“I’m sorry, Mirabella.”
“Do not apologize. I do not need it. When do you sail back for Wolf Spring?”
“Tonight.”
She turns to him and smiles, her hands folded atop her skirt.
“Good. Sail safely, Joseph.”
He swallows. He has much more to say. But she will hear none of it. He takes his leave, and the textured wallpaper of the drawing room wavers before her eyes.
As his footsteps fade, Bree slips into the room and comes to take her in her arms.
“He chose her,” Mirabella says. “I knew that he would. He was hers before he was mine.”
“I heard,” Bree says softly.
“You were listening.”
“Of course I was. Are you all right, Mira?”
Mirabella turns her head. If she went to the southward-facing windows, she could watch as he left. She could know if he ever looked back.
“I am fine, Bree. It is over.”
Bree sighs. “No,” she says. “I saw the way he held you that night, Mira. And how he jumped in front of that bear. Half the island saw that. You are right: as a queen it must be over for you. But anyone with eyes can see that for him, it never will be.”
WOLF SPRING
The orchard is full when they arrive and so bustling with activity that no one even notices the arrival of a great brown bear.
“There they are.” Jules points. Two boys, both with red-gold hair, stand talking with Ellis and Madrigal. Madrigal flirts with them mercilessly.
“I hope they don’t expect me to giggle like that,” Arsinoe says.
“No one expects anyone to giggle like that,” Jules replies, watching her mother with a sour expression.
“Which one is Tommy and which is Michael?”
“Tommy is the bigger of the two. Michael, the more handsome.”
“Jules,” Arsinoe scolds. “When Joseph gets back, I’m telling him.”
She squares her shoulders. The unpleasantness can no longer be put off. She reaches out to Braddock and pats him. He is calm, blinking curiously at the activity and the food piled high on the tables.
Arsinoe takes a step toward the suitors and raises an arm in greeting, just as children come streaming out from between the trees. She falls in the midst of them, bowled over in the dirt as they squeal, caught up in a game of tag. Braddock grunts and joins in the fun. He rolls her back and forth on the ground. She rolls into chairs and upends them. Apples rain down like hail, and she covers her head as the bear lies down on top of her legs.
Someone shouts, and Arsinoe quickly holds her palms up.
“No, no, Braddock, back now,” she says. She rolls onto her knees just in time to see Jules twist a knife out of Tommy Stratford’s hands.
“Enough, Braddock, enough.” Arsinoe laughs, and shoves his large brown head.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy says. “I thought . . . I thought she was being attacked.”
Michael Percy works up his courage and moves past Tommy to offer her his hand.
“The bear’s a lot to handle,” he says as he helps her to her feet. “How do you manage?”
“Sometimes I don’t. As you’ve seen.” She smiles at him, and his expression flickers. No doubt he remembers the carnage on the Quickening stages. But the bear was not Braddock then. He was only a bear under a low magic spell. Angry and frightened.
Arsinoe slips her hand loose from Michael’s. There is nothing wrong with accepting a suitor’s helping hand. Only she cannot help wondering what Billy would say, and what he is doing in Rolanth, with her sister.
Tommy approaches from her other side.
“Are you all right?” he asks, speaking fast as if to cut off Michael’s questions. If they keep up like that she will be tired of them by the end of the day.
“Why have you chosen to pay court together?” Arsinoe asks them. “Sharing a barge for the Disembarking was odd, but this is truly uncommon.”
“Competitiveness,” Tommy says simply. He grins and shows bright white teeth in a pleasantly handsome face. He is more sturdily built than Michael, but with their shared red-gold hair and similar features, looking at them is like viewing one through open air and another through a magnifying glass.
“It’s true. We’ve always been this way,” Michael cuts in. He bends to help Luke right an upended table. Arsinoe smiles apologetically, but Luke only winks. No one seems to mind the cleaning up. As long as she has her bear, she can do no wrong.
“We’re cousins, you see,” Michael goes on. “Go to the same schools, spend summers on each other’s estates. When you spend so much time together, it’s hard not to engage in one-upmanship.”
“You must feel the same about the other queens,” Tommy says.
“It’s not exactly the same when you have to kill them,” says Arsinoe, and cranes her neck to look for Jules. Maybe she can take one of these boys off her hands. They were nearly as impressed by the sight of Camden as they were by Braddock.
She looks back at Tommy, and he glances away. It takes her a moment to realize why: he had been trying to peek at what is underneath her mask. Arsinoe cannot decide whether to laugh or punch him.
“Why did you request first suit with me?” she asks. “Did you think I would die first?”
Michael shakes his head emphatically.
“Not at all,” he says. “We just had to see the bear up close. We couldn’t wait.” He gestures, rather shyly, toward Braddock lumbering ahead of them. “May I?” he asks. “I mean, is he safe?”
“If you feed him a fish he will be perfectly safe.”
As the sun sets over the orchard and the braziers are lit for evening, Arsinoe and Jules stand back from the crowd. It is a good night. The children of Wolf Spring chase one another from hot brazier to hot brazier, fearless. Folk sit at tables playing games and nibbling on leftover pie. Camden leans against Jules’s legs, and Braddock lies somewhere in the dark, finally stuffed full of fish and apples and tired of the children’s shrieks.
“They aren’t really so bad,” Jules says. “They could be much worse.”
“I suppose so.” Arsinoe cocks her head wearily. Tommy and Michael are at a table near the roasted suckling pigs, nodding and chuckling at something Luke is saying.
“Luke seems to like them.”
“Don’t be fooled,” says Jules. “He finds them tolerable. You know his heart is pledged to Billy nearly as solidly as yours is.”
“As mine is? I don’t remember making any pledges.”
“Well. As soon as he gets back from Rolanth, maybe.”
“Maybe.” Arsinoe snorts, and crosses her arms. Her heart skips. Her knife is no longer in her vest.
“Jules, my knife is gone.” She pats herself all over, as if it might have moved to another pocket by itself.
“It probably fell out when you were tussling with Braddock,” Jules says. “We can find it tomorrow, in the daylight.”