One Dark Throne

by Kendare Blake

  “What low magic?”

  “The night you came back, she did a love spell for us. But she did it wrong. She ruined it, and she thinks that’s why . . . why you and Mirabella . . .” She stops. Joseph is quiet for a long time.

  “Joseph? Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “Like what, Jules?” he asks softly.

  “Well . . . do you think that’s why it happened? Arsinoe’s low magic is so strong. It could’ve been. It really could have been.”

  “I know what you’re doing.”

  “What?”

  “Trying to forgive me,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “You don’t want to go out there tomorrow still hating me.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “I hope you don’t. But what happened with Mirabella was my fault. Maybe the magic put us in each other’s path, maybe it even helped us along, but that doesn’t make me blameless, Jules. I made a mistake. I wish I hadn’t, but it doesn’t change what I did.”

  Jules knew all that, deep down. But she feels freer somehow now that he has said it.

  “Well, anyway,” she says cheekily. “I was just trying to make you feel better about it, since we’re about to die.”

  Joseph laughs.

  “How I love you, Jules.”

  Footsteps echo down the hall, and Jules wipes her tears on her sleeve. No guard on patrol will see tear streaks on her face. Not ever.

  “What now?” Joseph asks.

  Jules stiffens when she hears a sound like a body falling. Camden’s ears prick, and she gets to her feet, tail ticking back and forth.

  “Jules!” Arsinoe hisses. “Jules, are you down here?”

  “Arsinoe!” Jules and Camden scramble up to the bars as Arsinoe runs to them. They embrace her as well as they can with hands and paws. Camden purrs and licks her face.

  “Camden, blegh.” Arsinoe grins and wipes her cheek.

  “I might have licked you as well, I’m so happy to see you.” Jules gasps. “I thought you were dead. I thought they killed you.”

  “Aye, they tried. But they tried the wrong way. They sent that sister of mine to poison me.” Arsinoe fumbles with a ring of keys until she finds the one that opens the door. Then she tosses the ring to Mirabella to open Joseph’s. “Are you and Cam all right?”

  Jules steps out of the cell just as Joseph collides with them and kisses them each in turn: girl, girl, cougar.

  “We’re okay.”

  “Good. We have to get out of here now. Are you strong enough? Can you fight?”

  Jules clenches her fists.

  “That’s a silly question.”

  She looks across the corridor, at Mirabella, and nods to her. Then she slips out of her friends’ arms and lets Arsinoe lead the way out.

  GREAVESDRAKE MANOR

  Nicolas helps her out of the carriage, and Katharine looks up nervously at the light from her bedroom windows. Her maids will have prepared the room, setting out vases of poisonous flowers and lighting candles with perfumed wax. They will have turned down the bed.

  Katharine takes a deep breath. No carriage ride from the city has ever been over so quickly.

  Nicolas pulls her up the path to the house, and Natalia’s butler opens the door.

  “Edmund,” she says. “Is Natalia at home?”

  “She has not yet returned from the Volroy, my queen,” he replies. “But all has been made ready according to her specifications.”

  “That is good.” Katharine stalls a little as he takes her cloak. The air on her shoulders makes her feel very bare. “Though I expected that she would be here . . . or if not her, then Genevieve . . . Yet I suppose I should be glad that she is not here. . . .”

  “Enough,” says Nicolas, and pulls her close to kiss her neck. He takes up a lamp from the foyer table and leads her quickly down the hall.

  As they pass by the rooms, Katharine is gripped by an unexpected sadness. Soon she will say good-bye to Greavesdrake, to its ancient, creaky floors and sunless rooms full of cold spots. After tonight, she will not return. Not as she does now. Greavesdrake will no longer be home.

  “Nicolas, slow down. I will turn my ankle!”

  “You will not.” He laughs.

  The house seems so empty. Where are the tittering maids, the spying servants? There is not so much as a rustling skirt darting out of their way. They reach her bedroom, and Nicolas tugs her through the doorway so hard that she nearly falls.

  Inside, the space is lit softly with candles. The carpets and bed are strewn with red flower petals. She has imagined this night before. But it was never Nicolas she imagined beside her.

  Nicolas turns her to face him. Her breath is already fast.

  “I do not know why I am so nervous,” she says.

  “Do not be.”

  He kisses her.

  It is not like Pietyr’s kisses. Not like a dam breaking. It will take some getting used to, but at least his lips are soft. He strips her of her gloves.

  “These scars.” He stares at her hands. “Will they fade?”

  “I do not know,” she says, and tries to pull her hands away. But instead of being disgusted, the sight of the scars only seems to arouse him further. He bites them and traces them with his tongue. He kisses her neck and her collarbone, and his touch is rough, as though their wedding has made him bold. She has heard it is like that sometimes with mainland men. Though she does not remember where she heard it. From Pietyr, perhaps, during her education. Or from Genevieve, meaning to frighten her.

  Nicolas takes himself out of his shirt and works his fingers into the fastenings of her gown.

  Katharine turns away.

  “Stop. Wait.” She walks through the anteroom and into her bedchamber. It has all happened so fast. The duel, her crowning, poisoning Arsinoe. She has had barely a moment to breathe, and now she feels all those missed breaths clawing at her throat.

  “Wait for what?” Nicolas asks. He follows her and kisses her shoulder. Gentler now. She closes her eyes.

  In the morning, it will be over. She will execute Mirabella, and the hum in her blood will quiet. The dead queens of the Breccia Domain satisfied. But even as she leans into her king-consort’s arms, she feels the dead queens picking at her, surging through her. They make her strong and never leave her alone.

  Pietyr, I should never have sent you away, she thinks as she flinches from wetness left on her neck by Nicolas’s kisses.

  Nicolas stops. He pulls her up, holds her chin so she must look him in the eye.

  “Are you thinking of him?” he asks.

  “No,” she lies.

  “Good.” He picks her up and carries her to the bed. “Because he is not here.”

  THE VOLROY

  Arsinoe’s blood pounds in her ears as they head up and up the Volroy steps. She feels safer now that Jules is there, even though she is still in the lead. Part of her thought that when they freed Jules and Joseph, Jules would take over the escape. But they will get out either way.

  They reach the next floor, and Arsinoe presses flat to the wall. This is the last gate. She remembers the ornate iron brazier in the center of the room from when they were being dragged down to the cells. She leans forward by a fraction and quickly leans back. There are so many guards. No less than ten. A few are seated around the rectangular table. Others lean against the walls. Three stand directly beside the passageway through the gate. All are armed with clubs and knives. Two carry crossbows.

  Arsinoe turns and holds up ten fingers. Jules nods. Joseph’s and Mirabella’s faces pale. But there is no way out but through.

  Arsinoe takes a deep breath. She hopes that everyone knows what to do. And that they are able to do it.

  She barrels into the room and runs headlong into the nearest guard, dropping her shoulder into his chest so hard that she hears a crack. That must be good, because he folds up and hits the floor without throwing so much as a punch.

  “The scarred queen! The queens!” The guard by the g
ate shouts. Chairs tip over as the guards at the table rise. They hesitate to raise weapons against queens. Especially one who seems able to come back from the dead.

  Jules darts out from the shadow of the corridor and levels one of them holding a crossbow. Camden, snarling, quickly pins the other, and Joseph rips the weapon from his hands.

  “Quiet! No one move!” Arsinoe commands, hands out. “Get to the middle of the floor. Lie on your bellies!”

  A guard wearing a black captain’s sash shakes her head.

  “We can’t let you out of here, my queen,” she says.

  “You can, and you will,” says Arsinoe.

  But the captain’s hand goes to her short-bladed sword. She draws it and spins away from Arsinoe, aiming for Joseph. It is a fool’s move. Jules’s war gift stops the sword from ever coming down, and Joseph reflexively fires the crossbow. The bolt sinks deep into the captain’s chest.

  The sight of their captain spitting red sends the rest into a frenzy. Arsinoe is immediately shoved and has to duck fast to avoid the swing of a black-lacquered club. The sound of it ringing off the stones makes her dizzy. That could have been her head, split wide open. Ducked low, she grabs for the knife at the guard’s belt and sinks it into his leg, then into his shoulder as he falls.

  Someone else’s club catches her in the back. Her vision swims bright and dark, and she collapses onto the floor.

  There is so much noise. So much struggle. Someone steps on her hand and crushes it. Mirabella is screaming.

  “Jules?” Arsinoe groans. “Where is Jules?”

  Bones pop, and the guard who hit Arsinoe falls dead to the ground. Someone reaches underneath her and pulls her up.

  “I’ve got you, Arsinoe,” Jules says. “I’ve got you.”

  Arsinoe turns to look at her, and her eyes widen.

  “Jules, look out!”

  But before the knife can swing down, the attacking guard bursts into flames. Mirabella’s face is furious, her fire so hot that the guard only shrieks for a moment. She lowers the fire as the stench of burned flesh spreads heavily through the air. Jules coughs amid the smoke and fires a crossbow bolt into the dying body, to put him out of his misery.

  “I had to,” Mirabella says. “I—” Camden, who must have been guarding her, wrinkles her muzzle and slinks away to curl behind Jules’s legs.

  Arsinoe looks around. It happened so quickly. Every guard is dead or unconscious. The room is full of sick-smelling smoke. Joseph is on one knee, panting from the exertion of the fight.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Arsinoe mutters.

  Joseph stands, his right side dark with blood.

  “Joseph!”

  Jules slips out from beneath Arsinoe’s arm and goes to him, pressing hard against the wound.

  “Here.” Mirabella tears more strips from her skirt to bind it.

  “I’m fine,” he says. “It’s just a cut. It’s not even that deep.”

  Jules lifts his shirt. She and Mirabella wrap him up tight, using so much of the skirt that Mirabella’s legs are visible over the tops of her boots.

  “I’m all right, Jules.” Joseph touches her face. His hand trembles.

  “I know,” she replies. “You’ll be perfectly fine, as soon as we get out of here.” She puts his arm over her shoulders and nods to Arsinoe.

  “Right,” Arsinoe says. But she swallows hard, looking at him. There will be plenty more guards to get through when they make it upstairs and into the Volroy proper.

  She grabs a torch off the wall and takes up one of the fallen guard’s clubs.

  “Mirabella, stay behind me,” says Jules. “You don’t need to be out front to use your gift, do you?”

  Mirabella shakes her head.

  As quickly as they can, they move through the last gate and creep up the stairs to the ground level. Near the top, Arsinoe sets down the torch before the light can give them away.

  There are bound to be many guards here. Probably priestesses too. It will take all of them and the Goddess besides to get clear of the Volroy, and even then, they will probably be instantly stopped in the courtyard.

  They turn the corner, ready to fight. But there is no one there. Only faintly burning candles in the sconces on the walls. And then they see the bodies.

  Bodies of guards are littered across the ground. Arms and legs stick out from beneath tables and from behind half-closed doors.

  “What happened here?” Joseph asks, and Jules crouches as a dozen cloaked figures run into view with weapons drawn.

  The wind quickens through the windows as Mirabella gathers her elements. “Wait, wait!”

  The cloaked leader pushes back his hood, and Arsinoe drops her club.

  “Billy!” she cries, and runs into his arms.

  “Arsinoe!”

  He lifts her off the ground. He squeezes so tight that she can barely breathe and kisses her hair and the scars upon her face.

  “Are you all right?” he asks. “I was terrified we would be too late.”

  “I’m fine,” Arsinoe says, beaming. “But who is ‘we’?”

  A girl steps forward wearing a red-lined cloak.

  “I remember you,” Arsinoe says. “From the arena. You were at the duel.” She looks over the rest of them, barely a dozen in total, who have laid waste to every guard on the main floor of the fortress. “What are you doing here?”

  The girl regards her with respect and bows slightly.

  “We are warriors from Bastian City,” she says, and nods toward Jules. “And we came for her.”

  GREAVESDRAKE MANOR

  Katharine wakes in the dark to Nicolas thrashing, jerking, caught in the net of some horrible dream. She reaches out and touches his shoulder, and he eases back to sleep.

  The room is full of shadows. The candles and lamps have gone out or been put out; she cannot remember. What she does remember sends heat to her cheeks. Nicolas was so different from Pietyr. But he is no less passionate. Afterward, he held her tightly, pressed together skin to skin.

  She rolls toward him and slips her hand beneath the blankets.

  “Nicolas? Are you awake?”

  He does not stir. Her king-consort is exhausted. She walks her fingers up his chest, playfully.

  Her finger slides in warm liquid. At first she cringes, thinking it is drool. But then she recognizes the scent in the air. The smell of so much warm and sudden blood.

  Katharine sits up. She leans across to her bedside table for the candle and long matches. Her hands tremble as she lights it, even though she knows what she will see.

  Nicolas lies dead, covered in blood. It pools atop his chest and in the wrinkles of the fabric, staining the sheet bright red. It has run from his mouth and from his nose. Even from his eyes. His veins are a swollen, angry purple beneath his skin, nearly everywhere she touched him.

  Katharine sits back on her knees and stares down at her new husband. Poor Nicolas. Poor mainland boy, with no gift to help him withstand the toxins. She looks down at her skin, at her hands, at her whole body where the poison resides. The poison inside her must be strong indeed if it can produce such an effect so quickly.

  Poor Nicolas. He lay with a queen, and he died for it.

  Hoofbeats ring across the stones of the drive. Katharine gets quickly out of bed and stuffs her arms into her dressing gown.

  “Natalia. Natalia will help me.”

  She smooths and folds the tangled, blood-soaked bedclothes, breathing hard, beginning to weep. She touches Nicolas’s cooling cheek, and then pulls the sheet over his face. Natalia cannot arrive and see him that way.

  “I am sorry,” she whispers as footsteps sound in the hall.

  “Kat?” Pietyr says, and knocks. “I saw your candle from outside. Are you awake?”

  “Pietyr!” Katharine cries. She runs to him and crushes herself to his chest as he comes through the door.

  “You are trembling. What is—?”

  She closes her eyes. He has seen it. Seen what she has done. He draws
away to look at her. In the faint, shadowed light, he can only barely make out the crown of ink across her forehead. He touches it with his thumb.

  “So you have done it,” he says sadly. “Tell me what has happened.”

  It falls out of her mouth in a torrent. The farce of a duel. The crowning. The assassination of Arsinoe. Her wedding night, and the dead king-consort in her bed. When she is finished, she waits, sure that he will shove her away.

  “My sweet Katharine,” he says, and wipes the tears from her cheek.

  “How can you say that?” Her fingers have left streaks of red on his shirt. She tears free and returns to her bedroom, where the shape of Nicolas lies, what is left of his blood pooling in his back and legs.

  “I killed him. Just by touching him. There is something wrong with me!”

  Pietyr steps around her. He takes up a lamp from the table and pulls back the sheet. Katharine turns away when she sees how gray Nicolas’s skin has turned and how sunken his eyes. Pietyr picks up an arm and inspects the fingers.

  “So much poison,” he whispers.

  She is practically made of it. She is like they said she was, the Undead Queen.

  She claws at her own face, disgusted, rubbing the fresh scab of her crown until it smears across her forehead, bloody and black.

  Pietyr sets down the lamp and comes to her. He pins her arms to her sides.

  “Stop. You are a queen. You are crowned. And none of this was your fault.”

  “You are not surprised,” Katharine says. “Why?”

  Pietyr looks deep into her eyes for a long time. Almost as if he expects to find someone else there.

  “Because after you sent me away, I went to the Breccia Domain. I went down into it.”

  His fingers dig into her skin, and she notices that they are cold.

  “What do you really remember, Kat? From when you fell?”

  “From when you pushed me,” Katharine says, and jerks loose. She lowers her eyes. “And I remember nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Pietyr repeats. “Perhaps not. Or perhaps you are lying. What I saw there, or what I thought I saw there, made me scream like I have not screamed since I was a child.”