“It could mean nothing. Prophecies mean a lot of things. Often never the things people think they do.”
Jules reaches for a potato and starts cutting it into chunks. The fall of the island. Her blade slows. “Or it has already come to pass. I was there when the Ascension Year failed. When the line of queens broke. I was there to help them escape. That must have been what the prophecy meant.”
“It must have been. And now you will lead an army against Katharine, who is despised by even the mist that protects us.”
“Yes,” Jules whispers.
“Unless you are wrong,” says Caragh, “and the mist truly rises in response to you.”
Jules stops. The prophecy must be wrong. The rebellion must be right. It must be, because despite herself it has won her heart and given her hope.
She peers out the window at Mathilde.
“Mathilde told me something back in Bastian City. She said that the oracle who saw my curse never returned.”
Caragh adds more to the stew. Her mouth tightens.
“Did Cait kill her?” Jules asks. “Did she kill her to keep her quiet?”
“Yes,” Caragh replies.
“How?”
“The how doesn’t matter any more than where we buried her. She will never be found. We offered to pay. Everything we had. But she wouldn’t take it.”
Jules holds her knife tightly so it will not begin to shake. So her war gift will not bury it up to the handle in the wall of the Black Cottage. She cannot look at her aunt. She cannot think of Cait. So much darkness around her birth. So much death.
“You always told me how blessed I was.”
“You were. That was our crime, Jules. Not yours. I never wanted to tell you. I didn’t want you to bear it.”
“Someone always pays.”
Caragh and Juniper jump away from Mathilde, suddenly in the doorway.
“Mathilde!” Jules exhales. “I nearly put this knife through your head.”
The seer’s eyes are empty. Juniper creeps close and sniffs her. She paws at her knee, then jumps up against the oracle’s chest.
“Oh,” Mathilde says, and grasps the dog’s shoulders.
“Are you all right?”
“I am fine. Where is Emilia?”
“She’s out hunting with Camden.”
“Get her back. Get them both back. I have had a vision. We must call up the rebels now and fall back to Sunpool.” She pushes Juniper gently to the ground and comes to take Jules by the wrists. “She knows. The queen knows. And she is coming.”
“How? How does she know?”
“She knows because she has your mother.”
AT SEA
“How much farther?” the captain asks.
“Not far,” Billy replies, but he sounds uncertain. They have sailed through the afternoon and into evening, and still there is no sign of the island.
“Have we sailed for too long?” Arsinoe asks. “Is the mist not coming for us?”
“You would know better than I would,” Mirabella replies. “You have sailed into it much more than I have.”
And Billy would know best of all, having sailed into it and through many more times than either of them.
“I thought you said this would be a few hours,” the captain says. “For what you paid, I’ve let it go on, but now, we have to turn back.”
“A little farther!” Arsinoe walks to the fore, leans out and over. “I’ll know it when I see it!”
“See what? There’s nothing out here to see! No land in this direction until you run straight into Valostra.”
Billy joins her and Mirabella by the railing. “I can’t keep them out here much longer. We will have to turn and sail for home. Try again tomorrow.”
Arsinoe grits her teeth. He is trying to sound regretful, but his tone is full of relief.
“Look!” Mirabella lifts her hand and points. Though the horizon had been clear a moment ago, the mist stands up ahead, pale white from sea to sky. Under their feet, the little boat surges, and they hear the captain and his skeleton crew mutter in confusion.
“A squall? We’ll have to go around.”
“No.” Arsinoe waves her arm forward. “Straight through. Straight through!”
They plunge into the mist.
It is so thick that Arsinoe cannot see Mirabella though she is standing right beside her, and she is certain that if she breathes it in, it will stick inside her lungs and make her choke.
“What’s happening?” The captain shouts as inside the mist, the wind dies. “Check the sails!” Mirabella and Billy grasp each of Arsinoe’s hands.
“This . . . isn’t like what it usually is,” Billy whispers. But nor is it like when they fled. The mist is thick and pure white. No thunder or rain, and the water so still that the boat barely bobs. But it is taking too long.
Something large splashes just off to their port side, and Arsinoe shivers, imagining it is the dark queen taking form within the mist. In her ears, every wave is the slithering of the shadow’s mermaid tail, coil after coil of it rolling through the deep, murky water.
“Where do you think it will take us?” Mirabella asks. For the mist can take them anywhere.
“I never thought about it,” Arsinoe admits. “I guess maybe I thought I’d pass through and be looking at Wolf Spring.”
“And I thought of Rolanth. When the truth is we could emerge and find ourselves staring up at the twin spires of the Volroy.”
“Or we could not emerge at all,” Billy offers.
Arsinoe swallows. Everyone on board has fallen silent. Even the boat has ceased to creak.
Daphne. What have you lured me into?
“There,” Mirabella says, but the mist is too opaque to see where she points or whether she points at all. “Do you see that?”
Arsinoe turns. She looks up and gasps. The Blue Queen is directly above them. A black shape that cuts through the white.
“Has she always been there?” Billy murmurs as she raises her long sinewy arms. And the mist dissipates.
The three of them exhale and lean against the railing. They laugh with relief.
“What in the world was that?” the captain asks.
“They did not see her.” Mirabella looks up at the now empty sky.
“Good. If they had, they’d have taken her for a witch and probably thrown us overboard. Look.” Arsinoe gestures ahead. Across the water lies the shores of what can only be Fennbirn Island.
“Where did that come from?” one of the fishers asks.
“Never mind,” says Billy. “It’s what we were looking for.”
Arsinoe claps him on the back as he goes to make arrangements with the captain to get them ashore. Though they just sailed through the mist, they are already too close to identify what part of the island they have come upon. But it does not really matter. Daphne must have brought them there for a reason, and there are no black spires in sight.
After speaking with the captain, Billy returns with a dubious expression.
“Here’s a complication. There are no small crafts or rowboats on board and not a dock in sight. Do we pick a direction and sail to the nearest port or—”
“No.” With the island so close, Arsinoe cannot wait any longer. “Have him take us as far into the shallows as he can. Then we’ll swim.”
“Arsinoe, it’s freezing! And you have no idea how far we are from the nearest town.”
“So we’ll start a fire.”
Billy sputters. “What about Mira? She can’t swim in that corset and all those petticoats. She’ll drown!”
“Actually,” Mirabella says, staring over the side, “I do not think I will drown.”
Arsinoe leans over. Her sister is shifting the current in small swirls that as she watches grow into contrary little waves.
Mirabella turns and shouts to the captain.
“Take us in as far as you can!” She looks at Arsinoe and Billy, her smile broad, the happiest Arsinoe has seen her in months. “And you two. Prepare for the easiest swim of your lives.”
Though the crew initially objects to Arsinoe and Mirabella swimming, they eventually bring the boat into the shallows. So far, in fact, that Arsinoe has to tell them to stop, for fear they will beach and have to come ashore themselves.