Three Dark Crowns (8 page)

Joseph grins and scratches Camden behind the ears. “What does Arsinoe have, then? And where is she? There are people here I want her to meet. One more than the others.”

“Who?”

“My foster brother, William Chatworth Jr. And his father. They have a delegation this year.”

He regards her with mischief. The temple will not like that they are here. Delegations are not allowed to arrive until the Beltane Festival, and suitors are not allowed to converse with the queens until after the Quickening is over. She wonders who these men are to have been able to bend the rules.

Joseph nods at someone over her left shoulder, and Jules turns to see Autumn, a priestess from Wolf Spring Temple,
approaching with a somber expression.

“Juillenne Milone,” she says gently. “Forgive the intrusion. The temple wishes to welcome Joseph Sandrin back to his home. We would take him and his family to the altar to receive a blessing.”

“Of course,” Jules says.

“Can it not wait?” Joseph asks, and grumbles when the priestess does not reply.

On the eastern hill of Wolf Spring, Wolf Spring Temple sits tucked, a white circle of brick surrounded by small priestess cottages. Autumn is one of only twelve priestesses who reside there. It has seemed to Jules a lonely place, whenever she has gone to pray. Except on festival days, the temple is mostly empty save for Autumn, tending the grounds, and the others in the gardens.

“And as always,” Autumn says, “we extend an invitation to Queen Arsinoe, to receive a blessing.”

Jules nods. Arsinoe has never set foot inside the temple. She says she will not pray to a Goddess with a turned back.

“Listen,” Joseph says. “I will come to you when I'm ready. If I come at all.”

Autumn's serene face falls to a scowl. She turns on her heel and leaves.

“That was not much of a welcome,” Jules says. “I'm sorry.”

“This is all the welcome I need.” Joseph puts his arm across her shoulders. “You. Here. And my family. Come and say hello to them. I want you all with me, for as long as I can have you.”

Madrigal tells Arsinoe that they are going into the hills after pheasant. She will charm them, and Arsinoe will shoot them.

“You have never gone hunting in your life,” Arsinoe says, shouldering her small crossbow and bag of bolts. “What are we really going to do?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Madrigal replies. She tosses her pretty, light brown hair, but the way she glances through the kitchen window, where Cait stands preparing a stew, tells Arsinoe that she is right.

Together they walk far north of the house, up the trail past the clearing and Dogwood Pond, and into the cover of the forest. Arsinoe sinks past her ankles into snow. Madrigal hums a little tune, graceful despite the drifts. Her familiar, Aria, flies far ahead above the trees. She never sits on Madrigal's shoulder, like Eva sits on Cait's. It is almost like they are not familiar-bonded at all. Or perhaps it is only that Aria never matches the outfits that Madrigal likes to wear.

“Madrigal, where are we going?”

“Not far.”

It has been far already. They have walked up high, where large gray stones break through the ground. Some are only rocks, and some are the mostly buried remains of monoliths from back when the island was truly old and wore a different name.

In winter, though, they are hidden under snow, and slippery. Arsinoe has almost fallen twice.

Madrigal changes her course and walks along a rise to the
leeward side, where the snow is less deep. It is an odd little spot where the thick trunk and bare branches of a tree bend over to form a sort of canopy. At the base of the hill, Madrigal has hidden a cache of dry wood, and two small three-legged stools. She hands one of the stools to Arsinoe and begins arranging the wood for a fire, weaving in slender pieces of kindling. Then she pours oil from a silver flask onto the lot of it, and lights it with a long match.

It whooshes up hot. The logs catch quickly.

“Not so bad for a naturalist,” Madrigal says. “Though it would be easier if I were an elemental. Sometimes, I think I'd rather be almost anything than a naturalist.”

“Even a poisoner?” Arsinoe asks.

“If I were a poisoner, I would be living in a grand house in Indrid Down rather than my mother's drafty cottage by the sea. But no. I was thinking perhaps of the war gift. To be a warrior would be much more exciting than this. Or to have the sight and know what will come to be.”

Arsinoe plunks her stool down near the fire. She does not mention that the Milone house is much more than a drafty cottage by the sea. That is all Madrigal will ever think of it as.

“Why did you come back?” Arsinoe asks. “If you are so dissatisfied? You were six years on the mainland, and you could have stayed there.”

Madrigal prods the flames with a long stick. “Because of Jules, of course,” she says. “I couldn't stay away and let her be raised by my dull sister.” She pauses. She knows she has
spoken out of turn. No one in the family will hear one word spoken against Caragh. Not since she took Jules's place in the Black Cottage. How that must annoy Madrigal, who hardly has a kind word to say.

“And you,” Madrigal says, and shrugs. “A new queen. I wasn't even born when the last one was crowned, so I could not miss this. You are the only excitement this island has seen in all that time.”

“Yes, excitement,” says Arsinoe. “I imagine my death will be very exciting.”

“Do not be so dour,” Madrigal says. “I am on your side, unlike half these people. Why do you think I've brought you all the way up here?”

Arsinoe sets her crossbow and bolts beside her foot and stuffs her chilly hands into her pockets. She should have refused to come. But with Jules in Wolf Spring with Joseph, it was either this or chores.

“What do you think my Juillenne is doing down in town?” Madrigal muses, fiddling with something in her coat. She pulls out a small bag and sets it in her lap.

“Welcoming home an old friend,” Arsinoe says. “Her best friend.”

“You
are her best friend,” Madrigal says slyly. “Joseph Sandrin has always been . . . something else.”

She pulls four things out of her bag: a curving braid of hair, a strip of gray cloth, a length of black satin ribbon, and a sharp silver knife.

“Low magic,” Arsinoe observes.

“Don't call it that. That is the temple talking. This is the lifeblood of the island. The only thing that remains of the Goddess in the outside world.”

Arsinoe watches Madrigal set out the items in a careful row. She cannot deny being fascinated. There is a peculiar bend to the air here, and a peculiar feeling in the ground, like a heartbeat. It is strange that she has never stumbled across this place, and this bent-over tree, before. But she has not. If she had, she would have known immediately.

“Be that as it may,” Arsinoe says, “low magic is not a queen's gift. We aren't like everyone else. Our line is . . .” She stops. “Sacred,” she almost said. Of the Goddess. It is true, but the words turn the inside of her mouth bitter. “I shouldn't do it,” she says. “I should go down to the water and yell at a crab until it prostrates itself before me.”

“How long have you tried that?” Madrigal asks. “How many times have you called for a familiar who hasn't come?”

“It will come.”

“It will. If we raise your voice.”

Madrigal smiles. Arsinoe never thinks of Madrigal as beautiful, though many, many people do. “Beautiful” is too gentle a word for what she is.

“Jules will help me to raise it,” Arsinoe says.

“Don't be stubborn. Jules may not be able to. For her, things come too easy. The gift is there, at her fingertips. She reminds me of my sister that way.”

“She does?”

“Yes. Caragh opened her eyes one day and had the gift. All of it. Just like Jules. It was not as brutally strong as Jules's is, but it was strong enough to turn my parents' heads. And she did it without work.” Madrigal stokes the fire and sends up sparks. “I have wondered sometimes if Caragh isn't somehow really Jules's mother. Even though I remember giving birth to her. They were so close after I returned to the island. Jules even looks more like her.”

“So, uglier, you mean.” Arsinoe frowns.

“I didn't say that.”

“What else can you mean? You and Caragh look similar. And Jules looks nothing like either of you. The only feature she and Caragh share is that they are both less pretty than you. Jules bonded with Caragh, but what can you expect? You were gone. Caragh raised her.”

“‘Raised her,'” Madrigal repeats. “She was scarcely nine years old when I returned.”

She takes up the cloth in her lap and tears away errant threads until the edges are clean.

“Maybe I do feel guilt for leaving,” she says, staring down at her work. “Maybe that's why I am doing this now.”

Arsinoe studies the strip of gray cloth. She studies the braid of dark brown hair and wonders who it belonged to. Beneath the bent-over tree the breeze has stilled, and even the fire burns quietly. Whatever it is Madrigal is doing, they should not be doing it. Low magic is for the simple or the desperate. Even
when it works, there is always a price.

“Have you noticed that no one is panicking that your gift hasn't come?” Madrigal asks. “Not Cait. Not Ellis. Not even really Jules. No one thinks you are going to survive, Arsinoe. Because naturalist queens do not survive. Not unless they're beasts, like Bernadine and her wolf.” She ties a knot in the strip of cloth and uses it to anchor another knot around the braid of hair.

“Great Queen Bernadine,” Arsinoe mutters. “Do you know how tired I am of hearing about her? She is the only naturalist queen anyone remembers.”

“She is the only one worth remembering,” Madrigal says. “And for all their savagery, the people of Wolf Spring have gotten used to that. They have accepted it. But I haven't.”

“Why haven't you?” Arsinoe asks.

“I am not sure,” Madrigal says, and shrugs. “Maybe because I have watched you, growing up in Jules's gifted shadow, the way I did in Caragh's. Or maybe because I want my daughter to love me, and if I save you, she might learn to.”

She holds up the bit of braid and cloth. Arsinoe shakes her head. “It will go wrong. Something always does when it comes to me. Someone will get hurt.”

“It will hurt when your sisters kill you,” Madrigal reminds her, and presses the charm into Arsinoe's hand.

It seems like a harmless bit of junk. But it does not feel that way. It feels far heavier than any braid and strip of cloth should feel. And more alive than any rosebud in her hand.

“The Goddess is here, in this place,” Madrigal says. “The priestesses pray to her like she is a being, some faraway creature, but you and I know better. We feel her inside the island. Everywhere. You felt her in the mist that night, in the boat, when she would not let you go. She is the island, and the island is her.”

Arsinoe swallows. The words feel true. Perhaps once, the Goddess was everywhere, stretched out over the sky all the way to the mainland. But now she is drawn in, curled up like a beast in a hole. Just as powerful. Just as dangerous.

“Is this Jules's hair?” Arsinoe asks.

“Yes. I took it when I was brushing it this morning to put into a bun. It took forever to straighten it and braid it together.”

“What about the cloth?” It looks old, wrinkled, and dirty.

“A strip of Joseph's shirt, from when he was a boy. Or so my mother says. He ruined it on a nail out by the barns, and Jules kept it after she gave him a new one. I don't know how she remembers these things.” She snorts. “Of course, there are other things of Joseph's that we could use, but we don't want him charging Jules like a rutting stag.”

“This is a love spell,” Arsinoe says. “You are teaching me to use low magic, to do a love spell for Jules?”

“Is there any motivation in the world more pure?” Madrigal hands her the length of black ribbon. “Wrap them together and then tie them around with this.”

“How do you know how to do this?” Arsinoe asks. Though in truth it feels almost as if she herself knows how to do it. Her
fingers twist the braid and cloth together effortlessly, and she would have known to reach for the ribbon even if Madrigal had not instructed her to.

“Off the island there is nothing else,” Madrigal whispers. “Close your eyes. Look into the flames.”

“Jules would want to do this herself,” Arsinoe says. “No, she would not do it at all. She does not need this.”

Across the fire, Madrigal purses her lips ruefully. Every girl in Wolf Spring knows about the Sandrin boys. Their mischievous smiles, and eyes like storm clouds reflected upon the sea. All that wind in their dark hair. Joseph will be that way now. And even though Arsinoe loves Jules, and thinks of her as beautiful, she knows that Jules is not the kind of beautiful that holds a boy like that.

Arsinoe looks down at the charm, winding itself between her fingers. Moments ago, it was a scrap of nothing to be tossed into the bin or for birds to use to line their nests. But there is more to it in the knots that Madrigal tied, and the twists where Jules's hair and Joseph's shirt press tightly together.

She finishes the last wrap of the ribbon and secures the end. Madrigal takes up the silver knife and slices into the underside of Arsinoe's forearm, so fast that it takes the wound a few seconds to bleed.

“Ow,” says Arsinoe.

“It didn't hurt.”

“It did, and you could have warned me before you did it.”

Madrigal shushes her and presses the charm into the running
blood. She squeezes Arsinoe's arm, squeezing her into the charm like milk into a bucket.

“A queen's blood,” Madrigal says. “The blood of the island. Thanks to you, Jules and Joseph will never be parted again.”