“No, you don’t understand.” Arsinoe looks quickly over the people in attendance. Her people, talking and drinking. Luke calls to Tommy and Michael from the edge of the nearest row of apple trees and they get up to play a shadow game with the children. Before he goes, Tommy slices another serving of meat and eats it, and Arsinoe’s heart stops at the sight.
He used her knife. The whole table had. Her knife, with the poisoned edge.
“Oh, Goddess,” she whispers, and runs to the table to pick it up.
“Arsinoe? What’s wrong?” Jules asks, running up behind her.
“They used my knife! The knife I dropped!”
It takes Jules a moment to understand. To her, Arsinoe is still not a poisoner.
“Who was eating here?” she asks.
“Both of the suitors . . . I don’t know who else! We have to send for a healer, Jules, now!” Arsinoe moves to bolt, but Jules holds her fast.
“Send for a healer and say what? That our poisoner in disguise accidentally poisoned her own suitors? You can’t!”
Arsinoe blinks.
“What are you saying? That doesn’t matter now. They need help!”
“Arsinoe, no.”
She has grasped on to Arsinoe’s arm with a grip like iron when they hear the first cry.
“Poison!” Luke shouts. “Poison! Send for the healers! The suitors have been poisoned!”
“No,” Arsinoe whispers miserably, but Jules holds her fast and takes the knife to slide into her back pocket.
“You did not mean to do this,” Jules hisses fiercely. “This is not your fault! And it’s too late to help them now.”
GREAVESDRAKE MANOR
“Poison the suitors? I did no such thing!” Katharine declares. “Why would I poison them before I even got to meet them?” She crosses her arms and turns her back to the tall windows in Natalia’s study.
“Because they chose your sister,” Genevieve says. “Because she had two to your one. Because you could!” Genevieve crosses her arms as well, and Natalia rubs her temples with tired fingers.
“Stop sniping at each other like spoiled children,” she mutters.
“Well, she has truly made a mess of this,” Genevieve half-shouts. “Returning from the dead is one thing. But murdering mainland suitors?” She throws up her hands.
“I did not do it, I said!” Katharine shouts back. “Natalia, I did not!”
“Whether you did or did not does not matter. They are dead, and if you did not do it, then someone did it on your behalf. So what do we do now?” Natalia steadies her nerves with another sip of brandy tainted with yew. Except that she has already had too much, and her mind is sluggish when it should be sharp. She looks at her glass and then drains it anyway.
“It could be worse,” she says. “The suitors will have families to appease, but once we would have had whole countries. We will not go to war over this.”
“Think of the money it will take,” Genevieve grumbles. “The resources and favors. She will bankrupt the crown before she even wears it!”
“At least they were cousins, so it is only one family to appease and not two,” Katharine mutters, and Natalia reprimands her with an arched brow.
“The island will not like this.” Genevieve paces. When she stops, her whole body bounces with the motion of her tapping foot. “Word is spreading. The suitors were not the only ones to die. An old man and a little girl in Wolf Spring also fell to the poison. And this amid the talk of farmers dying in wildfires and lightning-struck cattle. This Ascension is going out of control!” She points at Katharine. “If you would just poison like Queen Camille did or Queen Nicola. Fast and clean. Poisons that found their targets and no one else!”
“Genevieve, be quiet,” Natalia says. “How a queen poisons is a queen’s business. Issue a statement from the Council. Remind the people that the greatest Ascensions are bloody and turbulent. That it is when the strongest queens rise. Suitors die. It is known. If they had still been alive for the Beltane crowning, they may have died in the Innisfuil woods during the Hunt of the Stags.”
“It is still a mess,” Genevieve says. But she says so more softly.
“Natalia,” Katharine says. “I really did not—”
Natalia waves her hand.
“Whether you did or did not, we must find a way out of it.” She stands up and walks from behind her desk to look out the windows, at the great city of Indrid Down across the hills.
“Those suitors did not matter anyway. Our alliance with the Chatworth boy’s father still holds. Chatworth has gone to great lengths to insinuate himself into the trust of the Westwoods, in case we have need of him, and the boy will make a fine king-consort when the time comes.”
“Can we not get him away from my sister?” Katharine asks. “I do not like him standing between us. I want to go to her. I would look her in the eye when I carve up her pretty face with a poisoned blade.” She walks to Natalia’s decanter of brandy and pours herself a measure, then drinks it in one large gulp.
“You take poison now at every meal,” Genevieve says.
“How do you know?”
“The servants talk. They say that you sicken long into the night. That you take too much and will do yourself harm.”
But Katharine only laughs.
“Have they not heard?” she asks. “You cannot kill what is already dead.”
Natalia frowns. Rumors of the Undead Queen have not faded as they hoped. Instead they grow stronger, and Katharine is not helping the people to forget.
“Kat,” Natalia asks thoughtfully. “Would you really like to go to Mirabella?”
Katharine and Genevieve look at her curiously.
“With the temple inspecting everything, it would be easier if you are face-to-face,” Natalia says. “So what if we put you together? Put you all together, for the Midsummer Festival. It is barely two weeks away. We could descend upon Wolf Spring.”
“Perfect,” says Genevieve. “Whatever damage is done to Wolf Spring from the queens’ business will be penance for failing to protect the suitors. But High Priestess Luca will not like it.”
“Who cares what she likes and does not like?” Katharine says. “If it were up to you, I would do nothing until Beltane was over, and the three of us would end up locked in the tower. I do not like to think of how I would fare trapped in close quarters with a bear.”
“Besides,” Natalia says, “I think the High Priestess would force her queen’s hand as well. None were happy when Mirabella returned from the Ashburn Woods with Arsinoe still alive. If we offer to hold the festival of the Reaping Moon in Rolanth afterward, I do not think she will object to Midsummer.”
“I will discuss it with the Council at once.” Genevieve half-curtsies and then walks toward the door.
“Wait,” says Natalia. “Let me send a letter to Luca first. Perhaps we can save ourselves an argument.”
ROLANTH
Billy has ordered a table set for two in the sunlit grounds behind Westwood House. It is a pretty table, with a bright white tablecloth and silver platters. But as Mirabella sits, the sun glints off one and nearly blinds her. So she calls some clouds, and soon the sky is filled with thunderheads.