Nicolas leans across her bed watching, enrapt.
“How strange,” he whispers. “That so little of a thing can cause such great harm.”
Katharine pries the snake free with a gentle motion and places her back into her cage. Sweetheart writhes crankily and bites at the glass, wriggling as she tries to inject venom that is no longer there.
Nicolas recoils; Katharine giggles. She screws a lid onto the jar.
“What will you use it for?” he asks.
“Perhaps nothing.” She tips it back and forth and watches the poison run. “I just wanted a bit of her with me, since I must leave her behind. Now let us go!” She tugs him playfully off the bed, and he kisses her gloved fingers.
Downstairs, Natalia arches an eyebrow, already waiting at the door. But she does not scold. Indeed, she smiles toothlessly at the sight of their linked hands.
Outside, a dark caravan packed full of Arrons and poisons stretches down the long, horseshoe drive.
“I cannot wait to see the faces on the bumpkins of Wolf Spring when we arrive,” Katharine says. “Their bottom teeth will scrape the dirt.”
The household servants line up to bid them farewell, and as she passes her maid Giselle, Katharine reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. Giselle jerks back. Her eyes fall to the stone steps.
She is afraid of me, Katharine realizes, and looks down the row. They are all afraid of her. Even Edmund, Natalia’s steadfast butler.
Katharine smiles at Giselle and kisses her cheek as if she had not noticed. She turns away when she hears horse hooves clip-clopping in her direction.
She will not ride in a coach like the others. Pietyr rides up on a tall black mare and leads two saddle horses behind him: Katharine’s favorite, Half Moon, and the blood bay Nicolas brought from the mainland.
“This will be a good opportunity to let the people see you,” Natalia says.
“To see how well and healthy you are,” Genevieve adds, and stops talking when Natalia shoots her a look.
The island will see her as she passes, a live queen, not the decaying, animated corpse the rumors would have them believe.
“Whatever the reason, I am glad to ride outside,” she says. Loaded as they are, the caravan will move at a snail’s pace and still slower when navigating the steep and unkempt roads in the hills.
Pietyr starts to dismount to help Katharine into the saddle.
“Don’t trouble yourself, Renard,” Nicolas says, using Pietyr’s non-Arron name on purpose just to irritate him. “I will assist my queen.”
“She is not your queen yet,” Pietyr mutters, and Katharine grins at him before Nicolas boosts her onto Half Moon.
“Careful, Pietyr,” she whispers after Nicolas has gone to mount his own horse. “Or Natalia and Genevieve will send you away.” She takes up her reins, but Pietyr holds fast to Half Moon’s bridle.
“They may, but I will not go,” he says. “I will be here until the day you tell me to leave.”
Katharine’s pulse quickens. The look Pietyr gives to Nicolas is so dark that she wonders whether it is a good idea that they both remain at Greavesdrake. If their rivalry goes much further, she will enter the drawing room one day and find Nicolas poisoned or Pietyr slumped across the sofa with a knife in his back.
“May we ride ahead?” Nicolas asks, bringing his horse up beside hers. “We can circle back around to the carriages if we go too far . . . unless your horse will tire?”
“Impossible.” Katharine strokes Half Moon’s long, sleek neck. “Half Moon can run for days and never tire. He is the finest horse on the whole island.”
They trot together down the drive ahead of the caravan but behind the guard and the scouts. The day is hot but with a strong, cool breeze. A true Midsummer day. Perhaps a good omen.
“What is that there?” Nicolas gestures toward the end of the drive.
A cluster of women in white-and-black robes, priestesses from Indrid Down Temple, have gathered to give her a blessing. As they ride closer, Katharine notes that Head Priestess Cora is not among them.
“So many coaches,” says one of the priestesses, whose name she does not remember. “Wolf Spring will overflow.”
“Indeed,” Katharine says. “When I leave, they may be poorer by one queen but much richer in money from the capital. Have you come to give the Goddess’s blessing?”
“We have. Tonight we go into the hills to pray and burn oleander.”
Half Moon starts to fidget and Katharine takes up an inch of his rein.
“Everyone knows that the temple supports Mirabella,” she says. “But you are priestesses of Indrid Down. In service to poisoners since you came.”
“All queens are sacred,” the priestess responds.
Katharine’s jaw tenses. She glances at Nicolas, who moves his horse back.
“I know you do not like me,” Katharine whispers. “I know you sense that I am wrong, even if you will not say so.”
“All queens are sacred,” the priestess says again in her infuriating, even voice.
Katharine would like to ride the white robes into the dirt. Grind them into the mud until they are stained dark red and brown. But the caravan approaches in hoofbeats and jangling harnesses, trunks and wheels rattling. So instead she smiles a smile of bared teeth.
“Yes,” she says. “All queens are sacred. Even those you threw into a pit.”
ROLANTH
A woman and her husband kneel before the temple over an offering of dyed and scented water. The water is a dark, stormy blue, calm inside a beautiful mosaic bowl of white-and-silver glass.
“Blessings upon you, Queen Mirabella,” the woman murmurs, and Mirabella extends her hand over her bent head. She recognizes them from the central district. They are merchants who deal in silks and precious stones. And she has seen the woman through her carriage window as they passed, shouting orders to workers restoring the Vaulted Theatre.
Not many from Rolanth will accompany her to Wolf Spring. Since it was announced that the Reaping Moon would be held here in a few months’ time, there is simply too much to do.
“Thank you for your offering,” Elizabeth says, and picks up the bowl to be brought inside. Bree takes Mirabella by the arm.
Once inside, Mirabella takes a deep breath. The open air smells of temple roses in full bloom, and beneath that, the salt of the sea and the cold, earthy essence of her beloved basalt cliffs. Today they depart for the long road to Wolf Spring. Wagons have been loaded with supplies, and at Westwood House, coaches stand ready with a portion of her wardrobe folded away in trunks.
“You seem so sad,” Bree says as they walk around the southern dome. “Are you not even a little bit excited?”
Mirabella pauses before Queen Shannon’s mural, storms and lightning in blue-and-gold paint. The weather queen seems to be gazing down upon her.
“I should not be excited,” she says. “I should be ready. No decree from the Black Council is to be trusted so long as the Arrons control it.”