“Mother, did you not hear what I said?”
“And did you not hear what I said?” Mrs. Chatworth asks. “Your father, it seems, is in no hurry to return from”—she glances sidelong at Mirabella and Arsinoe—“that place, and without him our creditors will come calling. The partners will push us out, and before you know it, the estate at Hartford will be gone, and this town house will be gone, and the business will be gone, and we will be ruined! And all you need do to save us is ask for Christine Hollen’s hand.”
“If I ask for her foot instead, do you think they’ll just give us a loan?” Billy asks, and Arsinoe barks surprised laughter into her napkin.
“May we be excused?” Mirabella asks, and grabs her. “I am afraid my sister and I have slept poorly. Perhaps a bit of fresh air . . .”
“I’ll join you,” Billy says, and starts to rise.
“You will not. You’ll stay and come to the shops with Jane and me to be fitted for your jacket. And you.” Mrs. Chatworth fixes her gaze on Mirabella. “You and your sister are my guests, and how you conduct yourselves reflects on my house. Make sure to take your parasols. And make sure she wears a dress.”
Mirabella assures her that she will, though it will be easier said than done, and pushes Arsinoe gently up the stairs. Not ten minutes later, Billy knocks at their door and pokes his head in.
“I’ve managed to put my mother off jacket shopping for the time being,” he says, and glances at Arsinoe, who is still dressed in trousers and one of his old shirts.
Mirabella gestures to her sister helplessly. “She has it in her mind that she should start passing herself off as a boy.”
“It’s my fault, I suppose.” He softly closes the door. “For letting her have so many of my clothes.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Arsinoe says from her dresser, where she is rummaging through drawers. “Billy, would you lend me a pair of your socks? I know how protective you are of them, but you have several dozen pair.”
“And I’ve lent you at least five pair already. What have you done with those?”
“Does it look like I know?” She tosses long white stockings and other frilly underclothes out of the drawer and onto the floor. “Just give me the socks, will you, Henry?”
She stops.
“Who’s Henry?” Billy asks.
Arsinoe turns and quickly walks past him to search under Mirabella’s bed.
“No one,” she says. “Isn’t that your middle name? William Henry Chatworth Junior?” She comes up brandishing black socks.
“You know it isn’t,” Billy says. “Now who is Henry?”
“She will explain later.” Mirabella takes Arsinoe by the shoulder and tugs her through the door, even as she struggles to put on her last shoe. “If I do not get her out of the house soon, your mother will change her mind and confine us to our room.”
“That was close,” Arsinoe whispers as they walk down the front steps.
Mirabella grasps her by the elbow. “You are in far better spirits than I would expect, considering.”
“Well, I got more sleep than you did.” Arsinoe ventures a smile, but it fades when Mirabella is unmoved. “I can’t explain it. The dreams are good dreams. They feel safe.”
“And the Blue Queen’s shadow? Did she feel safe?”
Arsinoe swallows. “No. She felt like a threat.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe it won’t happen again.”
Mirabella takes her sister by the arm. “Neither you nor I believe that,” she says. “So you had better take me back to where it started. Let us go back to Joseph’s grave.”
“You haven’t been back here, have you?” Arsinoe asks as she leads Mirabella down the groomed path of the cemetery.
“No.” Not since the day they erected the grave marker. Mirabella has thought about it and about him, many times, but she has never visited. “It does not feel that I have the right when she cannot.”
“I don’t think Jules would begrudge him visitors.”
“Perhaps. But that is not the only reason. I also do not like to think of him rotting underground when he should be ashes on the wind. Ashes in the water.”
“When he should be alive.”
“Yes,” Mirabella agrees. “When he should be alive.”
They reach Joseph’s grave and step into the shade of the elm trees. It is hard to believe that he is really there, under that dirt, beneath that smooth patch of green grass. Mirabella cannot feel him. But then, they had so few days together. Sometimes she does not trust her own recollection of his eyes or his smile. The sound of his voice. But she had loved him. He had loved Jules, but Mirabella had loved him for those brief few days.
“Why here?” Mirabella asks as Arsinoe drops to a crouch beside the headstone. “Why at Joseph’s grave?”
“I think it started here because he’s a piece of the island.” Arsinoe touches the earth. “I think, with him and me together, she was able to find me. And maybe because of . . .” She makes a fist.
“What?”
“Madrigal said once that low magic was the only kind of magic that worked outside of the island. And maybe because I’ve done so much of it, the island is able to find me.” She pulls up her sleeve and studies her scars. “Maybe I burn like a beacon.”
Mirabella’s eyes wander over the slashes of raised pink on her sister’s arm. The pocked marks inside her hands. They are different from the bear’s claw marks across her face. There is something about them. Something disturbingly useful.
“If that is true, then I like this even less,” Mirabella mutters. “Low magic has never been trustworthy.”
“It saved me often enough,” Arsinoe says.
“Not without cost. And not only to you.” Mirabella’s eyes flicker to the dirt of Joseph’s grave. It was an unconscious movement, but Arsinoe sees it and grimaces. “I did not mean that, Arsinoe. I only mean . . . We should hope the dreams are only dreams.”
“And the shadow queen is only what?”
“Another dream.”
“Mira, I was awake.”
“Barely.” Arsinoe scowls and Mirabella softens her tone. “Tell me what you dreamed of this morning, when you fell asleep again.”
Arsinoe hesitates, as though she would keep it to herself. When she finally tells her, she keeps her eyes on the dirt.
“I dreamed that I was her again.”
“Who?”
“Daphne.” Arsinoe cocks her head and shrugs, a gesture she has taken up from the mainlanders. “The lost queen of Fennbirn.”
“There is no lost queen of Fennbirn.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
Mirabella exhales and motions for her to continue.
“I dreamed we stole away on a ship bound for Fennbirn. To help Henry Redville in his suit.” She closes her eyes as though remembering and sniffs, searching for scraps of the dream as if they might carry through the memory. “Her plan is to befriend the queen. To enter into her confidence so she can steer her toward Henry. But I think she’s going to want Henry for herself—”
“And then what?” Mirabella interrupts. “After she stowed away, what happened?”
“Then we were back on Fennbirn. We got off the boat dressed as a boy and made our way to the queen.”
“You met Queen Illiann? You met the Blue Queen?”
Arsinoe nods gravely. “I have been back there. Back on the island. Back on the docks in Bardon Harbor, and in the Volroy.”
Mirabella turns away, shaking her head. This cannot be real. The more Arsinoe talks, the closer the island feels, as if she could look out past the bay and it would be there, leering back at them.
She squeezes her eyes closed. “So this . . . missing queen . . . she has met the Blue Queen and not been recognized? How? Did she truly believe Daphne was a boy?”
“No. Illiann saw past that right away. But Daphne moves like a mainlander. She talks like one. And according to everyone on the island, Illiann’s sisters have all been dead for a very long time. She’s never had to look over her shoulder and guard her crown. She was the Queen Crowned since birth. Not like us.”