Katharine wanders through the darkened room and draws the red drape away from the windows. She squints into the daylight. Her face has lost its hollows, despite her ingestion of extra poison. Katharine looks different. She looks new.
“Only what I have told you,” she says. “I ran away and was lost. I fell and the Goddess saved me. If I am out of sorts now, it is only that I have been inside for too long.” She turns to Natalia. “Mirabella’s carriage was only a decoy, was it not?”
“It was. And it has departed. So perhaps that means one of your sisters is now dead.”
Katharine rides Half Moon high into the hills beside Greavesdrake. She rides fast, her heels to his sides, hoping to make it to the summit and see her sister’s decoy making its retreat. But when she arrives, the road is empty.
“It is all right, Half Moon,” she says, and pats the gelding’s sweaty neck. She knows what it must have looked like: a gaudy, overdone black carriage with silver fastenings and blue velvet cushions, the horses groomed to high polish, and every one of their white hairs covered with dye.
“I wish it had not been a decoy,” she says to her horse. “I wish she had blown the doors off Greavesdrake and found me huddled in my bedsheets. I would have thrown a knife into her pretty white throat, and she would have been so surprised.”
Katharine turns Half Moon and rides him back down from the summit. As they enter the cover of the trees, her senses prick, and she realizes they are being followed.
It must be Bertrand Roman, her near-constant shadow. Natalia has sent him out after her, and it has taken him this long to catch up. She pulls Half Moon to a halt. But the hoofbeats behind them are too light to come from Bertrand’s long-suffering black mare.
Katharine urges Half Moon to a canter. Behind her, the pursuing rider does the same. She glances back discreetly, peeking beneath her arm, and sees a light bay horse and a male rider with a flash of blond hair.
Pietyr? She sends Half Moon flying down the path. He will not sneak up on her, and he will not overtake her. No one on the estate is a better rider than she is, and no mount in the Arron stable can twist and cut through the trees the way Half Moon can.
She loses him easily and doubles back, circling to his left. She kicks Half Moon into his path, so suddenly that his mount rears up and veers off sharply, and Katharine smirks when Pietyr is thrown rolling across the ground.
She rides to where he lies groaning in the ferns. Her mouth drops open.
“You are not Pietyr!”
The boy, who does have blond hair but not the pale blond of Pietyr and Natalia, gets slowly to his feet.
“No, I am not,” he says, and shakes dead leaves from the cuff of his shirt. “Do you not remember me? I am Nicolas Martel.”
“My suitor!” Katharine blurts, and for once she does not need to use the tricks Pietyr taught her in order to blush. She does remember him now, but he looks different than he did far below the cliffs on the beach of the Disembarking, or even across the firelight of the feast. His face in the sunlight is softened angles, and there is a pleasing curve to his lower lip. Golden blond hair brushes against his shirt collar and curls over his temples.
Katharine searches for words. She drops one side of her reins and puts her hand on her hip.
“That was a stupid thing to do! Sneaking up on me like that during an Ascension Year! I have poisoned knives; I could have killed you!”
She should not be so shrill. According to Pietyr, mainland boys do not like it. But Nicolas smiles.
“I did not mean to sneak,” he says. His accent is lilting; his voice is soft and low. She likes it immediately. “I’ve only just arrived. They told me to wait at the manor house, but I’m afraid I was too curious.”
“That is . . . sweet. Someone should have stopped you.”
“Once I have made up my mind, I am not easy to stop.” He cocks his head as though intrigued. “You would have killed me? I thought the queens were only lethal to one another.”
“Then you have much to learn,” Katharine says. She sighs. “Though you are right that my sisters are my favorite quarry.”
“Forgive me,” he says. “It seems that I’ve ruined our meeting. Me, facedown in the dirt was not the way I wanted to introduce myself.”
Katharine turns in the saddle.
“Let us go and find your horse. If she was from our stables, she would have been trained and would not wander far. But as it is, I do not know where she has gone to.” She holds out her hand. Nicolas accepts it along with one of her stirrups and climbs onto Half Moon behind her. He slides his arms around her waist.
“I thank you,” he says into her ear. “Perhaps this was not so bad a first meeting after all.”
WOLF SPRING
Arsinoe, Jules, and Joseph leave the Valleywood Road and cut west, following the stream that joins eventually with Dogwood Pond. They sneak onto the Milone property as the sun sinks below the trees, and manage to avoid the eyes and questions of people in town.
Cait, Madrigal, and Ellis burst through the front door before anyone can call out. Jake the spaniel jumps into Jules’s arms and the crow familiars flap soft, worried wings against their heads.
“My Goddess.” Ellis walks up and takes Arsinoe by the hand. “We’ll send for a healer.”
“No,” Arsinoe says. “I’m fine. Look.”
As if she needed to tell them. The great brown bear is hard to miss.
“He’s called Braddock,” Arsinoe says. She places her hand atop the bear’s large furred head.
Madrigal extends her arm like she might touch him, then reconsiders. “Is Mirabella dead, then?” she asks.
The door slams, and a moment later, Cait returns with a bowl of water, already hot. She sponges off Arsinoe’s face and arms, which are crusted with blood and blistering burns. Cait looks almost like she might cry, but when she speaks her voice is like it always is.
“You look like a propped-up corpse. She had better be dead.” She prods Arsinoe’s bruised ribs. “You won’t survive another fight like this.”
“She’s not dead. Braddock, he . . . I don’t think she had the stomach to face him again.”
“She will soon,” says Jules in a low, tired voice.
“Did you get to her at least?” Madrigal asks Joseph.
Joseph tightens his arm around Jules’s waist and puts his chin protectively atop her head.
“I got to her,” he says. “And I told her what you told me.”
“Come inside,” Cait says gravely. “Those burns need tending. Braddock, I’m afraid, will have to stay out here. He’s not a familiar, and even if he was, he wouldn’t fit through any of the doors.”