The look on Natalia’s face says she would very much like to slap the girl, but she does not. Mirabella is a queen. Instead, Natalia shouts, “Westwoods!”
And the Westwoods come forth. Such is the clout of the Arrons after so many years of ruling the Black Council. The Westwoods grasp Mirabella by her thin arms and pull, and the younger queens start to scream, reaching for their sister only to have their hands slapped away. Jules hides half her face in Caragh’s blowing skirt as Mirabella rages. The wind rises, loud enough to cover the Westwoods’ words of comfort, but not enough to mask the queens’ cries.
Soon, Mirabella is gone, dragged into the trees of the Greenwood, and the storm goes with her. In the meadow, two little queens stand together, chest to chest, wrists locked behind each other’s backs.
“Caragh,” Jules whispers, and tugs on her arm.
“Shush, Jules. Wait our turn.”
But Jules cannot watch them be pulled apart again. And she knows the name of the queen they have come for. Arsinoe. Arsinoe the naturalist, who will be hers to take care of, and Joseph’s too, whether he likes it or not. So she pulls free of her aunt, and steps into the meadow.
“Queen Arsinoe?” she asks, and holds out her hand.
The queens’ heads raise from each other’s shoulders. The taller of the two looks at her, and Jules knows she is Arsinoe. Jules smiles. She points to herself and then to her aunt and Matthew.
“I’m Jules Milone. This is my aunt Caragh and our friend Matthew. We’ve come to take you back to Wolf Spring.”
Arsinoe’s cheeks are streaked with tears and dirt. She looks at Jules, and Jules holds out her hand again. Then the queen looks back at her smaller sister and whispers to her.
“No!” the littler girl says. “They are mean!”
“You have to go, Kat,” Arsinoe says. “And be good. We will see you again.”
For the first time, Natalia Arron acknowledges Caragh, Matthew, and Juillenne. Her eyes slide over them only for a moment, but Jules dislikes the way the look feels, and stands up straighter.
“Good,” Natalia says, and takes the littlest queen’s arm. “Come, then.” She stalks away, nearly too fast for the girl to keep up, dragging Katharine along as she stares back over her shoulder.
Suddenly, Katharine pulls back hard.
“Arsinoe!” she shouts, and Arsinoe springs forward like a cat. She scratches wildly at Natalia Arron’s arms and face, drawing blood before Willa can pry her off. When Arsinoe’s arms are held fast, Natalia slaps her across the face.
Caragh and Matthew gasp, and in Jules’s stomach, butterflies fight with wasps, afraid and outraged.
“You do not strike a queen,” Willa growls.
“That one is no queen crowned,” Natalia says. “That one is walking dead.” She pulls Katharine, crying, out of the meadow, and the Arron procession follows into the trees.
“Come on, Caragh Milone,” says Willa, and softly strokes Arsinoe’s wild black hair, stuck down with sweat and snot and tears. She kisses the girl once and then turns away, back down the meadow toward the cottage. She has raised the queens from birth. And now her work is finished.
Arsinoe stands by herself. A queen should not look so sad or lost or beaten. Jules walks closer, and when Arsinoe does not move, she takes one more step and folds the other girl in her arms.
ROLANTH
The journey from the Black Cottage to Westwood House marks the most miserable days of Mirabella’s life. She is ill with the memory of her last moments with Arsinoe and Katharine. She hears the echoes of their cries and feels the ghosts of their fingers grasping at the sleeves of her dress. As for her new family, they have barely spoken to her. “Sit her up straight,” the matriarch, Sara Westwood, said. “Get the queen some water.” Never “Mirabella.” Never by her name, or to her, at all.
When she finally stopped screaming, after several long minutes in the carriage, they were relieved. They wiped her dry and patted her all over, as if she were a horse. Not one of them has dared to look her in the eye.
“Not long now until we reach Rolanth,” Sara Westwood says to her brother, Miles.
“Should we stop and send a rider ahead?” he asks. “So the people can turn out to greet her?”
Sara glances in Mirabella’s direction. “I am not sure. After what happened at the claiming, and in front of the Arrons—”
“At least they can have no doubts about what she can do,” says Miles. “The strength of her gift.”
“Still . . . perhaps we had best wait until she is settled at home. Bree will calm her in no time—you will see. Then she can face the crowds.”
“I would not mind,” Mirabella says softly. “I would like to meet people.”
Sara and Miles look at her, finally. So do the two quiet, frightened Westwood girls. Cousins, she has gathered, who are visiting only for the prestige of the claiming and will not stay and reside with them at Westwood House.
Mirabella tries to smile. Perhaps it does not look queenly enough, because Sara huffs and turns to look out the window. These people are flighty as birds. Why are they not like Willa? Why do they not seem to know what to do?
At the Black Cottage, Willa schooled all the queens, teaching them how to read and write, showing them numbers and arithmetic. And when Katharine fell asleep atop an open book, and Arsinoe wandered outside to chase the chickens around, she would teach Mirabella about the elemental city of Rolanth. Now Mirabella yearns to see it outside of the artists’ renderings. To see the river rush out to the sea and to walk beside it through the Central District, where it is slowed to a crawl by locks and barges. She has imagined the smell of the evergreens and the ocean salt, and the sound of her heels against the stone of Shannon’s Blackway, high on the basalt cliffs near Rolanth Temple. But it seems she will not even be permitted to look out the window.
She tries to catch Sara’s attention again, to show her that she is a queen, that she has been raised as one and knows how to behave. At the cottage, with her sisters, Mirabella never felt small, and as the oldest, she never felt young. But she feels both very small and very young in the carriage full of Westwoods. Finally, after a long time of silence, she falls asleep, curled up into the seat with her legs tucked into her skirt.
“Queen Mirabella.”
She wakes to a hand on her shoulder.
“You slept a long time. We are here. Home, at Westwood House.”
Mirabella opens her eyes. They have been many days in the carriage and only stopped to change horses, never to sleep in a proper bed. In between griping about the Arrons, Sara had muttered about the preciousness of the queen and how important it was to get her back to Rolanth quickly. But as Mirabella steps out of the carriage on wobbly legs, she does not feel like a queen at all. Only dirty and hungry and faintly ashamed.
She looks up, blinking in the bright light, at Westwood House. It is indeed a grand place, at least twice the size of the Black Cottage. The carriage is stopped before the front steps, parked on a stone-paved drive that circles a tall, gurgling fountain.
“You are most welcome here, Queen Mirabella,” Sara says, seemingly more at ease now within the confines of her property, high in the hills above the city proper and surrounded by evergreens.
“It is red,” says Mirabella, and Sara raises her eyebrows.
“Ah. Yes. Old red brick. Perhaps you expected the limestone white and marble of the rest of the city.”
She had not known what to expect. She moves off the drive and up the walk to the house, where the small staff of servants stands assembled to greet her. On the end, a little girl about Mirabella’s age is straining against the hand of one of the maids. She wriggles with silent ferocity until she pulls free and races to stop before Mirabella and Sara.
The girl is so excited she is about to burst, yanking on the ends of her bright brown braids.
“Mother,” she groans finally. “Introduce me!”
“Queen Mirabella, this is my daughter, Bree.”