The crowd parts as the prisoner is brought near. Madrigal Milone sits astride an old gray mare, her hands bound behind her back. Her crow familiar rests docilely on her shoulder, still tethered to her wrist.
“Are you looking forward to seeing your daughter?” Katharine asks.
“More than you should be.”
Katharine leans over and pushes the woman’s hair out of her eyes. She tucks it behind her ear and smooths it down, revealing some of that unsinkable prettiness. She is so lovely but of so little substance. Only a regular-sized woman despite that beauty. Though they were of similar height, Natalia would have towered over Madrigal Milone and covered her in shadow.
“Do not be afraid,” she says gently when Madrigal flinches. “I will not hurt you. I swear that it is not why we have come.”
“You can’t hurt me,” Madrigal mutters.
Katharine clicks at the mare and tugs her along, keeping her close enough that Madrigal’s toe occasionally bumps into her heel. She looks over her shoulder where her army stands waiting.
“No.”
Turned around, she sees it before anyone: the mist, rising over the water of Longmorrow Bay.
“Not now! Pietyr!”
He twists in the saddle, just as the soldiers farthest away on the beach begin to scream.
The mist spreads, slow and thick through the path between the cliffs and into the meadow. She watches it creep up over the cliff tops, watches it swallow her lookouts.
“Kat, what do we do?”
“It does not matter,” Katharine replies as her army breaks ranks and scatters.
From her perch up in the tree, Mirabella sees the mist roll out over the sand of the beach and crawl up the sides of the cliffs. At first she thinks it is only a storm. Some quirk of the weather. But as it swallows the first soldier and the next and the next, and she hears them scream . . .
“The mist,” she whispers.
She grasps on to the branches so hard the cold bark splits the skin of her hands. Her heart beats loudly as she watches the mist swirl over the terrified soldiers. To cloak them? To protect them?
A shrill shriek draws her eye as the mist rolls back, revealing a body twisted in two and pulled apart. The snow between the torso and legs is littered with entrails and spreading red.
She does not know what to do. The mist has wound nearly the length of the valley, leaving some and maiming others, causing panic and confusion, and swirling westward, toward Katharine and Jules.
If Mirabella stays her hand, it may all be resolved. The Undead Queen and the Legion Queen destroyed in one stroke. Perhaps that is what the Blue Queen wants. What the island wants. Perhaps she was brought there only to witness.
“No.” Mirabella slides down the trunk. She jumps from the lowest branch and winces as her ankle rolls.
All those innocent soldiers. The servants. The priestesses she saw in their white robes. She does not know what is wrong with the mist. But she knows that it is wrong.
Mirabella runs as fast as she can toward the sounds of screaming, calling the wind and the storm up behind her.
Katharine can only watch as her army comes apart. As the mist darts through them like wispy fingers, mangling them or swallowing them whole.
The entire camp is in shambles: turned-over tents, horses running loose to trample through supply stores or over the tops of people the mist has taken and spun around.
“Katharine! We have to get you to safety!” Pietyr shouts.
“What safety?” Her head turns at the sound of hoofbeats. Rho is leading a band of cavalry, galloping for the cover of the trees. The priestess’s face is hard as stone. Angry as Katharine is that there is no form to truly fight. The mist is almost upon them, creeping around to the sides. How can it move so quickly without seeming to move at all?
“Ride!” Pietyr calls to her. “Follow Rho!”
He kicks his horse hard. He does not see the arm of white billow between them until it is too late.
“Pietyr!”
“It’s blocking us in!” Madrigal screeches. “Don’t you see? We have to run!”
“Where?” Katharine drags her closer, the dead war queens infusing her with strength enough to pull Madrigal from her horse and across Katharine’s pommel. “Right for the western woods? Right into your waiting rebels’ arms?”
“Are you mad? People are dying!”
“But not us!” Katharine drops her shield and draws a long knife out of her boot. The mist is everywhere. She cannot see anything in all the white. Not even the silhouette of a tree trunk. Her horse’s hooves prance and kick up wisps like smoke. They are pocketed inside it, and she need only wait for it to rush into her lungs. Will she feel it then, pull her heart out through her mouth? Or twist her arms from their sockets?
“Madrigal? Mother!”
Katharine whirls as the mist around them thins. Jules Milone and her cougar stand at the edge of the trees. Her hand is raised.
“I’ve come to trade.”
“No!” Madrigal shouts. “No, Jules, get out of here!” She tries to burst out of Katharine’s grip, but Katharine’s fingers are locked tight.
“You cannot run yet!” Katharine cries. “Not yet!”
“Let go of me!” In a flurry of black feathers, Madrigal sends her crow at Katharine’s face.
“Mother, stop struggling!” Jules calls, and Katharine looks at her through the haze. She is not alone. Mirabella is running up behind her. She is dressed in mainlander clothes, blue and gray, none of the black of queens. But her regal face is unmistakable.
At the sight of Mirabella, the dead queens surge through Katharine’s blood. Their rage is so pure that it turns her vision red, even through the white of the mist. She cannot calm them or speak to them, and when Madrigal’s bird flaps again in her face, the dead queens lash out. Katharine does not remember that she had drawn her knife until the blade is already buried deep in Madrigal’s neck.
“No,” she whispers as the blood begins to pour from the wound. She looks into Madrigal’s wide, surprised eyes. “I did not mean . . .” She presses her hand against the blood, but it is no use. The veins of Madrigal’s throat have been cut. Severed. Horrified, Katharine lets go, and Madrigal’s body tumbles limply to the ground, her panicked crow still tethered to the dying woman’s wrist.
The next thing Katharine hears is an otherworldly scream. The next thing she feels is herself blown backward to land hard upon the snow and her horse rolling over her foot.
When Madrigal falls, Mirabella dashes past Jules to try and catch her. She sends her storm out into the mist ahead, pushes wind through her fingertips, and feels the clouds gather over the valley.
She pushes harder, and the mist is blown back, creating a path for her straight to Madrigal. She is still strides away when an unseen force hits her from behind, throwing her forward hard to bounce against the ground. For an instant, everything is dark, and her storm begins to fizzle. But she shakes her head clear and goes on, scrambling on her hands and knees.
Not far ahead, Katharine is on the ground, struggling beneath her horse. The horse itself is dead or knocked cold by the unseen blast. Mirabella ignores her and hurries to Jules’s mother, lying in a bloody heap, her arm lifted by a crow desperately trying to fly away.
She kneels beside the woman and turns her over. Madrigal’s eyes roll toward her, white and panicked as blood pours out of her neck.
“It is all right, Madrigal. Do not move now.” Not knowing what else to do, she quickly unties the crow and lets her fly. It seems a relief, to the bird and Madrigal both. “We have to get you out of here.”
“No. She’s—” Blood bubbles over her lips. She says more, but it is nearly impossible to understand. “She is full of them.”
“Full of what? Who is?”
“Full of dead,” Madrigal gurgles, and grasps on to Mirabella’s shoulder. She spits blood into the snow, presses her hand into it. “Stop her . . . Jules . . .”
“Hush now.”