“A duel,” he says. “Katharine. What will we do? I cannot believe that the temple would allow it! The risk is too great, on both sides.”
“She thinks she can win,” Katharine says as they enter the manor, cool darkness enveloping them and making her skin prickle. “That the Goddess is on her side.” She reaches for belladonna berries piled high in a gold bowl on a foyer table and stuffs a handful into her mouth.
“She may win,” Pietyr cautions. “In the open space of the arena, she will have the advantage.”
“She will have no advantage.”
“Katharine. That is plenty of berries.” He takes her arm, but she wrenches away and eats still more, the juices running down her chin. “Kat, you will sicken!”
Katharine laughs.
“And what if Mirabella is right?” Pietyr asks. “What if the Goddess is on her side?”
Katharine turns on him, grinning with teeth full of poison, and for a moment her vision blacks out and makes his face a void, dark and bottomless as the pit of the Breccia Domain.
“It does not matter. They are on mine.”
ROLANTH
The notice that Bree prepared in swirling black ink challenging Katharine to a duel in the Indrid Down Arena is absolutely perfect. It bears Mirabella’s signature, recreated at the printer’s. But she made sure to send the original to tack to the Volroy gates.
“They are everywhere?” Mirabella asks.
“Everywhere,” Bree replies. “From here to Bastian City and even northwest to Sunpool.”
“And to Wolf Spring?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” Mirabella says. “I would have Arsinoe’s family there to see the poisoner fall.” She chuckles slightly.
“You are jovial?”
“Only when I imagine Katharine’s face when she reads this,” Mirabella says, but her smile does not last. It is easy to think of killing Katharine when she is angry. But when the anger fades . . . she must not let the anger fade.
Beside them, Elizabeth worries at the stump of her left wrist.
“Are you all right, Elizabeth?” Mirabella asks. “Does it still pain you?”
“Not often,” Elizabeth replies. She looks down at the skin, pulled taut over the nub of bone. The scars from the stitches have faded to a deep pink. “I’m only wondering about the tattooed bracelet. It will feel strange to adorn an eyesore such as this.”
Elizabeth turns her wrists over, toying with her one bracelet of ribbon and beads. Soon they will perform the ritual and ink the black bands into her skin, and she will be a full priestess, belonging to the temple forever.
“Your arm is not ugly, Elizabeth,” Bree says hotly. “It was an ugly thing that was done to you.”
“When do they want to hold the ceremony?” Mirabella asks.
“As soon as I will consent. It’s past time. . . . I’ve been an initiate for almost three years.”
“And will you do it?” asks Bree. “You should not. You should throw off those robes and stay with us. You will always be welcome at Westwood House.” Bree’s voice is forceful. Determined. She does not understand why Elizabeth stays after what they did to her. Bree is not suited to serve like Elizabeth is.
“I haven’t decided,” Elizabeth says. “I wouldn’t mind staying an initiate for a little while longer. Perhaps a few years. Perhaps forever. Then I could keep Pepper, and still have the choice to stay or go.”
Mirabella looks ahead to their white-robed escort. They have drifted quite a distance away, but she is sure they are still listening. She squeezes Elizabeth’s elbow.
“You will tell us? So we can be there?”
Elizabeth nods, and Mirabella kisses both her friends on the cheeks before parting company to go and see Luca.
She finds the High Priestess in her rooms high in the temple, soaking up a spilled cup of tea with one of her silk pillows.
“Perhaps a towel?” Mirabella suggests, and Luca startles.
“Mira, you frightened me.” She holds up the soiled pillow and makes a regretful face, then drops it beside her desk, ruined. “You have just missed Rho.”
“Oh,” Mirabella raises her brows, unable to feign disappointment. “Are the two of you hatching plans again?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“Of course you do. I have heard the whispers about Beltane. Your idea to sacrifice my sisters into the fires and make me a White-Handed Queen.” She pauses to watch Luca try to maintain a passive expression. “Your priestesses forget I have ears. They grow careless when they speak. But with all of your scheming, I cannot believe that you disapprove of the duel.”
“Whether or not I disapprove does not matter. You announced it before the city.”
“You think we should let her come to Rolanth?”
“At least we would have the advantage of having her attack be here, at home, where she would feel unfamiliar and off balance.”
“Yes,” says Mirabella. “And how did that work for Arsinoe? Coming here is what Katharine wants. She wants me cut down in Rolanth. Humiliated in front of my people. I was never her target in the Wolf Spring woods! It was always Arsinoe. It was always going to be Arsinoe.”
Luca studies her quietly from beneath her white hood.
“Perhaps we have missed our chance,” Luca says, “Once, you were the chosen queen. Now all is uncertain. Now our fortunes have reversed.”
“A duel in the arena favors me,” Mirabella presses. “Elemental queens have fared well before—”
Luca turns back to her spilled tea and pours again in the remains of the first cup. When she drinks, it drips onto her robes.
“I feel the Goddess’s hand in this, Luca. You must trust in me.”
“Her hand, perhaps,” the High Priestess says softly. “But the Goddess is not always kind, Mira. We cannot know her will. Even in those moments when I have felt most close to her . . . that I thought I saw a hint of her plans . . .” She gestures with a trembling hand. “One moment it is clear and the next it is gone.”
“Then how do we know we are doing the right thing?”
“We do not. We do our best, knowing that there is no choice and that she will have her way, in the end.”
THE BLACK COTTAGE
Willa walks past Arsinoe on the way to the kitchen.
“Goose and onion pie tonight.” Willa holds up a small yellow onion and chucks Arsinoe beneath the chin with it.
“Mmm,” Arsinoe replies uncertainly. “Was that . . . one of my favorites?”
“You do not remember?”
“I don’t.” Arsinoe follows her through the sitting room, looking at the paintings and the furniture. It would not have changed much, but nothing feels familiar. “Mirabella remembers everything. If she were here, the sentimental goof would be hugging that chair.”
“Even when she was a girl, Mirabella had far too much dignity to go about hugging chairs. Unlike you. How are you healing?”
Arsinoe follows her into the kitchen and rolls her shoulder. The wound from the crossbow bolt has closed. Before long, it will be no more than a fresh, deep scar. She can feel the new dead spot forming in her back, like the dead spots in her face. Another wound, another ruin.
“I’m all right.”