Three Dark Crowns Read online

  Snow flies in twin shoots from her paws as she pounces, and the mouse scurries faster for the cover of the bare brush. Despite their familiar-bond, Jules does not know whether the mouse will be spared or eaten. Either way she hopes that it is over soon. The poor mouse still has a long way to run before it reaches cover, and the chase has begun to look like torture.

  “Jules. This isn’t working.”

  Queen Arsinoe stands in the center of the clearing, dressed all in black as the queens do, looking like an inkblot in the snow. She has been trying to bloom a rose from a rosebud, but in the palm of her hand, the bud remains green, and firmly closed.

  “Pray,” Jules says.

  They have sung this same song a thousand times over the years. And Jules knows what comes next.

  Arsinoe holds out her hand.

  “Why don’t you help?”

  To Jules, the rosebud looks like energy and possibilities. She can smell every drop of perfume tucked away inside. She knows what shade of red it will be.

  Such a task should be easy for any naturalist. It should be especially easy for a queen. Arsinoe ought to be able to bloom entire bushes and ripen whole fields. But her gift has not come. Because of that weakness, no one expects Arsinoe to survive the Ascension Year. But Jules will not give up. Not even if it is the queens’ sixteenth birthday, and Beltane is in four months’ time, falling like a shadow.

  Arsinoe wiggles her fingers, and the bud rolls from side to side.

  “Just a little push,” she says. “To get me started.”

  Jules sighs. She is tempted to say no. She should say no. But the unbloomed bud is like an itch that needs scratching. The poor thing is dead, anyway, cut off from its parent plant in the hothouse. She cannot let it wither and wrinkle still green.

  “Focus,” she says. “Join me.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Arsinoe nods.

  It does not take much. Hardly a thought. A whisper. The rosebud pops like a bean skin in hot oil, and a fat, fancy-petaled red rose uncurls in Arsinoe’s hand. It is bright as blood, and smells of summer.

  “Done,” Arsinoe declares, and sets the rose on top of the snow. “And not bad, either. I think I did most of those petals at the center.”

  “Let’s do another,” says Jules, fairly certain that she did it all. Perhaps they should try something else. She heard starlings while on the path up from the house. They could call them until they filled the bare branches around the clearing. Thousands of them, until not a single starling remained anywhere else in Wolf Spring, and the trees seethed with black, speckled bodies.

  Arsinoe’s snowball hits Camden in the face, but Jules feels it as well: the surprise and a flicker of irritation as the cat shakes the flakes from her fur. The second ball hits Jules on the shoulder, just high enough for the exploding snow to find its way into the warm neck of her coat. Arsinoe laughs.

  “You are such a child!” Jules shouts angrily, and Camden snarls and jumps.

  Arsinoe barely dodges the attack. She covers her face with her arm and ducks, and the cougar’s claws sail over her back.

  “Arsinoe!”

  Camden backs off and slinks away, ashamed. But it is not her fault. She feels what Jules feels. Her actions are Jules’s actions.

  Jules rushes to the queen and inspects her quickly. There is no blood. No claw marks or tears in Arsinoe’s coat.

  “I’m sorry!”

  “It’s all right, Jules.” Arsinoe rests a steadying hand on Jules’s forearm, but her fingers tremble. “It was nothing. How many times did we push each other out of trees as children?”

  “That is not the same. Those were games.” Jules looks at her cougar regretfully. “Cam is not a cub anymore. Her claws and teeth are sharp, and fast. I have to be more careful from now on. I will be.” Her eyes widen. “Is that blood on your ear?”

  Arsinoe takes off her black cap and pulls back her short, shaggy black hair. “No. See? She didn’t come close. I know you would never hurt me, Jules. Neither of you.”

  She holds her hand out, and Cam slides under it. Her big, deep purr is the cougar’s apology.

  “I really didn’t mean to,” says Jules.

  “I know. We are all under strain. Don’t think on it.” Arsinoe slips her black cap back on. “And don’t tell Grandma Cait. She has enough to worry about.”

  Jules nods. She does not need to tell Grandma Cait to know what she would say. Or to imagine the disappointment and worry on her face.

  After leaving the clearing, Jules and Arsinoe walk down past the docks, through the square toward the winter market. As they pass the cove, Jules raises her arm to Shad Millner standing in the back of his boat, just returned from a run. He nods hello and shows off a fat brown sole. His familiar, a seagull, flaps its wings with pride, though she doubts that the bird was the one who caught the fish.

  “I hope I don’t get one of those,” Arsinoe says, and nods at the gull. This morning, she called for her familiar. Like she has every morning since leaving the Black Cottage as a child. But nothing has come.

  They continue through the square, Arsinoe kicking through slush puddles and Camden lollygagging behind, unhappy about leaving the powdery wild for the cold stone town. Winter ugliness holds Wolf Spring in a firm grip. Months of freezing and partial thaws have coated the cobblestones with grit. Fog covers the windows, and the snow is mottled brown after being walked through by so many mud-covered feet. With the clouds hanging heavy overhead, the entirety of the town looks as though it is being viewed through a dirty glass.

  “Take care,” Jules mutters as they pass Martinson Sisters’ Grocery. She nods toward empty fruit crates. Three troublesome children are ducked down behind them. One is Polly Nichols, wearing her father’s old tweed cap. The two boys she does not know. But she knows what they are up to.

  They each have a rock in their hands.

  Camden comes to Jules’s side and growls loudly. The children hear. They look at Jules and duck lower. The two boys cower, but Polly Nichols narrows her eyes. She has done one naughty thing for every freckle on her face, and even her mother knows it.

  “Do not throw that, Polly,” Arsinoe orders, but that seems to make it worse. Polly’s little lips draw together so tightly that they disappear. She jumps from behind the crates and throws the rock hard. Arsinoe blocks it with her palm, but the stone manages to skip off and strike the side of her head.

  “Ow!”

  Arsinoe presses her hand to the spot where the stone struck. Jules clenches her fists and sends Camden snarling after the children, determined to plant Polly Nichols onto the cobblestones.

  “I’m fine, call her back,” Arsinoe says. She wipes the line of blood away as it runs down to her jaw. “Little scamps.”

  “Scamps? They are brats!” Jules hisses. “They should be whipped! Let Cam tear up Polly’s ridiculous hat, at least!”

  But Jules calls Camden, and the cat stops at the street corner and hisses.

  “Juillenne Milone!”

  Jules and Arsinoe turn. It is Luke, owner and operator of Gillespie’s Bookshop, looking smart in a brown jacket, his yellow hair combed back from his handsome face.

  “Small of stature but large of lion,” he says, and laughs. “Come inside for tea.”

  As they enter the shop, Jules stretches up on her toes to quiet the brass bell above the door. She follows Luke and Arsinoe past the tall, blue-green bookshelves and up the stairs to the landing, where a table is set with sandwiches and a tray of buttery yellow cake slices.

  “Sit,” Luke says, and goes to the kitchen for a teapot.

  “How did you know we were coming?” Arsinoe asks.

  “I have a good view of the hill. Mind the feathers. Hank’s molting.”

  Hank is Luke’s familiar, a handsome black-and-green rooster. Arsinoe blows a feather off the table and reaches for a plate of small muffins. She picks one up and peers at it.

  “Are those shiny black bits legs?” Jules asks her.

  “And shells,” Arsinoe say
s. Beetle muffins, to help Hank grow new feathers. “Birds,” she remarks, and sets the muffin down.

  “You used to want a crow, like Eva,” Jules reminds her.

  Eva is Jules’s grandma Cait’s familiar. A large, beautiful black crow. Jules’s mother, Madrigal, has a crow as well. Her name is Aria. She is a more delicately boned bird than Eva, and more ill-tempered, much like Madrigal herself. For a long time, Jules thought she would have a crow too. She used to watch the nests, waiting for a fuzzy black chick to fall into her cupped hands. Secretly, though, she had wished for a dog, like her granddad Ellis’s white spaniel, Jake. Or her aunt Caragh’s pretty chocolate hound. Now, of course, she would not trade Camden for anything.

  “I think I would like a fast jackrabbit,” Arsinoe says. “Or a clever, black-masked raccoon to help me steal fried clams from Madge.”

  “You will have something far more grand than a rabbit or a raccoon,” Luke says. “You’re a queen.”

  He and Arsinoe glance at Camden, so tall that her head and shoulders are visible over the tabletop. Queen’s familiar or not, nothing could be more grand than a mountain cat.

  “Perhaps a wolf, like Queen Bernadine,” Luke says. He pours tea for Jules and adds cream and four lumps of sugar. Tea for a child, the way she likes it best but is not allowed to drink at home.

  “Another wolf in Wolf Spring,” Arsinoe muses around a mouthful of cake. “At this rate, I’d be happy to have . . . one of the beetles in Hank’s muffins.”

  “Don’t be pessimistic. My own father did not get his until he was twenty.”

  “Luke,” Arsinoe says, and laughs. “Giftless queens don’t live until they’re twenty.”

  She reaches across the table for a sandwich.

  “Maybe that is why my familiar hasn’t bothered,” she says. “It knows I will be dead, anyway, in a year. Oh!”

  She has dripped blood onto her plate. Polly’s thrown rock left a cut, hidden in her hair. Another drop falls onto Luke’s fancy tablecloth. Hank hops up and pecks at it.

  “I had better go clean this up,” Arsinoe says. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’ll replace it.”

  “Do not think of it,” Luke reassures her as she goes to the bathroom. He puts his chin in his hands sadly. “She’ll be the one crowned at next spring’s Beltane, Jules. You just wait and see.”

  Jules stares into her tea, so full of cream that it is almost white.

  “We have to get through this spring’s Beltane first,” she says.

  Luke only smiles. He is so sure. But in the last three generations, stronger naturalist queens than Arsinoe have still been killed. The Arrons are too powerful. Their poison always gets through. And even if it does not, they have Mirabella to contend with. Every ship that sails to the northeast of the island returns telling tales of the fierce Shannon Storms besieging the city of Rolanth, where the elementals make their home.

  “You only hope, you know,” Jules says. “Like I do. Because you don’t want Arsinoe to die. Because you love her.”

  “Of course I love her,” says Luke. “But I also believe. I believe that Arsinoe is the chosen queen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. Why else would the Goddess put a naturalist as strong as you here to protect her?”

  Arsinoe’s birthday celebration is held in the town square, beneath great black-and-white tents. Every year the tents heat up with food and too many bodies until the flaps have to be opened to allow the winter air in. Every year, most of the attendees are drunk before sundown.

  As Arsinoe makes her way through, Jules and Camden follow closely. The mood is jovial, but it takes only a second for the whiskey to turn.

  “It’s been a long winter,” Jules hears someone say. “But the madness has been mild. It’s a wonder more fishers haven’t been lost on their boats, taken a gaff to the side of the head.”

  Jules presses Arsinoe past the conversation. There are many people to see before they can sit down to their own food.

  “These are very well done,” Arsinoe says, and leans down to sniff a vase holding a tall spray of wildflowers. The arrangement is layered with the pinks and purples of hedge nettles and showy orchis. It is as pretty as a wedding cake, early bloomed by the naturalist gift. Each family has brought their own, and most brought extra, to decorate the tables of the giftless.

  “Our Betty did them this year,” says the man nearest Arsinoe. He winks across the table and beams at a blushing girl of around eight, wearing a newly knit black sweater and a braided leather necklace.

  “Did you, Betty? Well, they are the finest ones here, this year.” Arsinoe smiles, and Betty thanks her, and if anyone notes that a little girl can do such elegant blooms when the queen cannot open one rose, they do not let it show.

  Betty’s eyes brighten at the sight of Camden, and the big cat walks close to let her pet and stroke her back. The girl’s father watches. He nods respectfully at Jules as they go by.

  The Milones are the most prosperous naturalists in Wolf Spring. Their fields are rich and orchards bountiful. Their woods are full of game. And now they have Jules, the strongest naturalist in some sixty years, it is said. For these reasons and more, they were chosen to foster the naturalist queen and must take on all the responsibilities that go with it, including playing host to visiting members of the council. Something that does not come naturally.

  Inside the main tent, Jules’s grandmother and grandfather sit on either side of the honored guest, Renata Hargrove, a member of the Black Council sent all the way from the capital city of Indrid Down. Madrigal ought to be there too, but her seat is empty. She has disappeared, as usual. Poor Cait and Ellis. Trapped in their chairs. Granddad Ellis’s cheeks will be sore later, from holding such a fake smile. On his lap, his little spaniel, Jake, grins a grin that looks less like friendliness and more like bared teeth.

  “They only sent one representative this year,” Arsinoe says under her breath. “One out of nine. And the giftless one, at that. What do you think the council is trying to say?”

  She chuckles and then pops an herb-roasted, buttered crab claw into her mouth. Arsinoe hides everything behind the same easygoing smirk. She makes eye contact with Renata, and Renata inclines her head. It is not much of an acknowledgment. Barely enough, and Jules’s hackles rise.

  “Everyone knows her seat on the council was bought and paid for by her giftless family,” she growls. “She’d lick the poison off Natalia Arron’s shoes if she asked.”

  Jules glances at the few priestesses from Wolf Spring Temple who have decided to attend. Sending one council member is an insult, but it is still better treatment than Arsinoe has received from the temple. High Priestess Luca has not come to her birthday even once. She went to Katharine’s, occasionally, in the early years. Now it is only Mirabella, Mirabella, Mirabella.

  “Those priestesses should not show their faces,” Jules grumbles. “The temple should not choose sides.”

  “Take it easy, Jules,” Arsinoe says. She pats Jules’s arm and changes the subject. “The sea catch is impressive.”

  Jules turns to the head table, thoroughly stocked with fish and crabs. Her catch forms the centerpiece: an enormous black cod accompanied by two equally huge silver stripers. She called them from the depths early that morning, before Arsinoe had even gotten out of bed. Now they lie on piles of potatoes, onions, and pale winter cabbage. Most of their juicy fillets have already been picked clean.

  “You shouldn’t brush it aside,” Jules warns. “It matters.”

  “The disrespect?” Arsinoe asks, and snorts. “No, it doesn’t.” She eats another crab claw. “You know, if I make it through this Ascension Year, I would like a shark as my centerpiece.”

  “A shark?”

  “A great white. Don’t be cheap when it comes to my crowning, Jules.”

  Jules laughs. “When you make it through the Ascension, you can charm your own great white,” she says.

  They grin. Except for her severe coloring, Arsinoe does no
t look much like a queen. Her hair is rough, and they cannot keep her from cutting it. Her black trousers are the same ones she wears every day, and so is her light black jacket. The only piece of finery they could get her into for the occasion was a new scarf that Madrigal found at Pearson’s, made from the wool of their fancy, flop-eared rabbits. But that is probably for the best. Wolf Spring is not a city of finery. It is of fishers and farmers and folk on the docks, and no one wears their fine blacks except on Beltane.

  Arsinoe studies the tapestry hung behind the head table and frowns. Normally, it hangs in the town hall, but it is always dragged out for Arsinoe’s birthday. It depicts the crowning of the island’s last great naturalist queen. Bernadine, who weighed orchards heavy with fruit when she passed, and had an enormous gray wolf for a familiar. In the weaving, Bernadine stands below a tree sagging with apples, with the wolf beside her. In the wolf’s jaws is the torn-out throat of one of her sisters, whose body lies at Bernadine’s feet.

  “I hate that thing,” Arsinoe says.

  “Why?”

  “Because it reminds me of what I’m not.”

  Jules bumps the queen with her shoulder. “There is seed cake in the dessert tent,” she says. “And pumpkin cake. And white cake with strawberry icing. Let’s find Luke and go have some.”

  “All right.”

  On the way, Arsinoe pauses to chat with people and to pat their familiars. Most are dogs and birds, common naturalist guardians. Thomas Mintz, the island’s best fisher, gets his sea lion to offer Arsinoe an apple, balanced on its nose.

  “Are you leaving?” Renata Hargrove asks.

  Jules and Arsinoe turn, surprised Renata has bothered to come down from the head table.

  “Only to the sweets tent,” Arsinoe says. “May we . . . bring something back for you?”

  She glances at Jules awkwardly. No member of the Black Council has ever shown any interest in Arsinoe, despite being annual guests at her birthday. They eat, exchange pleasantries with the Milones, and depart, grumbling about the quality of the food and the size of the rooms at the Wolverton Inn. But Renata looks almost happy to see them.