CONTENTS

2. Prologue: The Black Cottage

3. The Day of the Claiming

1. Wolf Spring

2. The Black Cottage

3. The Claiming

4. Rolanth

5. Greavesdrake Manor

6. Wolf Spring

7. Rolanth

8. Wolf Spring

9. Greavesdrake Manor

10. Wolf Spring

4. The Aftermath of Arsinoe’s Attempt to Escape

1. Indrid Down

2. Rolanth

5. Epilogue: Wolf Spring

6. Excerpt from The Oracle Queen

7. Back Ads

8. About the Author

9. Books by Kendare Blake

10. Copyright

11. About the Publisher

PROLOGUE:

THE BLACK COTTAGE

The day of the birth of the queens who would come to be known as Mirabella, Arsinoe, and Katharine was still, unremarkable, and without omens. There was no great wind to howl the arrival of an elemental queen. No bloody fish kill against the rocks to signal the coming of the war gift. All across Fennbirn—from the capital of Indrid Down to the smallest villages—elders and the dwindling number of seers cast divinations and downed trance potions, only to pass out drunk and see the oracle bones lie on the ground in nonsense patterns. The triplets were born, in silence and in private, with only the queen, the king-consort, and the Midwife to bear witness.

Three black witches, the mainland would say. Born to a descending queen. One would rise to become queen in her place. Perhaps the strongest of the three. Perhaps the cleverest. Or perhaps it would be the girl born under the best shield of luck.

“It was an easy labor,” said the Midwife. “You were lucky, Queen Camille.”

“Easy,” Camille said, and scoffed, “Easy for you to say, Willa.” But even though she hurt, and ached, and could barely keep her eyes open, she knew it could have gone worse. From the moment her pregnancy was known, her foster sister Genevieve Arron had filled her head with tales of births gone wrong. On Camille’s last day at the Volroy, just before she departed for the Black Cottage to give birth, Genevieve spoke of so much blood and screaming that Camille had nearly passed out. She had stopped short and stood frozen, as if standing still would somehow stop the triplets from coming. She did not move until her eldest foster sister, Natalia, had taken her by the arm and walked her to the coach.

“Do not let her frighten you, Camille,” Natalia had said. “Queens have birthed the triplets for thousands of years.”

“But not all have survived,” Genevieve had continued to taunt. “I was only trying to prepare her, so that she might see the signs of it going wrong. So that she might fight for her life.”

Genevieve. Younger than the queen and completely spoiled, and always as mean as the snakes they kept to adorn themselves with at parties.

Camille lay back in the birthing bed, remembering her last days at the Volroy, as Willa pressed a cool cloth to her forehead.

“Well,” said Willa, and brushed the queen’s black hair out of her eyes, “you are breathing, aren’t you?”

Camille looked at the bassinets across the room, each with a sleeping queen inside. The firstborn, Mirabella the elemental, had come in such a rush, with such electricity to her that Camille had shouted her gift before her name. Elemental Mirabella. Arsinoe the poisoner had arrived not long after; Willa had barely gotten Mirabella washed and settled into her blankets. But sweet little naturalist Katharine had given her a rest, taking so long that they feared her sisters would start to fuss.

“I did it,” Camille said as her eyes began to close. “I survived. And now my reign is over.”

When she woke, the three bassinets were gone, whisked away by Willa to the nursery down the hall. In their place was a chair, and slumped down on it, snoring softly, was her king-consort, Philippe.

Sweet Philippe. He had won her hand in the Hunt of the Stags, when she could not choose her favorite from the suitors that the Arrons approved of. Sometimes she thought it was the only bit of luck that the Goddess ever gave her. Though he had little power in the face of the Arrons, he had loved Camille well, and a life away from the island with him was all she had ever looked forward to. When her triplets came after only seven years of her rule, she was overjoyed.

They would leave now, and trade the island for the world. Out there, she would be just a woman, free to make her own path. All she had to give up was her crown, and that she had already torn off her head and thrown during the births.

Camille looked around the room. Willa had done a fine job of cleaning while she slept. The bloody cloths and trays of sharp knives were gone, the cloths burned and the knives returned to storage in case the next queen’s birth was not so lucky and the triplets needed to be cut out. Mellow incense smoke cleared the stench of sweat and labor, and she had set a warm, crackling fire in the fireplace.

Outside, the December night was dark—only the faintest hint of moonlight reflected across the snowdrifts. Camille gingerly swung her leg over the edge of the bed and winced. She took a moment to collect herself, held her sagging, empty belly with one arm and swung the other until she stood. Her vision wavered, and for a moment, she feared Philippe would wake to the sound of her collapsing on the floor. But the weakness passed. She slipped a blanket about her shoulders like a shawl, and walked out.

“Where are you going, my love?” Philippe, more awake than she had thought, grasped her wrist softly as she passed. “You should be resting. We have a long journey tomorrow.” His eyes lingered on her pale face, and then on the floor, and on the small trail of dripped blood she left behind.

She patted him, and he let go. His heavily lidded eyes blinked shut. He was, even after years on the island, still a mainland man and trusted that she must know best about these women’s mysteries.

“I am only going to look in on them.”

“Shall I go with you?”

She shook her head. Philippe was a strong consort, but he was too softhearted for this. If he saw the triplet queens, he might want to hold them. And if he held them, he might start to feel that they were his instead of Fennbirn’s.

Queen Camille walked down the high-ceilinged hall of the Black Cottage, one hand out along the wall to steady her. The light from the lamps in the nursery cast warm yellow light, and inside, another bright fire crackled against the cold.

Much like Camille’s king-consort, Willa slept upright in a chair. Though not, perhaps, as prettily. Willa’s mouth hung open, and her head fell over to the side. Her snore sounded like a pig searching excitedly for mushrooms.

Camille crept past. The newborn queens in the bassinets were dressed in black and affixed with the colors of their gifts. Blue buttons for elemental Mirabella, and a purple patch for poisoner Arsinoe. Pretty green ribbons for tiny naturalist Katharine. Even the bassinets had been decorated with items associated with each gift: a cloud-shaped pillow, a mobile hung with snakes and spiders, and a quilt embroidered with flowers.

“Enjoy the colors, little queens,” Camille whispered. “Soon enough it will all be black, black, black.”

She looked down on their sleeping faces—red and wrinkled, and angry-looking, even at birth. She did not blame them. Their lives would not be easy. And then two lives would be over.

Camille was a poisoner, like Queen Nicola, and Queen Sylvia before her. Three generations of poisoner queens. Almost a dynasty. But instead of growing stronger, it seemed that the blood of the poisoner queens grew thinner. The Arrons flourished in their power, as well as other poisoner families in Prynn and the capital, but Sylvia was stronger than Nicola, and Camille was the weakest of all. Over hundreds of years, the other gifts of the island had lessened: elementals lost their mastery over one or more elements, and the war-gifted lost the ability to guide their weapons with their minds. The naturalists’ familiars grew smaller and smaller. And the oracles . . . The true oracle gift was almost gone, thanks to generations of drowned oracle queens.

Something was changing on the island and within the line of queens. As a queen, Camille could feel that. Not that anyone would believe her. The Arrons never listened when she spoke of queenly instinct. They never listened to her about anything. They had been bullies her whole life, from the moment they claimed her from that very cottage. They shamed her when she failed. They did not let her rule. With each successive poisoner queen, the queen herself mattered less and less. The line of queens was not important, the Arrons said. It was the poisoners who the Goddess truly favored.

In their bassinets, the new triplets hummed with an aura of the gift each carried, that energy—like a scent or a heartbeat—that linked them to the Goddess and called to the queensblood in Camille. It was that which told her what she had given birth to, when she announced it to Willa, and named them, as though in a trance. It was like a trance. On Arsinoe and Katharine, the auras that lingered were weak. On Katharine it was barely a hint. But Mirabella still blazed with it.

“What are you doing here, Queen Camille?”

Camille flinched. Willa’s voice from behind her had sounded like Mistress Arron.

“Nothing.” She straightened her shoulders as Willa rose from her chair and came slowly to join her. “Only looking in on them. The messengers have been dispatched?” Messengers, summoned to the Black Cottage upon her labor, to ferry word to Rolanth, Indrid Down, and Wolf Spring. The elemental, poisoner, and naturalist cities, respectively.

“They have. They rode out at dusk.”

Camille sucked in her cheeks. A messenger to Indrid Down was hardly necessary anymore. The poisoners were so assured of their destiny.

Camille nodded to the baby in the storm-blue blanket.

“Her, there. Mirabella. She will be the next queen.”

Willa, still a servant of her temple teachings though no longer a priestess, made a pious gesture, touching first her eyes and then her heart.

“The Goddess decides,” Willa said. “Only she decides who rules her island.”

Camille took a deep breath. The walls of the cottage where the queens would spend their first six years, where she spent her own first six years, closed in, squeezing her out. Here they would play and have their hair braided. Here they would learn to walk and run, and if they were lucky, to not love one another too much.

“She decides,” Camille said. “But the queen knows. And I was mistaken about those two.” She pointed to poisoner Arsinoe and naturalist Katharine. “Arsinoe is a naturalist. Katharine . . . a poisoner.” She almost said war-gifted, to deny the Arrons a queen at all. But they would never believe it. They would investigate and look too closely.

“Camille . . .” Willa turned to her, and shook her head.

Camille clenched her jaw. She was still bleeding, and exhausted. For all she knew, she was slowly dying. But she willed herself to look strong. To look like the queen she was, for once.

“Mirabella will be queen. I can see that. Feel that. And she will be a great one. These other two will not survive long. Katharine’s gift is so weak, it will never fully quicken. And Arsinoe . . . Another poisoner queen will not sit the throne. But if the Arrons have a gifted poisoner, they will make her suffer. Training and belittling. Beating her when she gets it wrong. Like they did to me.”

“And what would they do with Queen Katharine?” Willa asked.

“What could they do with a giftless girl but leave her alone?” Camille swallowed hard. That was a lie. The Arrons could do plenty to a giftless girl. Everything they ever did to Camille, and worse. But at least they would fail. At least they would have no winning queen.

She looked down at little Katharine. The child was doomed already. “Change the queens’ gowns, Willa. So they are right.”

Willa looked from Arsinoe to Katharine. “If Mirabella is the chosen queen, then it will not matter.”

“It will not matter,” Camille agreed. She had known Willa since she was a girl. Willa had been a young woman then, deep in her midwife training, when she presided over the births of Camille and her sisters, and she was the one who raised them. She showered them with sweets and games. And they were happy.

“You cared for me so well, Willa,” said Camille. “You loved me.”

“I loved you all.”

“And you love me still.” Camille pressed her lips together. Through the nightmares, and the screaming fits, and the black blanket of depression that coiled round and round a queen’s neck as the birth neared. Through the days full of tremors, when Camille had tried to claw the babies out of her stomach. Willa was there. She brewed her teas to calm her. She told her it was normal. That the bearing of queens was always haunted by the fallen ones who came before, and the Black Cottage was full of ghosts. Even Camille’s own poisoned sisters.

It was the first time Willa had spoken of Camille’s sisters. After they were dead, fallen queens were never spoken of. They were forgotten, except by the families who had raised them, and the sister who survived. Camille had survived and become queen. Her sisters had not. The sisters of a true poisoner, they had died on the same day, in the same hour, writhing. Spitting blood.

“I love you still, and I will always, Camille,” said Willa. “But I cannot do this.”

“I am doing it.” Camille lay her hand on her Midwife’s shoulder. “I know that I took my crown off and threw it at you. But I am still the queen.”

In the morning, Queen Camille and her king-consort readied themselves to leave the island. It was a strange thing, to pack her own trunks and to dress her own sore body. But she would get used to it.

“Are you sure you are well?” Philippe asked. He glanced at the spots of blood on the floor, the pool of blood in her bed that had soaked through her clothes and cloth padding. “Our ship home can wait, if you need to rest longer. They won’t sail without us.”

“We go today,” Camille said. She felt weaker this morning than she had in the night, looking down on the new queens. But her time on the island was over. And she had done what she could to ease their paths.

It was not for them that you did it, her conscience amended. It was for you and for revenge.

“It was for the island,” she muttered. And it was not a terribly fulfilling revenge, anyway, when she would not be there to see it.

“What did you say? Camille—”

“I am fine, I said. The bleeding is normal.” She had begun to tremble slightly. The bleeding was a bit heavy, perhaps, but she was not sure. She had never birthed triplets before, after all.

Philippe watched her, then sighed and nodded. How relieved he would be to return to the world. His world, where men ruled. It gave her pause sometimes, wondering how he would change. He loved her on her island, but out there it might all be different. He might expect her to be something she had no idea how to be.

“I’ll take these to the carriage,” he said, and picked up the last of her cases. Camille followed, but she lingered in the hall near the open door of the nursery, where inside, Willa rocked and cooed to the new queens.

They said the old queen was glad to go. Glad to be done. That her queen-bearing, and her flight, was instinctual.

But when Camille looked at the babies, for just a moment she wished she had jaws like her beloved snakes, so she could unhinge them and swallow the girls back down under her heart forever.

“How can I go,” she whispered.

“You’ll forget,” Willa said gently. “The moment your feet cross the threshold. With every step you take across the island. When you set foot into the boat. You’ll forget.”

“I . . . worry for them.”

“Even though you know which one will be crowned?” Willa looked up; Camille looked away. Mirabella was the strongest child, true. And last night with the birthing blood rushing through her veins, she thought she had seen something in the little queen’s future. Something chosen. But in the daylight she remembered that she was only a used-up vessel. She knew what the queens were, but their fates were their own. She was no oracle.

“Will you change them back, after I am gone?” Camille asked, and then a pain tore through her, and she cried out. Willa left the babies to their bassinets and came to hold her by the elbows.

“Your skin is cold,” she said. She looked at Camille’s face and embraced her suddenly, kissing her forehead. “I will do as my queen wishes.”

THE DAY OF THE CLAIMING

Six Years Later

WOLF SPRING

Juillenne Milone stares at the colors swirling through the pearl, plucked fresh from an unlucky oyster that morning. She holds it up to the sun to admire the greens and pinks and gentle golds. It is very beautiful, and truth be told, she would rather not give it up. But Aunt Caragh says an offering is no use if it is something you do not want anyway, so she purses her lips and chooses the spot, directly in the middle of her patch of yellow daffodils. She digs deep and buries the pearl, getting dirt on her cheeks and somehow managing to sprinkle some into her dark brown hair. She prays to bless the young queens she and her aunt Caragh depart from Wolf Spring to see today, because Aunt Caragh told her to.

For a moment, the soil under her palm pulses with heat, stronger than the sun shining down on her head, and she feels the Goddess of the island rush into her blood, making her one with everything the soil touches: the roots and the pearl and the wind. And then the moment passes, and Jules gets to her feet.

Juillenne is six years old. Six and a half, really. She was born in December, like the queens themselves were, nine months after the Beltane fires. On the island, fall passes with heavy bellies painted for the reaping moon, in the hopes that babies conceived at Beltane will be nearly as strong as the queens. The Beltane Begots, those lucky children are called, and her grandpa Ellis says that bearing one was the only thing her mother, Madrigal, ever did by the island’s rules. Even so, the magic did not take. Jules was born a pretty child, with one blue eye and one green, with tan skin and thick, dark curls. But she was also born small, and weak, and sick almost the second she breathed the air. A bad sign for a child born into the strongest family of naturalists on Fennbirn, who in three generations had had only half a dozen cases of illness to split among them.

Or so her grandparents say. Jules of course does not remember, any more than she remembers her mother, who left Jules and the island when Jules was three years old. Another unlucky sign.

Jules steps away from the daffodils and wipes the dirt from her hands onto her pants, on the sides and the back, so Aunt Caragh will not see. Behind her, the grass rustles, and her best friend, Joseph Sandrin, shoves her and says, “Boo!”

“I heard you coming,” she says.

“Did not.” He bends to inspect the spot where she buried the pearl, and Jules waits with held breath for his nod of approval. Even at six years old, she knows that something about Joseph is special. Something that is not like other boys, and her stomach clenches around the feeling—it is exciting and scary. Then he squints up at her, and whatever it was disappears, and he is just Joseph again.

“It was the one I said, wasn’t it,” he says.

“Maybe.”

“It was. It was the oyster I chose. The one I brought you.”

The oyster he brought her was delicious and salty, but it held no pearl. Though he was born to a mostly giftless family (his oldest brother Matthew is able to charm fish), Joseph thinks he has a touch of the sight gift, and no one on the island can convince him any different.

They stand together in her aunt Caragh’s garden of radishes, green tomatoes, daffodils, and sunflowers. Two children with dirty trouser legs and matching blue shirts. Joseph and Jules, inseparable since birth.

“When do you have to go?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Pretty soon.” Jules looks back at the house. The season has started off hot, and Aunt Caragh’s familiar, a lean brown hound named Juniper, lies in a patch of dirt to stay cool. It is only the four of them in the house now, only Jules and Aunt Caragh, Grandma Cait and Grandpa Ellis. Great-Grandma Sasha died in her sleep and was burned before the first snow. Her ashes feed the daffodils on which Jules and Joseph now stand. Jules reaches out and strokes a yellow, velvet petal. Birth and death and rebirth. These are words she knows, and she thinks with sudden panic that they are words she should understand. That somehow they are tied to this day and these queens in a way that is important.

“I don’t know why you have to be the ones to take her,” says Joseph. He has never much cared for change and has spent most of the last few weeks trying to figure a way out of Jules taking in another girl.

“Because she’s a naturalist,” says Jules. “And because we’re the guardians.”

“My ma and pa say that it doesn’t look like she’s anything.”

“Well, Aunt Caragh says that’s what being a naturalist looks like,” she says, and shoves him.

Joseph scowls. “She won’t be with us all the time,” he says, half a question, half a demand, and looks at Jules with stormy blue eyes.

“Hardly at all. She’s a queen. But we have to be kind to her.”

“Because she’s a queen.”

Three dark queens are born in a glen. But only one will rule. Jules knows the rhyme by heart. But in her young mind it is only a rhyme. She has not thought about the other queens and who they are. Where they must go.

Aunt Caragh calls for Juillenne through an open window.

“Guess you have to go put on a dress,” says Joseph. “Glad I don’t have to.”

“Me too,” says Jules, and they laugh.

“Want to take the boat out and swim when you get back? Or we can just swim off the dock.”

“I don’t know. Aunt Caragh says the journey will take a long time. And when we get back, she’ll be here.”

Joseph frowns. “Well . . . you’ll have to bring her along, then, I guess. She can’t be that bad.” He walks through the yard and waves when he gets to the edge of it, and Jules waves back. She can’t be that bad, he says, but what does he know? The girl is a queen. Even though they say she is a naturalist, she could still be terrible.

Jules stretches her hand out toward the patch of blue oat grass that grows beside the daffodils, in the shade of the trees. For a moment, gentle energy moves from the center of her out to her fingertips, and she breathes in, unafraid, mostly impatient that she cannot ripen the fields yet like her grandparents or bloom a rose in her palm like Caragh.

The oat grass turns to her like she is the sun, but it grows no taller. Not yet. When she comes into the fullness of her gift, she will be able to grow a garden as lush as this one, with nothing more than wishes and coaxing. Grandpa Ellis says that the naturalist queen Bernadine, whose familiar the city of Wolf Spring was named for, could bring a field to harvest with a thought. But that was a long time ago, and besides, Jules is no queen.

“Juillenne!” Caragh shouts. “Stop dallying in the garden!”

Jules runs to the house and scoops up her grandpa Ellis’s familiar-dog, Jake, to use as a furry white shield against Caragh’s impatience.

THE BLACK COTTAGE

Willa watches the young queens as they ready themselves in eldest triplet Mirabella’s bedroom. Though the bedroom belongs to all of them, really. Neither Arsinoe nor Katharine has spent a full night in her own room since . . . well, since they traded their cradles for beds.

“No,” says Arsinoe, and throws her formal black dress on the floor. “It does not fit right.”

“It does so fit,” says Mirabella. She takes it from little Katharine, who has retrieved it from the rug. “It fits how it is supposed to.”

“You would know that if you ever wore one,” Katharine adds, and sticks out her tongue.

The girls are being difficult. Katharine likes her dress but does not want to have her hair braided. Mirabella’s hair is done, but she is unsatisfied with her sash. And Arsinoe . . . Arsinoe refuses everything.

That, Willa supposes, is her fault. She has raised them according to their designated gifts and let Arsinoe run wild in the woods. Let her tromp through the streambeds and dive after crayfish. Sweet Katharine has been primped and spoiled, and they have all looked upon her as their own special treasure. As for Mirabella, Willa remembers well the words of the queen. Mirabella is chosen. Strong. Born to rule. It shows in the way that she is with her sisters, always in charge of them and always the mediator. Or perhaps that, too, is due to how she was raised. Camille’s prediction was impossible to forget. So even though she was not supposed to, Willa has groomed Mirabella over her sisters for the crown. As soon as the girl could read, Willa spent hours in the cottage library with her, poring over the history of the island.

But today is the day. Their claiming day, when the elemental, poisoner, and naturalist families will come to take their queens away. She has known forever that it was coming. But six years is a long time, full of long days of growth and laughter, and Willa has come to look at the queens as hers. Her queens. Her girls. More so even than she had with Queen Camille, perhaps because she is older now, and this generation will be her last.

“Queen Arsinoe, come to me.”

Arsinoe does as she is told, trudging across the room to stand before Willa with her head hanging. Willa reaches out and wipes a streak of dirt from the little girl’s cheek. Before the day is done Arsinoe will find a way to become filthy. She has such a knack for it that Willa half believes that Camille really did mistake her gift, and she truly is a naturalist made for digging in the soil.

“Raise your arms,” Willa says. “Out of that shirt.”

“May I wear trousers under the dress, at least?”

“No. Not today. But you are going home with the naturalists. Good working people, by the sea. You will like it there. And I doubt that they will make you dress too formally, except for on festival days.”

Arsinoe sighs and lets Willa get her out of her clothes and into the dress with minimal tugging. When she is finished, the queen goes dutifully to her sister to have the tangles brushed out of her hair.

Perhaps due to the strain of the day, Katharine begins to cry, and it is hard for Willa not to comfort her. Mirabella and Arsinoe stop, as if they should turn and wrap her in their arms. But they do not. It is time for Katharine to learn to stand on her own, and after a moment, she quits crying and wipes her cheeks.

The Arrons will not be pleased with her. When the poisoner gift does not come, they may treat her even worse than they treated Queen Camille. Once, Willa feared what would happen as the queens grew and their families began to suspect they had been switched. But they will never come to suspect. Weak-gifted or giftless queens are no longer uncommon, where it is unheard of for a queen to be designated wrong at birth. And Willa should know. She has searched through the histories.

“Mirabella is chosen,” Willa whispers, and makes a pious gesture, left over from her days as a young priestess, before she felt the Goddess pulling her into service at the Black Cottage. “And if she is chosen, the other gifts will not matter.”

They may never even be an issue. Neither Arsinoe nor Katharine has shown the slightest hint of a gift, not their true ones or any other, whereas Mirabella’s elements showed when she was four years old. Perhaps sooner than that, but that was when Willa first saw her playing with the candle flames: putting them out and lighting them again with her tiny, pointed finger. Other elements followed after: a tremor in the ground when she was frightened, or overcast skies when she is nervous like today.

So it seems that Queen Camille was right.

Katharine, eyes dry, steps up to the mirror beside her sisters and quickly organizes the brushes and combs and bits of ribbon on the dresser. She is such a pretty, delicate queen. And somehow sweet despite being spoiled.

“You look odd with your hair like that,” she says to Arsinoe.

“You look odd all the time,” Arsinoe says back, and Mirabella tugs on her braid.

“No fighting.” Mirabella reaches for a length of black ribbon. “This is our last day together.”

“But we will see each other sometimes. At festivals,” says Arsinoe.

“We will see one another when we are all grown up,” Mirabella corrects her. “That is what Willa said. When we are tall.”

“Then we will never see Kat again. She will never be tall.”

“And you will never be smart!” Katharine hisses, and Mirabella laughs. They are so different, in character and in feature. Arsinoe’s scowl was apparent from the age of two. When Mirabella lost her baby cheeks, her fine bones and slender neck made her look every bit the oldest. And Katharine’s large, heavily lashed eyes were impossible to miss. Willa has not needed to use colored cords or buttons to tell them apart since they could crawl.

“What if we do not like them?” Katharine asks. “The people who come to take us?”

“You will,” Mirabella says. “You are going to Indrid Down. The capital city! Someday we will visit you there, and you must show us all around it.”

Willa turns to leave them alone. The families will arrive soon, and she must still get ready herself. The young queens’ laughter rings out and follows her down the hall.

“Have this, your last day as sweet girls,” she whispers. “For when you next meet, you will remember none of it.”

THE CLAIMING

Jules follows Aunt Caragh down the seldom-used path through the Greenwood that leads to the Black Cottage, where the queens are born. The path is not well-groomed, and brambles and prickers catch on the hem of her black skirt, and scratch against the leather of her boots. When they get back to the carriage, she will have to pick bits of plant from Juniper’s floppy ears and the pads of her paws.

“Keep up, Jules,” says Aunt Caragh, and Juniper turns and woofs. Jules does her best, a small girl on small legs—nothing like her aunt or even like the photos she has seen of her mother, Madrigal. Everyone in Wolf Spring talks about those Milone girls, with their shining light brown hair and swaying limbs like a willow’s branches. It makes Jules wonder who her short, dark father was and resent him a little.

In the carriage, Caragh had changed into her best black dress, the modest one with the high collar and shining buttons. She anointed her wrists and forehead with oil and swept her hair high off her neck, and though the rest of the family says that Madrigal is far prettier, to Juillenne, Caragh is very beautiful. Jules tried to do her hair like her aunt’s, but it was too wild and wavy. It fell out of its pins, and Jules feels ugly, and tied tight by the fastenings of her dress.

“Why didn’t we take the carriage to the Black Cottage?” she asks.

“Because the claiming is held in the high meadow,” Caragh replies. “And because this is queen business and all ritual. We must come from different directions and take them away in different directions.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Aye, and you’re not the only one who thinks so.” Caragh turns and smiles out of the side of her mouth. “But hold your tongue when we get there. They’ll be angry enough as it is that it’s you and I who have come, instead of your grandma Cait.”

Jules nods. She tries not to think ahead to the Black Cottage and what they will find there, instead daydreaming about returning to Wolf Spring, getting out of the hot, scratchy dress and into the cold, fresh water of Sealhead Cove, near Joseph’s house. On bright days she can see clear to the rocky bottom.

“Caragh!”

They turn to see a tall boy following them down the path, shaking leaves out of his hair and brushing dust off his vest and slacks. It is Matthew, Joseph’s brother, older than him by a full eleven years. Jules shouts his name and runs up the path to jump into his arms, and he tickles her belly until she is breathless.

“Matthew!” Caragh exclaims. “What are you doing here?”

“I missed you. So I waited a day and followed on horseback.”

“But you aren’t supposed to be here. And put my niece down. She’s had too much Sandrin influence already, cavorting with Joseph.” Despite her tone, Caragh goes and kisses Matthew’s cheek.

“She’s not the only Milone with a weakness for Sandrin boys,” he says.

“What’s ‘cavorting’?” asks Jules.

“Nothing,” both adults answer together.

“What are you doing here, Matthew?” Caragh asks. “I mean really.”

“I really did miss you,” he says. “And I couldn’t let you show up alone. Not with the grand crowds and caravans the Arrons and the Westwoods will be towing.”

“So Jules and I together is a shame, but you and I and Jules is not?”

“One Sandrin makes all the difference.”

“You know, there’s always the chance we could miss them. I didn’t push the horses to hurry through the mountains.”

Matthew shakes his head. “The sisters leave at the same time.” He bends down to Jules and makes a face. “Pulled apart screaming, like they’re pulling clots from wet wounds.”

“Matthew, that’s only a story,” scolds Caragh as Jules giggles. “And a terrible one.”

“Jules can handle it. She has picked her share of scabs. And if you wanted to shield her, you shouldn’t have brought her.”

The wind picks up and rushes through the trees, cold from coming down the face of Mount Horn and through the glen. It rattles branches and sends leaves flying past Jules’s cheeks.

“Seems like the Westwoods are just arriving.”

Maybe it is the elemental gift, or maybe it is only a spring breeze, but it makes Jules feel very insignificant suddenly, and she tugs on Caragh’s long, flowing skirt.

“Don’t be afraid, Squirt,” says Matthew. “That and one lonely rain cloud probably exhausted half the Westwood clan.” But as he finishes speaking, a great bolt of lightning cracks through the sky and touches the rocky summit of the mountain.

Caragh scoops Jules up and plants her on her hip. They walk fast toward the Black Cottage and the high meadow without another word. Jules cannot help but cry, though she does so as softly as she can.

They reach the meadow and look down through the glen. Even from such a distance, the Black Cottage looms large beneath the shade of tall oaks. The yard, wild with growth—seeded grasses and flowers—is bordered on the east by a broad stream, which finds its source deep beneath the rock of Mount Horn. The cottage itself is not actually black but brown brick with white wood and dark brown timbering. In the warmth of the May day, no smoke rises from any of the chimneys atop its gabled roofs. Jules gazes at it in wonder. It is not what she imagined, but it is grand. And then Caragh stops short and puts her down in the grass.

Two small crowds stand in the meadow, all dressed in black. One is led by a tall, imposing woman with white blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. Their faces seem frozen into stern expressions, heads tilted slightly back. The other is led by a woman in a soft, flowing cloak, with bright blue gemstones sewn into the hem. Later, Jules will remember nothing else about her, aside from those gemstones and the nervous way she clasped her hands.

“Milones,” an older woman says to Caragh and Jules. She is thick around the middle and through the legs, her dark blond hair turned stiff with gray. “You are late.”

“We are late, but we are here, Midwife,” Caragh replies, and Jules tugs on her arm. Surely Caragh should not speak so to the woman presiding over the ceremony. “Though I’m sorry if we kept you.”

“We can’t be that late,” says Matthew. “Wasn’t that light show the Westwoods just arriving?”

The old woman looks at Matthew sternly, and Jules thinks he must be very stupid. Even she can see that the lightning must have come from the tall little girl with black hair and eyes, holding on to her sisters, a storm cloud and sweat across her brow.

They are the queens. Jules thinks she ought to bow, but she cannot stop staring. The three little girls are all alike in coloring, with black hair and eyes, but otherwise, they are each different, no two the same height or with similar features. They are nearly Jules’s very same age, though they seem older, even as the smaller two weep fiercely.

“That’s enough, Mirabella,” the Midwife says.

The girl in the center of the triangle shakes her head. Her black tresses blow across her cheeks and tiny shoulders.

“No,” she cries. “They are afraid, Willa!”

“That one is ours,” says the matriarch of the Westwoods. She cocks a smile at the Arrons, gathered at the adjacent edge.

“Clearly,” the tall Arron woman replies. “Sparking storms and misbehaving. Emotional and unreliable, as so many elementals are.”

Every proud Arron face wears a frown so deep they look like scars. They are a pale family, Jules thinks, though she has heard others describe their beauty as “icy.” After three poisoner queens, they are the strongest family on the island, and the richest. Joseph once told Jules that they had become so strong, even their blood had turned to poison, but Grandma Cait and Grandpa Ellis said those were only wild tales. In the old days, they said, a poisoner’s blood could turn toxic, but only a queen’s. And even then, it was rare. How do they know? Jules asked, wondering whose job it was to taste the queen’s blood, and her grandma Cait had made Ellis stop teasing.

In the middle of the meadow, the three queens listen to the insults spoken between their new families with wide, frightened eyes.

“My Goddess,” Aunt Caragh murmurs. “They weren’t prepared for this. Look at them. They are only children.”

“Poisoner Queen Katharine,” the Arron matriarch says. She holds out her hand for the girl to come, but the queens only huddle closer together, so she sighs and snaps her fingers. “Willa. What kind of spoiled girls have you raised? Separate them. Now.”

The Midwife stares into the grass. She seems so tired, and sad, and Jules wishes the girls would not be taken away. That Willa would not be left alone again inside the Black Cottage, alone until the next generation of queens is born. It is a great honor for a priestess to serve as Midwife, but to Jules it seems very hard.

“Come along now, Queen Mirabella,” Willa says. “Let them go.” She does not look at the little queens when she says this, but they look at her, all betrayal and tears.

“Let me go with them,” Queen Mirabella begs. “Just to get them settled!” She grips her sisters tightly, and the Arron woman clears her throat.

“Oh, do it yourself, Natalia,” Willa snaps.

Natalia Arron strides forward on long legs. Her blond hair is tied back in a bun so tight that the elemental wind cannot touch it. To Jules she seems ageless, too strong and beautiful to be old, too hardened and commanding to be young. Jules watches in wonder as little Mirabella raises her chin and stares her down.

“You will protect her,” she says as she holds her sisters tight. “And treat her like a precious stone?”

The look on Natalia’s face says she would very much like to slap the girl, but she does not. Mirabella is a queen. Instead, Natalia shouts, “Westwoods!”

And the Westwoods come forth. Such is the clout of the Arrons after so many years of ruling the Black Council. The Westwoods grasp Mirabella by her thin arms and pull, and the younger queens start to scream, reaching for their sister only to have their hands slapped away. Jules hides half her face in Caragh’s blowing skirt as Mirabella rages. The wind rises, loud enough to cover the Westwoods’ words of comfort, but not enough to mask the queens’ cries.

Soon, Mirabella is gone, dragged into the trees of the Greenwood, and the storm goes with her. In the meadow, two little queens stand together, chest to chest, wrists locked behind each other’s backs.

“Caragh,” Jules whispers, and tugs on her arm.

“Shush, Jules. Wait our turn.”

But Jules cannot watch them be pulled apart again. And she knows the name of the queen they have come for. Arsinoe. Arsinoe the naturalist, who will be hers to take care of, and Joseph’s too, whether he likes it or not. So she pulls free of her aunt, and steps into the meadow.

“Queen Arsinoe?” she asks, and holds out her hand.

The queens’ heads raise from each other’s shoulders. The taller of the two looks at her, and Jules knows she is Arsinoe. Jules smiles. She points to herself and then to her aunt and Matthew.

“I’m Jules Milone. This is my aunt Caragh and our friend Matthew. We’ve come to take you back to Wolf Spring.”

Arsinoe’s cheeks are streaked with tears and dirt. She looks at Jules, and Jules holds out her hand again. Then the queen looks back at her smaller sister and whispers to her.

“No!” the littler girl says. “They are mean!”

“You have to go, Kat,” Arsinoe says. “And be good. We will see you again.”

For the first time, Natalia Arron acknowledges Caragh, Matthew, and Juillenne. Her eyes slide over them only for a moment, but Jules dislikes the way the look feels, and stands up straighter.

“Good,” Natalia says, and takes the littlest queen’s arm. “Come, then.” She stalks away, nearly too fast for the girl to keep up, dragging Katharine along as she stares back over her shoulder.

Suddenly, Katharine pulls back hard.

“Arsinoe!” she shouts, and Arsinoe springs forward like a cat. She scratches wildly at Natalia Arron’s arms and face, drawing blood before Willa can pry her off. When Arsinoe’s arms are held fast, Natalia slaps her across the face.

Caragh and Matthew gasp, and in Jules’s stomach, butterflies fight with wasps, afraid and outraged.

“You do not strike a queen,” Willa growls.

“That one is no queen crowned,” Natalia says. “That one is walking dead.” She pulls Katharine, crying, out of the meadow, and the Arron procession follows into the trees.

“Come on, Caragh Milone,” says Willa, and softly strokes Arsinoe’s wild black hair, stuck down with sweat and snot and tears. She kisses the girl once and then turns away, back down the meadow toward the cottage. She has raised the queens from birth. And now her work is finished.

Arsinoe stands by herself. A queen should not look so sad or lost or beaten. Jules walks closer, and when Arsinoe does not move, she takes one more step and folds the other girl in her arms.

ROLANTH

The journey from the Black Cottage to Westwood House marks the most miserable days of Mirabella’s life. She is ill with the memory of her last moments with Arsinoe and Katharine. She hears the echoes of their cries and feels the ghosts of their fingers grasping at the sleeves of her dress. As for her new family, they have barely spoken to her. “Sit her up straight,” the matriarch, Sara Westwood, said. “Get the queen some water.” Never “Mirabella.” Never by her name, or to her, at all.

When she finally stopped screaming, after several long minutes in the carriage, they were relieved. They wiped her dry and patted her all over, as if she were a horse. Not one of them has dared to look her in the eye.

“Not long now until we reach Rolanth,” Sara Westwood says to her brother, Miles.

“Should we stop and send a rider ahead?” he asks. “So the people can turn out to greet her?”

Sara glances in Mirabella’s direction. “I am not sure. After what happened at the claiming, and in front of the Arrons—”

“At least they can have no doubts about what she can do,” says Miles. “The strength of her gift.”

“Still . . . perhaps we had best wait until she is settled at home. Bree will calm her in no time—you will see. Then she can face the crowds.”

“I would not mind,” Mirabella says softly. “I would like to meet people.”

Sara and Miles look at her, finally. So do the two quiet, frightened Westwood girls. Cousins, she has gathered, who are visiting only for the prestige of the claiming and will not stay and reside with them at Westwood House.

Mirabella tries to smile. Perhaps it does not look queenly enough, because Sara huffs and turns to look out the window. These people are flighty as birds. Why are they not like Willa? Why do they not seem to know what to do?

At the Black Cottage, Willa schooled all the queens, teaching them how to read and write, showing them numbers and arithmetic. And when Katharine fell asleep atop an open book, and Arsinoe wandered outside to chase the chickens around, she would teach Mirabella about the elemental city of Rolanth. Now Mirabella yearns to see it outside of the artists’ renderings. To see the river rush out to the sea and to walk beside it through the Central District, where it is slowed to a crawl by locks and barges. She has imagined the smell of the evergreens and the ocean salt, and the sound of her heels against the stone of Shannon’s Blackway, high on the basalt cliffs near Rolanth Temple. But it seems she will not even be permitted to look out the window.

She tries to catch Sara’s attention again, to show her that she is a queen, that she has been raised as one and knows how to behave. At the cottage, with her sisters, Mirabella never felt small, and as the oldest, she never felt young. But she feels both very small and very young in the carriage full of Westwoods. Finally, after a long time of silence, she falls asleep, curled up into the seat with her legs tucked into her skirt.

“Queen Mirabella.”

She wakes to a hand on her shoulder.

“You slept a long time. We are here. Home, at Westwood House.”

Mirabella opens her eyes. They have been many days in the carriage and only stopped to change horses, never to sleep in a proper bed. In between griping about the Arrons, Sara had muttered about the preciousness of the queen and how important it was to get her back to Rolanth quickly. But as Mirabella steps out of the carriage on wobbly legs, she does not feel like a queen at all. Only dirty and hungry and faintly ashamed.

She looks up, blinking in the bright light, at Westwood House. It is indeed a grand place, at least twice the size of the Black Cottage. The carriage is stopped before the front steps, parked on a stone-paved drive that circles a tall, gurgling fountain.

“You are most welcome here, Queen Mirabella,” Sara says, seemingly more at ease now within the confines of her property, high in the hills above the city proper and surrounded by evergreens.

“It is red,” says Mirabella, and Sara raises her eyebrows.

“Ah. Yes. Old red brick. Perhaps you expected the limestone white and marble of the rest of the city.”

She had not known what to expect. She moves off the drive and up the walk to the house, where the small staff of servants stands assembled to greet her. On the end, a little girl about Mirabella’s age is straining against the hand of one of the maids. She wriggles with silent ferocity until she pulls free and races to stop before Mirabella and Sara.

The girl is so excited she is about to burst, yanking on the ends of her bright brown braids.

“Mother,” she groans finally. “Introduce me!”

“Queen Mirabella, this is my daughter, Bree.”

Bree reaches out immediately and takes Mirabella’s hands.

“I am going to be your foster sister,” she says. “Our rooms are very close. On the same floor. I always wanted Mother to have more babies, but so far she has not, but I am so excited you are here!”

“Give the queen some room to breathe,” Sara says, and Bree quiets. She does not let go of Mirabella’s hands, only drops one and moves to the side. Mirabella tries to listen as they take her through the vast house, and Bree is kind, and it is nice to be looked at again and called by her name. But when they finally leave her alone in her new, richly furnished bedroom, she sinks down beside the bed and hugs her knees. Bree wants to be a good foster sister, but she is no replacement for Arsinoe and Katharine.

“Be brave,” she says to herself. “Do not cry.”

For many weeks afterward, Mirabella does her best to appear cheerful and to be good and dutiful, for Willa has taught her that being a queen is about serving as much as it is about ruling. She goes where she is told to go and wears what she is told to wear. She compliments the Westwoods’ household, their cooks, their city, and their fashion sense. She keeps her own room tidy and tries to help Bree to tidy hers (though that may truly be a lost cause) and impresses Sara with her grasp of the estate accounts.

For a while it seems that all will go as planned. The Westwoods are pleased, and parade her about Rolanth like a new and prized horse. She makes appearances at the best stalls in Penman Market and at the best shops in the high street. She prays to the Goddess every evening before the altar in Rolanth Temple. And everywhere she goes, the people of the city gawk. They stare and they whisper, and the bravest of them touch her clothes: the edge of her sleeve or the hem of her skirt. They ask questions about her, but never of her: “Is it true that her gift came when she could barely walk?” “Is it true that she has command of all the elements? And even the weather?” “I heard rumor that she has a temper, but she seems perfectly sweet and docile. . . . What chance does a docile queen have, even with a gift as strong as hers?”

Always, Sara answers for her with confidence, though Mirabella does not understand why they are shocked that she is strong or why her chances must be good. She wonders about it, but does not worry, for Sara seems to wave it off, and it must be something far away.

For a time, it seems that it may all be well, until one afternoon when Mirabella and Bree sneak into Sara’s sitting room to surprise her with some raspberry cake.

The girls steal into the room like thieves, each holding one side of a silver tray. They duck down behind the arm of the sofa, and Bree presses her lips tightly together to stifle a giggle. The cake is not much to look at, but they iced it themselves with swirls of raspberry frosting, and the taste is very good; not too dry and not too sweet. Sara will like it. She will press her palms to her cheeks and close her eyes on the first bite. Then she will gather Bree and Mirabella in her arms so they can help her eat the rest.

They bring her so many surprises like this that Mirabella wonders how she can still be so surprised every time.

“It is a long time until the Ascension,” Sara says to Uncle Miles, who is seated across from her in the green chair. Sara’s sitting room is full of the swirling blues and blue-greens that she favors, and often being in it feels to Mirabella like being underwater. It is a calming room. An elegant space. And she and Bree are mischievous dolphins.

“Already the city loves her,” says Miles. “There are so many offerings now at the temple. So many lit candles. She will have all the support she needs. We do not need the Black Council. And we do not need to fear the Arrons.”

“We all need to fear the Arrons. Westwoods, elementals, down to the last—we ought to fear them. They are too strong now and dug in like ticks. We have the chosen queen, but they will not give way easily. I would not be surprised if it costs more than queensblood to place Mirabella on the throne.”

The smiles fade from Bree’s and Mirabella’s faces. They have come at a bad time. Sara’s voice is unhappy and serious, and Uncle Miles is not his usual lighthearted self.

“Whatever the cost,” says Miles, “it will be worth it. The poisoners have had their way for too long. Choked us with taxation and mainland tariffs. Rolanth was the jewel of the island in Grandmother’s time. And when she fought their injustices, they put her in a cell. Poisoned her in the dark with one of their concoctions.”

“I have not forgotten, Miles.”

“No one has. But it will stop now. Queen Arsinoe and Queen Katharine . . .”

Mirabella freezes at the mention of her sisters’ names.

“They are weak. Mirabella will kill them easily. Quickly. Certainly faster than any of these poisoner queens have managed to kill their sisters.”

Mirabella looks at Bree. Bree’s eyes are wide, but out of fear, not of surprise. Mirabella’s world tilts as she half listens to Sara going on about unclear oracles and quick deaths, death by lightning bolt or death by fire. Kill Arsinoe and Katharine. It is so terrible that she almost laughs. She must have misheard. How could anyone ever think to kill Arsinoe and Katharine? How could anyone ever think that she would?

The tray of raspberry cake clatters to the floor, the icing smearing across the deep blue rug like sea foam. Sara and Uncle Miles leap to their feet.

“Queen Mirabella! Bree!” Sara glares at her daughter. “What in the world are you doing?”

“We brought you cake,” Bree answers, and begins to cry.

Neither adult moves to comfort her. They stare at Mirabella, afraid.

“You want me to kill my sisters?” she asks, and neither replies. Bree cries harder. Bree is a child. A little girl. But though they are the same age, Mirabella is no child. She is a queen. An eldest triplet.

“Mirabella,” Uncle Miles says. “Why worry about such dull, grown-up business? And now we have frightened you and ruined this sweet surprise.”

“No. What you were saying before,” Mirabella says, undeterred. “A queen is to kill her sisters?”

“Mirabella—”

“Tell me!” When Mirabella shouts, a crack of lightning rattles the house, and even Sara flinches.

“You should not have heard this,” Sara says. “There is plenty of time for such difficult things when you are older.”

“But it is true,” says Mirabella, and outside the rain starts. It pelts the roof and the sides of the house, harder and harder, turning to hail, and thunder booms against the cliffs of the Blackway, growing louder until Bree covers her ears.

Sara reaches for the queen, but Mirabella screams and sends the flames in the candles high, scorching the walls. “Miles! Bree! Put them out!”

Little Bree is too afraid to move, but Miles clenches his teeth, pitting his gift against the queen’s. He is older, and more practiced, and the candles snuff to smoke. But neither he nor Sara nor anyone else can stop the ferocity of the storm.

“Queen Mirabella, please!”

Shutters tear loose from the house. Windows rattle and threaten to shatter. Lightning strikes so close that the foundation shakes, and every elemental inside feels the electricity through the bottoms of their feet.

“I will not!” Mirabella screeches. “I will never, I will never, I will n—”

The storm eases when she falls to the floor, after Miles leaped behind her and used a heavy lamp to strike her on the back of the head.

GREAVESDRAKE MANOR

Queen Katharine walks through the hallways of Greavesdrake Manor, holding tight to the seam of Edmund the butler’s pant leg. The great house that the Arron family occupies is easy to get lost in and makes Katharine feel even smaller than she already is. Last week in the library she had to fight her way out of the folds of a curtain. And the ballroom is so large that the entire Black Cottage could fit inside.

As they go down the halls, their footsteps echo, and Katharine keeps glancing behind them, sure that Miss Genevieve is lurking about, ready to jump out and frighten her. The game was funny at first, but grows less so due to its frequency, and Miss Genevieve pinches hard enough to leave marks.

“There is no one back there, little queen,” Edmund says. He looks down and winks at her over the top of his silver tray. “Miss Genevieve is already in the courtyard with the others. They have been playing croquet.”

“She must like that game very much,” says Katharine. “Since it lets her use such a big mallet.”

Edmund chuckles, and she giggles back, though she does not know what is funny. Genevieve would like things with big mallets. She seems to like anything that allows her to hit.

They wind through the rear kitchens and step outside to make their way to the courtyard. The Arrons had erected black-and-white tents; more shade for visiting family than the alder trees could provide. Edmund leads her to the largest tent, where Natalia sits, watching her sister, Genevieve, and brother, Antonin, play a round with the younger cousins.

“There you are,” she says as Katharine enters. Edmund places the silver tray down onto the table, and Katharine curtsies to Natalia and sits on the chair opposite. “And you have brought the May wine. How lovely.”

“May wine,” says Katharine. “Is it called that because of the month? Are we only to drink it in May?”

“May wine is a poisoner tradition.” Natalia takes hold of the clear pitcher, full with bright, golden liquid. “We drink it always, but it is especially for the children. Let me show you.”

She pours the wine into a silver cup and holds it out for Katharine to sniff. The scent is acidic and sweet, slightly grassy. Katharine wrinkles her nose.

“The toxin is from the woodruff plant,” Natalia explains. “But it is not too much. That is why even those early in their gift are safe to drink it. Like children. And also because it is best served like so.” She takes up a set of tongs and drops three lumps of sugar into the cup. She pauses, raises an eyebrow at the queen, and then drops in a fourth, making her giggle. “Almost done,” Natalia says, but first she takes a large strawberry and makes fast slices into the tip, then uses her fingers to spread the fruit like a fan. She dips the berry into a bowl of honey and then drops the whole sticky mess into the cup of wine.

Katharine holds the cup in both hands and sips as Natalia licks her fingers. She can still smell the grassy bitterness, but the drink is sweet and wonderful.

“Well? What do you think?”

“It is delicious,” Katharine says, and takes another sip. Natalia smiles and goes back to watching the cousins at their game. To Katharine’s eyes, no woman in the world could be more beautiful than Natalia Arron. Her blond hair blazes like sunlight, and her lips are as red as summer apples. Everything about her is regal and elegant. Every step she takes is sure. The other Arrons, and the servants, are more than a little afraid of her, but since Katharine arrived at Greavesdrake, Natalia has been nothing but kind.

Katharine sips her drink and watches the croquet balls tumble across the lawn. No one asks her to play. No one pays her much mind at all, except to glance at her occasionally with curious looks on their faces. But that is fine with Katharine. The day is sunny and pleasant, and the May wine is cool in her belly. She has never cared for croquet anyhow; Arsinoe would never follow the rules when they tried to play at the cottage, and the mallets are too tall for her to swing comfortably.

After some time, Natalia stands and calls to Genevieve.

“I am going inside to settle some accounts,” she says to her sister. “And then into the capital. I will not return until suppertime. Can you play the hostess until then?”

“Of course, sister,” Genevieve replies, her mallet resting against her shoulder, and her pretty, lilac eyes sparkling.

“Serve more May wine to the children. It is weak enough for them. But do not taint it with anything else. The littler cousins have no gift at all yet, and we do not want there to be vomit in the grass.”

It is on her third glass of May wine that Katharine’s stomach starts to hurt. At first, she tries to conceal it, thinking that the pains will pass, like the time that she and Arsinoe ate all of Willa’s plum tart and could not walk for hours. But then her head begins to throb, and her vision darkens. She is vaguely aware that she is throwing up, just as her body thumps against the soft, green grass beneath the black-and-white tent.

When she wakes later she is nauseous and shivering, but at least she is in her bed inside the manor and no longer stretched out on the lawn for everyone to see. She half opens her eyes in the candlelight. It is dark. Nighttime. Of the same day? She hopes so.

Natalia and Genevieve stand just outside of her bedchamber, in her sitting room. Their voices are hushed but angry. Perhaps frightened. She moans, so they will know they do not need to be quiet, and so they might come in and see her. Their talking pauses, but they remain outside.

Curious and a little more awake, Katharine rolls and looks through the doorway. Just the sight of Natalia calms her: back straight, wearing a dove gray shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. The front of her black trousers are messed, and Katharine realizes with horror that she must have thrown up on her.

“She is weaker than Camille ever was, and now the whole family knows it,” Genevieve hisses.

“And whose fault is that? How many cups of May wine did she have? Did I not tell you to watch her? To mix the wine weak? Now we have a sick queen and two sickening cousins in a carriage back to Prynn.”

“This story will spread. The people will dive upon it. Especially with the tales coming out of Rolanth about the elemental queen. How strong she is. The storms she produces. Queen Mirabella—”

There is the sound of a slap, and Genevieve cries out.

“How many times must I say not to speak their names? Nowhere that she might overhear.”

“She is unconscious,” Genevieve says.

“I do not care. No one speaks their names. They do not exist. A queen’s memory is short at this age, and in a year or two, she will have forgotten them entirely, as long as we do not help her to remember. Ignore her when she asks of them, as if you had not heard. And never speak the names!”

Clothing rustles, and Genevieve squeaks again. Even disoriented and sick, the sounds frighten Katharine, and she huddles down into her blankets.

“We will have an easier time of it, once she forgets,” says Natalia.

“We will have an easier time of it once her gift strengthens,” says Genevieve. “Let me train her. Let me coax it out. Such methods have worked before, and even if the gift is slow to show, at least she will build natural tolerances.”

A long pause, and Katharine raises her head to find Natalia staring in at her. Katharine sinks back on her pillows and feels safe. Natalia will not leave her. She will probably stay by her bed all night. Her eyes drift shut. Nothing bad can happen as long as Natalia is there.

WOLF SPRING

The house of the naturalist Milone family rests on the outskirts of the village of Wolf Spring. It is an agrarian land, some residents with more of a gift than others, but the strongest magic in the region bears a naturalist slant. Crops and livestock grow well, and fish are plentiful in the waters outside Sealhead Cove, named not for its shape but for the propensity of seals to bob up and down in the waves.

Joseph’s family lives on the cove. His father builds ships and occasionally sails them, though most of his crafts run along the coast to the richer families of Prynn and Beckett. Neither he nor the three Sandrin sons have any gift, though Matthew insists he can charm the fish and dolphins like his mother, and Joseph claims to have the sight. Little Jonah is not likely to show a gift either, though he is only a toddler and it is too early to say.

Juillenne and Joseph bob in the water alongside the seals in the warm waves. From the tip of the dock, the landmass of the island stretches out in both directions. Fennbirn Island. Called so by the outsiders who find their way across the sea and through the mists. To its inhabitants, it is only the island, and Grandpa Ellis says that its true name is guarded on the tongues of the eldest women. They bite down on it, angry that the young cannot even pronounce it, let alone understand what it means. Their anger will swallow the word whole, and in a generation or two, the island’s true name will be forgotten entirely.

Juillenne doubts that the island cares, one way or the other, what it is called. To her it is only home, vast and unending, dotted with mountains and inland lakes, streams and cities of varied people of varied gifts. Caragh says that Jules’s mother, Madrigal, ran away from the island for bigger things. But Jules does not understand how anyone could want something more than the island and its Goddess.

On the dock, nearer to shore, Caragh sits with Matthew, with their legs dangling in the water, pant legs rolled to their knees. Beneath the surface, Joseph tugs on one of Jules’s ankles, and she tries very hard to keep from kicking him in the face.

He comes up and spits water.

“Race you to the dock,” he says. Jules shakes her head. She is in no mood to be beaten today. Today she would wish she had a shark for her familiar, to drag Joseph under and give her time to pass, and she has heard a hundred times from the old folk of Wolf Spring that such wishes are dangerous, for the Goddess might grant them true.

Jules presses her finger to her lips and nods toward Matthew and Caragh, ripe for splashing. She and Joseph skim side by side through the cove, smooth and silent as water striders. Then they hang off the dock wood and wait for their moment.

“Is that what it’s like every time, do you think?” asks Matthew. “The lightning. The crying. Pulling them apart. I know I said so to Jules, but I really did think that was only a story.”

“I don’t know,” Caragh replies. “Goddess willing, it will be the only claiming we ever have to see.”

“Maybe it was the Midwife’s fault. Maybe she didn’t prepare them right.”

“How do you prepare a child for something like this? How will we prepare her now? Queen Arsinoe’s been with us a week, and all she does is stare out toward Rolanth. In case her sister sends up a bolt.” Caragh nods down the dock, where Arsinoe stands scanning the sky.

“Let her have those lightning bolts. Because one day they’ll stop. Then Arsinoe won’t see her lightning again until the Ascension, and it will be for a totally different reason.”

Jules grasps Joseph’s shoulder, and he looks at her, brows creased. She pulls them both under the cover of the dock.

“Three dark sisters, all fair to be seen,” says Matthew.

“The way it’s always been,” says Caragh. “And it never seemed cruel until I saw it firsthand.”

“It isn’t cruel. It’s in their nature. Always three, always in December, conceived at Beltane, always daughters. A queen isn’t like us. They aren’t normal people with normal gifts. It’s just how it is.”

“Not always,” Caragh whispers. “Sometimes there is a fourth. A Blue Queen. Do you remember the year of the birth? Some of the oracles spoke of that. They thought the lack of omens meant something special.”

Matthew throws something into the water. It splashes beside Joseph, and he and Jules retreat farther along the dock.

“Something special,” Matthew mocks. “Now the lack of omens is an omen in itself?”

Caragh’s expression is distracted, lost in some memory. Then she shakes her head, hard. “You’re right. It’s foolish. Omens and oracles. Means nothing.”

“It would have been better if it had. But there hasn’t been a Blue Queen since . . .”

“Queen Illiann,” says Caragh. “Born ten generations of queens ago. Reigned in harmony until the birth of her triplets forty-six years later. A long reign. I asked Dad.”

“What’s a Blue Queen?”

Arsinoe’s low voice is a surprise to all. Jules had not heard her footsteps even from underneath the wood.

“Nothing,” Caragh answers quickly. “Only a very lucky and rare queen.”

“Only one of my sisters or I will be the real queen,” says Arsinoe. “So if she is so lucky, is it always her?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happens to her sisters?”

Above the wood, Caragh clears her throat. “Why don’t you go into the market? The catch should be cleaned and the stalls frying them up for sandwiches by now.”

Arsinoe says nothing. She walks away, back down the dock, and Jules and Joseph swim along in her shadow. By the time she stops, they are in such shallow water that they can almost touch the bottom.

She is so sad, Jules thinks, and Joseph frowns, as if he can read her mind. He takes a breath and dives down with a great splash, loud enough that Arsinoe must know they are there, so Jules swims out a few strokes and smiles at her, squinting into the sun.

It has been strange, sharing the house with the sullen, black-haired little girl. She spends most of her time staring out the window for Mirabella’s lightning, or whispering Katharine’s name over and over under her breath, like a spell they do not know. But she eats (a lot), and she sleeps, and she is always polite. And to think that Jules feared the young queen would be constantly underfoot, hanging on her sleeve and getting in the way of her and Joseph’s fun.

Joseph surfaces and surges up and out onto land like a seal, grabbing the dock and rolling onto the wood beside Arsinoe without much grace. Still, he does it in one try. It takes Jules a lot longer, scrambling and huffing. Then they sit on either side of Arsinoe, and Joseph spreads out the things he has carried up from the bottom of the cove: three curved shells, black and white and speckled brown. He taps the shell in the middle, and a hermit crab’s legs poke out of its oversize home. He prods it again, and it waves its tiny antennae.

Jules taps one of the other shells, and the crab inside scuttles back. Joseph pulls Arsinoe to her knee. It takes a moment, but finally she gets curious enough to tap the last crab. For the next few minutes at least, her sister’s lightning is forgotten as the three children prod their crabs to see whose will be first to make it back into the water.

Six weeks after the Milones took the young queen into their house, Caragh lies on her back in the meadow beside Dogwood Pond, with her head on Matthew Sandrin’s stomach. Her familiar, Juniper, rests her brown snout in the crook of her arm, the hound’s back covered with yellow and white wildflower petals that Matthew shook over them both. The day is warm and lazy, and Caragh traces patterns along Matthew’s forearm, wrapped around her chest. It is not often that she gets a day to herself. Usually, she is too busy raising her younger sister’s daughter.

Jules is Madrigal’s child, but it has been years since Caragh has thought of her as anything but her own. Caragh watches her every day as she walks through the flowers and vegetables in the garden, coaxing their stalks and stems to grow up straight, urging their roots to run deep. She sees her love for the island, and for the Goddess who runs like water through the heart of it all. Jules is hers. The Goddess’s and Caragh’s. Jules is nothing like Madrigal.

“What are you thinking about?” Matthew asks.

“Nothing.”

He smiles, that rakish smile that Caragh worries will someday get Juillenne into the same kind of trouble with Joseph that she is in with Matthew.

“Nothing,” he repeats, and pulls her farther into his arms. “Liar.”

Caragh kisses him, pressed against his chest, and it is not long before Matthew’s hands change from gentle to searching. Juniper growls and grabs Matthew’s shirt, but before she stalks off, she licks his hand. Juniper is Caragh’s familiar, and because Caragh loves Matthew, so does she.

“Caragh Milone,” he says against her lips, and again as he kisses her neck, as she arches to meet his hands, fumbling at the buttons of her shirt. “Marry me.”

Caragh’s heart pounds between them. She slips her arm around his back and holds him fast when she says no.

He is not surprised. He has asked before and heard the same. His hand slides down, along her leg, and she holds her breath.

Afterward, when they lie entwined, half dozing in the late-afternoon sun, he asks why she said no this time.

“Because you don’t mean it,” she says quietly. “You’re only seventeen, Matt. And I have five years on you.”

“I don’t know why you keep telling me that. Like you think I haven’t heard. Or can’t count.”

Caragh smiles. Matthew thinks their ages are just right. Strong-gifted naturalists live long lives, so she will be one hundred and he will be ninety-five, and they will die together in their bed, on the same day. Caragh touches his face.

“If you can count, then count to three. And ask again then.”

“Three days?”

“Matthew.”

“Three months?”

She shakes her head.

“Three years, Caragh,” he says, “is forever to wait.”

“To you it is. And that’s why I’m saying no.”

Three Years Later

ROLANTH

Sara Westwood sits across from the High Priestess of Fennbirn Island. They have met in secret at an inn in Trignor, a coastal town with a port that smells as much of the sheep from the farms in Waring as it does of fish, but Sara does not mind the smell. She has quietly begged for this meeting for years, and this is as near as they could come to midway between Sara’s city of Rolanth and the High Priestess’s quarters in Indrid Down Temple.

“More ale?” she asks, and snaps her fingers for the serving girl. She does not call the High Priestess by her title, as she has come dressed in simple white-and-black temple robes that any priestess might wear. She does not even call her “Luca,” her name, which is known the island-over.

After the ale is poured, High Priestess Luca regards her with sharp blue eyes.

“How is everything in your household, Sara?”

“Lucky to be standing, truth be told,” Sara replies. “Thank the Goddess for reinforced roofs. They are most resistant to being torn off.”

Luca chuckles. “You are being dramatic.”

“High Priestess, I am not. The stronger she became, the more difficult she was to control. We have”—she pauses, ashamed—“we have taken to keeping her shut up in the basement.”

Inside, belowground and away from windows, Mirabella is manageable. But they have still had to brick over the fireplace. And the nailed-down shutters on the exterior of the windows are not fooling anyone.

“A queen? Locked up in a basement?”

“We are failing her. We were not prepared.”

Sara takes a large swallow of ale. They will do better. The Westwoods’ time is just beginning. The Arrons will fade, and the Westwoods will rise, building up their homes and the city until Rolanth rivals the capital city of Indrid Down. If only they can shepherd this queen.

“There have been rumors,” says Luca. “They say that she is a handful. But surely your letters were an exaggeration.”

“I am not in the habit of exaggerating. And certainly not to you. She has not forgotten her sisters.”

“A queen always forgets. Give her time.”

Luca’s voice is soothing but dismissive. She will seek to put Sara’s mind at ease and leave her with no more than a pat on the head, if Sara lets her. And Sara has written too many letters, and pleaded with too many interim priestesses, for that.

“The people wished for an elemental queen,” she says, her voice bitter. “They feared that there was nothing left to the Goddess but poisoners. And now that they have an elemental, they whisper that she is a handful. She is more than a handful. And we will fail if someone does not help us.”

“At first, the strong queens are always difficult.”

“It has been three years.”

Luca takes a long drink of her ale and crunches through a baked, salted cracker. “How is she other than that? Does she look you in the eye? Respond to your emotions?”

“Yes. There are times when she is almost sweet.” Sara knows what the priestess is asking. Madness in a queen is not to be borne, and would mean Mirabella’s instant death. “She shows no sign of madness.”

“The island can never have another Elsabet,” Luca says, referring to Queen Elsabet, a sight-gifted queen who, upon foreseeing an assassination plot, had three whole houses of people executed without evidence.

“Never.” Sara makes a pious gesture to the Goddess of the island. “But what do we do now? Is there anything that can be done?”

Luca grunts. “There is always something to be done. Fostering a queen is never easy. Did you think it would be? The temple must be neutral, Sara. I don’t know what you would have of me.”

Sara bows her head, and Luca sighs, as if she cannot take a moment more of Sara’s pitiful face. “Do you really think she is a chosen queen? Our queens win their crowns through killing. People have their favorites, but if she truly is as strong as you say, her victory would be near assured.”

“She is that strong. She is chosen. And she needs the temple to guide her. As all queens do. Surely you would go to the aid of any of the young queens in this way.”

“Surely,” Luca says.

Sara keeps her eyes on the table as the High Priestess mulls it over, weighing tradition against rightness, faith against action. But Sara knows that Luca hates the poisoners as much as she does. Though they may not have murdered Luca’s grandmother, they have done even worse in wresting power away from the temple.

Luca wipes her mouth on a napkin and drops it beside her ale. “Well. You had better take me to meet the queen. Let us let her prove it.”

When the door to the basement creaks open, Mirabella blinks curiously into the shaft of light. It is not the hour for lessons or feeding. Though it is difficult to tell in the darkness of her confines.

Bree’s feet come slowly down the steps. She has even dared a small candle to light her way.

“Queen Mirabella,” she says. “We are bringing you to meet someone very important today. Will you let me help you get dressed? We have prepared a bath, and a beautiful new gown, and I will style your hair if you like. . . .”

The stubborn part of Mirabella, that same part that grips on to memories of her sisters with slippery fingers, wants to flare Bree’s candle up into her face. But the other part, that part that has rarely seen the sky in three long years, wins out. Besides, Bree’s gift has shown with an affinity for fire. Maybe she is already strong enough to hold back the flare.

With a gentle touch, Bree leads her up the stairs, into the day. The light hurts at first, stinging her eyes. From the grimaces on the servants’ faces, she must be hurting their eyes just as badly.

“Into the tub, Queen Mirabella.”

They have dragged a deep copper tub into the center of the kitchen and filled it with hot, perfumed water. Two maids strip her of the filthy rag of a dress she wears until she stands in her underclothes, her limbs streaked with dust and her hair hanging in oily strings.

She steps into the tub and submerges immediately, the heat and weight of the water pressing down like a blanket. Water has always been her worst element. The most elusive. Almost playful in its propensity to ignore or disobey. But today is different. Today she can tell that it has missed her.

Mirabella surfaces and lets Bree and the maids wash her face and scrub her fingernails. It is nice to be touched. Nice to be warm. And after the bath, they wrap her in a soft dressing gown, and brush and brush the tangles out of her hair.

“Who is here?” she asks as they pull a dress of fine black wool over her head. “Who am I to meet?”

“No one is here,” Bree replies. Over the last three years, Bree has grown lovely. Her chestnut hair is twisted into buns on the back of her head, and she wears a light blue skirt edged with black ribbon. “We must travel to meet them at Starfall Lake. You are to meet the High Priestess of the island. High Priestess Luca.”

It takes a long time for High Priestess Luca and Sara Westwood to reach the end of the rocky, sloping path to the shores of Starfall Lake, but when they do, only Sara is out of breath.

“It surprises you.” Luca stretches her arms. “You likely thought I would be old and soft. You have only seen me from afar, riding in fancy carriages and eating from silver platters on the festival days.”

“I am impressed but not surprised. Have you ever been to the lake before?”

“Of course. Though not for several years. Starfall Lake. Named for the starfalls reflected in its waters, still commonly visible in the winter skies on this side of the island. It is lovely, is it not?”

“Yes, lovely,” says Sara, her voice like a waving hand. The lake is not important. The only thing that is important is the small girl making her way around the shore opposite. Several Westwoods form a circle around her. It would look like protection had Luca not already heard about the queen’s erratic behavior.

The Westwood party arrives and pays respect to the High Priestess. Some wear temple insignia around their necks, and bow to her with unusual fervor, perhaps touched by the Goddess to become priestesses one day. Luca nods and lays distracted blessings upon their heads. Her focus is on the queen, as theirs should be, but the moment the Westwoods saw Luca, they flocked to her in relief and left Mirabella’s side to hide behind the High Priestess’s robes.

Queen Mirabella, meanwhile, has stepped into the lake up to her ankles.

“Mirabella,” Sara Westwood says. “Will you come and meet the High Priestess?”

Other Westwoods begin to gather cautiously around the lake, closing in on the queen in a half circle, but Luca shakes her head. Mirabella walks closer, alone, and silly Sara feels the need to whisper, “Take care. She learns new tricks every day she is allowed outside.”

Luca pays no mind. She slides out of her shoes and walks into the lake, up to her ankles in cool water on the warm, summer day, shoulder to shoulder with the queen.

“It is lovely here,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Nice. Quiet.”

“Yes.”

Mirabella is a queen of few words. Or perhaps she is only shy, like Queen Camille, and will chatter on and on if given the opportunity, in private. Luca looks her over quickly, from head to toe. A beautiful girl with even features and a firm set to her mouth, even at nine years old. Dark, determined eyes. She does not seem like the wild thing that Sara described, though that is perhaps because they have groomed and disguised her in thin black wool, and an airy veil.

“Do you know who I am?” Luca asks.

Queen Mirabella glances at her.

“You are the High Priestess. That much they have told me. But I know what a high priestess is. From my teachings. You are the leader of the temple.”

“That is right. And who was your teacher?”

“The Westwoods teach me now. Sara and Uncle Miles. But my first teacher was . . . Willa.”

“You remember her fondly?”

“I remember,” Mirabella says, but Luca sees through her clenched teeth to the truth. The truth is that she remembers Willa, only not as well as she used to. And she remembers the other queens, though she remembers them even less so. The fight in her has become a fight against forgetting. That is where the anger stems from.

“It is all right to remember,” says Luca. “You will not be punished for remembering.”

“Why are you here?”

Luca cocks her head. She kicks a little, playfully, at the water of the lake.

“I go where the Goddess wills me.” She smiles at the queen. “As we all must. As surely you do. Someone with a gift as strong as yours must feel her with every beat of your heart.”

“The Goddess,” Mirabella murmurs thoughtfully. “Willa said she was my . . . our mother.”

“The Goddess is mother to us all. But to you, especially. You are her body, here, on the island. Her hand. As I am her ears and eyes. And her voice to the people.”

“Why are you here?” Mirabella asks again, brow furrowing, and the lake shudders suddenly, the entire surface contracting, as if an earthquake struck someplace down deep.

“To meet you, of course. I am here because you are sad.”

“What is that?” From the shore, Sara points down into the water. Luca cannot see what she means, but from the way everyone backs away, it cannot be good. “There’s something in the lake!”

Mirabella draws the creature out of the water, and Luca gasps. The translucent, liquid body is oddly beautiful as it hovers above the surface. Perhaps it is the water spirit of Starfall Lake, given form. But if it is, then Mirabella can do something no elemental has been able to do in recent memory.

“I am not sad,” Mirabella says, and Luca looks at her and sees dots of perspiration on the little girl’s forehead. “I am angry.”

“Queen Mirabella—”

“Give me back my sisters!”

The water creature dives onto Luca, stabbing watery fingers into her eyes and into her nose and ears. She hears the Westwoods screaming as the water forces its way down her throat. Luca wishes she could scream, but all she can do is flail, and fall to the ground, and get her arms wet as she tries to fight.

“Mirabella, stop!” Sara shouts. But the queen will not. There is steel in her spine, and ice in her heart that will not be melted by one dead priestess. But Luca knows that her murder will force them to say Mirabella is mad. The people will storm Indrid Down and demand she be put to death.

With a gargantuan effort, Luca wills herself to stop panicking. She looks at the queen with compassion. She holds out her hand. For a moment, she thinks it will not work, that the burning in her lungs will increase until her vision goes dark. But then the water splashes to the ground. She coughs it up until her throat is raw and her muscles sore, but she can breathe again.

The Westwoods circle around Mirabella, ready to drag her from the lake and lock her back where they found her.

“No!” Luca shouts in between her coughing. They back away, and Luca looks up at the queen fondly. “No one touches our chosen queen.”

WOLF SPRING

Arsinoe follows Jules as Joseph leads them on a merry chase through the woods. Try as he might, he cannot leave them behind. Both are still as slim-hipped as he is, and what Jules lacks in length of leg she makes up for in quickness. All three run for the sheer childhood delight of running and never seem to tire, though their cheeks are flushed red. It has been three years since Arsinoe joined them, and while she is still far more serious than Jules or Joseph, she will laugh now, and a mischievous, sarcastic edge has crept into her voice. She is happy. Jules and Joseph have become her friends, and if some part of her remembers that they are not to be replacements for others . . . Well, that part has fallen very quiet.

“Joseph, not so fast!” Arsinoe shouts from the back.

Joseph cackles and yells, “Faster!” He twists his head to look. She and Jules are right on his heels, and he smiles as though proud of them. Ahead, the path leaves the woods and broadens into the tall, sunlit grass of the meadow beside Dogwood Pond. Jules takes her chance, surging ahead of Arsinoe, short legs flying. She overtakes Joseph at the last moment and bursts through first, into the daylight.

“That’s practically cheating!” Joseph says, and Arsinoe laughs. Her strides slow, and her muscles relax to weak-kneed slackness.

“She does it every time. You ought to know by now. You ought to expect it.”

Arsinoe slaps Joseph on the back. But he does not reply or slap her in return like he usually does. He has stopped dead behind Jules, and both are staring at something across the field. Arsinoe blinks against the summer sun and puts a hand up to shield her eyes.

It is a young woman. A beautiful young woman in a vibrant green dress, and golden brown hair loose to her waist. Arsinoe thinks she knows this woman somehow, from somewhere, though she is certain she has never met her. And something about the way Jules is staring sets Arsinoe’s teeth on edge.

Across the meadow, the woman holds out her arms and calls, “Juillenne!”

“Mother!” Jules shouts, and runs to her.

Caragh stands at the kitchen sink, scrubbing tender, fat carrots from her garden. This year, she and Jules have spent more time than ever in the fields coaxing crops, and the entire harvest is strong. Jules’s gift has almost reached fullness. Ellis teases that when she is grown she will be able to feed Wolf Spring all by herself.

“Here, let me,” says Caragh’s mother, Cait, elbowing her way in. “You’re too slow. Should be done already.” Should have been done hours ago, while Caragh was out doing who-knows-what with that Sandrin boy, is what Cait means. But stolen hours with Matthew are worth all the snide comments that her mother wants to make. “Where’s Juillenne?”

“Where she always is,” says Caragh. “Playing with Joseph and Arsinoe.”

“You should mind them. Nine is a mischievous age.”

“So it is. And it goes too fast. They might as well have a bit of fun.”

Cait scowls, a beautiful woman turned handsome by the years. She is tall, like all the Milone women save for Jules, and her bones are straight and strong.

“Is that what you’re having with Matthew? A bit of fun?”

Caragh pours more water into the sink. “No. Matthew is different. Matthew, I intend to marry.”

“Different,” Cait says sadly. “Like it was for my aunt Phillippa. Like it was for my sister Rosaline.”

Caragh squeezes the carrots almost hard enough to break them. Phillippa and Rosaline. She has heard those names so many times. Whispered in another room, or spoken right to her, as if she was them. Phillippa, who married Giuseppe Carlo. She threw herself off Hawthorne Bridge in the middle of winter, and her body cracked like a champagne flute against the ice. Rosaline, who married no one but could not face the fertile womb of her sister Cait, and died alone in Portsmouth on the eastern coast.

The unlucky Milone sisters. The cursed ones who bore no children. No one knows where the curse came from. They only know that it is the curse of all Milones. Two girls are born each generation. And one is barren. Sasha and Phillippa. Cait and Rosaline. Madrigal and Caragh. And Madrigal has already had Juillenne.

“It’s not the same for me,” says Caragh.

“It’s not,” Cait agrees. “Because you’re a Milone. A naturalist. And barrenness for us is”—she takes a quiet breath—“like tearing our hearts out.”

“It’s not the same for me because I have Jules,” Caragh says. “I have Jules, and I’ll be fine. Matthew loves her like she’s his own.” She does not say that she loves him. It is too much of an admission, and Caragh has always kept her feelings to herself.

“He’s too young to be a father to Jules.”

“He loves Jules,” says Caragh, her voice far away.

“He is only a boy. He doesn’t know what he loves.” Cait scrubs the carrots hard, and Caragh knows that her mother is only saying these things because she is afraid to lose her to madness and solitude—or worse, to the ice beneath a winter bridge—when she has already lost one daughter to the mainland.

“You’re so sure, are you?” Caragh jokes lightly. “Have a bit of the sight now, like little Joseph?”

“We all do on Fennbirn,” says Cait. “We just blind ourselves to it when it suits us. When we need it most.”

Caragh sighs. She starts to say more, but her mother has stopped listening. Cait stares out the window over the kitchen sink, into the yard and the garden that borders their long driveway.

“By the Goddess,” Cait whispers, and dries her hands on a towel. She tears off her apron and throws it onto the countertop. “Ellis! Ellis, where are you?”

“What’s wrong?” Caragh asks as Cait shoves past her and dashes into the yard. She follows to the door and looks out. If it is Jules, showing up again in head-to-toe mud, she will scrub the girl raw. But it is not Jules running up the drive to leap into Cait’s arms.

It is Caragh’s sister, Madrigal. It is Jules’s mother.

No one leaves or is allowed to find the island if it is not by the will of the Goddess. That is what Caragh has always been taught. So she tries to accept it with a little bit of grace that her sister has returned. Surely the Goddess must have a purpose, beyond upsetting Caragh’s carefully ordered and relatively happy life.

She watches through the window as her mother weeps and her father lifts Madrigal in a whirling embrace, like he used to do when she was a little girl. Madrigal, they cry. Madrigal is home.

For how long, and for what, Caragh wonders. No one has heard from Madrigal since she left the island six years ago to go to the mainland, and no one expected to. It is said that once a woman leaves Fennbirn, she begins to lose her memory. And then, slowly, her gift. Indeed, when Madrigal finally sees Caragh through the kitchen window, it is almost as if she does not recognize her.

“But I recognize you,” Caragh whispers, and at her knee, Juniper growls. Whatever Madrigal has been up to on the mainland, it has only made her more beautiful. She is still slender, but rounded now in just the right places. Her light brown hair shines, and her eyes sparkle. Her familiar has already returned to her and perches on her shoulder: Aria, a pretty black crow. Madrigal cocks her head, and so does the bird.

“Caragh,” she says in a tone that is somehow familiar and insulting. Oh Caragh, there you are. Where else would you be?

Caragh brushes her hands nervously against her skirt and goes to meet her sister at the front steps. Madrigal is dressed like an outsider, in a strangely cut dress of green silk. There are gold hoops in her ears, and gold bangles on her wrists. She holds on to Jules with one hand, and Jules holds on tight, as though afraid she will disappear if she lets go.

“I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t come straight here,” Madrigal says. She wraps an arm about Jules’s small shoulders. “I wanted to find my daughter first.”

My daughter. The words swirl in Caragh’s stomach like blood from a punch. She wonders whether on Fennbirn all sisters are meant to hate one another. Not only the queens.

“She has not grown tall.” Madrigal cups Jules’s face. “But she has certainly changed since I saw her last.”

“She was a baby when you saw her last,” Caragh says, and Cait and Ellis look at her sharply.

“A baby.” Madrigal smiles. “She was three and a half. Walking and talking and even slightly gifted. A baby. Caragh, what can you be thinking?”

Not far away in the grass, Arsinoe’s pale face peeks out from behind Joseph. He seems curious, and confused, like he thinks he should be happy but cannot remember why. Arsinoe looks suspicious.

“Are you home for good, Mother?” Jules asks. “Home to stay?”

“I am, my Jules.” Madrigal plants kiss after kiss into Jules’s hair, and the family closes around them in a circle, all smiles and tears. No one sees Caragh press her fists into her middle, where it hurts so badly it must surely be bleeding.

GREAVESDRAKE MANOR

Greavesdrake Manor rests at the western end of the capital city of Indrid Down and spills across woodland and meadow. The great house stands on a low central hill and has grown larger as the years passed, expanding steadily, as if the house has somehow learned to feed. One more poisoner queen, and Greavesdrake will spill over into the streets.

Its pitched roofs have been washed black, to show the Arrons’ devotion to the crown. That is what Natalia told little Katharine that first day, more than three years ago, when the carriage drove up to it. But Katharine has come to believe that the roof is black for another reason: it screams down to the capital, and all across the island, This is where your queens are raised.

Katharine sits at her vanity table and lets her maid brush out her long black hair. Her eyes are hollow and haunted, and she is painfully thin. She has simply lost the taste for eating. It is not easy to pretend to relish the poisoned food they serve. Nor to keep from crying when they put her to the scorpion’s sting or lash the nettles across her back. But she tries. It is all part of being a poisoner queen. Natalia says it is her duty to become strong, her obligation—to the Arrons who house and clothe her and to the island that worships her like the Goddess. Take the pain into yourself, Natalia tells her, and you will grow strong.

But sometimes it feels like her gift will never be strong. Like it will never come, and she will never revel in the poisons like the Arrons do. It feels like she has been poisoned forever. She cannot even remember anything that came before.

“Shall we braid you, miss?” her maid asks, and Katharine does not reply. The maid will do it anyway.

A short while later, Katharine walks alone to the dining room for breakfast with Natalia. Her hair is done, and she has been fitted into a soft, fine dress of black muslin. When Natalia sees her, she smiles. Even drawn and miserable, Katharine is still very pretty, and all Natalia sees is a perfect poisoner queen.

“Good morning, Queen Katharine.”

“Good morning.” Someone pulls a chair out for her, and she sits in front of a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of cut strawberries.

“How are your studies?” Natalia looks severe as she always does, but not unkind. A red-and-black-striped coral snake is twisted around her wrist like a bracelet.

“Does it have a name?” Katharine asks.

“No.” Natalia kisses it on the head. “But it is very beautiful. Now. How are your studies? Is your new tutor more to your liking?”

“We are reading from Toxicology: The Use of Poisons in Modern Medicine.”

“Very good.” Natalia lifts the silver off her own dish. She eats a soup for breakfast, a bitter broth steeped with poison mushrooms. For lunch she might enjoy blowfish or a salad of bloodroot. Dinner is meat tenderized and tainted with scorpion venom. Poison for every meal. Such is her strength.

Natalia promises that one day, Katharine will eat the same. But Katharine cannot imagine it.

“I have to go into the capital today, Queen Katharine. But I shall be back before supper.”

Katharine puts down her spoon. “I would like to go with you,” she says softly. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I ought to go with you, if I am to rule there one day.”

During the short carriage ride to Indrid Down, Natalia studies Katharine as she looks out the window, nosed pressed to the glass like an excited puppy. At nine years old, she has little of the lanky, lithe quality that Queen Camille had. But then, queens do not pass down physical traits or talents. Nothing but the bloodline.

“Natalia,” Katharine asks, “what are we going to do in the capital today?”

“We are going to the Volroy. Where I must meet with the Black Council. You will not meet with them until after you are crowned.”

“Then what am I to do while I wait?” The little queen turns and blinks at her. There is no guile in her questions, no petulance. Only a genuine curiosity that awaits instruction. Katharine pulls a little bit at her sleeve, tugging the muslin down to cover the fading welt of a spider bite.

Natalia sighs. “Perhaps I can put off the council. I will show you the poison room. An entire room with a full inventory of poisons, both domestic and foreign. Common and rare. Curated by many Arrons before me, on expeditions to the mainland.”

“An entire poison room? Is it larger than the one at Greavesdrake?”

“Not larger.” The poison chamber at Greavesdrake is the size of a small ballroom. “But better stocked. I have added to its shelves myself, as did my brother Christophe, when he traveled through the mists to the exotic, tropical climes of the southern seas.”

Queen Katharine leans forward, daydreaming of poison as she gazes through the window glass.

“A whole room of poisons, right in the Volroy castle. Is that because the queen is always a poisoner?”

“She is not always, and you know that.” Natalia reaches out and taps her beneath her chin. “But our queens have kept this island safe for three generations, without war or intrusion. Our family has kept it safe. And if the Westwoods think they can do the same, with their breezes and rain clouds . . . Fennbirn needs a poisoner. It needs a queen to fear. Death and strength are the only true currencies on the mainland anymore.”

The carriage halts at the gates and moves on when Natalia nods to the guards. Inside the vast, chilled halls of the Volroy, eyes widen at the sight of the young queen, so rarely seen there.

“I should like to hang more tapestries when I am queen,” Katharine remarks, quietly so her voice will not echo.

“And why is that?”

“So it will not feel so cold. Cold and distant and brittle. The Volroy was not made to be loved.”

“Indeed it was not,” Natalia replies. “It was made to endure.” She leads the queen up the stairs of the East Tower, up and up and through the antechamber that leads to the room of poisons.

She steps in, and Katharine walks eagerly to the center of the stone floor. She marvels at the cabinets full of poisons, dried and liquefied and preserved, glittering malevolently in their vials. She reaches out to touch the long table of sealed wood, topped with glass, and Natalia grasps her by the wrist.

“Take care. Your gift has not come. You must wear gloves before you touch anything in this room. No matter how meticulously it is maintained, I will not take any chances with your tolerance.”

She goes to a closet and selects a pair of small, lined gloves for Katharine to wear.

“Now,” she says, and smiles, “shall we make something pretty? Something pretty, and something deadly.”

The poison that they craft is called Winter’s Blush, since it kills by constricting the blood vessels and making the body go cold all over. Sometimes the constriction causes the capillaries to burst as well, making the name even more fitting. It is a popular poison lesson for beginners, because it has only four ingredients and because of the pretty lilac color that it turns, and the way that it fizzes.

Katharine holds the stoppered vial gleefully between gloved fingers, admiring the purple hue. “It is like Miss Genevieve’s eyes,” she says.

Natalia chuckles. “She would love that you said that. But though it is beautiful, you must treat it with respect. As you must treat all poisons. A poison is not a plaything. It is sacred and serious business. As the head of the Black Council, I must concoct poisons to administer as punishment to those on the island who would do harm. Who commit crimes. Sometimes I must punish them to death. And as queen, you must do so as well.”

The young queen slides the poison into the cuff of her sleeve, practicing her sleight of hand. She is still not very good at it. But she is no stranger to death and has heard such words before. Each time she turns a little less green.

“I will do what I must.” Katharine looks at her in sudden alarm. “But you will be there with me?”

Natalia begins to clean the table, returning ingredient bottles to shelves and drawers, carefully brushing stray bits and dust into a bin to be destroyed. Queen Katharine may be small, and some, like Genevieve, may think her weak, but Natalia disagrees. She is small, and softhearted. She is kind. But she is also resilient and dutiful. She has never refused or hesitated in the face of poisoning. She will make a fine queen.

“Yes, Queen Katharine. I will always be with you.” She wipes the blade of one of the short knives she used to cut a sliver of root and finds it so sharp that it sinks into her finger. She gasps as blood runs down her knuckle. “Foolish. Foolish and careless of me.”

“Natalia, you are bleeding!” Katharine reaches for her hand and quickly wraps it in a clean cloth. She looks so concerned as she pats Natalia’s fingers and squeezes them gently. And over such a small thing. “Is that better?”

“All better,” says Natalia. And then she laughs and pulls the queen close. “You are such a strange girl, Kat. Such a strange and dear girl.”

WOLF SPRING

Arsinoe and Joseph walk behind Jules and her mother by at least a dozen paces. They watch the pair suspiciously and wonder who this strange woman is, the strange woman with the beautiful face, whose very presence turns their friend Jules into an affectionate pet. Joseph pulls up a long bit of big bluestem out of the meadow grass and thwacks the other stalks as Aria the crow flaps overhead. She is never far from Jules’s mother. Perhaps she is afraid of being left again.

Arsinoe tugs at the collar of her black shirt. She is the only one who has to wear black year-round, even in high summer, when it soaks up the sun and makes her so hot she might have a stroke.

“You should quit wearing black all the time,” Joseph says, and he makes it sound so easy that she wants to hit him.

“Arsinoe!”

She looks up—they both do—and sees Madrigal waving for them to come on. She is smiling, and the blades of grass move around her in a dance. She is hard to resist. Joseph runs at once, and after a moment, Arsinoe, the most skeptical and sullen queen born for at least the last thousand years, goes, too.

Madrigal grabs Arsinoe, and Arsinoe grabs Joseph, and Joseph grabs Jules, and they spin through the grass, churning up their own wind. Arsinoe and Joseph laugh, and Jules and Madrigal throw their heads back, and the butterflies come. All the butterflies it seems, from every crick and corner of Fennbirn. Monarchs, wood whites, orange tips, and black-and-yellow-striped swallowtails. They swirl into the meadow and fly over and under and around them. In the corner of Arsinoe’s eye, flashes of blue and brighter yellow ignite in the grass: the wildflowers all blooming at once.

Finally, they fall apart onto their backs, laughing. Madrigal pulls fresh blooms of flowers to her nose, and Aria lands on her chest to eat a blue butterfly. Delicate wings cover Madrigal from head to toe, opening and closing in all colors. They are on Jules, too, but Jules does not seem to notice. She stares at her mother with such love it makes Arsinoe jealous, only she is not sure who she is jealous of.

“That was a very good game, Funny Eyes,” Madrigal says. She reaches a finger out to touch her daughter’s nose, and Jules’s smile fades.

“I like your eyes, Jules,” says Joseph. “I wish I had them.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like them,” Madrigal says. “I only said they were funny. Which they are.” She touches Jules’s hair. “It’s a pity, though, that I didn’t find a boy that Beltane with black, black hair. The butterflies look so pretty in Arsinoe’s.” She lets go of Juillenne and leans toward the queen.

“Do you feel the way they talk to you? Can you hear what they say through their beating wings?”

Arsinoe sits still a moment. She feels only their legs and furry antennae, tickling her scalp.

“No.”

Madrigal sighs. She puts one hand on her crow and then tosses her into the air before she can eat any more butterflies. “I haven’t been back on the island for two weeks, and already I’ve heard them whispering. ‘Will she be strong enough to become the queen?’ ‘Could she be?’ ‘When will her gift start to show? She is already nine.’”

“I’m already a queen. That’s why they call me Queen Arsinoe.”

“But you aren’t the only one. You know that, don’t you?”

Jules and Joseph look at Madrigal, faces bleak, as if they sense she is about to ruin a sunny afternoon.

“Fennbirn has three queens in every generation,” Madrigal goes on. “You don’t just get the crown by virtue of being born. You have to fight for it.” She prods Arsinoe in the belly playfully, and Arsinoe swats at her hand.

“I don’t think I want to be crowned anyway.”

Madrigal leans back with her elbows in the grass and clucks her tongue, like that is a very great shame. She brushes at the last of the butterflies lingering on her clothes—strange clothes from the mainland: tall leather boots with heels, and tight trousers.

“Caragh and Mum want to coddle you,” she says. “Make you happy until your time comes. They want to treat you like a loser. Like you’re dead already.”

“Dead?” Jules sits up.

“That is what happens to the queens who lose. They are killed. But don’t despair.” Madrigal cups Jules’s cheek with one hand and pinches Arsinoe’s with the other. “There is plenty of time yet to train. To grow strong. To be the victor. And I am here now, and I will help you.”

Caragh and Matthew walk the long dirt road that leads to the Milone house. It is a cool, pleasant walk thanks to the oaks that stretch their branches over the path, but still Matthew is quiet. He has been quiet all afternoon.

It is high and fading summer, as August draws toward close and minds turn toward the fall and the celebration of the Reaping Moon. It is a difficult time for naturalists, as their gift sings in anticipation of harvest but also shakes before the descending shadow of winter. In some it shakes so hard it feels like something trying to escape. For a barren Milone girl, it is a season to be driven mad as all across the island, pregnant Beltane bellies begin to show. Matthew knows this. Caragh suspects that he has always been aware of it, since he always seems aware of whatever she needs. How he knew she would need him that claiming day at the Black Cottage. How he knew that this turn of season was the first one to break her heart. In every other year, she had Jules.

The breeze moves the leaves overhead, and Aria the crow dives down on Juniper and caws loudly, making Juniper yip and scrunch her back. She tries to bite the bird out of the sky, but the crow is already up and out of danger. Caragh’s heart sinks when she hears Madrigal’s laugh, and sinks farther when she turns and sees Jules, Joseph, and Arsinoe walking up with her.

“Caragh Milone,” Madrigal says. “What are you up to with this boy?”

“You should keep an eye on your crow,” says Matthew, and Madrigal skips up to and around him. Her long brown hair flicks across his shoulder, and her fingers slide down his arms. Even when she is being a brat, she looks like a fairy. Twirls and sparkle. Gossamer wings.

“I always have an eye on my crow. Just like Caragh has on her dog.” She taps Juniper’s nose and looks back at Matthew. “I remember you. Matthew Sandrin. My how you’ve grown.”

Caragh watches Matthew over her sister’s shoulder. He stares at Madrigal like he hates her, but he still stares. Madrigal has always made everyone stare.

“Should we go home together?” Madrigal asks. “If you can keep up?” She spins away, and the children follow, as if pulled by an unseen leash. Jules does not even look at Caragh. None of them do. They are not their usual, rascal selves.

“Wait, Madrigal,” Caragh says. “You children go on ahead. We’ll catch up to you.” The three of them walk on somberly, and Caragh senses a tension in them. A fear.

“What now?” Madrigal asks, and rolls her eyes.

“What did you do to them? Jules looks ready to wilt flowers.”

“I didn’t do anything to them. We called butterflies and grew grass. Arsinoe grew nothing. She won’t last long, you know, if you keep treating her this way. She will be dead the moment the Quickening is over.”

“You didn’t speak to them of that?”

“Of course not.”

“Madrigal, they are too young. She is not ready.”

Madrigal crosses her arms. It has been more than two years since Arsinoe made any mention of her sisters. The memories have likely faded into nothing. But even if they have, she is still only a little girl. Too young a queen to start in with talk of the killing.

“Why is that your decision to make?” Madrigal narrows her eyes. “You are not Mother. You are not anyone’s mother. And if there is a guardian to the queen, it is clearly meant to be my Jules.” She says nothing else. She turns and walks with light steps onward up the road.

Neither Caragh nor Matthew move until Madrigal is gone. Caragh clenches her fists. She would like to jump up and down and scream.

“She thinks she can come here and upend everything! She arrives, ruins things, and leaves. That is what she does. And she never sees the consequences!”

Matthew slips his arm about her trembling waist.

“You’re still her aunt,” he says. “Jules still loves you. She always will.”

A heaviness forms in her throat as he speaks. She knows that. She knows she is being ungrateful, spurning the idea of being only Juillenne’s aunt after raising her for six years. To want Jules to run to her, not Madrigal, when she calls her first great fish or has a bad dream.

“Go home, Matthew,” Caragh says.

“What? Why?”

“Because that’s the first stupid thing you’ve ever said to me.”

For days and nights, the old tales of the queens haunt Jules’s every moment. She has heard the tales before—brutal, exciting stories of poison and wolves and fire. But they were only stories. Even when Arsinoe came to them and Arsinoe was real, her young mind could not fathom that one day Arsinoe would be a part of one of those stories. Joseph tries to distract her, but not even he can keep her from worrying.

“Your mum was probably fooling about. To scare us. Like around the Reaping Moon fires,” Joseph says. “And even if she wasn’t, Arsinoe’s tough.” He shoves Arsinoe, standing beside him, until she stumbles, to illustrate the point. “I wouldn’t want to fight her.”

But it is not just a fight. Arsinoe and Joseph would rather not know. They would rather forget the silliness that Madrigal said and go back to enjoying their summer. To believe it meant difficulty. It meant things that they were not prepared for.

It meant growing up.

Later that night, when Jules kneels down on the rug beside her grandpa Ellis’s chair, she is not sure what she wants to hear. She only knows she must find out where the truth lies, in all the tales.

“Grandpa,” she says, twisting a bit of the fine yarn he spins around her index finger. “What’s going to happen to Arsinoe?”

He looks down at her through the bottom of his spectacles. Unlike other adults, he does not tell her that it is nothing. He does not lie.

“You have heard something,” he says, “haven’t you?”

“Only thinking about the old stories. The queen stories. And Arsinoe is a queen. Is she a queen like that?”

“You are still young, Jules, and this will be hard for you to understand. But as the Ascension draws nearer, you will hear things. About the contest between the queens. About how they take their crown. The people will start to talk more as Arsinoe grows.”

His tone is calm. The Ascension is nothing new. The deaths of queens are nothing new. Jules feels deeply ashamed suddenly, of her youth and her ignorance. Her inability to understand what was true until now. Even knowing, it seems impossible when all the death she has ever known was the death of animals or of the old. Of fishers lost at sea or folk taken by illness or accident. But death cannot touch Arsinoe, who is young and careful. Who has become her best friend and foster sister.

“She has to?” Jules asks. “Can’t someone else?”

“No. It can only be her. Arsinoe is a queen, Jules. She is special. It is in her nature; you will see. It is her purpose.”

That night, lying in bed with Arsinoe snoring across the room, Jules cannot stop thinking about Grandpa Ellis’s words. Kill or be killed. That is her purpose. Her nature. But that is not fair. That cannot be.

“I will find a way to keep you safe, Arsinoe. I’ll protect you. I promise.”

THE AFTERMATH OF ARSINOE’S ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE

Two Years Later

INDRID DOWN

The foolish little naturalist queen tried to flee. She, a Milone brat, and a Wolf Spring boy were found stranded in the mists, floating in a pitifully small, stolen boat. After they were caught, they were brought under lock and key to the Volroy, along with Cait Milone and her family.

“They have arrived only just now?” Natalia asks as she and Genevieve walk quickly through the castle to the chamber where the trial is to be held. “A shame. They should have been allowed to languish a while in the cells.”

“The council was too eager to punish them,” says Genevieve.

“Then they may be disappointed. We cannot punish the queen. Queens are not to be touched until after the Quickening, and she is still only eleven years old. The island will view it as nothing more than youthful indiscretion.” Some will even admire her rebelliousness. The alliances of the island have begun to shift. Natalia has felt it ever since the elemental queen showed so strong a gift. The poisoners, her family, had ruled Fennbirn well. But they had been in power too long. Three poisoner queens, and it is easy for the island to turn restless.

Natalia and Genevieve climb the stairs and burst through the upper chamber door. The room is vast and open to the east with a railed balcony that overlooks the courtyard and on past the rooftops to Bardon Harbor. Members of her Black Council, which is finally truly hers now and not her mother’s, stand in small groups in their silk handkerchiefs and deep purple skirts. Where once they were all old poisoners—except for her cousin Lucian, and Paola Vend, from the strongest poisoner family in Prynn—now the council is filled with youth: Natalia’s brother Antonin and sister, Genevieve. Her younger cousin Allegra. The vivacious young poisoner Lucian Marlowe.

In the center of the room, pressed to their knees on the red, circular rug, are the naturalist queen and her co-conspirators. They are still children to her eye, though the queen and Juillenne Milone both glare at her with foolishly little fear. Natalia could have the little Milone poisoned. And the boy as well. They have committed a dire offense, and she would so very much like to give them to Katharine as a set to practice on.

As she thinks this, she glances at Juillenne Milone and nearly startles. The girl’s gaze is so intense that she must be able to read Natalia’s thoughts.

“We would speak,” says Cait Milone. It has been a long time since Natalia has seen her, but she seems as hard and proud as ever.

“Then speak,” Natalia says. “Though I do not know what you think you can say.”

Still, she listens as Cait pleads, insofar as Cait is capable of pleading, and turns a sympathetic ear to the tears of the boy’s mother, a woman named Annie Sandrin. Mostly though, she watches. She watches the way the two younger Milone women cling to the backs of chairs but not to each other. She sees the guilt-bent back of Cait’s husband. The confused, pale faces of the Sandrin men as they wonder how their boy got mixed up in a queen’s business.

And she watches the queen. Arsinoe. She has grown long and lanky in the five years since the Black Cottage. Her hair is chopped short, the ends uneven, and she is not a beauty, like her queen Katharine, or like the elemental Queen Mirabella is rumored to be. She is plain, with a stingy, downturned mouth, and the council’s spies in Wolf Spring say her gift has still to show.

To Natalia she looks like an easy kill.

“Natalia?” Genevieve prods her from her reverie. Apparently, the pleading and lamentation is over.

“Will the queen be allowed to speak?” asks Cait.

“It is not necessary to let the children speak,” says Cousin Lucian.

“But I would speak.”

Heads turn as Arsinoe gets to her feet.

“Then of course, Queen Arsinoe,” Natalia says. “We will hear you.”

“None of this was their fault.” Arsinoe gestures to the Milone girl and the dark-haired boy. “It was my idea. I told them to do it. I made them help me.”

Natalia does not believe her for a moment. But she will pretend. It would be perhaps too much to ask of Katharine yet anyway, to poison two children so close to her own age.

“If that is true, then they will not die.” Natalia looks at the two of them, the boy afraid and contrite, and the Milone girl still defiantly scowling. Everything about her screams defiance, except the desperate way she clings to the boy’s hand. “Joseph Sandrin will be banished to the mainland until he comes of age, or we see fit to retrieve him.”

Queen Arsinoe’s mouth falls open, but Juillenne Milone begins to shout, and every Milone in the room presses forward, as if to comfort her.

“She has quite the temper, Cait,” Natalia says. “You look almost frightened!” She raises her chin to Juillenne. “The Milone girl is sentenced to the Black Cottage. She will repay this crime through service as the next Midwife to the crown.”

“No!” Arsinoe and the boy start to cry and throw their arms around Juillenne. One of the younger Milone women slumps into her seat. Another bursts through the barrier of guards, and before Natalia can stop her, attaches herself to her sleeve.

“Please,” she says. “Let me go instead.”

“You should be glad. She could be dead. And there are many priestesses who would be thrilled by such a sentence. It is more honor than she deserves.”

“She is only a child. Have you no mercy? Are the Arrons truly as wicked as that?”

Natalia looks at her council of poisoners. The ill will toward them spreads by the day. So much so that she may have to dismiss some of them and appoint new members of other gifts. A warrior, perhaps. Or even someone giftless. That ought to appease the people.

“Very well,” she says, and sighs. “That will do.”

Katharine runs to greet Natalia the moment she comes through the front door, as she often does when she is not ill from poison training. Natalia stifles a smile and takes her time getting out of her gloves before lifting the cool glass of poison juice from Edmund’s silver tray. Katharine seems about to burst standing there, hands folded and trembling over her black skirt and ankles twisting in an odd little dance.

“Yes, Kat?” Natalia says finally, and Katharine takes her by the hand.

“They tell me something has happened! Something with Queen Arsinoe!”

Genevieve catches Natalia’s eye as she slips past in the foyer. “I will speak to the servants again about gossiping.”

Natalia nods. Katharine’s memories have faded. There is little danger in speaking of Arsinoe, or even Mirabella. They are only names to her now. Rivals. Though they have only discussed it in the broadest terms, Katharine knows that the other queens must be killed, and after five more years of training, and armed with a strong poisoner gift, she will be ready to do it.

“It was not the servants’ fault,” Katharine says quickly. “I was eavesdropping.”

“Eavesdropping,” Genevieve scoffs. “It is more likely that you were just silent for so long they forgot you were there, little mouse. I will speak to them.” She touches Natalia’s arm and leaves. Natalia gave her younger sister a place on the council only recently, but it seems to have centered her. Or at least she does not seem half as frivolous as she did before.

“What did Queen Arsinoe do?” Katharine asks. “They said that she was to be punished. That you were to punish her.”

“She tried to leave the island.”

“But queens are not allowed to leave the island.”

“I do not even think that it was her fault.” Natalia sighs. “Certainly it was not her idea. She was taken in by foolish naturalists. They have never been fit guardians.”

“Not like you.” Katharine looks down. She is so meek. So sweet. They ought to train that meekness out of her, but Natalia cannot bring herself to try. Or perhaps she knows that it would be impossible. Katharine will always be a kind, grateful girl in need of looking after. “So you were merciful, then? If it was not her fault?”

“I was.”

“But you did punish her?”

“I did.” Natalia reaches out and touches the queen’s pale cheek. “I will always take care of everything, Kat. If you are tired, I will be alert. If you are weak, I will become twice as strong. I will guard your crown for you.”

ROLANTH

Queen Mirabella, I have brought you something.” Luca takes down the hood of her light traveling cloak, and the queen sets aside her book and walks quickly into the High Priestess’s open arms. She squeezes the girl tightly and steps back to remove her gloves. Fall has come early to Rolanth, so far in the north, with a chill wind rushing through the evergreens and across the basalt cliffs. In the capital of Indrid Down, from whence she came, they are still enjoying the last of a balmy summer, and the change in climate has made the bones in the High Priestess’s wrists ache. This Rolanth weather will take some getting used to.

“I care only that you have brought yourself,” Mirabella says, and kisses her hands. “But what did you bring me?”

“Iced anise cookies.” Luca holds them up, in a pretty striped box, and Mirabella takes them. She sniffs the edge. “I thought we could have them with our tea. But first, to business. I must tell you what has happened to your sister, Queen Arsinoe.”

Mirabella’s smile fades. They have come a long way from water spirits forced down Luca’s throat. Mirabella is no longer a danger. No longer kept in a basement out of fear. But the queen is stubborn. At least as stubborn as she is strong, and that makes her the most stubborn girl on the island.

“They should have known she would get herself into trouble. They should have guarded her more closely. Do they not know her at all?”

“They know her, and they care for her,” Luca says. “I have seen it.”

Luca takes her arm and walks with her through the open air of Rolanth Temple. As the years passed, she has grown fond of the elemental queen. More than fond. She has grown to love her, and the favoritism shown by the High Priestess cannot be denied. But favoritism by the High Priestess is not the same as favoritism by the temple. So she told Natalia Arron when the woman finally confronted her. She will never forget the look on Natalia’s face when she said she would be leaving Indrid Down to reside in Rolanth with the queen.

“What was the punishment?” Mirabella asks as they walk past the altar and into the dome with the mural of elemental Queen Elo, the fire breather, where they might hide from the wind. “Was it as bad as you feared?”

“It was not. It was a rare show of Arron mercy. Banishment to the mainland for the boy.” She pauses as Mirabella puts a hand to her throat. “And banishment of another kind for the girl. To the Black Cottage, to serve as the next Midwife. However, it seems that the girl’s aunt will take her place, so Queen Arsinoe may keep her companion.”

Mirabella exhales. After their first meeting on the banks of Starfall Lake, Luca did not know if she could be controlled. But the key to taming Mirabella has been to use a soft hand. Not to try to drive the thoughts of her sisters from her head, but to understand them. To educate her in the ways of a queen and devote her to the Goddess completely. To make her a servant.

Sara Westwood still foolishly hopes that one day Mirabella will forget, like other queens do. But Mirabella will never forget. Perhaps it is because she is such a rare queen, of such tremendous power, and the memories are the way the Goddess has chosen to test her. Or perhaps it is because her sisters were burned into her mind after being locked in a dark basement for three long years.

It will take time, and more education, but Mirabella will be the queen that the island needs. She is chosen. Luca knows that as surely as she has known anything since the day she took the bracelets and entered the temple.

“You are still wild.” Luca reaches out and flicks a long lock of tangled black hair from the queen’s shoulder. “Have you been out in the wind, running along Shannon’s Blackway again, with Bree?”

“Only before prayer this morning. We were both so restless, awaiting your return.”

“Come, then. I am restless as well after days in the carriage. Will you walk with an old woman, down toward the city? On the evergreen path?”

“Of course, High Priestess.” Mirabella offers her arm.

Luca does not really need the arm. Not yet. Her old legs are still sturdy and show no sign that they will fail her for years to come. But it is good for the queen to feel necessary. Like a caretaker. They wander down the evergreen path, in the hills that overlook the city of Rolanth. Not too far, Luca hopes, for the way back will not be quite so easy, but luckily, they come across the funeral procession just after the third curve.

“What’s this now?” Luca asks, and holds up her arm.

The carriages draped in crimson slow and stop, the horses bracing against the slope of the hill as their drivers set the brake. Three carriages, of average quality, the crimson hanging in dyed wool and not something finer like silk or even muslin. They are local folk, Rolanth people. Shopkeepers or weavers. Luca does not know for sure. She only knows that one of their own committed a crime and was poisoned to death for it.

A woman steps down from the first carriage and immediately kneels before Luca. She is cloaked all in crimson and her cheeks are tear-streaked.

“High Priestess, will you bless us?”

“Of course, of course,” says Luca as Mirabella looks on. “But what has happened?”

“My oldest boy, put to death for theft,” the woman says. “The Black Council is cruel. Unfeeling. They tortured him with their vile concoctions!” The woman begins to wail, and Mirabella touches her shoulder.

“Theft?” the queen asks. “But that is monstrous! To put someone to death for theft!”

Monstrous indeed. Also untrue. Luca knows the boy was tried for murder, just as she knew his funeral procession was to pass by this way, for blessings upon his body at the temple before being burned atop the Blackway Cliffs. She walks to the second carriage, the hearse carriage where the boy’s body is held, and says, “Stay back, Mirabella,” knowing full well that she will follow.

Luca opens the door. The corpse is covered in crimson cloth and perfumed against the scent of rot. But the scent is still there, after so many days traveling from Indrid Down. She raises her chin and pulls back the sheet.

Behind her, Mirabella gasps.

He is nothing but blisters. Broken, red blisters and deep, angry claw marks from his own fingers as he tried to dig the poison out of himself. Luca lets the queen look just a few moments longer, but covers the boy before Mirabella begins to weep. She is still young, after all. Not even twelve years old.

Luca makes sure that her face is strained as she goes back to the grieving mother, who must truly be his mother, or at least a very talented actress. She places her hands on the woman’s shoulders and draws her to her feet.

“Blessings upon your boy as he rejoins the fold of the Goddess.” Luca presses her thumb to the woman’s forehead. “Blessings upon you. Blessings upon your family.”

“It is not fair,” the woman cries. “The Black Council! The poisoners!”

“I know. It is horrible. But it will not remain so. The next queen will change it.”

“She must,” says the woman. “This cannot stand. We cannot take it.”

Luca turns sadly to Mirabella, whose eyes are wide and shining. The queen holds her head high, angry as well as horrified, just as Luca wants.

“I will change it,” Mirabella says. “I promise I will change it.”

EPILOGUE:

WOLF SPRING

Two Years Later

Arsinoe and Jules walk through the meadow beside Dogwood Pond. There is no one watching them. They have no escort. They have not even told anyone where they are going or when they will be home. Arsinoe thought that after what happened, after Jules and Joseph stole that boat and tried to flee the island with her, they would be guarded night and day. Instead, it is the opposite, as if they are barely seen.

Since Caragh departed for the Black Cottage, and Joseph sailed away to his banishment, so much sadness emanates through the Milone house, and all of Wolf Spring, that it is like the peoples’ hearts have slowed their beating.

“What do you want to do?” Arsinoe asks. “Go fishing? Swimming? The water’s still warm enough. Look for berries left in Pace’s ditch?”

“Sure,” Jules says. But she does not say which. And there is no fire in her voice, though she does turn to Arsinoe and smile. Good Jules. She has done everything she can to let Arsinoe know that she does not blame her. But Jules’s blame does not matter. Arsinoe knows that what happened to Caragh and Joseph was her fault. They were punished because they tried to save her.

Late at night, when she lies in her bed in the room she shares with Jules, Arsinoe still thinks about that day in the capital. That look on Natalia Arron’s face when she banished Joseph and Caragh. How Arsinoe hates the Arrons, every one of them, with their cold, blond coloring and imperious eyes. She would like to ruin everything for them, like they have ruined everything for Jules and the Milones. She does not know how she will do it yet, but she has time. The queens’ Ascension does not begin for another three years.

“I’m tired of the same old paths,” Jules says suddenly, and stops short. “Let’s go into the woods. Northeast, into the woods.”

“All right.”

Arsinoe does not like the northeastern woods. They are dark and too heavily shaded. Large creatures dwell there, safe from the noises and people in town, and whenever they go there, they hear many, lumbering or crashing through the brush, just out of sight. Of course she does not say so to Jules. They would be the most unnaturalist words ever uttered by a naturalist.

Jules leads her deeper and deeper into the forest, walking so fast that she may have forgotten that Arsinoe is with her at all. In the thick trees, Arsinoe loses track of the sun in the sky, and all the light seems slanting. Now and then, Jules stops to sniff the air and listen, but all Arsinoe hears are the whisper of leaves and the low, irritating buzz of insects. Where are the birds? Why is Madrigal’s familiar, Aria, not flapping somewhere overhead, cawing in the branches?

“Look.” Jules points.

Without Arsinoe noticing, they have come upon a clearing. The sun beams down upon an oblong stretch of green grass and moss, and shrub bushes with shiny, waxen leaves. In the center of it is a large, flat stone, just tall enough to climb on.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Arsinoe remarks.

Jules does not reply. Her face is set in concentration, her blue and green eyes intent on the stone. She wipes a bit of sweat from her upper lip. Bits of her wavy brown hair have come loose from her braid, and she looks as wild as anything in the woods.

Jules walks toward the stone. Arsinoe follows and watches as she scrambles up it to stand. Jules looks around, but it does not really make her that much taller, and certainly not tall enough to see over the trees.

“This is a strange rock.” Arsinoe lays her hands on it, flat and sun-warm. “So squared off and flat. Do you think it used to be something? Part of something old?”

Jules looks down at the stone.

“I think . . . if after today, we were to come looking, we would never find it again.”

Arsinoe swallows as a chill passes from her scalp to her tailbone. To hide it, she climbs up onto the rock beside Jules.

“Let’s just . . . stay here awhile,” Jules says, and sits. “I don’t feel like going home.”

With the heat of the stone against their backs, and the soft sunlight on their faces, it does not take long for Jules and Arsinoe to fall asleep. When Jules wakes, it is from a good dream that she cannot quite remember, but there was laughter in it, and warmth. She thinks that Joseph and Caragh might have been there.

In the brush to her left, back in the shady cover of the trees, something rustles, and Jules sits up. She holds an arm out over the queen, ready to protect her or tell her to run. Jules is not much to look at, with her short legs and funny eyes, but she is brave. She will not hesitate to fight for Arsinoe. She is not afraid to be hurt.

But after a moment, her apprehension fades. It changes to a sensation of deep calm. Peace. The brush and ferns rustle again, and Jules waits, holding her breath.

The fuzzy mountain cat cub creeps cautiously into the light. It blinks its eyes, so young that they are still a little blue, and stands on big, fluffy paws. Its coat is the spotted coat of a baby.

Anyone but Jules would still be afraid, for where a mountain cat cub goes, a mountain cat mother is not far behind. But as Jules and the cub stare at each other, something clicks into place.

“Camden,” Jules says, and the little cub bounds joyfully across the meadow and leaps into her arms.

Excerpt from The Oracle Queen

Do you know the truth behind the legend of the Mad Oracle Queen? For a sneak peek at Queen Elsabet’s never-before-told story, turn the page!

On a warm summer day, Queen Mirabella sat on the front steps of the Black Cottage at Midwife Willa’s feet, having her hair braided. Her little sisters, Queen Arsinoe, younger by mere minutes, and Queen Katharine, younger by a full half hour, played together in the yard.

“It is a good thing that black does not show grass marks,” Willa commented as Katharine tripped over her own feet and tumbled, dark skirt flying.

“Ha ha,” Arsinoe taunted. She hoisted the stick she was carrying as a sword high over her head as Katharine’s large eyes began to shine and wobble. Mirabella cleared her throat, and Arsinoe glanced at her guiltily. Then she sighed and went to help their youngest sister up.

“Why do you not ever tell them to be nice?” Mirabella asked.

“I tell them to be polite.” Willa separated the little queen’s hair with gentle fingers. “It is so long now. So long and so shiny. When you are queen you must wear it down often, and never cover it with a veil.”

Mirabella fought the urge to jerk her head. Even at five years old, she knew that nice and polite were not the same things, though she could not explain exactly why.

Down in the grass, Arsinoe and Katharine had resumed chasing each other. They laughed breathlessly, and when they ran out of laughter Katharine began to sing a song that Willa had taught them that morning.

“No sight, no sound, no fault was found, no treason to be had!”

“Yet every one would die that day for Elsabet the mad!” Arsinoe finished the rhyme and raised her stick-sword. Katharine squealed and ran.

“Why did you teach us that song?” Mirabella asked. It was a queen’s song, the tale of the last oracle queen, but Mirabella did not like it.

“Everyone on the island knows the story of the mad oracle. A queen certainly should.”

“It is only a song.”

“Songs preserve history. So people remember.” Willa took a deep breath and lowered her voice, and Mirabella knew that what would follow was only for her ears. “They say that Queen Elsabet’s gift of sight turned on her. That it drove her mad until in a fit of paranoia she ordered the execution of three whole houses of people.”

“What is ‘paranoia’?”

“Being afraid of or convinced of something that is not there.”

“Were they sure she was wrong?”

“They were sure. And for her crime, Queen Elsabet spent the last fifteen years of her reign locked in the West Tower of the Volroy. And now we will have no more sight-gifted queens.”

Mirabella swallowed. She knew why that was. Because every triplet born with the sight gift was drowned. “All because of her?”

Willa peered around and chuckled at the stark look on Mirabella’s face. “Do not be so troubled! It was a long time ago.”

“How long ago?”

“Long, long ago. Before even the mist came to protect us. Queen Elsabet ruled when Fennbirn was part of the world still. Back then the ports were crowded with ships from countries like noble Centra, rich Valostra, and warlike Salkades.”

Centra, Valostra, Salkades. Names Mirabella had heard before in Willa’s teachings. But not often. Those names had been lost to the mist. They were all the mainland now. They barely existed.

“Fifteen years is a long time to be locked away,” Mirabella murmured, and Willa kissed the top of her head. Mirabella felt two tugs on the ends of her hair, and a finished braid appeared, tossed over her shoulder.

“Never mind that. Go on now and play.”

Mirabella stood and did as she was told. But for the rest of that day, and many days afterward, she thought about Queen Elsabet and the song of the mad oracle. And she wondered how much of it was true.

No Sight no sound

No fault was found

No treason to be had

—

Yet every one

Would die that day

For Elsabet, the mad

—From “The Song of the Mad Oracle”

Want more? Stay tuned for The Oracle Queen,

the second Fennbirn novella from #1 New York Times

bestselling author Kendare Blake.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by Shawn H. Nichols Photography

KENDARE BLAKE holds an MA in creative writing from Middlesex University in northern London. She is the author of Anna Dressed in Blood, a Cybils Awards finalist; Girl of Nightmares; Antigoddess; Mortal Gods; Ungodly; and the New York Times bestselling Three Dark Crowns. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages, have been featured on multiple best-of-year lists, and have received many regional and librarian awards. Kendare lives and writes in Kent, Washington. Visit her online at www.kendareblake.com.

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BOOKS BY KENDARE BLAKE

Three Dark Crowns

One Dark Throne

The Young Queens

The Oracle Queen

Anna Dressed in Blood

Girl of Nightmares

Antigoddess

Mortal Gods

Ungodly

COPYRIGHT

THE YOUNG QUEENS. Text copyright © 2017 by Kendare Blake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ISBN 978-0-06-274826-3

EPub Edition © December 2017 ISBN 9780062748263

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