“Kat.”
She looks at Pietyr. His hands are raised, palms out. She looks down at the boy, so very young and so very dead, his blood cooling on her arms.
“Pietyr,” she whispers. “What have I done?”
THE MAINLAND
The night after the party at the governor’s estate, Mirabella and Billy sit in the kitchen after the rest of the house has gone to sleep.
“I don’t like meeting like this.” He pushes their solitary candle closer to the center of the table and hovers over it, ready to blow it out at the first sound of footsteps. “You know how she hates it when we talk about her like she’s not there. But sometimes—”
“Sometimes we need to talk about her when she is not here.” Mirabella stares into the tiny flame, resolute. But she says nothing more. She does not like it any more than he does.
Upstairs, Arsinoe lies in her bed, sleeping, dreaming through the eyes of another queen. A queen from generations ago, hundreds of years.
“Couldn’t they be . . . just dreams?” Billy asks.
“They do not seem like ‘just dreams.’”
“But you’ve never heard of this happening to any other queen before?”
“No one knows anything about a queen after she leaves the island. Maybe this is common.” The candlelight flickers with her breath. It is hard to resist trying to test her gift, to see if she can push it higher, make it stronger. But she has tried and failed so many times that she is not brave enough to try anymore. “Besides, Arsinoe and I are different. Our destiny was to be dead. So who knows what lies ahead for us now?”
“I still think it could be nightmares.” Billy rubs his eyes. “You have both been . . . uprooted . . . strangers in a new place, and she’s had a difficult time with my mother and Christine.”
“Billy, I do not think—”
“And before that, the entire bloody, traumatic year. These dreams might pass if we let them.”
He is trying to make it so just because he declares it. She has heard him use the same tone with his mother and other young men. She thinks of it as Billy’s “mainlander” voice. But this is queen’s business. Fennbirn business, and when she slides her hand across the table, he is all too happy to take it.
“From what she has told me, Arsinoe is no historian. She says . . .” She pauses, and smiles at the memory. “She says that Ellis Milone was the historian, so anything she needed to know was stored for safekeeping in his mind.
“Yet she recalled the name of Queen Illiann’s king-consort, Henry Redville, and knew where he was from.”
“Henry Redville,” Billy grumbles. “And what sort of man was he?”
“He was a king-consort. A good one. He remained true to the queen. He led a fleet of ships into the last battle.”
“Did he die?”
Mirabella frowns. She gestures to the empty table.
“Does it look like I have my stack of Fennbirn history books with me? And why do you sound like you hope that he did?”
Billy leans back, dragging his forearm across the table.
“You’re getting salty. I think you’ve been spending too much time with your sister.”
She inhales. “No, I do not think that Henry Redville died. Queen Illiann ruled for another twenty years after the war ended.”
“I didn’t mean to snap,” he says. “I’m just worried about her.”
“I am worried for us all.” She reaches again for his hand. “If the dreams are only dreams, then how did she know about the king-consort? How did she even know Queen Illiann by name; the whole island only remembers her as the Blue Queen.”
“Maybe from a story Ellis told. Or maybe she heard it somewhere else. You can’t be the only queen to know Blue Queen history. Poets must write of it. Your . . . bards must sing of it!”
“That is true. That could be. But I cannot stop thinking . . .” She shakes her head. “I cannot help feeling like the island is reaching out for Arsinoe, ready to snatch her back.” She stares again into the candle, watches the flame flicker and weaken, mocking, as Billy’s eyes spark with curiosity.
“Tell me more about the Blue Queen,” he says. “Tell me everything. Why was she so important?”
“She created the mist.” Mirabella shrugs. “That is her legacy. To win the war, she created the mist to shroud and protect the island. She is the one who hid us away and turned us into legend.”
“And now she’s after Arsinoe.”
“Arsinoe thinks that the dreams are meant to show her something, about Daphne, the Blue Queen’s lost sister. She feels safe in the dreams. The only threat comes from the shadow of the Blue Queen herself.”
Billy leans back and runs his hands roughly through his hair. “This is madness. I thought we’d left all this behind.”
“It seems not. Low magic is everywhere, and the island has tracked us through Arsinoe’s link to it. The last of the magic in the mainland world.”
“Low magic is everywhere. You keep saying that. But I’ve never seen it.”
“You do not know where to look.” She takes a deep breath. “Arsinoe says that if I were to let her do a low magic spell with me, the dreams could reach me, as well.”
“Is that wise? To let the island find you, too?”
“Low magic is not for queens. She was a fool to turn to it in the first place. But if it means protecting her, then I will—”
They freeze at a sound from the upper floors. The darkness of the kitchen feels like a cave, and the two of them huddle around their small circle of light. But every shift of the row house is a creak. On blustery nights, the walls sound like they are groaning.
“If you had the dreams, too,” Billy goes on, his voice lower, “you could help her to—”
Another thump from upstairs, followed by a short cry. Mirabella jumps to her feet with Billy right behind her.
She gathers her skirt, but Billy still passes her on the stairs, taking them by two. They hurry down the hall as quickly as they can, past Jane’s room, where Mirabella hears her still faintly snoring.
“Arsinoe.” He opens the door. Arsinoe’s cry has become a full-blown fit. She kicks and thrashes in the dark, and Billy yelps as he is caught by an unseen flying elbow.
“I can’t see. Get a candle. Arsinoe.” He shakes her. “She won’t wake!”
Mirabella dashes for the bedside table. Her hand closes around a candle; her fingers send matches rolling. Stupid things. She kneels and feels along the rug for them.
“Mira, hurry!”
“I am trying,” she whispers. But the matches have disappeared. She turns toward her frightened sister, but it is too dark to see. “Curse these matches,” she hisses, and feels her gift rise, an unexpected wave through her blood, out to the tips of her fingers.
The candle lights. It flares up at twice the usual height, so bright it illuminates the room nearly to the corners.
“I—” Mirabella exhales. What the flame has revealed nearly makes her drop the candle.
The shadow is with Arsinoe in the bed. It crouches over her shoulder like a goblin of spilled ink, elongated legs folded over feet that sink into the edge of Arsinoe’s pillow. One dark, bony hand is wrapped around Arsinoe’s head, holding it fast as her body twists.
“Are you seeing this?” Billy asks.
“You can see it, too?”
He does not respond. The paleness of his face is answer enough.
Slowly, Arsinoe’s limbs still, and she begins to wake. The shadow remains until she opens her eyes. When it disappears, it disappears completely: there in one blink and gone in the next.
“Mira?” Arsinoe pushes up onto one elbow. She squints at the brightness of Mirabella’s candle, which only now begins to fade along with the easing beats of her heart. “Billy? What are you doing here? Was I making noises again?”
Mirabella and Billy look at each other. The shadow was real. Not a dream or a vision. And on its head, it wore the whisper of a crown, the same one that Arsinoe had sketched and that Mirabella recognized from a dozen paintings, a dozen woven shrouds. Silver and bright blue stones. The crown of the Blue Queen.