“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.