Two Dark Reigns

by Kendare Blake

  “Mira? Are you awake?” Arsinoe waits but gets no response. She takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes.

  The dream begins as they always do: nestled snug down inside Daphne’s mind. Seeing through Daphne’s eyes. Hearing through Daphne’s ears.

  As the dream takes hold and Arsinoe finds herself seated at a table in the Volroy, it is only the thought of Mirabella that allows her to keep her resolve. It would be so easy not to fight, to be Daphne for one more night, one more fortnight, another month . . . or to simply stay dreaming until her story ends. Except that the dreams have begun to feel less like an escape and more like a distraction, dulling her senses so she is oblivious as the ax swings down.

  In the dream, Daphne sits beside Richard, Daphne and Henry’s pale, skinny friend from Centra, and glares up at the head table, where Queen Illiann and Duke Branden sit with their heads close together.

  “I do not understand it, Richard,” Daphne says. “There is no reason why Henry should lose. He has beaten all comers at the joust, at hawking and archery. He commands a ship even better than I do!”

  “You see Henry differently,” Richard replies.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  She takes a swallow of ale, good ale, not like Arsinoe has had on the mainland.

  “Anyone with two eyes can see that Henry is twice the man that rogue from Salkades is.”

  “I believe that Henry is a match for any man,” says Richard. “But not every woman is a match for him.”

  Daphne peers up at Illiann. Neither she nor Arsinoe know what he is talking about. Illiann is a beauty. Such long black hair and soft, even features. Eyes as dark as Daphne’s own but wider, larger, and more thickly lashed. “How can you say that? She is lovely.”

  As Richard laughs, Arsinoe begins to squirm in Daphne’s mind. It is not easy, separating herself from the form she inhabits. It is actually so hard, she would be sweating if only she had a body to sweat with.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “I always laugh when my friends are fools. Daphne, have you really never noticed the way that Henry looks at you? All those tavern girls back at Torrenside were a lie. All for show. For as long as I have known him, Henry has cared for only one girl above all the rest. You.”

  Finally, someone said it. The thing that had been obvious from the moment Arsinoe had started dreaming, and she pauses her struggle to free herself from the dream in order to watch.

  “That’s not true,” Daphne says. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Richard shakes his head and chuckles again.

  “Yes it is.” Daphne pushes away from the table and stalks out into the quiet corridor.

  Get back in there. Sit down and listen. But inside Daphne, Arsinoe feels the turmoil as the realization takes hold. As she remembers every interaction she and Henry have ever had and begins to see them in a different way. The poor girl. Arsinoe wishes she had her own arms to pat her comfortingly on the back with.

  “Is something troubling you, Lady Daphne?”

  Daphne turns, and together she and Arsinoe narrow their eyes. Duke Branden has made his way into the hall after them.

  “Not at all, my lord. I am only taking a little air. Please, return to the queen and your meal.”

  “She will wait.” He smiles lopsidedly. Such a handsome man. Even Arsinoe’s intense dislike of him cannot completely override it. “Why do you never wear dresses?” He advances a step, then another. “You are a lovely enough thing.”

  “On Fennbirn one can be lovely without the aid of a dress.”

  Arsinoe notices the shuffle in his stride. He has had too much wine.

  He’s drunk far too often. Even Illiann cannot be blind to that. And nor is Daphne. Arsinoe feels alarm spike through her as the duke moves closer, pushing her further into the shadowy corridor.

  “But you,” he says, “were raised in the civilized world. And so you should behave as a proper woman.”

  “Proper?” Daphne asks.

  “Were you one of my sisters, I would have you whipped. Were you one of my serfs, I would have you burned.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I am neither.”

  Arsinoe’s pulse quickens as she watches the duke edge ever closer. Get out of here, Daphne! But she does not, and in two fast movements, Branden has them pinned against the wall.

  For a moment, Daphne is so shocked that she freezes, and inside her, Arsinoe does the same. The feeling of Branden’s hands roaming beneath Daphne’s tunic is so wrong and disgusting that it nearly causes Arsinoe to wake.

  “Do not touch me!”

  “Why? It is no great secret what you have underneath. You have shown it to all, dressed as a man.”

  “I thought you were pious,” Daphne objects. “And courteous to women.”

  “Courtesy does not extend to whores.”

  Kill him! Kick him! Inside Daphne’s mind, Arsinoe tries to move her limbs. To bring her knee up hard in the place where it would pain him most. But she cannot make Daphne’s body fight any more than she can stop the tears that blur their vision.

  “Daphne? Are you all right?”

  Branden moves away at the sound of Richard’s voice.

  “I heard a bit of a scuffle.”

  Branden glares between Richard and Daphne and back again before he laughs. He leaves the hall as quickly as he arrived. When he walks past Richard, he shoves the thin young man into the wall.

  “Centrans,” he mutters. “Whores and weaklings.”

  In the dream, Daphne and Richard move to comfort each other, but Arsinoe balks.

  NO.

  ENOUGH OF THIS.

  Anger at Branden fuels her frustration with the dream. She twists and thrashes, screams so hard she must be screaming for real; her attempt to break the dream will probably be thwarted not by the shadow of Queen Illiann but by Mrs. Chatworth and Jane shrieking in panic after she wakes the house.

  For a moment, her thrashing does not work. Until she jerks her arm and Daphne’s arm jerks right along with it.

  That is all it takes. The dream goes dark.

  “Hello?” She can hear herself breathing. She looks down in the dark and sees that she is herself again, Arsinoe, right down to the scarred face and borrowed trousers.

  This is a dream of a different sort. But equally as vivid; she inhales and smells the familiar, damp scent of Fennbirn earth.

  “Did I break the dream?” she wonders aloud. “Why didn’t I wake? Can I wake?”

  Something in the shadows slides coolly past her shoulder, and she pedals backward, not caring that she cannot see the terrain. She knows that touch even though she has never felt it. The shadow of the Blue Queen.

  Light breaks through, and Arsinoe blinks. They are on the island. In the clearing, beside the bent-over tree.

  “Did you choose this place? Or did I?”

  The shadow of Queen Illiann stands before her, motionless. Then it puts a hand to its throat. Points a thin finger, as it did that day next to Joseph’s grave. As it has every time she has seen it.

  “Go to where you can speak. I know. But we are on the island now”—she stomps her foot against the dirt—“so spit it out.”

  It repeats the motion, more and more agitated until it is shaking so hard that the crown of silver and blue shifts atop its head. It drags dark fingers across where its mouth would be.

  “Stop doing that!” Arsinoe shouts. “Just tell me what you want! Why am I dreaming through Daphne’s eyes? Why won’t you speak to my sister?” She sticks out her arm and bares the crescent scar. “She worked the same low magic as me. So why isn’t she dreaming?”

  But no matter what she asks, the Blue Queen says nothing. Only continues the frustrating pantomime: throat, mouth, point.

  “Go to the island. But why do you want us to go there? What am I supposed to see?”

  The shadow stops. Then it points again, very slowly.

  Arsinoe turns. Above the trees of the Wolf Spring meadow is the summit of
Mount Horn, the great mountain of Fennbirn that looks down upon Innisfuil Valley and houses the Black Cottage at its base.

  “You can’t really see that from here,” Arsinoe says. “And I should know.”

  The shadow claws at its mouth.

  “You mean the mountain?”

  The shadow relaxes, and Arsinoe exhales. “You want me to go to Mount Horn? And what will I find there?”

  In answer, the dark queen slides toward her. She drags across the ground and across the half-submerged sacred stones. Arsinoe steps back until she feels the hanging branches of the bent-over tree. She does not know what she fears most: Queen Illiann or it.

  The Blue Queen draws closer, and as she comes, the darkness melts away at the edges until it is completely gone, and Arsinoe stands face to face with Daphne.

  Daphne, the Blue Queen. Not Illiann.

  “Daphne! It’s been you the whole time? How . . . Why are you wearing Illiann’s crown?”

  She smiles at her, a smile Arsinoe has seen only through a looking glass. She touches her mouth, shakes her head.

  “Right, right. You still can’t speak.”

  Daphne cocks her head, and the dream shifts again, this time only a flash, a rush of colors. But it is all nightmare. Blood and swords and bodies rotting on the ground. Camden with her fur stained red. Jules—

  “Jules!”

  She jerks awake and finds Mirabella and Billy leaned over her. Mirabella holding her shoulders while Billy holds a candle so close it is likely to singe her eyebrows.

  “Arsinoe,” Mirabella gasps. “What is it?”

  “Jules.” Arsinoe swallows. The dream is still thick around her. She half expects to look into the corner and see Daphne standing there in Queen Illiann’s crown.

  “Billy?” They hear his sister, Jane, call out from down the hall. “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s fine, Jane. Just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

  Arsinoe breaks away from him and swings her rubbery legs out of bed. “It wasn’t just a nightmare. It was a message.”

  “What message?” he asks. “What did you see?”

  “I saw Jules. On a battlefield. With Katharine.”

  “A battlefield?” Mirabella’s brow knits. “The island has not seen a battlefield in a hundred years.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “You do not have the sight gift—”

  “I know what I saw,” Arsinoe snaps.

  “All right. But it was still only a nightmare.”

  Billy and Mirabella exchange that look, the one she has come to hate, that says they are worried and she is losing her mind. If she tries to tell them now, about Daphne, about the message, they will never believe her. Worse, they might try to stop her. So even though her heart is halfway into her throat, she forces herself to be calm.

  “It felt very real,” she says.

  “I’m sure that it did. Was it like . . . the other dreams you’ve had?” Billy sets down the candle. He pours her a cup of water from the pitcher on her bedside table.

  “No. Not really.”

  Arsinoe drinks down the water and runs her fingers through her hair. The dream of Jules felt like a warning. A consequence if she does not do what Daphne wants.

  “Are you . . . going to be all right?” Billy asks.

  “I guess so,” she says.

  “Can you go back to sleep? We can talk more in the morning.”

  Arsinoe nods, and begins to think of ways to pay for a boat back to the island.

  THE VOLROY

  After the attack of the mist in Rolanth, Katharine and her court quickly returned to Indrid Down. No one, not even Antonin and Genevieve, who love the capital as their own mother, really wanted to return. But there was nowhere else to go.

  “They have still not found all of those who went missing,” Katharine says, lying in Pietyr’s arms in the safety of her rooms. “How long will it take? Or does the mist mean to keep them?”

  Pietyr kisses the top of her head.

  “I do not know, Kat. But whoever is found, and in whatever state, should be brought to the capital immediately. There are bound to be wild tales. And we will want to verify them.”

  “We have to find a way to fight the mist, Pietyr. They think I am the cause of it!” All the way back to the Volroy, they had been dogged by whispers and shifting eyes. The mist or the queen, the people cannot decide who they ought to fear most. But they have decided who to blame.

  “Pietyr.” She slides her fingertips between the buttons of his shirt to feel his heartbeat, and the warmth of his skin. “What if the mist is right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if I am not supposed to be in the crown? What if it was not meant to be me and I stole it, like the people are saying?”

  Pietyr props his head on his elbow, his ice-blue eyes soft, for once.

  “No one knows why the mist is doing this. When people are afraid, they grasp on to the easiest answer.”

  “But what if it was supposed to be Mirabella? Or even”—she makes a sour face—“Arsinoe?”

  “Then it would be them. The crown of Fennbirn cannot be stolen. It must be won, and you won it.”

  “By default. Because I was the only one who wanted it. I am the queen because they abandoned us and allowed me to be.”

  “That is right.” He brushes a lock of black hair from her neck. “You are the Queen Crowned because you fought when they did not. Because you would have killed them as a queen does. You are not the one who does not belong in the crown.” He looks down to her chest, to the center of her.

  “The dead queens. They are the ones who were never meant for it.”

  “Do not start that again, Pietyr. They are the only reason I am anything. Without them . . . you would have killed me.”

  “I know.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I know that. But if the mist, and the Goddess behind it, is displeased, they are the only reason I can think of.”

  “Why? They are also her daughters.”

  “Yes. But the dead queens had their chance, Katharine. They had it, and the island chose them for extinction.”

  Inside Katharine, the dead queens are silent. She can feel them there, in her blood and in her mind, clinging to her like bats to the walls of a cave. Their silence speaks to her of sadness. Old sadness and pain. Part of her would tell Pietyr to stop. To be quiet and not to hurt them anymore.

  “They take care of me,” she whispers. “They care for me, and I owe them the same care.” She strokes her own skin. But for the mist to quiet, must she really let them go? “Perhaps . . . if they could be gotten out . . . if they could be laid to rest . . . that would not be cruel?”

  “No.” Pietyr takes her hand and kisses it. “That would not be cruel at all.”

  The next morning, Genevieve comes to escort her to the council chamber. Pietyr has already gone, down to the library to try to find a way to exorcise the dead queens from Katharine. If he does not find it there, he will try the library at Greavesdrake. And if that fails, Katharine has given him permission to discreetly go to the temple scholars. He was so eager to be off and so pleased with her for making the right choice. He called her brave. Good-hearted.

  “Genevieve, what word have you received from Sunpool? When is the oracle to arrive?”

  “I mean to address that in council this morning, Queen Katharine.”

  They pass by the open doors of the throne room, and Katharine glances inside. There is no one there except for a smattering of queensguard. So few people come to her for governance that they are able to restrict them to certain days of the week.

  “Is something odd going on?” Katharine asks. “Should I not have sent Pietyr on that errand this morning?”

  “Nothing odd,” Genevieve replies. “Or if there is, it is nothing that cannot be handled without my nephew.”

  Inside the Black Council chamber, everyone has already assembled. Even Bree, who has proven to be chronically late. When they see Katharine, t
hey stand, and the mood in the room is so tense that she does not bother sitting down.

  “Tell me.”

  She waits, watching as the responsibility to speak passes through the room in sighs and shuffling feet. Antonin and Cousin Lucian look away. Bree pretends she has not heard. Only Rho and Luca raise their eyebrows, and finally, Luca takes a deep breath.

  “There is an uprising in the north.”

  “An uprising?”

  “Someone claiming to be Juillenne Milone is traveling through the north country raising an army to rebel against the crown.”

  The words strike Katharine cold.

  “A rebellion? Fennbirn does not have rebellions.”

  “Perhaps this will be the first.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Luca and Rho glance at each other.

  “Reports first reached us in Rolanth,” says Rho. “The rebels were supposedly seen there, to the west, and there have been rumors of Jules Milone as far as the villages south of Innisfuil.”

  “Jules Milone drowned with my sisters,” says Katharine, and every eye falls. They know as well as she what it will imply if the naturalist is found to be alive and well.

  Beside her, Genevieve clears her throat.

  “We think they are heading to Sunpool, and that is why the oracles have denied our request for a seer. They have allied with the rebellion.”

  The room closes in around Katharine until it is hard to breathe.

  “The legion-cursed naturalist is alive.”

  “Or someone who is pretending to be her.”

  “And the city of the oracles has taken her side?” Katharine scans the faces of her council. “Who else?”

  “Bastian City, perhaps,” says Genevieve. “The Milone girl is calling herself the Legion Queen.”

  The Legion Queen. The queen of multiple gifts, who will unite the island under one banner. If they only knew. It strikes Katharine as almost funny. The people yearn for a queen with a two-gift curse, when they already have a queen with all of them.

  “So now I must fight a war for my crown and the mist as well?” She grinds her teeth. “And I suppose that the rebels are using that to their advantage. Spreading word that the attacking mist is my fault?”