Mirabella has just filled the air with lightning. Gorgeous, bright bolts, crackling across the sky and crashing down in thick veins on all sides. Long, repeated strikes that brightened the interior like day. She feels elated. The lightning is her favorite. The lightning and the storms, the electricity coursing through her blood—it vibrates down to her bones.
But from the looks on the faces of her people, one would think she had done nothing at all. In the orange candlelight, their wide-eyed expectation is plain. They have heard the whispers, the rumors of what she can do. And they would see it all. The fire, the wind, the water. They would have her shake the earth until the pillars of the temple crack. Perhaps they even want her to shear off the entire black cliff and cast it into the sea so the temple can drift in the bay below.
Mirabella snorts. Someday perhaps. But just now it feels like a lot to ask.
She calls the wind. It blows out half the torches and sends orange sparks and embers flying from the braziers. Screams of delight fill her ears as the crowd pushes joyfully out of the way.
She does not even wait for the wind to die before raising the flames on the last of the torches, high enough to scorch the mural of Queen Elo, the fire breather, where she stands depicted on her gilded barge, burning an attacking fleet of mainland ships to the bottom of Bardon Harbor.
And still they would have more. Gathered together they have turned giddy as children. There are more in attendance than she has ever seen, packed into the temple and pressed into the courtyard outside. High Priestess Luca told her before the ceremony started that the road to the temple glowed with the candles of her supporters.
Not all who have come are elementals. Her gift has inspired other followers as well, naturalists and some who carry the rare war gift. Many who have no gift at all. They come desiring to see the rumors proved true, that Mirabella is the next queen of Fennbirn and that the long reign of the poisoners has come to an end.
Mirabella’s arms tremble. She has not pushed her gift this far in a very long time. Perhaps not since she first came to Rolanth and to the Westwoods, when she was parted from her sisters at six years old and tried to batter down the Westwood House with wind and lightning. She glances at the shallow reflector pool to her right, lit prettily with floating candles.
No. Not water. Water is her worst element. The most difficult to control. She ought to have done that first. She would have, had her mind not been so clouded by her nerves.
Mirabella looks across the crowd to the back, where High Priestess Luca huddles against the curve of the south wall, layered in thick robes. Mirabella nods to her from beneath her dripping brow, and the High Priestess understands.
Luca’s clear, authoritative voice cuts through the din.
“One more.”
The crowd is suggestible, and in moments murmurs of “one more” weave with cheers of encouragement.
One. Just one more element. One more display.
Mirabella reaches down deep, calling silently to the Goddess, giving thanks for her gift. But that is only temple teaching. Mirabella needs no prayers. Her elemental gift coils in her chest. She takes a breath and lets it go. A shockwave passes under their feet. It rattles the temple and everyone in it. Somewhere a vase falls over and shatters. People outside feel the reverberation and gasp.
Inside the temple, finally, the people roar.
She draws her sister’s blood with a pair of silver shears. What was meant to simply trim her hair has instead shorn off an ear.
“Is this a nursery rhyme, Sister?” her sister asks. “Is this a fairy story?”
“I have heard it before,” Mirabella says, and studies the crimson stain. She drops the ear into her sister’s lap and runs her fingertip along the shears’s sharp edge.
“Careful not to cut yourself. Our queenly skin is fragile. Besides, my birds will want you whole. Eyes in your head and ears attached. Do not drink. She has turned our wine to blood.”
“Who?” Mirabella asks, though she knows very well.
“Wine and blood and back again, inside our veins and into cups.”
Somewhere through the tower a little girl’s voice sings; it rises up the stairs and round and round like a noose tightening.
“She is not my sister.”
Her sister shrugs. Blood rolls down in a slow waterfall from the open hole on the side of her head.
“She is and I am. We are.”
The shears open and close. The other ear falls into her sister’s lap.
Mirabella wakes with her mouth tasting of blood. It was only a dream, but a vivid one. She almost expects to look down and see pieces of her sisters clenched in her fists.
Arsinoe’s ear landed so softly in her lap. Though it was not really Arsinoe. So many years have gone by that Mirabella does not even know what Arsinoe looks like. People tell her that Arsinoe is ugly, with short, straw-like hair and a plain face. But Mirabella does not believe it. That is only what they think she wants to hear.
Mirabella kicks her sheets aside and takes a long drink of water from the glass on her bedside table. The sprawling estate of Westwood House is quiet. She imagines that all of Rolanth is quiet, even though the sunlight tells her it is nearly noon. Her birthday celebration went long into the night.
“You are awake.”
Mirabella turns toward her open door and smiles weakly at the petite priestess who has stepped into her room. She is a small thing, and young. The black bracelets on her wrists are still real bracelets, not tattoos.
“Yes,” Mirabella says. “Just.”
The girl nods and comes inside to help her dress, along with a second initiate who had been hidden in her shadow.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Quite,” Mirabella lies. The dreams have gotten worse of late. Luca says that is to be expected. That it is the way of the queens, and after her sisters are dead, the dreams will stop.
Mirabella holds very still as the priestesses brush her hair and put her into a comfortable dress after the night’s revelry. Then finally, they step back into the shadows. They are always with her, the priestesses. Even in Westwood House. Ever since the High Priestess saw the strength of her gift, she has been under temple guard. Sometimes, she wishes they would disappear.
She passes Uncle Miles in the hallway that leads to the kitchen, pressing a cold compress to his forehead.
“Too much wine?” she asks.
“Too much of everything,” he says, and bows clumsily before going back toward his room.
“Where is Sara?”
“In the drawing room,” he answers over his shoulder. “She has not moved from there since breakfast.”
Sara Westwood. Her foster-matron. A kind, devout woman, if a bit prone to worrying. She has cared for Mirabella well, and is quite gifted, specializing in the element of water. When Mirabella settles into the sitting room for tea, Sara’s moans occasionally echo up the stairs from where she is likely reclined on the drawing room sofa. Overindulgence has its price.
But the night was a success. Luca said so. All the priestesses said so. People of Fennbirn will talk of it for years. They will say they were there when the new queen rose.
Mirabella puts her feet up on the green velvet chair opposite the couch and stretches out. She is spent. Her gift feels like rubber in her stomach, wobbly and uneasy. But it will come back.
“That was quite a show, my queen.”
Bree leans against the door and then lazily twirls inside. She flops down beside Mirabella on the long satin couch. Her shiny, chestnut-and-gold hair is loose from its usual braid, and though she too looks exhausted, it is only the best kind.