The Black Council sneers at the word “travelers,” and Natalia shushes them like children. “If one of these travelers is indeed Arsinoe, then Queen Mirabella should go. You know better than anyone that they are not to meet until the Disembarking.”
“They have already met once,” Luca says. “Another time will do no harm. The queen will stay. She will stay and be silent. As will you, young Milone.”
The cougar pins its ears. The elder Milones each place a hand on Jules’s shoulders.
The priestesses return from the beach with tromping footsteps and jostling bodies. Mirabella listens tensely as the crowd mutters and gasps. And then the tent flap opens, and the priestesses throw Arsinoe inside.
Mirabella bites the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out. It is hard to tell that it is Arsinoe at first. She is soaked to the bone, and shaking, crumpled into a ball on the thin temple rug. And her face is ruined by deep, stitched gashes.
The priestesses stand guard with their hands on the hilts of their knives. They are ridiculous. The girl can barely stand let alone run.
“What happened to her face?” Renata Hargrove asks, disgusted.
“So there really was a bear,” Genevieve mutters over Natalia’s shoulder.
The stitched-together cuts are bright red. Irritated by the salt water.
More noise rumbles outside the tent flap, and two more priestesses enter with a boy struggling between them. Through his soaked, sand-streaked clothes, Mirabella recognizes him as the boy who was in the woods when Arsinoe and Jules found Joseph. He had been holding the horses. She had thought he was an attendant. But he must be the suitor, William Chatworth Jr.
The boy wrenches loose of the priestesses and kneels near Arsinoe, shivering.
“Arsinoe,” he says. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Arsinoe, I’m here!” Jules shouts, but Cait and Ellis hold her back.
Lucian Marlowe reaches down and pulls Chatworth up by the collar. “The boy should be killed,” he says.
“Perhaps,” says Natalia. “But he is a delegate.” She steps toward him and holds his chin in her hand. “Did you knowingly take Queen Arsinoe, mainlander? Did you attempt to help her flee? Or did she take control of your vessel and do it herself?”
Her voice is carefully neutral. Anyone listening would believe that she does not care one way or another how he answers.
“We were caught in a squall,” he says. “We barely made it here. We did not mean to leave.”
Margaret Beaulin laughs aloud. Genevieve Arron shakes her head.
“He didn’t know,” Arsinoe whispers from the carpet. “I made him. It was me.”
“Very good,” says Natalia. She flicks her wrist, and two priestesses take Billy by the arms.
“No,” he says. “She’s lying!”
“Why should we believe the word of a mainlander over one of our own queens?” Natalia asks.
“Take him to the harbor,” she says. “Send word to his father. Tell him that we are most relieved that he has been returned unharmed. And hurry. He does not have long to recover before the Disembarking.”
“This whole place is mad,” Billy growls. “Don’t you touch her! Don’t you dare touch her!”
He struggles, but it is not difficult to remove him, exhausted as he is.
With him gone, every eye falls on Arsinoe.
“This is unfortunate,” Renata says.
“And unpleasant,” says Paola. “It would have been better had she stayed lost. If she had drowned. Now there will be a mess.”
Genevieve slips out from behind Natalia and leans down close to Arsinoe’s ear.
“She has been very stupid,” she says. “Another boat and another boy. She has not even come up with a different plan.”
“Get away from her.” Jules Milone’s voice is a growl. Genevieve looks for a moment at the cougar, as if unsure it was not the one who actually spoke.
“Quiet,” the High Priestess says. “And you, Genevieve. Get back.”
Genevieve clenches her jaw. She looks to Natalia, but Natalia does not disagree. At Beltane, the temple rules. The Goddess rules, whether the Black Council likes it or not.
Luca kneels before Arsinoe. She takes the queen’s hands between her own and rubs them.
“You feel like ice,” she says. “And you look like a belly-up fish.” She motions to one of the priestesses. “Bring her water.”
“I do not want water.”
Luca sighs. But she smiles at Arsinoe kindly, trying to be patient. “What do you want, then? Do you know where you are?”
“I tried to get away from you,” Arsinoe says. “I tried to run, but the mist wouldn’t let go. We fought. We paddled. But it held us like a net.”
“Arsinoe,” Cait says. “Do not say any more.”
“It doesn’t matter, Cait. Because I couldn’t get away. She held us in that fog until she spit us out, right into this cursed harbor.”
Arsinoe’s arms tremble, but her eyes do not waver. They are red, and weary, full of hatred and despair, but they remain fixed on the High Priestess’s face.
“Does she know?” Arsinoe asks. “Does your precious queen know what you are planning?”
Luca inhales sharply. She tries to pull away, but Arsinoe does not let go. Priestesses advance to help, and grasp Arsinoe by the shoulders.
“Does she know that you are planning to kill me?”
The priestesses force Arsinoe facedown onto the rug. Jules shouts, and Ellis holds Camden tight by the neck to keep her from leaping.
“Does she know?” Arsinoe shrieks.
“Kill her,” Luca says calmly. “The escape cannot be pardoned a second time.” She motions to the priestesses, and they draw their knives. “Take her head and her arms. Cut the heart separate from the body. And throw it all into the Breccia Domain.”
Arsinoe struggles as the priestesses move upon her. They pin her down. They raise their knives. The council looks on in shock. Not even the poisoners were ready for this. The only one not slightly green is war-gifted Margaret Beaulin.
“No!” Jules shouts again.
“Get her out of here,” Natalia says. “For the girl’s own good, Cait. She does not need to see this.”
Cait and Ellis struggle with Jules and drag her out of the tent. Mirabella steps forward and takes Luca by the arm.
“You cannot do this,” she says. “Not here. Not now. She is a queen!”
“And she will have the death rites of a queen, though she dies in disgrace.”
“Luca, stop. Stop it now!”
The High Priestess pushes Mirabella back gently.
“You do not have to stay either,” she says. “Perhaps it would be better if we escorted you out.”
On the thin rug, Arsinoe is screaming as the priestesses tear at her, pressing her down, pulling her limbs to lay flat. It seems that she is crying red tears, but it is only that the stitches in her face have begun to stretch.
“Arsinoe,” Mirabella whispers. Arsinoe used to chase Katharine like a monster through the muddy bank. She was always dirty. Always angry. Always laughing.
One of the priestesses places a foot on Arsinoe’s back and yanks her arm hard to pull it out of joint. Arsinoe yelps. She does not have much fight left. It will not be difficult to saw through her arms and head.
“No!” Mirabella shouts. “You will not do this!”
She calls down the storm almost without knowing it. Wind bows the sides of the tent and tears at the flaps. The priestesses upon Arsinoe are so focused that they do not notice until the first bolt of lightning shakes the ground beneath them.
The Black Council scatters like rats. Before she can send the flames from the candles after them, or lightning comes straight for their heads. Luca and the priestesses try to reason with her, but Mirabella brings the storm down harder. Half the tent collapses beneath the force of the wind.
In the end, they all run.
Mirabella gathers Arsinoe into her lap and brushes salty
, filthy hair from her sister’s cheeks. The storm calms.
“It is all right now,” Mirabella says softly. “You will be all right.”
Arsinoe blinks her tired black eyes. “You’re going to pay for this,” she says.
“I do not care,” says Mirabella. “Let them execute us both.”
“Hmph,” Arsinoe snorts. “I’d like to see them try.”
Mirabella kisses her sister’s forehead. She is weak and feverish. The knotted wounds that line her face are swollen and slightly torn. Every bit of her must sing with pain. Yet Arsinoe does not wince.
“You are made of stone,” Mirabella says, and touches Arsinoe’s stitched-together cheek. “It is a wonder that anything was able to cut you at all.”
Arsinoe struggles out of Mirabella’s arms. That too is like the sister she remembers. Always a wild thing, not made for cuddling.
“Is there water?” Arsinoe asks. “Or did you turn it into an arrow and stab Natalia Arron through the heart?”
Mirabella retrieves the pitcher from where the storm cast it onto the floor. Most of it spilled, but there is still a cupful, sloshing against the sides. “There is not much,” she says. “I was not focused. I only wanted to keep them away. It was like that day at the Black Cottage.”
“I don’t remember that day,” Arsinoe says. She upends the pitcher and swallows greedily. She may throw it up as soon as she stands.
“Try, then. Try to remember.”
“I don’t want to.” Arsinoe sets down the pitcher. It takes a moment, but eventually, she is able to rise.
“Your shoulder,” Mirabella says. “Be careful.”
“I’ll get Jules to put it back in. I should go.”
“But,” Mirabella says, “the council and Luca . . . They will be waiting.”
“Oh,” Arsinoe says. She takes a step and holds her breath and then takes another. “I don’t think they will. I think you made your point.”
“But if you let me . . .”
“Let you what? Listen, I know you think you did something really grand just now. But I’m here. I’m caught. We all are.”
“You hate me, then?” Mirabella asks. “You want to kill me?”
“Yes, I hate you,” Arsinoe says. “I always have. I didn’t try to escape so that I could spare you. It was not about you.”
Mirabella watches her sister limp toward the tent flap.
“I suppose I have been very stupid,” Mirabella says. “I suppose . . .”
“Stop sounding so sad. And stop looking at me that way. This is what we are. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t ask for it.”
Arsinoe grabs on to the flap of the tent. She hesitates as though she might say more. As though she might be sorry.
“I hate you a little less now,” she says quietly, and then she is gone.
THE MILONE ENCAMPMENT
Jules is waiting for Arsinoe just beyond the half-collapsed tent. Arsinoe will not take a shoulder to lean on, but she accepts Jules’s arm, and tugs the collar of her shirt over her face. It at least provides a small shield from the spit and fruit peelings as they navigate the crowds.
“Everyone stay back!” Jules shouts. “No one say a word!”
They do stay back, thanks to Camden. But they say and throw plenty.
“Just like being at home, eh?” Arsinoe says grimly.
Inside her tent at the Milone encampment, safe from prying eyes, Cait and Ellis tend to her. Luke and Joseph are there as well. Even Madrigal. When Ellis sets Arsinoe’s shoulder, Luke weeps.
“Queen Mirabella is one for the rules,” Ellis says. “She will not even let priestesses harm a queen before her time.”
“Is that why she stopped them?” Jules asks. “Or does she just want to do it herself?”
“Whatever the reason, I think that the temple will find her harder to control than they thought,” says Ellis.
“Is Billy all right?” Arsinoe asks. “Has anyone heard?”
“He was safe when they escorted him toward Sand Harbor,” Joseph says. “I’m sure he’s there now, preparing for the Disembarking.”
“The Disembarking,” Madrigal says. “We do not have long until sundown.”
“Be silent, Madrigal,” Jules says. “She does not have to worry about that.”
“No,” Arsinoe says. “I do. I’m here, and I won’t have you getting into any more trouble on my account.”
“But—” Jules says.
“I would rather walk up those cliffs than be dragged by priestesses.”
Cait and Ellis look at each other solemnly.
“We had best finish preparing for the feast, then,” Cait says. “And dig our blacks out of mothballs.”
“I can help,” Luke says. He looks very handsome, and very smart, in his festival clothes. But Luke is always better dressed than the rest of Wolf Spring. “If I’m staying and eating, I ought to pull my weight.” He takes Arsinoe’s hand and squeezes. “I am glad to see you back,” he says, and follows Cait and Ellis out of the tent.
Arsinoe sits down on the makeshift bed of pillows and blankets. She could sleep for days, even in a tent that smells like mold, with no furniture besides a wooden trunk and a table with water in a cream-colored pitcher.
“I should wring your neck,” says Jules.
“Be nice to me. My neck was almost severed, not one hour ago.”
Jules pours Arsinoe a cup of water before sitting on the trunk.
“I need to tell you something,” Arsinoe says. “I need to tell you all.”
They gather close. Jules and Joseph. Madrigal. They listen as she tells them what Billy told her. About the Sacrificial Year, and the priestess’s plot to assassinate her and Katharine.
“This can’t be true,” Jules says when Arsinoe is finished.
“But it is. I saw it in old Luca’s eyes.” Arsinoe sighs. “Luke should go. Someone should get him out. He would stand between me and a thousand priestesses’ knives, and I don’t want him to be hurt.”
“Wait,” Joseph says. “We can’t give up now, after all this. There has to be some way . . . some way to stop them.”
“To outmaneuver the High Priestess at the Beltane Festival?” Arsinoe asks. “It isn’t likely. You should . . . ,” she says, and pauses. “You should take Jules away, too, Joseph. For the same reason as Luke.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jules says. Her eyes flash at Joseph like he intended to grab her right that instant.
“I don’t want you to see it, Jules. I don’t want any of you to see it.”
“Then we’ll stop it,” says Madrigal.
They turn to look at her. She sounds very sure.
“You said that the temple is using the guise of the Sacrificial Year,” Madrigal says. “One strong queen and two weak ones.”
“Yes,” says Arsinoe.
“So we will make you strong. They cannot strike after the Quickening if the island does not see weakness. Their lie will not hold.”
Arsinoe looks at Jules and Joseph.
“That might work,” Arsinoe says wearily. “But there is no way to make me strong.”
“Wait,” Jules says. Her eyes are unfocused and faraway. Whatever it is that she is thinking, she is so distracted that she does not even respond when Camden tugs on her pant leg with very sharp claws.
“What if there was a way to make you look strong?” Her eyes snap back to Arsinoe’s. “What if on stage tomorrow night, you call your familiar, and it arrives in the form of a great brown bear?”
Arsinoe inadvertently touches the cuts on her face. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw a great brown in the western woods,” Jules says. “What if I could get him to go to you? I could hold him on that stage.”
“That is too much, even for you. A great brown bear, in the midst of the crowds and clamor . . . You couldn’t hold him. He’d tear me apart in front of everyone.” Arsinoe cocks her head. “Though I suppose I would prefer that he do it, rather than the priestesses.”
r /> “Jules can do it,” Madrigal says. “But just to hold the bear on stage will not be enough. It must be made to obey you, or no one will believe. We will need to tie it to you, through your blood.”
Jules grabs her mother by the wrist. “No. No more.”
Madrigal jerks away and shakes the touch off dismissively. “Juillenne. There is no choice. And it will still be dangerous. It will not be a familiar-bond. You won’t be able to communicate with it. It will be more like a pet.”
Arsinoe looks at Camden. She is no pet. She is an extension of Jules. But better a pet than a torn-out throat or losing her head and arms.
“What do we need?” Arsinoe asks.
“Its blood and yours.”
Jules inhales shakily. Joseph takes her by the elbow.
“This is too much,” he says. “Holding a bear is one thing, but taking his blood? There must be some other way.”
“There isn’t.”
“It’s too dangerous, Jules.”
“You’ve been gone a long time,” says Madrigal. “You don’t know what she can do.”
Jules puts her hand over Joseph’s.
“Trust me,” she says. “You always have before.”
Joseph clenches his jaw. It seems that every muscle in his body might burst from tension, but he manages to nod.
“What can I do to help?” he asks.
“Stay away,” says Jules.
“What?”
“I’m sorry but I mean it. This is the hardest thing I have ever asked of my gift. I can’t be distracted. And I don’t have much time. It will take a while, to move him from the woods. I will have to take him around the valley, where he won’t be seen. Even if I sneak out tonight, after everyone is asleep, I may not make it in time. And if the Hunt drove him farther away . . .”
“It is the only chance we have,” Arsinoe says. “Jules, if you’re willing, I would try.”
Jules glances at Madrigal. Then nods.
“I’ll leave tonight.”
THE DISEMBARKING
Arsinoe is the last queen to take her place atop the cliffs for the Disembarking. By the time she makes her way through the meadow and up the path, the valley has emptied. Everyone has assembled on the beach, to stand beside tall, lit torches and await the ships.