Arsinoe throws back her quilt and winces as she dangles her leg over the side of the bed.

  Jules turns and frowns.

  “Arsinoe, you dolt! Stay in bed!”

  “Dolt? What a thing to say when I’ve almost died.”

  But Jules is no longer listening. Her eyes widen, her knuckles white as she grips onto the curtains.

  “Stay there,” she says, and bolts for the door. “It’s Joseph!”

  “Joseph? Camden, stay and help me!”

  But the cat scrambles off the bed and dashes after Jules, as excited to see him as she is.

  “Stupid, love-sick cat,” Arsinoe grumbles. She uses the bedside table to brace and reaches for the arm of the chair. Somehow she manages to get to the window and holds fast to the sash.

  Just past the cottage steps, Jules and Joseph have their arms wrapped around each other. His reins are still looped over his elbow, so Jules probably dragged him bodily off his horse. Madrigal is there too, sitting very upright, staring directly at Caragh.

  Arsinoe turns and limps out of the room, sliding against the wall as she goes down the hallway. When she gets to the door, Joseph is so buried in Jules that at first he does not even see her. But when he does, he shouts.

  “Arsinoe!”

  “Arsinoe.” Madrigal’s mouth hangs open, and Arsinoe nods to her before Joseph gently scoops her into his arms, squeezing a bit too tightly.

  “Careful,” she says. “I really was shot by a crossbow.”

  He kisses her cheek and turns to Jules.

  “You did it, Jules. You saved her.”

  “Yes, she is alive.” Willa steps up onto the porch, carrying two plucked chickens. “And so popular. You are all welcome at our table tonight. But tomorrow you go. Contrary to its size, the Black Cottage was not intended to house guests.”

  GREAVESDRAKE MANOR

  Genevieve lies stretched across the silk brocade chaise in Natalia’s study, eating figs glazed in sugar and cantarella. Ever since Midsummer, it is as though she is on a great holiday, humming and buying lavish gowns and dresses from her favorite shops in the capital. She is acting as if killing Arsinoe has won them the crown, and it is beginning to get on Natalia’s nerves.

  “Why are you not at the Volroy, sister?” Natalia asks.

  “I am not needed today,” Genevieve replies. “They are discussing a request from Rolanth for funds to restore the Vaulted Theatre.”

  “You should be there to advise.”

  “They already know what I would advise. Our eyes in Rolanth say they are overextended in renovating the central district. They will bankrupt themselves and ask the crown to bail them out.” She eats another fig and licks poison from her fingers. “Only Lucian Marlowe will argue their side. Saying that the crown’s coffers are for all queens, not just ours. Can you imagine?”

  Natalia stares past Genevieve through the windows that overlook the drive. Katharine is somewhere out there, riding the bridle paths with her suitor and Pietyr. She alone deserves a moment to celebrate. Not the Council. They must keep working in preparation for the journey to Rolanth at the Reaping Moon.

  “If I were to die,” Natalia says suddenly, “you would be the head of the family.”

  Genevieve puts down her figs.

  “Sister? Are you unwell?”

  “I am fine.” Natalia walks to the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Katharine on horseback. She has gifted her a flashy new stallion, all black, with long, lean legs and a smooth stride. He will not replace Half Moon, but she hopes that they will get along.

  “Then what are you thinking of?”

  Genevieve rises to a seated position and sets her sticky plate to one side.

  “I suppose I am thinking of our mother,” Natalia replies. “And what she would say if she were alive to see us now.”

  “Mother,” Genevieve says, and shudders.

  Yes. Mother was terrifying. She held the Council, and Queen Camille, in a clenched fist. When she controlled the Arrons, the whole island feared them. The only thing the Arrons had to fear was her.

  Natalia, though she has tried, has never been her mother’s match. And Genevieve is even less so. Genevieve inherited all their mother’s cruelty but none of her initiative, and so she is cutthroat but unreliable. She never knows where to strike.

  “And what would mother say?” Genevieve wonders aloud.

  Natalia crosses her arms.

  “She would certainly say that we are horrible breeders. No children for me and none for you. Only a boy for Christophe.”

  “But Antonin has two girls and will have more.”

  Genevieve says nothing of children for herself. She has never shown much romantic inclination, and of the lovers she has had, those that lasted the longest were women. As for Natalia, the Goddess sent her Katharine, and she is more than enough.

  She smiles, watching Katharine and Pietyr ride side by side out of the trees. The new stallion rises up on his hind legs when Katharine tries to slow him. She looks so delicate on his massive back, but soon she has him prancing docilely in a circle.

  Natalia sighs.

  “Enough of this. Has there been any word of the Milone girl? Any word of Arsinoe’s body?”

  “None. And no one expects any. The naturalist knows her woods. If she hides the corpse away or buries it, no one will find it except for the bugs.” Genevieve raises an eyebrow. “It is the Milone girl who is the real problem. So strong and legion cursed? And with the war gift of all things. Something must be done.”

  “Something will be done,” Natalia says. “But not yet. The legion curse is an abomination. It is my guess that the temple will take care of her for us. Which will give us a chance to keep our hands clean with Wolf Spring.”

  Natalia presses her forefingers to the bridge of her nose.

  “You will not be able to do this for much longer, sister,” Genevieve says.

  “Do what?”

  “Hide away in your hilltop manor. Soon, Katharine will be living in the east tower with her king-consort, and you will have no more excuses to avoid your Council seat.”

  “Do not remind me.” Natalia narrows her eyes at a rider approaching up the long, tree-lined drive. A messenger. Riding fast. Katharine intercepts the letter, and tears it open. Natalia tenses. She rushes from the room when Katharine begins to scream.

  Katharine pats her new stallion’s neck. Together they led Pietyr and Nicolas on a merry chase through the woods, and the stallion does not want it to end. But she keeps her hands firm on the reins until he quiets.

  “Shall we go in for tea?” she asks the boys. “And later to the city, to buy sardines to feed my poor sister’s bear?”

  “I do not like you so near that thing,” Pietyr says, and she rolls her eyes. During the parade back to the city, Pietyr flinched every time it fought against its ropes. “It is not happy with you, Kat, for what you did to its mistress.”

  “Truly, Pietyr, I thought the same at first. But I have fed the bear many times since, and whatever anger it had is gone. It is as if it does not care at all.”

  “Perhaps it’s no longer a familiar, now that she is dead,” Nicolas adds. “In any case, I enjoy seeing it, Queen Katharine. And perhaps hunting it, at this year’s Beltane Festival?”

  She smiles, a little nervously. “Perhaps.”

  Hoofbeats make them pause.
They stop their mounts and wait for the messenger to canter up the drive.

  “Good afternoon, Queen Katharine,” the girl says, breathless from her ride. She bows as deep as she can in the saddle. “I have a message for Mistress Arron.”

  “I will take it.” Katharine holds out a gloved hand, and the messenger gives it over. She salutes them before riding away.

  Katharine breaks the Black Council’s wax seal and opens the letter. Another letter is folded inside and falls out onto the ground. She dismounts to collect it, and Pietyr takes her stallion’s reins. When she turns the letter over, it reveals the blue-and-black wax of Rolanth. Of her sister Mirabella.

  Katharine reads it and starts to scream.

  “Kat!” Pietyr quickly dismounts. “Kat, what is it?”

  She crumples the letter from Rolanth in her fist. It was not addressed to her. It was not addressed to anyone. It was a notice, found tacked to the gates of the Volroy.

  Pietyr takes her by the shoulders, but she breaks free, screaming so loud she spooks the horses, and her new stallion bolts for the safety of the stables. Nicolas struggles to keep his mare still, his expression confused.

  “Katharine!” she hears Natalia calling, running to her across the courtyard. “Kat! Are you all right?”

  “How many of these are there?” Katharine shouts. She stalks toward Natalia and Genevieve and holds up the crumpled paper in her fist. “How many? You must have known! When were you going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” Genevieve squeaks as Natalia pries the letter from Katharine’s fingers and reads.

  “It is a challenge,” Natalia says. “Mirabella has challenged Katharine to a duel, to be held at the great arena in Indrid Down.”

  “What?” Pietyr asks. “When?”

  “At the next full moon.”

  Genevieve moans. That is less than two weeks away.

  Natalia grabs for the accompanying letter from the Council.

  “It says they are everywhere,” Katharine says. “Tacked to every board and signpost in Indrid Down.”

  “How did she manage it?” Genevieve asks shrilly. “It must have taken a small army to pull off such a stunt!”

  “Then she must have used a small army,” Natalia replies.

  Katharine grits her teeth. She recites the challenge from memory in a bitter voice.

  “A duel. To be held the day of July’s full moon, in the arena in our great capital of Indrid Down. All are welcome to bear witness to the end of the Ascension and the beginning of a new elemental reign . . . !’” Katharine grabs at her hair and shrieks, tearing it loose of its bun. “Who has seen these?”

  “There is no way to know,” says Natalia. “But if it were me, I would dispatch riders to every corner. I would make sure that the entire island hears of the challenge.”

  “Must everyone be here to witness this?” Genevieve hisses. She throws her hand up at Pietyr’s mare, who has fled only a few paces away. “Even the horses? Shall I call the kitchen staff and the maids?”

  “This is not the way.” Katharine begins to pace, biting at her nails and muttering to herself. “It is not what we planned. Not what we hoped. We would see her disgraced in her own city.” She spins angrily and points to the letter. “‘All are welcome to bear witness.’ Bear! Is that some slight against me and the way I dispatched Arsinoe?”

  “If it is, I do not see how.”

  Katharine takes a deep breath. She smooths her mussed hair. Mirabella will not get away with this. The supreme brat will live only long enough to regret ever coming to the capital.

  “Kat,” Pietyr says gently, “a triumph is still a triumph, whether in Rolanth or Indrid Down. This will be even more gratifying in many ways, as it will be before all of those in the city who have watched you grow from a child. Mirabella’s boldness will only make it easier. And sweeter when she loses.”

  Katharine pauses. Then she exhales, and the shoulders of everyone around her relax slightly.

  “Perhaps you are right. Either way, she will be dead. Here we can arrange things the way we like. And I will not have to disturb the bear by making him travel.” She grabs the notice from Natalia and tears it down the center, smiling sweetly as the halves float to the gravel drive. “I will hold a ball, the night before. To welcome her.”

  “Yes,” says Natalia. “That is a fine idea.”

  Katharine nods, and blinks at them. They look terrified.

  “Natalia, I am so sorry! I did not mean to carry on so!”

  “It is all right, Kat. Though you must control your temper. What has come over you? You are behaving like an elemental.”

  Katharine lowers her head. She curtsies to Natalia and walks alone toward the house. But it is not long before Pietyr catches up to her.

  “A duel,” he says. “Katharine. What will we do? I cannot believe that the temple would allow it! The risk is too great, on both sides.”

  “She thinks she can win,” Katharine says as they enter the manor, cool darkness enveloping them and making her skin prickle. “That the Goddess is on her side.” She reaches for belladonna berries piled high in a gold bowl on a foyer table and stuffs a handful into her mouth.

  “She may win,” Pietyr cautions. “In the open space of the arena, she will have the advantage.”

  “She will have no advantage.”

  “Katharine. That is plenty of berries.” He takes her arm, but she wrenches away and eats still more, the juices running down her chin. “Kat, you will sicken!”

  Katharine laughs.

  “And what if Mirabella is right?” Pietyr asks. “What if the Goddess is on her side?”

  Katharine turns on him, grinning with teeth full of poison, and for a moment her vision blacks out and makes his face a void, dark and bottomless as the pit of the Breccia Domain.

  “It does not matter. They are on mine.”

  ROLANTH

  The notice that Bree prepared in swirling black ink challenging Katharine to a duel in the Indrid Down Arena is absolutely perfect. It bears Mirabella’s signature, recreated at the printer’s. But she made sure to send the original to tack to the Volroy gates.

  “They are everywhere?” Mirabella asks.

  “Everywhere,” Bree replies. “From here to Bastian City and even northwest to Sunpool.”

  “And to Wolf Spring?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” Mirabella says. “I would have Arsinoe’s family there to see the poisoner fall.” She chuckles slightly.

  “You are jovial?”

  “Only when I imagine Katharine’s face when she reads this,” Mirabella says, but her smile does not last. It is easy to think of killing Katharine when she is angry. But when the anger fades . . . she must not let the anger fade.

  Beside them, Elizabeth worries at the stump of her left wrist.

  “Are you all right, Elizabeth?” Mirabella asks. “Does it still pain you?”

  “Not often,” Elizabeth replies. She looks down at the skin, pulled taut over the nub of bone. The scars from the stitches have faded to a deep pink. “I’m only wondering about the tattooed bracelet. It will feel strange to adorn an eyesore such as this.”

  Elizabeth turns her wrists over, toying with her one bracelet of ribbon and beads. Soon they will perform the ritual and ink the black bands into her skin, and she will be a full priestess, belonging to the temple forever.

  “Your arm is not ugly, Elizabeth,” Bree says hotly. “It was an ugly thing that was done to you.”

  “When do they want to hold the ceremony?” Mirabella asks.

  “As soon as I will consent. It’s past time. . . . I’ve been an initiate for almost three years.”

  “And will you do it?” asks Bree. “You should not. You should throw off those robes and stay with us. You will always be welcome at Westwood House.” Bree’s voice is forceful. Determined. She does not understand why Elizabeth stays after what they did to her. Bree is not suited to serve like Elizabeth is.

  “I haven’t
decided,” Elizabeth says. “I wouldn’t mind staying an initiate for a little while longer. Perhaps a few years. Perhaps forever. Then I could keep Pepper, and still have the choice to stay or go.”

  Mirabella looks ahead to their white-robed escort. They have drifted quite a distance away, but she is sure they are still listening. She squeezes Elizabeth’s elbow.

  “You will tell us? So we can be there?”

  Elizabeth nods, and Mirabella kisses both her friends on the cheeks before parting company to go and see Luca.

  She finds the High Priestess in her rooms high in the temple, soaking up a spilled cup of tea with one of her silk pillows.

  “Perhaps a towel?” Mirabella suggests, and Luca startles.

  “Mira, you frightened me.” She holds up the soiled pillow and makes a regretful face, then drops it beside her desk, ruined. “You have just missed Rho.”

  “Oh,” Mirabella raises her brows, unable to feign disappointment. “Are the two of you hatching plans again?”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do. I have heard the whispers about Beltane. Your idea to sacrifice my sisters into the fires and make me a White-Handed Queen.” She pauses to watch Luca try to maintain a passive expression. “Your priestesses forget I have ears. They grow careless when they speak. But with all of your scheming, I cannot believe that you disapprove of the duel.”

  “Whether or not I disapprove does not matter. You announced it before the city.”

  “You think we should let her come to Rolanth?”

  “At least we would have the advantage of having her attack be here, at home, where she would feel unfamiliar and off balance.”

  “Yes,” says Mirabella. “And how did that work for Arsinoe? Coming here is what Katharine wants. She wants me cut down in Rolanth. Humiliated in front of my people. I was never her target in the Wolf Spring woods! It was always Arsinoe. It was always going to be Arsinoe.”

  Luca studies her quietly from beneath her white hood.

  “Perhaps we have missed our chance,” Luca says, “Once, you were the chosen queen. Now all is uncertain. Now our fortunes have reversed.”