“I didn’t believe her at first. In Centra, kings made overtures of mercy often, only to change their minds on a whim and put their rival’s head to the block. But Illiann was different.”
“Daphne,” Arsinoe says. “Why did you want us to come here?”
Daphne stares soberly into the fire. She pulls a long strip of shadow from her neck and drops it into the flames to sizzle.
“The mist is rising against the island,” she says. “I would show you how to stop it. Because its creation was my fault.”
THE FATE OF THE BLUE QUEEN
It is strange to see Daphne outside of the dreams, a dead queen half-covered in shadow. And older. This Daphne is a full-grown woman. Her hair is long and lines lightly crease her face.
“Your boy is handsome,” she says, looking at Billy as he stands protectively in front of the bear. “He reminds me of my Henry.”
“Henry Redville,” Arsinoe says. “The king-consort of Queen Illiann.”
“The king-consort of the Blue Queen,” Daphne corrects her.
“What does that mean? What do we do about the mist? How do we keep it from rising?”
With every new question, Daphne shakes her head. “No.”
Arsinoe’s eyes narrow. She must remember that the Daphne before her is not the Daphne from her dreams. This Daphne has been long dead, and Arsinoe must remember that she knows her not at all.
“Why did you send me the dreams? Why did you show me your life?”
“So you would know us. So you would love us. To call you home.”
“Is that what you want? For one of us to come home to take the crown from Katharine?”
“A queen crowned cannot be uncrowned,” Daphne replies.
Arsinoe nods to the silver and blue stones. “Then how did you come to wear Illiann’s?”
Daphne grimaces, baring teeth that are still tipped in shadow.
“Don’t,” Billy murmurs. “Don’t make her angry.”
“I’ll make her whatever I need to make her to learn what we came for. People are dying. The mist is killing them. And if she won’t speak, maybe we ought to be talking to Illiann.”
Daphne rounds on her and despite her irritation, Arsinoe gasps.
“You can’t talk to Illiann,” Daphne says, crooked finger pointed to Arsinoe’s chest.
“Why not?”
“Because Illiann is not Illiann. Illiann is the mist.”
“You mean she made the mist,” Arsinoe says.
“No. I mean she became it.”
Became the mist? Arsinoe blinks. “That couldn’t be. It had to be some kind of spell. Some elemental trick—”
Daphne springs forward, elongated fingers wrapped around the sides of Arsinoe’s head. “No tricks,” she hisses, and presses her thumbs over Arsinoe’s eyes.
“Let go of her!” Billy shouts, and Braddock roars and swipes his paw furiously. But the fire flares up like a wall, burning them both and sending them reeling backward out into the snow. Even long dead, the elemental is still an elemental.
Arsinoe squeals and squirms. But Daphne’s cold grip is like a vise.
“See,” Daphne whispers, and shakes her hard, sending a jolt through Arsinoe’s entire body. And Arsinoe sees.
Daphne and Illiann stand atop the cliffs over Bardon Harbor in the driving rain. It is night, but the waves are lit bright orange and yellow by the fires in the burning boats. Some torched, others struck by Illiann’s lightning. Farther out, the sea is dark, but each illuminating flash reveals the horror of the battle: Selkan ships like a swarm upon the waves.
“There are too many!” Daphne shouts over the thunder. “Too many here, too many in Rolanth.” Salkades has besieged the entire eastern side of the island. Fennbirn will be overrun.
All this, Arsinoe sees in flashes. As she struggles against the shadow queen, she sees the ships and feels the rain sting her cheeks.
“My storm is not done yet,” Illiann calls. “I can roll them under the waves. All of them.”
“You can’t,” Daphne cries. “Henry is out there!”
Arsinoe twists her arm up between her and Daphne’s chests and wrenches it down hard, forcing Daphne to let go.
“Stop!” Arsinoe strikes out blindly with her fists. “Just stop!”
But Daphne leaps on her again, cold hands pressed to her ears, over her eyes, leaking into her mind.
Illiann falls from the cliffs, screaming, her storm still surging over the harbor. She falls, down to break upon the rocks, but when she does, her body is lost to the white. To the mist that bursts out from the foot of the cliffs and across the sea, to spread across the water north and south, choking the invaders as Illiann would have done with her own waves.
“There is no place on the island for sisters,” Daphne says, still clutching her. “We tried, she and I, but we failed. My elemental sister had to die to create the mist.” She releases Arsinoe’s head and drags her close by the collar. “And yours must die to unmake it.”
Arsinoe shoves her away. “No. You’re lying. Queen Illiann ruled for decades more. She had the next triplets.”
“I had the next triplets,” Daphne says, her eyes ablaze. “I stepped into her life. Stepped into her crown, with Henry by my side. ‘Daphne’ died at sea, in the battle. And out of grief, the queen was not seen publicly for a long time. Or at least not without a veil.”
“No. Someone had to know.”
“Many knew. But Fennbirn needed a queen. And soon the island’s secrets are lost to time. Like my real name.”
Arsinoe trembles, sick from the sight of Illiann falling to her death and from the thought that Mirabella—
“There has to be another way.” Except there does not and wanting one will not make it so.
“Now you know why I did not call to Mirabella.”
“Don’t you say her name,” Arsinoe growls. “And stay away from me! You’re a liar! You’re a murderer!”
“Murderer—?”
She advances on Daphne, her anger driving back the fear, and Daphne retreats farther into the cave. Farther and farther, and every shadow she steps into clings to her skin until she is back in the dark. Grotesque once more.
“We aren’t like you, me and my sister! And for the island or not, I will never hurt her!”
“Arsinoe? Are you all right?”
She looks back. With Daphne gone, the fire has died, and Billy and Braddock stare at her from the cave entrance.
“What did you hear?” she asks.
“Everything.”
“Then you know it was nonsense.” She goes back to the fire and gathers their supplies. “Let’s just get back to Sunpool.”
INNISFUIL VALLEY
“Mirabella has returned,” says Katharine, once she and Pietyr are inside the relative safety of her tent. “And if she is here, it is a sure bet that Arsinoe is lurking somewhere as well.”
“It does not matter, Kat. They are defectors. Traitors. You are the Queen Crowned. The people will fight for you; they will never follow them—”
Katharine scoffs. “The same way they would never follow a naturalist with the legion curse? They will follow anyone if it means the end of me.”
In the camp, the queensguard searches for survivors of the mist. They are good soldiers and shed themselves quickly of their fear, righting tents and catching horses. Rho has not stopped barking orders since she returned the queen to her quarters.
Katharine peeks through the tent flap. “So many dead.” She hugs herself tightly. “I just wanted to be a good queen.”
“Oh, Kat.” Pietyr takes her in his arms. “You are a good queen. All you have done is your duty, and it is neither right nor fair that you should be hated for it.”
“Hated,” she whispers. “And feared.” Slowly, she strips her gloves from her hands and flexes her fingers. They are alive. Covered in scars but alive, and hers again. “The dead queens wielded the knife that cut the legion curse from Madrigal Milone. This was as much their fault as the mist’s.” She drops her hands. “And it was mine, for not listening to you sooner. For not trying harder to control them.”
The tent flap bursts open, around High Priestess Luca. Unharmed by the mist and unruffled as ever.
“A moment of the queen’s time?”
“Of course, High Priestess.” Pietyr walks to the table for a cup of poisoned wine. “How pleased we are to see you have survived the spread of the mist.”