“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.
“If you go, you will miss my announcement,” Renata says, and smiles.
“What announcement is that?” Jules asks.
“I am about to announce that Joseph Sandrin’s banishment is over. He is already set to return to the island and should arrive in two days.”
Sealhead Cove laps at the end of the long wooden dock. The weathered, gray boards creak in the brisk wind, and the rippling, moonlit sea mirrors the quiver of Jules’s breath.
Joseph Sandrin is coming home.
“Jules, wait.” Arsinoe’s footsteps rattle across the dock as she follows Jules to the point, with Camden trotting reluctantly alongside. The cat has never cared for the water, and a thin, bent wooden board does not seem to her the most trustworthy barrier.
“Are you all right?” Jules asks, out of habit.
“What are you asking me for?” Arsinoe asks. She tucks her neck down against the wind, deep into her scarf.
“I should not have left you.”
“Yes you should have,” Arsinoe says. “He’s coming back. After all this time.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
“To lie about this, at my birthday celebration, would take more nerve than even the Arrons have.”
They look across the darkening water, across the cove, past the submerged sandbar that protects it from the waves and out into the deeper currents.
It has been more than five years now since they tried to escape the island. Since Joseph stole one of his father’s daysailers and helped them try to run away.
Jules leans against Arsinoe’s shoulder. It is the same reassuring gesture they have done since they were children. No matter what their attempted escape has cost them, Jules has never regretted trying. She would try again, if there were any hope at all.
But there is none. Beneath the dock, the sea whispers, just like it did against the sides of their boat as it held them captive in the mists that surround the island. No matter how they set the sails, or worked the oars, it was impassible. They were found, cold and scared, and bobbing in the harbor. The fishers said they should have known better. That Jules and Joseph might have made it, to be lost at sea, or perhaps to find the mainland. But Arsinoe was a queen. And the island would never let her go.
“What do you think he is like, now?” Arsinoe wonders.
Probably not still small, with dirt on his jaw and under his fingernails. He will not be a child anymore. He will have grown up.
“I am afraid to see him,” says Jules.
“You are not afraid of anything.”
“What if he has changed?”
“What if he hasn’t?” Arsinoe reaches into her pocket and tries to skip a flat stone across the water, but there are too many waves.
“This feels right,” she says. “Him coming back. For this. Our last year. It feels like it was supposed to happen.”
“Like the Goddess has willed it?” Jules asks.
“I did not say that.”
Arsinoe looks down and smiles. She scratches Camden between the ears.
“Let’s go,” says Jules. “Catching a chest cold won’t improve the situation.”
“Certainly not, if your eyes get red and your nose swells.”
Jules shoves Arsinoe forward, back toward the marina and the long winding road up to the Milone house.
Camden trots ahead to bump against the backs of Arsinoe’s knees. Neither Jules nor the cat will sleep much tonight. Thanks to Renata Hargrove, every memory they have of Joseph is coursing through their heads.
As they pass the last dock, Camden slows, and her ears flicker back toward town. A few steps ahead, Arsinoe laments the lack of strawberry cake in her stomach. She does not hear. Jules does not either, but Camden’s yellow eyes tell her that something is wrong.
“What is it?” Arsinoe asks, catching on.
“I don’t know. A scuffle I think.”
“Some drunks left after my birthday, no doubt.”
They jog back toward the square. The closer they get, the faster the big cat moves. They pass Gillespie’s Bookshop, and Jules tells Arsinoe to knock and wait inside.
“But, Jules!” Arsinoe starts, except Jules and Cam are already gone, racing down the street, past the now-empty, flapping tents and toward the alley behind the kitchen of the Heath and Stone.
Jules does not recognize the voices. But she recognizes the sound of fists when they begin to swing.
“Stop!” she shouts, and jumps into the middle of the fray. “Stop it now!”
With Camden by her side, the people reel backward. Two men and a woman. Fighting over she does not care what. It will cease to matter in the morning, after the ale wears off.
“Milone,” one of the men sneers. “You’re a bully with that cougar. But you are not the law.”
“Aye, I’m not,” Jules says. “The Black Council is the law, and if you keep on, I’ll let them have you. Let them poison you out of your wits, or maybe even to death, in Indrid Down Square.”
“Jules,” Arsinoe says, and steps out of the shadow. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” says Jules. “Only a brawl.”
A brawl, but an escalating one. There is a small club in the drunk woman’s fist.
“Why don’t you look after the queen,” the woman says, “and get out of here.”
The woman raises the club and swings. Jules jumps back, but the end of it still catches her on the shoulder, striking painfully. Camden snarls, and Jules clenches her fists.
“Idiot!” Arsinoe shouts. She steps between Jules and the woman. “Do not push her. Do not push me.”
“You?” the drunk man asks, and laughs. “When the real queen comes, we’ll offer her your head on a pike.”
Jules bares her teeth and lunges. She gets him square in the jaw before Arsinoe can grab her arm.
“Send him to Indrid Down!” Jules shouts. “He threatened you!”
“So let him,” Arsinoe says. She turns and shoves the man, who holds his bleeding jaw. Camden is hissing, and the other two back off. “Get out of here!” Arsinoe yells. “If you want your chance at me, you’ll have it! They all will, after Beltane is over.”
ROLANTH
The pilgrims gather beneath the north dome of Rolanth Temple, their lips sticky from bites of caramel cake or sweet chicken skewered with lemons, their shoulders wrapped in billowing black cloaks.
Queen Mirabella stands at the altar of the Goddess. Sweating, but not from heat. Elementals are not bothered much by temperature, and if they were, no one inside could complain of being warm. Rolanth Temple is a weather queen’s temple, open to the east and west, the roof supported by beams and thick marble columns. Air moves through no matter the season, and no one shivers, except for the priestesses.