Two Dark Reigns Read online

  THE MAINLAND

  In the morning, Arsinoe and Mirabella get ready for the governor’s wife’s birthday party.

  “We must try to be polite,” Mirabella says as she stands behind Arsinoe at their vanity table, trying to pin Arsinoe’s short black hair to the sides of her head. “We must try to smile at Mrs. Chatworth and Miss Jane.”

  “I’ll try.” Arsinoe coughs as Mirabella puffs loose powder over the redness of her scar, but when she is done, it only looks like a powdered scar. Her mark of the bear refuses to hide.

  “We are here on their goodwill. On their charity.”

  “I know. It’s just . . . harder to move on for some of us.”

  In the mirror, Mirabella’s face falls. “I didn’t mean that,” Arsinoe says. “I just meant you’re better at pretending to be one of them in a crowd.”

  “Only because I am already used to wearing dresses. We should hurry and choose yours. Not the gray. It looks like a potato sack. What about the blue? With the black ribbon at the hem?”

  “No,” says Arsinoe. “No dresses. A jacket and vest will do.”

  Mirabella sighs and stops fussing with Arsinoe’s hair. “What did you dream, last night? Do not lie.”

  “I dreamed of arranging secret meetings between Henry Redville and Queen Illiann. To give him an advantage before she meets the other suitors at the Disembarking.”

  “Met,” Mirabella says with a frown. “Met. This is all in the past. None of it can be changed. It is only some trick of the island, some lingering grasp it has on us. And you were the girl again? Daphne?”

  “I was.” Arsinoe squints at her sister in the mirror. “Did you know there are secret passageways hidden behind tapestries hanging in the Volroy?”

  “How would I know that? I have never been there, except for the cells. Nor have you.”

  “Except that’s how I snuck Henry through undetected.”

  “Was there anything else about this dream?” Mirabella asks. “Anything important? Did you see hints of why the Blue Queen would send you these visions? You said you thought Daphne in love with Henry herself. But we know he becomes Queen Illiann’s king-consort. Did it seem that Daphne would try to betray Queen Illiann?”

  “No. She and Illiann are already close friends. Is that why Illiann is giving me the dreams? Is she teaching me a lesson?”

  “I do not know.” Mirabella turns away to dress herself. “But until the governor’s party is over, let us try to forget it.”

  Governor Hollen’s mansion is just outside the city, a large estate surrounded by trees. As their carriage makes its way up the long circle drive, Arsinoe is reminded of the Black Cottage. The buildings have similar white exteriors and dark timbering, though the brick of the Hollen foundation is a bright red-orange.

  “Not bad,” she says, and whistles.

  “Hush.” Mrs. Chatworth reaches across the carriage and slaps Arsinoe’s shoulder. She has not spoken to her since she came down the stairs wearing trousers and a black vest.

  “She was paying them a compliment, Mother,” says Billy. He takes Arsinoe’s hand.

  “Just keep her to the rear. Show Miss Mirabella to the front. At least she knows how to dress decently.”

  In ivory lace and green ribbon, Mirabella hardly looks like a queen at all. But that is what mainland fashion demands. The only thing Mrs. Chatworth complained about was her hair. She wanted ringlets, but Mirabella refused to use the hot metal iron. With her weakening gift, she could be burned, and Arsinoe imagines that for a girl who used to dance with fire, there could be nothing worse.

  “Wasn’t half the reason you were invited to this party so that people could get a look at us? Christine would have invited Billy, but you and Jane were included to accompany the foreign wards.”

  “What is your point, Miss Arsinoe?”

  “My point is I’m doing you a favor dressing like this.” She pulls on her lapels, smooths her hair back away from her facial scars. “Dressed like this, I’m more of an attraction.”

  Footmen help them from their carriage and they are shown through the front door into an enormous, high-ceilinged foyer. Some relation of the governor—one of his younger daughters, his niece, perhaps—steps forward to receive them.

  Mrs. Chatworth inclines her head.

  “May I present Miss Mirabella Rolanth,” she says, “and her sister Miss Arsinoe.”

  At the introduction, the girl’s eyes open wide. “We have heard much! How wonderful to meet you, finally.”

  Arsinoe and Mirabella nod and curtsy slightly, and the girl sweeps them through the house.

  “I don’t know why we had to be Mirabella and Arsinoe Rolanth,” Arsinoe whispers as they follow.

  “We could not very well be Mirabella and Arsinoe Wolf Spring,” Mirabella whispers back.

  The governor’s girl leaves them at the rear of the house, where a set of wide-open doors leads to the party. Arsinoe whistles again. The sprawling rear lawn boasts a small fountain and a well-kept hedge maze. Tables have been set and adorned with summer flowers, and there is even a stone dance floor and a small band of musicians. On the island, such a celebration would be reserved for a queen or a high festival.

  “Some birthday,” Arsinoe says, watching guests as they mill about laughing or clump together with glasses of drink in their hands. Many ladies have opted for wide-brimmed hats instead of parasols.

  “Do not be sour,” chides Mirabella. “Our own birthdays were high-festival affairs as well.”

  “We were queens.” She sighs. “What I wouldn’t give for a mug of ale like we used to have at the Lion’s Head.”

  “Unlikely to find any of that here,” Billy says, and takes her by the arm. “Tea, certainly. Or champagne.”

  “Anything to put in front of my face. We may be foreign curiosities, but I hope they don’t mean for us to meet everyone at this party.”

  “Billy! Over here, Billy!”

  They turn. Christine Hollen stands in the center of a group of young women.

  Arsinoe grimaces.

  “Oh, good, it’s Miss Christine.”

  “Go,” Mrs. Chatworth says, and prods them not too gently.

  Billy clears his throat. “I suppose we’ll have to.” He leads the way, and Arsinoe turns to Mirabella to mouth the word help.

  “She will not get within an arm’s length,” Mirabella says, and snakes her arm through Billy’s. “Do the same on his other side.”

  Arsinoe does, though it feels awkward. She cannot help noticing that Mirabella’s stride has gotten markedly slinkier. And that with the both of them pressed tight against him, Billy is grinning like an idiot.

  “Put on your best smile,” Mirabella says cheerily through her teeth.

  “Just like a horse’s,” Arsinoe says cheerily through hers.

  When they reach her, Christine offers Billy her hand to be kissed, but with both of his arms occupied, her fingers linger idly in the air before fluttering back down to her side. Mirabella glances at Arsinoe and lifts her chin in triumph.

  “I am so glad that you and the Misses Rolanth could come.”

  “Thank you for the invitation,” says Billy. “It’s a lovely party.”

  Christine’s smile is not as radiant as usual. She cannot stop looking at the way Mirabella leans against Billy, and with Mirabella there, the poor girl seems to have shrunk three sizes. Arsinoe feels sorry for her and tries to catch her eye to smile for real, but a boy approaches to extend his hand to Mirabella, and Christine’s expression brightens.

  “Miss Rolanth,” he says. “Will you dance?”

  “Oh yes, you must!” Christine exclaims before Mirabella can respond. “The band my father chose is absolutely delightful.”

  Mirabella looks between the boy and Arsinoe.

  “Please,” Christine nudges. “Billy cannot have thought he could keep you all to himself!”

  Mirabella slides her arm free and takes the boy’s hand. “I will be right back.” But she will not be. The boys a
re already forming a queue beside the stone dance floor.

  Arsinoe wonders how well she will fare. The music on the mainland is so different from the music of home. There are no somber strings and woodwinds like in Rolanth, no cheerful fiddle like Ellis and Luke played in Wolf Spring. This stuff is played mostly on horns, by musicians wearing shirts striped like pulled taffy.

  Once Mirabella is gone, Christine wastes no time. She reaches for Billy’s empty arm and tugs him to her side, sliding her gaze over Arsinoe’s vest and trousers. Then she taps him on the shoulder.

  “There is someone here I want you to meet.” She cranes her neck, a perfectly smooth and elegant neck, Arsinoe notes, and points to a young boy racing across the lawn. “There he is! My little cousin.” They laugh as the child tumbles and pops back up in his tiny, handsome suit. “He is just the sort of boy that I will have someday. A fine son, for a father to be proud of. Isn’t he darling?”

  “He is,” Billy agrees.

  “He certainly is,” says Arsinoe.

  “Isn’t that the sort of boy that you would like someday, Billy? A fine boy and a fine woman to raise him.”

  Arsinoe snorts unintentionally, and Christine’s pretty smile falters.

  “Perhaps you should go and dance as well, Miss Arsinoe. That is, if there is anyone here who is willing.”

  “Perhaps I should knock you on your—”

  “I’m willing.” Billy extricates himself from Christine’s grip and slips his arm around Arsinoe’s waist. “And as for a son, Christine, I think I would prefer a little girl. With a smart mouth. And who only ever wears trousers.”

  They walk away together, and Arsinoe cannot resist looking back. Christine’s entire face has turned red with fury.

  “Well,” Billy says nervously. “What are they doing?”

  “She looks like she’s about to scream.” Arsinoe laughs. “Your mother is not going to be happy about this.”

  “My mother will get used to it. She’ll have to be content with my agreeing to go to school in the fall.”

  “To school?”

  “Yes,” Billy says. “I should have told you sooner.”

  “Tell me now.”

  He nods and turns them away from the dance floor to find someplace quiet. It takes a while, on an estate the size of the governor’s, but finally the sounds of the party are muted, and they stop on a soft knoll of grass between the stables and the carriage house.

  “This is nicer.” Arsinoe plops down onto Billy’s jacket after he spreads it out for them. “Some of those people were staring at me so hard, I thought their eyeballs were going to pop past their lids.”

  “Here.” He hands her a glass of champagne he had taken off a tray as they passed. “It’s not ale, but it’s better than nothing.”

  She stares intently at the bubbles.

  “Do you think it could be poisoned?”

  “It isn’t likely.”

  “What a pity.”

  “I didn’t think your gift worked here,” he says.

  “I don’t think it does.” She downs the glass in one gulp. “Still a pity.”

  He sits down beside her, and for a moment, they recline in the comfort of each other’s company. Alas, it does not last long.

  “You understand why I have to go to school,” he says.

  “Yes. Of course. It’s what’s done here, isn’t it? Go to school and then into business with your father.”

  “Unless I’m disinherited,” Billy says, and laughs without much humor.

  “Do you think that’s why he hasn’t come back?”

  “No, actually. The fact that he hasn’t come back makes me think I have hope. If he’s staying away to punish me, then that’s a good sign. If he was going to disinherit me, he would just come home and draw up the papers.”

  “Are you and your family really going to be all right?” Arsinoe asks. “About the money, I mean.”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” He grins ruefully and sets his champagne in the grass. “It’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out somehow.”

  “I wish I could give you all this,” she gestures to the estate. “But I haven’t got it. You went to the island for a queen and a crown and came back with two extra mouths to feed. For Goddess’s sake, I’m borrowing your clothes.”

  “And you look much better in them than I do. Listen. Don’t worry. My father’s an arse, but he won’t stay gone so long that he ruins us. If there’s anything you can rely upon, it’s his sense of self-preservation.”

  “I’ll admit, I sort of dread his return.”

  “It’ll be all right. But in the meantime, I’ll go to school to please Mother.” He touches her chin. “I promised Joseph and Jules that I would take care of you, didn’t I?”

  Arsinoe jerks loose.

  “Jules should never have asked that. She was just so used to looking after me that she couldn’t leave without someone else to take over. You should have said no.”

  “I would never have said no, Arsinoe. Jules didn’t really need to ask.”

  “But maybe then she would have stayed.” Except now that she is here, Arsinoe knows that Jules could never have come to the mainland. The constraint and the ridiculous rules would have driven her mad. And what would have become of Camden, had Jules’s gift weakened? She would have become a wild thing, no longer a familiar, in a place where she would have been hunted, or put in a cage.

  “Junior, could you ever have belonged on the island?”

  He raises his brows.

  “I don’t know. For you, maybe.”

  “But you would have been waiting, to come home.”

  “Is that what you’re doing? Waiting to go home?”

  She shakes her head. There is no home for her on Fennbirn, either. “It’s just . . . very different here. There’s a lot to get used to.”

  Billy wraps his arms around her and pulls her down beside him. She rests her head on his shoulder and throws her leg across his.

  “I miss Fennbirn, too, you know,” he says. Then he pauses before asking in alarm: “Do you think the Sandrins have eaten my chicken?”

  Arsinoe laughs.

  “There are plenty of other chickens to eat besides Harriet. I’m sure she’s fine. Spoiled, even. Maybe she spends some of her days at the Milone house, following Cait and Ellis around. Maybe she’s met Luke’s rooster, Hank, and they’ve made you some adorable chicken grandchildren.”

  “Chicken grandchildren.” He laughs and pulls her closer. “I think I would like that.”

  Arsinoe nuzzles her face into his neck. Even on a hot summer day, she cannot seem to get close enough. Despite living in the same house, they have had so little time alone.

  “You know, if your mother finds us like this, she will call it a scandal.”

  Billy rolls onto her and grins. “Then we had better make it scandalous.”

  After a very pleasurable while, Arsinoe and Billy drift off in the afternoon sun. And Arsinoe dreams.

  She slides into Daphne’s body and finds herself at Innisfuil. And there is only one reason for so many to have gathered there: it must be the Beltane Festival.

  In the dream, Daphne regards herself in the long polished mirror. She dresses always as a boy on Fennbirn. Always as she wishes. How fondly she runs her hands over the doublet and hose and the ends of her short hair. The folk of Fennbirn know she is a girl, yet they do not treat her any differently than if she had successfully passed as a boy. Which she does whenever she meets someone from her home country of Centra or Valostra or Salkades. She can dress as she pleases and move freely in all circles, and for the first time in her life, Daphne feels whole.

  Arsinoe peers out through Daphne’s eyes as she stands beside the Blue Queen: Queen Illiann. Illiann reminds Arsinoe of Mirabella. They are both elementals, for a start, and Illiann is nearly as beautiful, with long black hair shining to her waist and intelligent eyes edged by thick black lashes. She is also just as elegant and assured of her crown as Mirabella was when they first met.
So sure that her sisters had been killed as babies that the sight of a black-haired, black-eyed girl from Centra caused not even a flicker of curiosity.

  But she is still not as strong as my sister, Arsinoe thinks as attendants dress Illiann for the festival, weaving around her and Daphne so quickly it is a wonder they both do not wind up bound into the same gown. Illiann’s elemental gift was for weather and water. A flickering of fire and nothing of earth. Not even the great Blue Queen was master of them all like Mirabella.

  “Are you sure I can’t smuggle Henry off his ship?” Daphne asks, close to Queen Illiann’s ear. “The suitors miss out on so much of the festival. And Henry loves to watch the mummers.”

  Mummers. Arsinoe searches her memory for the old word. Play actors.

  “Absolutely not.” Illiann smiles. “The suitors remain on their ships until tonight’s Disembarking Ceremony.”

  “Even Henry? When he has met you already so many times before?”

  Illiann claps her hand across Daphne’s mouth, laughing. “You are not even supposed to be here,” Illiann says as her attendants clear out of the way, eyes rolling over their smiles.

  Inside Daphne’s head, Arsinoe laughs along with them. It is still a strange sensation, disembodied yet within a body, the senses so keen that she can smell the sweet perfume on Illiann’s palm.

  “Such a secret.” Daphne pries the queen’s fingers loose. “I don’t see what the trouble is when he will be your husband soon enough.”

  “Perhaps. And perhaps not. There are still other suitors to meet tonight.”

  “Other suitors. But what are they compared to my Henry? None of them will be as clever or as stout hearted. None of them can calm a horse with a word and a touch.”

  “He is lucky to have a friend who is so confident of his virtues.”

  A friend. What kind of friend would call him “her Henry”? And what kind of friend is he to look at Daphne like he does? Open your eyes, Illiann. Don’t be made a fool.

  Daphne sighs. She looks over Illiann’s formal gown. The Blue Queen may be called “blue” but may still wear only black.

  “Are you ready, then? Can we go and see the players, so I can tell Henry about them later?”