At first when Mirabella hears Arsinoe muttering in her sleep, she thinks she must be having some scandalous dream about Billy. Mirabella has stayed awake, lying in the dark and listening to Arsinoe’s breathing slow. Listening to her drift off. Looking after her as an older sister should after a younger sister is frightened in a graveyard. So when she hears Arsinoe start to murmur happily, she smiles, torn between listening closer and pressing her pillow around her ears. She is reaching for her pillow when Arsinoe says:
“Centra.”
Mirabella sits up and turns toward her sister. She knows that word. She listens closer as the dream goes on, Arsinoe muttering faster and faster, her words becoming harder to hear. Sometimes it is only a snort. Lots of snorts, actually, and Mirabella bites her lip to keep from laughing.
Suddenly, after a moment of quiet, Arsinoe jolts up from her pillow, back straight as a board. Then she slumps and rubs her face with both hands.
“What a dream,” she whispers.
“Arsinoe.” She flinches when Mirabella says her name. “What was that?”
“It was . . . Why are you awake? Did I wake you?”
“I was not asleep.” Their room is so dark that Arsinoe is only shapes. Hints of bare arms poking out of her pale nightclothes. Mirabella climbs out from underneath her sheets and goes to sit at the foot of Arsinoe’s bed. She takes the candle from her bedside table.
Her fire feels close. She can almost sense the heat of it, curling around her ankles like a warm and loyal pet. A small pet now, after weeks on the mainland. Mirabella stares at the wick of the candle and calls the flame. Nothing happens. It is so slow and shy. Each time it takes longer and longer, and the muscle inside her mind goes slack.
“You can always use a match,” Arsinoe says.
“Elementals with gifts of fire do not use matches.” But she sets the candle down. “What were you dreaming about?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you keeping secrets?”
“No. I’m just not sure I’m ready to tell you I’m losing my mind.”
Mirabella touches the tip of the wick. It is not even warm, and shame creeps up the back of her neck.
“You said, ‘Centra.’ Is that what you were dreaming of?”
“You know it?” Arsinoe says, and then, “Of course you do. So what do you know about it?”
“Not much.”
“Most people on the island wouldn’t even recognize the name.”
Mirabella thinks back to her teachings. To afternoons with Luca in the temple, surrounded by stacks of books. Even all the way back to Willa and the Black Cottage.
“I know that Centra is the name of Fennbirn’s ally to the north. Before the mist came. That is all.”
“That’s all?”
“What else mattered? All nations that are not Fennbirn are the mainland now.”
“Do you know anything about their history?” Arsinoe asks.
“Nothing,” she replies.
“Think hard. Nothing about a missing Fennbirn queen called Daphne?”
“A missing Fennbirn queen? Of course not. Arsinoe, what are you dreaming of?”
“What about Henry Redville?”
“Arsinoe—” She turns to her in the dark to demand answers. But that name. Henry Redville. “Redville of Centra,” she says. “I think he was Queen Illiann’s king-consort. Queen Illiann, the last Blue Queen.”
“Queen Illiann.”
“Yes,” Mirabella says. She would say more, but everyone knows of Illiann, the last and greatest Blue Queen, who won a great war with the mainland and whose gift was so strong that she created the very mist that shrouds and protects them to this day. Everyone knows that legend. Even those who resist study as hard as Arsinoe.
Arsinoe gets out of bed and starts to pace, jostling the little dog at the foot of the bed that Mirabella had nearly forgotten about. “Her king-consort. But he loves Daphne. And if Daphne is nowhere in the history books . . . then did she stay behind or go back to the island to be killed? And if Henry Redville was a real person, then I really am—” She stops and turns back to Mirabella in the dark. “Dreaming through her eyes.”
“Dreaming through whose eyes?”
“Daphne’s.”
“Daphne,” Mirabella says doubtfully. “The lost Fennbirn queen?”
Arsinoe quiets, and Mirabella finally strikes a match to light the candle, tired of trying to decipher her sister’s expressions in the blackness. Yellow-orange light flickers through the room; she touches her candle to the lamp on Arsinoe’s bedside table, and the space glows brighter.
Arsinoe’s eyes are haunted. But even so, the corner of her mouth is upturned as though she is amused.
“Tell me what you dreamed.”
“I dreamed I was inside someone else.” Arsinoe touches the ends of her hair, down past her shoulder now. She touches her chest and her face, as if to make sure they are still hers. “Someone who sailed ships on Centra with Henry Redville and had black eyes and hair, just like ours.”
“On Centra,” Mirabella says. “With Henry Redville. Arsinoe, that was over four hundred years ago.”
“Four hundred . . .” She sits down beside Mirabella on the bed, pulling the dog into her arms when he wakes and begins to whine. “What does that mean? Why am I dreaming it?”
“It cannot be real. It must not be. Perhaps it is only a memory, from a book you forgot about reading.”
“Maybe,” Arsinoe whispers, but Mirabella can tell she does not think so. “Except I saw something else first. In the cemetery.”
“What?” Mirabella holds her breath. Finally, her sister is ready to tell her what happened. She has been patient, but her patience had started to wear thin.
“A dark figure. Like a shadow. She had on a crown made of silver and bright blue stones.” Arsinoe goes to her desk and rifles through it for paper and ink. The sound of the pen scratching across it in the dark sends unpleasant twitches down Mirabella’s spine. She hands the paper to Mirabella, who looks at it in the candlelight.
“The Blue Queen’s crown.”
“I saw the shadow of the Blue Queen,” Arsinoe says. “And it pointed back to Fennbirn.”
All through breakfast, Mirabella tries to eat as though nothing is wrong. She butters her toast and drops sugar into her tea. Pretends to listen to Mrs. Chatworth and Jane gossip about the governor’s wife’s birthday party or coo over the little dog and the ribbon on his collar. Only Billy seems aware that anything is amiss, his gaze flitting from the dark circles beneath Arsinoe’s eyes to Mirabella’s tense fingers and then back again.
They had barely slept. They had simply sat side by side on Arsinoe’s bed until the candles had burned down to nubs. Finally, in the early gray hours of predawn, Arsinoe had lain down and let her eyes drift shut. But the moment she closed them, the muttering commenced. Mirabella shook her awake, but every time she slept, it would begin again.
Mirabella does not know what the dreams mean or if they are true visions or simply nightmares. She does not know if Arsinoe really saw the shadow of the Blue Queen, though her hands ache from clinging to the crumpled paper of Arsinoe’s drawing. All she knows is what she can feel: that it is the island reaching out for them again.
“A party at the governor’s grand estate!” exclaims Jane as if they had not already been talking about it for the last half hour.
“Indeed.” Mrs. Chatworth says, tapping into a soft-boiled egg and feeding a bit to her new pet. At least that idea of Arsinoe’s seems to have gone smoothly. “We will need a new jacket for you, Billy; I saw one in the shops that will do. And Jane, you must wear your new lilac silk. There will be plenty of eligible bachelors there; perhaps I can marry off both of my children in one afternoon!”
At the mention of Billy’s marriage, Arsinoe stops eating, and Mirabella turns to Billy with an arched eyebrow.
He clears his throat.
“I’m not looking for a wife, Mother.”
“Christine Hollen is a fine choice. Everyone in the city knows she has set her cap at you.”