One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns, #2)

by Kendare Blake

“Because every queen we have ever had has done the same. Since the beginning.” Arsinoe’s jaw tightens. Since the beginning. That old parable, that the Goddess sent gifts through the sacrifice of queens, triplets sent to the island when the people were still wild tribes. The strongest slew her sisters and their blood fed the island. And she ruled as queen until the Goddess sent new triplets, who grew, and killed, and fed the island. They say it was an instinct once. The drive to kill one another as natural as stags locking horns in the autumn. But that is only a story.

“Why did you do it, little sister?” Arsinoe wonders aloud. “Is it because you were angry? Because you thought I tried to have that bear slice you open?” But in her mind, Katharine offers no reply. Little Katharine. When they were children, her hair was the longest. And the shiniest. Her face had the sharpest little features. She would float on her back in the stream behind the cottage, with her hair clouded around her like black widgeon grass. Mirabella would send currents through it, and Katharine would laugh and laugh.

“They ought to end that,” she says. “Maybe. But they won’t. He says he loves her, Jules.” “Only with his eyes,” she spits. “Not with his heart.” Joseph nearly flinches when she says that, and she glances sideways at his handsome profile. Perhaps that is how all men love. More with their eyes than with their hearts. So maybe it was not the storm and the circumstances. The delirium. Queen Mirabella is certainly more to look at than she is, and maybe it was nothing more complicated than that.

“Do you know us?” Katharine whispers to it. “Do we still smell of the rock and the deep, damp earth that you threw us down into?” She kneels and places her hands on the marble floor. She leans across. The Goddess Stone lays before her curved and black, showing her pale reflection. “You will not have your way this time,” Katharine says, her lips close enough to the obsidian to kiss it. “We are coming for you.” Katharine strips off her glove and places her hand against the cold, hard surface. Perhaps it is only her imagination, but she could swear that she feels the Goddess Stone shudder.

Not long ago, she was the Chosen Queen and thought that she would leave Rolanth beneath banners flying. Instead, it was in the dead of night, and no one in the towns they passed has stepped out into the road to wish her well. She is in hiding, in secret, and even if she was not, Arsinoe and Katharine had such strong showings at the Quickening. There is no Chosen Queen anymore.

“We should have told her,” Madrigal says. “No.” “She will find out anyway. You’re not blind. You’ve seen what’s happened since the Ascension Year began. How her temper grows. The bear she killed by the bent-over tree . . . the one she killed without touching! And how many broken plates have there been? How many vases knocked off tables? You tried to bind it, but it didn’t work.”

“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.”

“Before the Beltane Festival, I thought watching a Gave Noir would be vulgar. But afterward”—he looks up at her from beneath his fall of gold hair—“there is something alluring about it. That you may eat something that I will never be able to taste.” “Shall I describe it to you?” “Do you think you could?” “I do not know.” She looks down at the mushrooms: their bright red caps spotted with white. “Much of what we eat is bitter or has little taste. But there is something in the sensation of it. It is like eating power.”

“I can’t believe how well you are,” Nicolas whispers, gazing at her in awe. “There was so much poison . . . enough to kill a man twice your size.” “Enough to kill twenty,” Katharine corrects him, smiling. “But do not worry, Nicolas. I have been eating poison since I was a child. Now I am practically made of it.”

“This is how it will be,” Billy says, his voice low. “I will taste for you, and I will smile. I will appease my father.” He feeds her another bite of sweet apples. “And I will be back with my Arsinoe before she can even miss me.”

“Does she know that you love her?” Billy raises his eyebrows. “Why would she when I didn’t? It wasn’t like I read in books. A thunderclap. Eyes meeting. Tortured glances. With Arsinoe it was more like . . . having cold water poured down your back and learning to enjoy it.”

“When you kill them. You will, of course.” He gestures toward the bows, toward the targets full of arrows. “And the servants have told me of your skill with a knife. Throwing them near to a target? I would very much like to see that.” Katharine’s stomach tightens with pleasure, and a tingle rolls up and down her back as if touched by unseen fingers. “Would you indeed,” she whispers. “Perhaps you only think so. You might feel different when you saw your future queen slide a knife into her pretty sister’s breast.” Nicolas smiles. “I come from a family of soldiers, Queen Katharine. I have seen much of that. And worse.” He takes another swallow of wine. It gathers at the corners of his mouth, bright red. “And I do not like to be back from the action.”

“Natalia prefers that I poison from the safety of her bosom,” she says. “That is how the Arrons like to do it. Quiet and refined. Nothing pleases them more than pleasant dinner conversation that ends when someone’s face falls dead to their plate.” Nicolas lets his eyes move over her body. “There is charm in that,” he says. “But I would see your hands around their throats. A memory to take with me on the night of our marriage.”

“That isn’t how it works.” “How do you know?” Madrigal asks. “The war gift has been weak for so long that nobody knows how it works.” That is true enough. Everything Jules has ever heard about the war gift has been the stuff of long-ago legends. Of the recent there are only rumors. Folk in Bastian City who have uncanny accuracy with knives and bows. Near-impossible shots made so clean that it is almost as if the weapon were pulled on a string. But it is not pull so much as push. Jules has worked at it, alone and mostly in secret, aghast and amazed at what she is able to do.

“They may, but I will not go,” he says. “I will be here until the day you tell me to leave.” Katharine’s pulse quickens. The look Pietyr gives to Nicolas is so dark that she wonders whether it is a good idea that they both remain at Greavesdrake. If their rivalry goes much further, she will enter the drawing room one day and find Nicolas poisoned or Pietyr slumped across the sofa with a knife in his back.

“Everyone knows that the temple supports Mirabella,” she says. “But you are priestesses of Indrid Down. In service to poisoners since you came.” “All queens are sacred,” the priestess responds. Katharine’s jaw tenses. She glances at Nicolas, who moves his horse back. “I know you do not like me,” Katharine whispers. “I know you sense that I am wrong, even if you will not say so.” “All queens are sacred,” the priestess says again in her infuriating, even voice. Katharine would like to ride the white robes into the dirt. Grind them into the mud until they are stained dark red and brown. But the caravan approaches in hoofbeats and jangling harnesses, trunks and wheels rattling. So instead she smiles a smile of bared teeth. “Yes,” she says. “All queens are sacred. Even those you threw into a pit.”

“A shame,” says Nicolas. “Though you, sweet Katharine, are warlike enough for me.” He grins. Such a suitor she has attracted. He is refined and charming, but he craves blood. He says she is too bold to poison from a plate. That she is too skilled with knives and arrows to let that skill go to waste. When he said so, she nearly kissed him. She nearly pushed him to the ground. Natalia wants her to take Billy Chatworth as her king-consort to preserve the alliance between their families. But when the suitors engage in The Hunt of the Stags, a sacred hunt open only to them, Billy Chatworth will not stand a chance. Nicolas will hunt him as he hunts the stag. And then Katharine will be free to choose him.

“It would be easy to hate her,” Katharine says, thinking of her sister, her eyes losing focus on the crowd. “Another queen standing in the way. But Queen Arsinoe was an innocent in this. Just as much an innocent as I. Before that bear”—she gestures toward it—“before Beltane, the people felt about her what they felt about me. That we were weak. Born to die. Sacrifices to the chosen queen’s legend. So let us not forget the queen we truly hate. The darling of Rolanth and the temple.” Katharine holds her cup high. “So I toast to Queen Arsinoe, my sister, whom I killed with mercy. It will not be so when I kill Queen Mirabella. Queen Mirabella will suffer.”

“So we are a good match.” Then he shakes his head. “I can’t do this. So soon after. It feels wrong.” “You want to avenge her, do you not? Or would you give up now and go back to the mainland? Will you go and pay court to Katharine, her murderer?” “No,” Billy barks, and his expression turns dark. “Never.” “Then stay and be a part of it.” Mirabella holds out her hand. She needs him to say yes. She suddenly cannot bear the thought of him leaving. He—the only suitor who loved her sister—he must be king.

“I wanted her to have everything,” he says, staring at her hand. “I wanted to have everything with her.”

“As you wish. But will he take part in the Hunt of the Stags?” “He may.” “And will he try to poison me there? Cut me with a poisoned blade?” “Will you try to put your knife in his back?” Katharine counters, but Nicolas only laughs. “Of course not, my sweet,” he says. “When I kill a man, I look into his eyes.” Katharine forces a smile. Of course he is joking. He must be. No one must ever be allowed to harm Pietyr. No one but her.

“How much longer will the mourning last?” Billy asks. “Not long,” Mirabella replies. Soon the candles and the crimson will be gone. The prayers said for Arsinoe at altars will cease. Vanquished queens are not spoken of past the Ascension Year. There is no hall in the Volroy that houses their portraits. No one even remembers their names.

“You are the strongest,” she says. “You could be the one. But up close, you are such a disappointment. Your eyes are wary as a kicked dog’s, when you and I both know you have never been kicked in your life. Not like me, who has been kicked down with poisons and popped blisters and made to vomit until I weep. “That is why I am going to win,” she goes on as they twirl. “I may be the weakest, but I am a queen, through and through. All the way down to my dead blood and bones.” “Katharine, stop this now.” Mirabella’s voice is pitiful. And she shudders when Katharine leans close. “Do you know what they do with the dead queens, sister?” Katharine asks. “Do you know what they do with their bodies?” She stops the farce of a dance to stand still in the center of the floor and jerks Mirabella toward her until they are chest to chest and eye to eye. “They throw them into the Breccia for the island to eat. And may I tell you a secret?” Katharine’s lips press to Mirabella’s ear, almost like a kiss. “They are tired of it.”

At the mention of her name, the air warms. Katharine was one of them. One of the fallen. There are centuries of sisters here, ready to listen to her woes and cradle her with skeletal hands. But that was a lie. Whatever help they gave was not for her. It was for them, and they have twisted through Katharine like ivy. “Who are you?” he shouts, but he already knows, and so the queens who dwell in the Breccia do not bother to tell him. What remains of them is uglier than bones and gray, withered skin. It is crushed hopes. The air reeks of their bitterness.

Katharine studies him in the candlelight. He is so handsome and a good match for her. But he is not Pietyr. A tight, cold ball settles in the pit of her stomach. Pietyr tried to kill her. But only because he thought she would be killed anyway and killed horribly, by serrated knives and strangers pulling her apart. Of course he could have hidden her instead. But that is not the Arron way. Arrons win, or they lose. All or nothing. And Katharine never expected him to be any different.

“You should stay with us,” Emilia says fiercely. “Let the queens and the mainlanders go.” “I am her guardian.” Jules’s eyes follow Arsinoe through the harbor. “And I will remain her guardian. Until the end.”