“It does not matter,” he says. “It is our lot. To drive each other mad with jealousy. You will kiss a suitor, and I will kiss a priestess, and it will make your fire for me burn even higher.”
“Do not tease,” she says, and he smiles.
Outside the tent, poisoners converse as they move and unpack chests. Preparation for the night’s Hunt has begun. Every poisoner at Innisfuil will soon be stringing bows and readying crossbows, dipping their arrowheads and bolts in dilutions of poisonous winter rose.
“I wish I could take part in the Hunt,” Katharine says. She walks to the bed and kneels to smear butter across a bit of crust. “It would be nice to take a horse into the hills and flush quail and pheasant. Will you go on horseback? Or on foot?”
“I will not go at all,” he says. “I will stay with you.”
“Pietyr. You do not need to. I will only be a bore, worrying about the Gave Noir and the Disembarking.”
“No,” he says. “Do not worry about any of that.”
“It will be hard to think of anything else.”
“Then I will help you.”
Pietyr pulls her to his chest and kisses her again until they are both breathless.
“Do not think of it, Kat. Do not worry.” He lays her back on the bed. “Do not be afraid.”
He moves on top of her, his warm breath in her ear. Something has changed in Pietyr; his touch is desperate and slightly sad. She imagines it is because he knows they will soon be parted by one suitor or another, but she does not say a word for fear he will stop. His kisses make her dizzy, even if she does not understand it when he traces his finger across her skin, first where her arm and shoulder meet, and then in an invisible line across her throat.
THE MILONE ENCAMPMENT
Jules raises the mallet high above the tent stake. She means to tap. But when she swings, the impact splits the wooden stake in two. A waste of a perfectly good stake, but at least it frightens the onlookers. Since Arsinoe disappeared, Jules has had no peace. Everyone thinks she must know where Arsinoe went.
Even Billy’s father. The day after the boat went missing, William Chatworth finally paid the Milones a visit, but only to pound on their door demanding answers. Demanding punishment. But there is no one to punish. The queen is gone, and Billy has gone with her.
Ellis bends down with his white spaniel, Jake.
“I didn’t mean to split it,” Jules says.
“I know,” he says. “Don’t worry. Jake can pull this out, and there are more on the cart.”
Jules wipes her brow as the dog sets to digging up the stake. Their main tent lies on the grass like a dead bat’s wing, and smells just as sour. It is nothing like the fine tents housing Mirabella and Katharine. Not that it matters. They do not really need to put it up. Without Arsinoe, they did not need to come to Innisfuil at all.
Jules toes the edge of the tent, and a hole in it that needs mending.
“This is shameful,” she says. “We should have taken more care. We should have treated her like a real queen.”
“We did,” Ellis says. “We treated her like a naturalist queen. Nose in the dirt. Running with us and fishing. Naturalist queens are queens of the people; it’s why they make such good ones, when they are strong enough to manage it.”
“Scat!”
Jules and Ellis turn and see Cait chase Camden from her tent. Eva caws and flaps around the cougar’s head.
“What’s the matter?” Jules asks.
“Nothing much,” Cait says. “She is only after the bacon.” She gestures with her chin. “Here’s Joseph.”
He waves a greeting, walking slightly hunched. The eyes of the island have been on him too since Billy and Arsinoe disappeared.
“Hallo, Joseph,” Ellis says. “Have you and your family settled in? Where are you camped?”
“Just over that way,” he says, and points to the east. “Though my parents decided to stay behind with Jonah, so it’s just me and Matthew.”
“Have you scouted ground for the Hunt?” Cait calls.
“No. Not yet.”
“Then you’d best get after it. You and Juillenne both. If you go slowly enough, you can take this beast with you.”
At her mention, Camden looks at Jules hopefully. Her left foreleg and shoulder are healing poorly, but her eyes are bright and yellow green. I am not useless, they seem to say. I am still alive and eager.
“Let’s go,” Jules whispers, and the cat canters ahead on three legs.
“Do a good job of it,” Cait says. “There will be more deaths this year, just on account of so many jostling feet.” She looks out across the enormous meadow. “It won’t be long before these tents start to spill over onto the beaches.”
And more will come, on top of that. Folk without any tents at all, to sleep out under the stars.
“Jules,” Joseph says when they are inside the trees.
“The undergrowth is not thick,” Jules says. That will make for easier going, but hunting in the darkness of the trees is always perilous. People trip and are trampled underfoot. They break their bones on uneven ground. Or they are caught by a careless blade or arrow.
“Jules.”
He touches her shoulder.
“How are you? I mean, after all this.”
“Shouldn’t we be happy?” she asks, and shrugs him off. “Haven’t we always wanted her to find a way off the island?”
“Yes,” he says. “But I didn’t think it would be so suddenly. And without word. I didn’t think she would go without us.”
Jules’s eyes sting. “That does cut. But I don’t blame her. She saw her chance.”
Camden scouts ahead and grunts at the edge of a slippery washout along the widening banks of a creek. During the Hunt, Cam will be kept in the camp with the other familiars. Though she would love to join, it is no place for the snap-able bones of dogs and birds, and any could be mistaken for prey.
“Mirabella is here,” Jules says. In the corner of her eye, Joseph tenses. “Did you see the carriages that brought her? Gilded and spotless. The horses had not a hair of white between them. If not for all the silver on their harnesses, they would have looked like shadows.”
“I didn’t see them,” he says. “I haven’t seen her, Jules.”
“I’m saying that it’s good that Arsinoe is gone,” Jules continues. “She was never going to win. Maybe she could have, if she’d had the Westwoods or the Arrons behind her instead of us. If we had been able to give her . . . anything . . .”
“Arsinoe was happy,” Joseph says. “She was our friend, and she got away. You made her strong enough to get away.”
Camden’s ears flicker backward as a branch pops beneath a foot. Other hunters scouting the woods. Joseph raises an arm in greeting. It is no one they know. They are probably naturalists but could have any gift. At Beltane, the people mix and mingle, though the tents do not reflect it. The naturalists are camped near other naturalists, and all the Indrid Down and Prynn tents are together. Even during the Hunt, only those with the war gift will venture outside their parties, and them only because they are so few and because they know the naturalist gift will provide a better opportunity for a kill.
“It’s nearing time,” Joseph says. His eyes are bright. Sad as he is for Arsinoe, he is still a young wolf, and this is his first time running with the pack.
“I don’t imagine you had any hunts so grand when you were on the mainland,” says Jules.
“No. We hunted, but it was nothing like this. It was daylight so we could see, for a start.”
In the distance, toward camp, someone beats a drum. The day has turned late without them noticing. Soon, the fires will burn high and people will jump through them. Naturalists will trade their clothes for deerskin and streaks of black-and-white paint on their bodies.
By the time they return to the meadow, the sun has dipped behind the trees and turned the light to dusky yellow. And Cait was right. In their absence, Innisfuil has filled to near bursting. Tents edge
together with barely a step of space between them, and the paths and fire pits are crowded with excited, smiling faces.
They reach Joseph’s tent, and he skins out of his shirt.
“Are you going to keep those?” Jules asks, gesturing to his tan, mainlander trousers.
“I don’t see why not,” he says. “Everyone thinks I’m from the mainland, anyway.”
He helps her out of her own shirt, down to her soft leather tunic and leggings. She is not much in the mood for hunting, but the naturalist blood in her veins will not let her stay behind. Already it tugs her toward the trees.
“Will you paint me?” Joseph asks. He holds out a jar of black.
At first, she does not know what to paint. And then she does.
She dips four fingers and drags lines down his shoulder. She dips them again and drags lines down his right cheek, before doing the same to herself.
“For Arsinoe,” she says.
“That is perfect,” he says. “But just one more.”
“One more?”
He takes her by the wrist.
“I would wear your handprint, over my heart.”
Jules’s hand hovers over his chest. Then she covers her palm with paint and holds it against his heartbeat. As she does, she presses her lips to his.
She missed his touch. The heat of it, and the strength of his arms around her. Since Mirabella, sometimes it has felt like Joseph had never come back to the island at all. But he is there, even if Arsinoe is not, and even if their promises to each other about Beltane, and being together for the first time, have been spoiled.
Joseph holds on to Jules tightly. He kisses her as if he is afraid to stop.
She raises her hands to his chest and pushes him away.
“Joseph. I was wrong to do that.”
“No,” he says breathlessly. “You weren’t. We can stay here all night, Jules, we don’t have to hunt.”
“No.”
He touches her face, but she will not look in his eyes. What she would see there might change her mind.
“Will you never forgive me?” he asks.
“Not now,” she says. “I do not want to feel like everything between us has been ruined. I want it to be right again and to go back to the way it was.”
“What if it never does?” he asks.
“Then we will know that it was never meant to be.”
THE BRECCIA DOMAIN
“It is so black,” Katharine says.
“Yes,” says Pietyr. “But you ought to know what black is, being a queen.”
His voice comes from a distance behind her. He refused to go so close to the edge. But the moment Katharine saw the Breccia Domain, she dropped onto her belly and slithered up to it like a snake.
The Breccia Domain is the deep chasm in the ground that they call “the heart of the island.” It is a sacred place. They say it has no bottom, and seeing it, Katharine cannot describe its darkness. It is so black that it is almost blue.
Pietyr sneaked her out as soon as Natalia and Genevieve were distracted by the Hunt. They slipped quietly into the deep southern Innisfuil woods, where hunting is forbidden, until the trees opened up on the stark gray rocks and the dark fissure in the island, like the wound from a jagged blade.
“Come out here with me,” she says.
“No thank you.”
She laughs and hangs her head over the edge. Pietyr cannot feel what she feels as a queen. This place is for her kind.
She takes another deep, deep breath.
The Breccia Domain feels. The Breccia Domain is, in that way that so many other sacred places on Fennbirn are, but the Domain is where all those other places connect. It is the source. Had Katharine been raised in the temples like Mirabella, she might have better words for the hum in the air and how it makes the back of her neck prickle.
The cold, dense air of it rushes into her blood and makes her so giddy that she laughs.
“Kat, come away from it now,” Pietyr says.
“Must we go so soon? I like it here.”
“I do not understand why. It is a morbid place in the middle of nowhere.”
She rests her head on her hand and continues to look down into the fissure. Pietyr is right. She should not like it so well. In generations past, the Domain is where they would throw the bodies of the queens who did not survive their Ascension Years. Genevieve says that at the bottom of the hole, they lie in piles. Shattered.
But now Katharine does not think so. The Breccia Domain is so vast and deep. Those queens cannot be broken at the bottom. They must all still be falling.
“Katharine, we cannot stay here all night. We must return before the Hunt is over.”
She takes one last, long look into the blackness and sighs. Then she stands and brushes dust off her gown. They had better go back. She will need rest before tomorrow.
Tomorrow, they will prepare for the Disembarking at sunset, when she and Mirabella will see their suitors for the first time, as well as each other. She wonders whether the pretty elemental will be surprised to see her weak poisoner sister looking so healthy.
“What a waste,” Katharine says. “Kissing that mainland boy, Billy Chatworth. Only to have him run off with Arsinoe.”
“What do you mean kissing him?” Pietyr asks. “You kissed him?”
“Of course I did,” she says. “Why do you think I left the drawing room? So that you would not have to watch.”
“That is kind, but soon I will not be able to avoid it,” he says. “You will have to pretend that I am not there, Kat. You will have to pretend that I do not exist.”
“Yes, but I will only be pretending. And none of them will touch me here at Beltane. I will not be alone with them until after the Quickening.”
Pietyr looks away, and Katharine walks to him and kisses him quickly. She will steal many more kisses from him tonight, and tomorrow night, hidden away from Genevieve’s disapproving eye.
“We will not be parted,” she whispers against his lips. “Even though we will always have to hide.”
“I know, Kat,” he says, and wraps his arms around her. She rests her head against his chest.
It will be hard but not impossible. They have gotten very good at hiding.
THE HUNT
When the Hunt began, Jules was so close to Joseph that they were almost touching, standing near the front of the naturalist horde as the drums counted down. The High Priestess sounded the horn, and they ran with the rest, the only sounds in their ears the cries of other hunters, and the crushing of grass beneath their feet.
They stayed together for a while, running, as the naturalists’ gifts drew game willingly into the trees. Then she looked to her right, and he was not there.
She searched for him every place she could think of. She even took up one of the torches to search the ground, in case he had fallen. But she did not find him, and now the woods are quiet.
“Joseph?” she calls. The other naturalists and those few with the war gift have left her far behind. For a time, she heard their victory cries, but now there is not even that. The poisoners with their tainted blades and arrows have taken the high hunting ground in the hills below the cliffs, and the fast, light-footed elementals will have flooded the northern woods behind their precious queen’s tent.
“Joseph!” she calls again, and waits.
He will be all right. He is fit and an able hunter. It is easy to lose track of a companion in such a trampling crowd; perhaps they were foolish to try to stay together in the first place.
Jules holds her torch out and peers into the dark. The night air chills her skin now that she is no longer running. After a moment, she sets off in the opposite direction of the pack. She has come this far already. There is no reason she should not find some game.
Mirabella sits before a cold plate of fruit and cheese. She stands quickly when something thumps outside her tent. Moments later, Bree and Elizabeth drag her unconscious guards inside.
“What is this?” she asks.
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Bree looks very pretty in a black belted tunic with silver edging and high, soft boots. She and Elizabeth both wear cloaks of dark gray wool. Hunting cloaks.
Mirabella studies the unconscious priestesses. At least, she thinks that they are unconscious. They are both so still.
“What have you done?” Mirabella asks.
“We have not killed them,” Bree says in a tone that suggests she would not care if they had. “They are only drugged. A poisoner’s trick, I know, but what good is being in a meadow full of poisoners if you cannot get even a simple sleeping water?”
Elizabeth holds out a folded gray cloak for Mirabella.
“We will be discovered,” Mirabella says. She looks down at Elizabeth’s side, where her hand should be. “We cannot risk it.”
“Do not use me as an excuse,” the priestess says. “I may be of the temple, but they will not control me.” Beneath her hood, her olive cheeks are flushed with excitement.
“You will make a very bad priestess someday,” Bree says, and laughs wickedly. “Why do you even stay? You could come and live with us. You do not belong with their lot.”
Elizabeth thrusts the cloak into Mirabella’s arms.
“It is not so bad, being a pariah,” she says. “And just because the priestesses have turned on me does not mean that the Goddess has. Now come. We do not need to be gone long. Only long enough to see the naturalists. The real hunters, with feathers braided into their hair and bones around their necks.”
“And their bare chests,” says Bree.
“We can put these two back at their posts when we return,” Elizabeth says. “Perhaps they will wake and be too ashamed to admit they fell asleep.”
There is a dagger and slingshot tucked into Bree’s belt, and a crossbow slung over Elizabeth’s shoulder. Not for game but for protection. Mirabella’s eyes dart to her friend’s missing hand. She will need help, to reload.
“All right,” she says, and slides into the cloak. “But quickly.”
Jules hears the bear before she sees the den dug into the side of the hill. She moves her torch so the light falls across the entrance, and he looks back at her with bright, firelit eyes.