“Do not be silly. He is still her familiar, even if she is gone. He remembers those she loved.”
Billy’s bite of bread stalls between his plate and his mouth.
“Will we let him go after it’s over?” he asks. “Back to the woods at Innisfuil, where she found him?”
“Is that what she would want?”
“I don’t know. I think so. Or maybe she would want Jules to have him.” Billy runs his hand roughly across his face.
Mirabella takes a deep breath and looks around the room. It is calm and elegant, the windows closed against the noisy streets and armed priestesses set in pairs in the hall.
“It will all be over soon,” she says. “One sleepless night. Then the ball. And then the duel.”
“And then you are queen,” says Billy.
Mirabella quiets. Up to now, it has all been haste and resolve. Quickly mobilizing the priestesses and the Westwoods and thinking of ways to antagonize Katharine. But now she is here, with only hours to fill before their fate, and her certainty is beginning to fade. What was it Luca said about knowing the Goddess’s will? Clear one moment and gone the next.
“Mirabella? Are you all right?”
“Not quite,” she says.
“What?”
“After the duel, I will be the presumptive queen. I will not be crowned officially until Beltane in the spring. So you will have fall and a long winter to wait before you are a king.”
Billy wipes at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. He would rather wait longer. Before she can be crowned, he may come to resent this bargain they struck.
“We are friends, are we not, Billy? And friendship in marriage is a strong foundation.”
Hesitantly, he slides his hand across the table and turns it palm up. Equally hesitant, she places her hand atop it.
She feels no spark. No quickening of her pulse. Looking into his eyes is not like looking into Joseph’s. She squeezes his hand.
“But I am not her,” she says, and sighs. “I am not Arsinoe, and if come Beltane, you do not wish to take part in the Hunt of the Stags and do not wish to become king—”
He shakes her hand lightly. “Don’t think of this now. There’s plenty of time. Only . . . I didn’t think there would still be a hunt. Since we’ve declared for each other.”
“It will only be a formality. Nicolas Martel may still take part, and he may try to kill you and take the crown. But we will have priestesses on the hunt to guard you.”
“Well, that’s good, then,” he says sarcastically. He turns toward the windows. “What is that sound? Sounds like chanting.”
They go to the window and look down. A crowd has gathered, big enough to block the street between the Highbern and the Volroy, which is causing some shouting on both sides as carts try to make their way past. Those in the center stare up at her floor. Cursing her. Telling her to go back to Rolanth.
“Mira,” Billy says. “You’re smiling.”
“Am I?” She gazes down and chuckles. “To hear Luca tell it, the whole island is sick of the poisoners, and I am the savior they wait for. What a tale.”
“It is true, to some. To many.”
She draws on her gift. Below, dark shadows form on the upturned faces of the crowd as her thunderclouds gather over the hotel. The people stop shouting. She cracks lightning through the air, and they duck and hold on to each other.
“What are you doing?” Billy asks.
“Nothing,” she replies. “Only making sure that they know that the elemental queen is here.”
GREAVESDRAKE MANOR
Pietyr glares out the window at Nicolas practicing his archery, this time from horseback. Every time Nicolas gallops past, Katharine can see Pietyr wishing for him to fall. And every time Nicolas shoots, she flinches, expecting the bolt to break through the window and pierce Pietyr’s chest.
“There is something off about him, Katharine,” Pietyr says. “And not just for a mainlander.”
“Pietyr. Come away from the window.”
“You should get rid of him. He will never be your king-consort anyway; you know Natalia intends to choose the Chatworth boy.”
Katharine makes a face. Chatworth is with Mirabella now. Before that he was with Arsinoe.
“I do not know what she can be thinking,” Katharine says. “What will that look like, to accept my sisters’ cast-offs? And besides, I do not like him.”
“But you like Nicolas?” And when Katharine does not answer, “That is ridiculous. You cannot like Nicolas.”
At first, it was good fun to make Pietyr jealous. To make him suffer. He had it coming and worse, after all. But the joke is not a joke anymore. He seethes at Nicolas, and Nicolas’s cool response unnerves her. The moment Nicolas gets a whiff of power, he will find a way to hurt Pietyr. Whether to humiliate him or kill him she is not sure, but she senses he is capable of either.
They are in the billiards room, but neither is focused enough to play. She shoots and listens to the balls clack together, not watching where they go. Instead she watches Pietyr pout. Even pouting, he is handsome.
“I do not like the ideas he puts into your head. He encourages you to be reckless!” Pietyr breaks away from the window and comes to roll the cue ball across the table, angrily stuffing it into a pocket.
“Perhaps it is you I should send away,” she whispers. But he only scoffs and crosses his arms as if she cannot mean it. “Nicolas is a better match for me now, in many ways. Even better than you.”
His eyes raise to hers.
“Kat. That is not true.”
“Our goals are more aligned. We have similar minds. And if I decide to defy Natalia, he will make a strong king-consort.” She inclines her head and tries to be kind. “It is not fair, this game that I have made you play. Thinking we could be together again. That there was hope for us.” Once, she thought that she would keep Pietyr as her lover, no matter which suitor she married. But that is a dream from a long time ago and dreamed by a different Katharine.
“Pietyr, I want you to go.”
“Go?” he asks. “Go where?”
“I do not care. Away from here. Back to the country. But you must go and go now.”
His bright blue eyes swim with something like regret. Will he weep? If he weeps, she will not have the heart to send him off. She will take him in her arms instead.
“Why are you saying this?”
When she does not respond, he shakes his head adamantly.
“I cannot go now. You are to fight a duel in two days. You do not know what you are saying. This Ascension . . . it has made you volatile. When you return to your senses, you will thank me for staying.”
He talks to her as if she is a child, and whispers break into her mind. Angry, sweet whispers, and her fingers move to her ankle, to the poisoned blade she always keeps there. She slides it from its sheath almost without realizing what she is doing.
Pietyr has turned his back on her. A mistake. But he turns around at the last instant, and the knife slices through the air instead of his skin.
“Katharine!”
“I said go, so you go,” she says.