One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns, #2)

by Kendare Blake

“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.” “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.