Katharine turns toward the gallery, where Natalia watches confidently beside the rest of the Black Council.
“So this is why you were not worried.” It does not matter what she has done in the months since Beltane. To Natalia, she will always be a failure.
Katharine drops her bow and quiver of arrows into the freshly tilled dirt. She pulls a throwing knife from her belt and takes careful aim. Mirabella cannot cover every inch of herself with that shield.
With her sister crouched and poison-slowed, it will not be the glorious victory Katharine planned. But the end result will be the same.
She throws the knife.
It is not until her blade curves unexpectedly to the right that Katharine suspects the fight may yet be interesting.
Mirabella dodges another knife. The boards creak and dirt settles onto Arsinoe’s head as the crowd above twists in their seats to get a better view.
“Was that you?” Arsinoe asks Jules. “Or a bad throw?”
“I don’t know,” Jules replies irritably. “I haven’t done much of this.”
In the arena, Mirabella rolls and nearly loses her hold on the shield.
“What is the matter with her?” Joseph asks from over Arsinoe’s shoulder. “Why doesn’t she strike?”
“I don’t know,” Arsinoe says. But something is wrong. The crowd senses it too, murmuring in confusion every time Mirabella dodges an attack and does not counter.
“Why won’t she do anything?” Jules growls, using her war gift to push another of Katharine’s knives wide. Her cheeks are red from exertion and her brown hair damp at the roots. “This won’t work if she refuses to kill! Legion cursed or not, I can’t spark fire!”
“Good Goddess,” Arsinoe whispers as Katharine goes back to her bow. She shoots an arrow and pinions Mirabella’s trailing skirt to the boards of the arena wall. “Mirabella’s been poisoned.”
Mirabella felt the feather of the poisoned arrow graze her leg when it passed. That is how close it came to being over. The sound of it sinking deep into the wood chilled her to the bone. She thought it was the sound of it burying itself in her thigh.
She drops her shield to yank at her skirt, trying to rip it loose. But it is stuck fast. The material is too thick to tear through.
Mirabella panics. She cries out and calls the wind to send Katharine flying halfway across the arena. But nothing more comes than a strong gust. It wobbles Katharine and sends her sideways onto her knee, but it does not even knock her over.
Katharine laughs and draws the sword from the hilt on her back.
“This was not the way it was meant to be,” Mirabella says.
“Poor sister,” says Katharine. “You have heard those priestesses say you were chosen so many times that you actually came to believe it.”
“Luca!” Mirabella screams. “Bree! Elizabeth!” She stops and takes deep, frightened breaths. “Turn away! Turn away and do not watch.”
Overhead, the summer sky is cloudless and free of storms. The last she will see as her sister raises the sword. How strange, how humiliating, that this is how the poisoner will kill her, in a way where the poison on the blade does not even matter.
“Katharine! Get away from her!”
Mirabella flinches as Katharine is jerked backward, tossed toppling into the dirt. The shout came from the side of the arena opposite, and Mirabella cannot believe her eyes.
It is Arsinoe. Arsinoe and Juillenne Milone.
When Arsinoe saw the sword ready to swing down and sever Mirabella’s head, she did not think. She just bolted into the arena, and Jules followed. Jules followed like always, and used her war gift to send Katharine flying.
The crowd screams at the sight of Arsinoe returned from the dead, and she realizes what she has done.
Katharine rolls up onto her knee, her lips pulled back in a grimace of disbelief.
“You!” she yells, and points at the two of them. “You, again!”
“Yes, me again,” Jules growls. She steps in front of Arsinoe. Joseph and Camden run to Mirabella.
And then the crowd finds its voice.
“That is the naturalist!”
“It cannot be; she is dead!”
Arsinoe shifts her weight. There is no mistaking her, unmasked before the city. They see her scars, slashed across her cheek.
“You are dead!” Katharine shrieks. “I killed you!”
“You should have checked,” Arsinoe yells back. “The poisoned bolt never pierced my leather armor.” The stands rumble with shocked whispers.
“I saw the blood!” Katharine screeches, and braces when Jules clenches her fists.
“You saw what we wanted you to see.”
“Arsinoe?” Mirabella asks. “Arsinoe, you are alive?”
Arsinoe keeps one eye on Katharine as she walks to her sister. She stretches her hand out, and Mirabella’s fingers wrap around it.
“But I saw you fall . . . in the forest . . .”
“I’m a good actress. Born for the stage.” The lie is a gamble; all Katharine need do is ask her to show her back or even to raise her right arm quickly, and her poisoner secret will be out. But Katharine has not dared to make a move, and she will not, for as long as Jules is there.
“Let me help you.” With Joseph’s help, Arsinoe tears the last of Mirabella’s skirt loose from the arrow to hang ragged at her knees. “I’ve never seen you look so awful,” Arsinoe says, and Mirabella laughs. “And you’re so tall. But you were always the tallest.”
Mirabella’s eyes soften as Arsinoe’s words sink in. She knows that Arsinoe remembers her.
“That is because I am the oldest,” Mirabella says, and lifts her chin.
“By less than five minutes, to hear Willa tell it.”
Jules whistles from the center of the ring. She motions with her head toward Katharine, then again to the crowd. There is no quick escape. Camden’s ears flicker back and forth, betraying Jules’s fear. Joseph steps up beside Arsinoe.
“Well?” he asks. “What’s the plan now?”
“You knew what the plan was,” she says out of the side of her mouth. “The plan didn’t work. Why do you think we had to run out here?”
“Fantastic.” Joseph sighs.
“Guards!” Genevieve Arron yells from the gallery, leaning so far over the railing that it looks like she might fall over it. Even from the distance of half the arena, Arsinoe can see how white her knuckles are.
“Take the fugitive queen and the naturalists to the cells!”
Arsinoe, Jules, Joseph, and Mirabella form a tight circle as the Volroy guards flood into the arena. Even with Jules and Camden, they cannot fight their way out. And they cannot run, except perhaps to go up and over the stands, and Mirabella could never manage it, still so weak.
“Arsinoe,” Mirabella says. “You could have gotten away. You should not have tried to save me.”
“I don’t think there was ever any saving us,” Arsinoe replies grimly. “I just didn’t want to be what they thought I was.”
“Stop!” Katharine waves her arms at the guards and the Council. “This is not over! I can still kill them! I can kill them both if you will remove that”—she points at Jules and sputters with rage—“that cursed naturalist girl!”