Katharine tears white meat from the plumpest part of the breast, the meat that is farthest from the toxic stuffing. She pushes it through her lips and chews. For a moment, she is afraid she will be unable to swallow. But the bite goes down, and the crowd relaxes.
She calls for the candied scorpions next. Those are easy. Pretty, sparkling sweets in golden sugar coffins. All the venom is in the tail. Katharine eats four sets of pincers and then calls for the venison stew with rosary peas.
She should have saved the stew for last. She cannot get around its poison. The rosary peas have seeped into everything. Every sliver of meat and drop of gravy.
Katharine’s heart begins to pound. Somewhere in the ballroom, Genevieve is cursing her for a fool. But there is nothing to be done. She has to take a bite, and even lick her fingers. She sips the tainted juice and then cleanses her palate with cold, clear water. Her head begins to ache, and her vision changes as her pupils dilate.
She does not have long before she sickens. Before she fails. She feels the weight of so many eyes. And the weight of their expectations. They demand that she finish. Their will is so strong that she can nearly hear it.
The pie of wild mushrooms is next, and she eats through it quickly. Her pulse is already uneven, but she is unsure whether that is from the poison or just nerves. The speed at which she eats does a good impression of enthusiasm, and the Arrons clap. They cheer her on. They make her careless, and she swallows more mushrooms than she intends. One of the last chunks tastes like a Russula, but that should not be. They are too dangerous. Her stomach seizes. The toxin is fast and violent.
“The berries.”
She pops two into her mouth and cheeks them and then reaches for tainted wine. Most of it she lets leak down her neck and onto the front of her gown, but it does not matter. The Gave Noir is over. She slams both hands down onto the table.
The poisoners roar.
“This is but a taste,” Natalia declares. “The Gave Noir for the Quickening will be something of legend.”
“Natalia, I need to go,” she says, and grasps Natalia’s sleeve.
The crowd quiets. Natalia discreetly tugs loose.
“What?” she asks.
“I need to leave!” Katharine shouts, but it is too late.
Her stomach lurches. It happens so fast, there is no time even to turn away. She bends at the waist and vomits the contents of the Gave down onto the tablecloth.
“I will be all right,” she says, fighting the nausea. “I must be ill.”
Her stomach gurgles again. But even louder are the gasps of disgust. The rustling of gowns as the poisoners back away from the mess.
Katharine sees their scowls through eyes that are bloodshot and full of water. Her disgrace is reflected in every expression.
“Will someone please,” Katharine says, and gasps at the pain, “take me to my rooms.”
No one comes. Her knees strike hard against the marble floor. It is not an easy sickness. She is wet with sweat. The blood vessels have burst in her cheeks.
“Natalia,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
Natalia says nothing. All Katharine can see are Natalia’s clenched fists, and the movement of her arms as she silently and furiously directs guests to leave the ballroom. Throughout the space, feet shuffle in a hurry to leave, to get as far from Katharine as they can. She sickens again and pulls on the tablecloth to cover herself.
The ballroom darkens. Servants begin to clear the tables as another twisting cramp tears through her small body.
Disgraced as she is, not even they will move to help her.
WOLF SPRING
Camden is stalking a mouse through the snow. A little brown mouse has found itself in the middle of a clearing, and no matter how quickly it skitters across the surface, Camden’s large paws cover more ground, even when she’s sunk up to her knees.
Jules watches the macabre game with amusement. The mouse is terrified but determined. And Camden looms over it, as excited as if it were a deer or a large chunk of lamb instead of less than a mouthful. Camden is a mountain cat, and at three years old, has reached her full, massive size. She is a far cry from the milky-eyed cub who followed Jules home from the woods, young enough then to still have her spots, and with more fuzz than fur. Now, she is sleek and honey gold, and the only black left is on her points: ears, toes, and the tip of her tail.
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.