Two Dark Reigns

by Kendare Blake

  “That’s because I don’t know. I’m not keeping some great secret. All I know is that Daphne wants me there. That she’ll speak to me.”

  “Which could mean a hundred things.”

  “Are you regretting not going with Mira and Jules?”

  “No, of course not.”

  They continue with the bear in tow, making their way through the trees, upward and upward toward the snow line. The path in the lower elevation is not that difficult, and Braddock keeps up easily and finds plenty of cold berries to forage along the way. That night, they stop at a broad stretch of the trail and build a small fire. Braddock lies down and lets Arsinoe and even Billy cuddle up in his side.

  “On second thought,” says Billy, “maybe we will try to bring him all the way. It’ll only get harder to light a fire, and he’s sure to stay plenty warm.” He slides an arm around her, careful not to jostle the bear too much. “We should have kept Mira back, too. We could be toasty and dry all the way to the cave.”

  “Do you think she’s all right?” Arsinoe asks. “Do you think they both are?”

  “I think if they weren’t, we’d have heard Mira’s storm all the way across the mountain.”

  Arsinoe glances up at the peak of Mount Horn. She hopes the cave will be good enough for Daphne, and they will not have to go any farther. If they rise early and climb hard, they may reach it by nightfall and not have to camp on the steeper mountainside.

  “Do you know what I’m afraid of?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid to reach this cave and find nothing inside. That it was all a joke. A ploy to bring us back here. Or a trick of my own mind.”

  “Funny”—he kisses her head—“that’s what I would like to happen. But I don’t think that it will.”

  Arsinoe snuggles closer to him, entwining their legs, and lets her hands roam until he inhales sharply.

  “Arsinoe!” He grins. “Not in front of the bear.”

  She grins back. “The bear doesn’t mind.”

  But as soon as their movements disturb him, Braddock gets up with a grunt and goes to lie someplace else.

  INNISFUIL VALLEY

  “How many cavalry soldiers can you knock from their horses with your gift?”

  “I don’t know,” Jules asks. “How many can you?”

  Emilia shrugs. “Two. Perhaps three if their seat is no good. Certainly not a hundred, which is how many horses she seems to have brought.”

  They lie on their backs in the snow, watching the clouds go by overhead. It is a clear, quiet day. Either not many of the queen’s soldiers are elementals, or none of them is the least bit nervous. As for Mirabella, somewhere up a tree to the southeast, well, she knows how to mask her gift.

  “If this goes wrong, Emilia, you have to promise to let me go through with the trade.” Jules turns her head. But Emilia will not look at her.

  “I will not promise that.”

  “She’s my mother. And my little brother needs her.”

  Emilia half rolls onto her shoulder and stretches her neck back to peer toward the valley.

  “The others should be in position now.” Camden growls, and the warrior grins, reaches down and scratches her shoulder. “Even your cat wants to fight. Like she is touched with the war gift as well. If you trade yourself, what am I supposed to do with her?”

  “Hold her back. Don’t let her follow.”

  Emilia and Camden regard each other. The cougar seems fairly sure she would win that argument.

  “It’s time,” Emilia says. “Send a bird to the queen. Let her know you are here.”

  The bird that the rebels send is a hawk. Unmistakable in its message, it swoops low through the army camp, every so often sounding its sharp, piercing cry. When Katharine emerges from her tent, it flies directly onto her arm, the insolent thing.

  She grits her teeth and strokes its chest feathers as its talons needle through her glove. Then she tosses it back up into the air and watches it fly, back to the west end of the meadow.

  “Horses?” Pietyr asks as he comes up behind her buttoning his shirt and queensguard coat. “Or shall we go on foot?”

  “Horses,” she replies. The dead war queens have lent her plenty of their gift today, and she will be ready for anything.

  With the arrival of the hawk, her queensguard comes alive, arming themselves and falling into formation. Though many of her soldiers are older than she, some are old enough to have served under the last queen, and she walks through them with a sense of pride. They are hers now. She reaches out and rattles a spear held in a girl’s shaking wrist.

  “No need for courage today.” She smiles. “You are simply an escort for queen and prisoner.”

  She mounts her horse, who looks twice his normal size in light armor, and takes a long shield to hold on her right. Madrigal will ride to her left and Pietyr, on Madrigal’s far side.

  “Keep the army to the rear,” she says to Rho, who holds her horse’s bridle. “Do not seem a threat. We do not want Jules Milone to turn tail and run.”

  She takes up her reins, and Pietyr rides close, tucking a sharp knife into his belt.

  “Are you all right, Kat? Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” she says without looking at him. Perhaps she should have left him behind. In Pietyr’s eyes and beneath his gaze, she is Kat, little Katharine. Only herself. And she cannot be that today, not until the trade is over.

  The crowd parts as the prisoner is brought near. Madrigal Milone sits astride an old gray mare, her hands bound behind her back. Her crow familiar rests docilely on her shoulder, still tethered to her wrist.

  “Are you looking forward to seeing your daughter?” Katharine asks.

  “More than you should be.”

  Katharine leans over and pushes the woman’s hair out of her eyes. She tucks it behind her ear and smooths it down, revealing some of that unsinkable prettiness. She is so lovely but of so little substance. Only a regular-sized woman despite that beauty. Though they were of similar height, Natalia would have towered over Madrigal Milone and covered her in shadow.

  “Do not be afraid,” she says gently when Madrigal flinches. “I will not hurt you. I swear that it is not why we have come.”

  “You can’t hurt me,” Madrigal mutters.

  Katharine clicks at the mare and tugs her along, keeping her close enough that Madrigal’s toe occasionally bumps into her heel. She looks over her shoulder where her army stands waiting.

  “No.”

  Turned around, she sees it before anyone: the mist, rising over the water of Longmorrow Bay.

  “Not now! Pietyr!”

  He twists in the saddle, just as the soldiers farthest away on the beach begin to scream.

  The mist spreads, slow and thick through the path between the cliffs and into the meadow. She watches it creep up over the cliff tops, watches it swallow her lookouts.

  “Kat, what do we do?”

  “It does not matter,” Katharine replies as her army breaks ranks and scatters.

  From her perch up in the tree, Mirabella sees the mist roll out over the sand of the beach and crawl up the sides of the cliffs. At first she thinks it is only a storm. Some quirk of the weather. But as it swallows the first soldier and the next and the next, and she hears them scream . . .

  “The mist,” she whispers.

  She grasps on to the branches so hard the cold bark splits the skin of her hands. Her heart beats loudly as she watches the mist swirl over the terrified soldiers. To cloak them? To protect them?

  A shrill shriek draws her eye as the mist rolls back, revealing a body twisted in two and pulled apart. The snow between the torso and legs is littered with entrails and spreading red.

  She does not know what to do. The mist has wound nearly the length of the valley, leaving some and maiming others, causing panic and confusion, and swirling westward, toward Katharine and Jules.

  If Mirabella stays her hand, it may all be resolved. The Undead Queen and the Legion
Queen destroyed in one stroke. Perhaps that is what the Blue Queen wants. What the island wants. Perhaps she was brought there only to witness.

  “No.” Mirabella slides down the trunk. She jumps from the lowest branch and winces as her ankle rolls.

  All those innocent soldiers. The servants. The priestesses she saw in their white robes. She does not know what is wrong with the mist. But she knows that it is wrong.

  Mirabella runs as fast as she can toward the sounds of screaming, calling the wind and the storm up behind her.

  Katharine can only watch as her army comes apart. As the mist darts through them like wispy fingers, mangling them or swallowing them whole.

  The entire camp is in shambles: turned-over tents, horses running loose to trample through supply stores or over the tops of people the mist has taken and spun around.

  “Katharine! We have to get you to safety!” Pietyr shouts.

  “What safety?” Her head turns at the sound of hoofbeats. Rho is leading a band of cavalry, galloping for the cover of the trees. The priestess’s face is hard as stone. Angry as Katharine is that there is no form to truly fight. The mist is almost upon them, creeping around to the sides. How can it move so quickly without seeming to move at all?

  “Ride!” Pietyr calls to her. “Follow Rho!”

  He kicks his horse hard. He does not see the arm of white billow between them until it is too late.

  “Pietyr!”

  “It’s blocking us in!” Madrigal screeches. “Don’t you see? We have to run!”

  “Where?” Katharine drags her closer, the dead war queens infusing her with strength enough to pull Madrigal from her horse and across Katharine’s pommel. “Right for the western woods? Right into your waiting rebels’ arms?”

  “Are you mad? People are dying!”

  “But not us!” Katharine drops her shield and draws a long knife out of her boot. The mist is everywhere. She cannot see anything in all the white. Not even the silhouette of a tree trunk. Her horse’s hooves prance and kick up wisps like smoke. They are pocketed inside it, and she need only wait for it to rush into her lungs. Will she feel it then, pull her heart out through her mouth? Or twist her arms from their sockets?

  “Madrigal? Mother!”

  Katharine whirls as the mist around them thins. Jules Milone and her cougar stand at the edge of the trees. Her hand is raised.

  “I’ve come to trade.”

  “No!” Madrigal shouts. “No, Jules, get out of here!” She tries to burst out of Katharine’s grip, but Katharine’s fingers are locked tight.

  “You cannot run yet!” Katharine cries. “Not yet!”

  “Let go of me!” In a flurry of black feathers, Madrigal sends her crow at Katharine’s face.

  “Mother, stop struggling!” Jules calls, and Katharine looks at her through the haze. She is not alone. Mirabella is running up behind her. She is dressed in mainlander clothes, blue and gray, none of the black of queens. But her regal face is unmistakable.

  At the sight of Mirabella, the dead queens surge through Katharine’s blood. Their rage is so pure that it turns her vision red, even through the white of the mist. She cannot calm them or speak to them, and when Madrigal’s bird flaps again in her face, the dead queens lash out. Katharine does not remember that she had drawn her knife until the blade is already buried deep in Madrigal’s neck.

  “No,” she whispers as the blood begins to pour from the wound. She looks into Madrigal’s wide, surprised eyes. “I did not mean . . .” She presses her hand against the blood, but it is no use. The veins of Madrigal’s throat have been cut. Severed. Horrified, Katharine lets go, and Madrigal’s body tumbles limply to the ground, her panicked crow still tethered to the dying woman’s wrist.

  The next thing Katharine hears is an otherworldly scream. The next thing she feels is herself blown backward to land hard upon the snow and her horse rolling over her foot.

  When Madrigal falls, Mirabella dashes past Jules to try and catch her. She sends her storm out into the mist ahead, pushes wind through her fingertips, and feels the clouds gather over the valley.

  She pushes harder, and the mist is blown back, creating a path for her straight to Madrigal. She is still strides away when an unseen force hits her from behind, throwing her forward hard to bounce against the ground. For an instant, everything is dark, and her storm begins to fizzle. But she shakes her head clear and goes on, scrambling on her hands and knees.

  Not far ahead, Katharine is on the ground, struggling beneath her horse. The horse itself is dead or knocked cold by the unseen blast. Mirabella ignores her and hurries to Jules’s mother, lying in a bloody heap, her arm lifted by a crow desperately trying to fly away.

  She kneels beside the woman and turns her over. Madrigal’s eyes roll toward her, white and panicked as blood pours out of her neck.

  “It is all right, Madrigal. Do not move now.” Not knowing what else to do, she quickly unties the crow and lets her fly. It seems a relief, to the bird and Madrigal both. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “No. She’s—” Blood bubbles over her lips. She says more, but it is nearly impossible to understand. “She is full of them.”

  “Full of what? Who is?”

  “Full of dead,” Madrigal gurgles, and grasps on to Mirabella’s shoulder. She spits blood into the snow, presses her hand into it. “Stop her . . . Jules . . .”

  “Hush now.”

  The storm above rumbles, and rain falls hard onto the snow, driving it down and melting it as it does the same to the mist. Her wind drowns out the sound of thunder as it clears the valley of white, revealing stunned soldiers on their hands and knees.

  As the valley becomes visible once again, Mirabella turns back to Jules and the rebels, to see if they were hurt by the blast. But Jules is fine. Standing alone, with her hands thrust down in fists.

  “Madrigal, we have to go,” Mirabella says. But when she tries to lift her, she is heavy and dead in her arms.

  Jules screams again, as her war gift explodes into the meadow. It sends Katharine’s horse flying over the top of her to land behind. Mirabella gasps. The blast came from her. Both of the violent blasts came from Jules. Mirabella stands and tries to use her gift to further push back the mist when she hears Emilia shout.

  “Mirabella, look out!”

  Mirabella turns. Too late, she sees the fallen form of Jules’s familiar, lying limp at her feet, taken out by Jules’s own attack. Her war gift is out of control. It will not spare even her friends.

  “Run!” Emilia screams, but not before Mirabella is thrown sideways into a tree.

  Blackness swims before her eyes. She struggles to her elbows and squints. Jules has been taken to the ground. Emilia has pinned her and strikes her hard on the back of the head.

  “Cover!” Emilia shrieks. “Give us cover, elemental!”

  “Cover,” Mirabella grumbles, blinking her aching eyes. With her jarred, the storm has begun to fray at the edges, but she pulls it back together, her gift singing in her veins after so many months on the mainland unused. Her lightning strike lands in the valley, cutting off the queen’s army from pursuing any retreating rebels. There is no mistaking it for natural weather, and every eye in the meadow seeks out the source.

  Katharine stares at Mirabella as Mirabella stares back. Katharine can no longer feel the ache in the leg that was trapped under her horse. She no longer cares whether the mist has retreated all the way into the sea. She does not even see it when the warriors and the oracle in a yellow cloak come to spirit away the legion-cursed naturalist and her fallen cougar. All that matters is Mirabella.

  “Come to me.” Katharine holds out her hand. “Come to me, sister!”

  Mirabella backs away into the trees until she is far enough to turn and run. But she need not even do that. The mist and her lightning have taken the fight out of the queensguard. Not a one of them is brave enough now to follow. Not even Rho.

  “Kat!” Pietyr rides to her and leaps from the saddle.
He takes her by the shoulders and presses his forehead against hers. “Kat, thank the Goddess. I thought I had lost you. I thought you were lost in it.” He tugs gently, and she moans. “You there,” he barks, and points to the soldiers and then her horse. “Get him up! Get him off the queen!”

  They roll him up, and he kicks out his front legs—he is not dead, after all—and Pietyr drags her out of the way.

  “What happened?” he asks. “Kat, are you truly all right?”

  “They made me kill her,” she whispers as she braces against him and struggles to her feet. “The fools. They used my hand and cut the legion curse loose.”

  “Oh, Kat.” Pietyr holds her tight as the shock wears slowly off. She is cold, all over, and herself again, the dead queens gone, perhaps ashamed or perhaps merely sated by Madrigal’s blood.

  Katharine surveys the meadow and all her wet soldiers. Some lie dead, torn apart by the mist, and she is sure that many are missing. But most appear unharmed. Pietyr is unharmed. Rho and twenty-five of her cavalry emerge from the trees.

  Jules Milone and the rebels are gone. Even Madrigal’s body is gone, dragged away in the chaos.

  “My sister has returned,” Katharine says dazedly. “Mirabella is alive.”

  MOUNT HORN

  “Aren’t you glad we brought him now?” Arsinoe asks Billy as they ascend along a steep slope of icy rock, their hands buried in the warm fur of Braddock’s rump.

  “Yes.” He stretches his neck to get a view of something other than bear tail. “You don’t think the trail is becoming too narrow?”

  “He’ll let us know. He’ll stop.”

  “And how will we get around, then? How will he get down?”

  Arsinoe squints as fat snowflakes start to fly by. “We’ll climb over the top of him and help him to back up. Is it hard to breathe? It seems harder to breathe.”

  She sucks in cold air. They are far enough up the mountain that the air could truly be thinner, but she thinks it is only her nerves. They have been above the snow line for the better part of the morning, making slow progress. The cave cannot be much farther.