The Young Queens (Three Dark Crowns #0.2) - Kendare Blake Page 0,1

in the fireplace.

Outside, the December night was dark—only the faintest hint of moonlight reflected across the snowdrifts. Camille gingerly swung her leg over the edge of the bed and winced. She took a moment to collect herself, held her sagging, empty belly with one arm and swung the other until she stood. Her vision wavered, and for a moment, she feared Philippe would wake to the sound of her collapsing on the floor. But the weakness passed. She slipped a blanket about her shoulders like a shawl, and walked out.

“Where are you going, my love?” Philippe, more awake than she had thought, grasped her wrist softly as she passed. “You should be resting. We have a long journey tomorrow.” His eyes lingered on her pale face, and then on the floor, and on the small trail of dripped blood she left behind.

She patted him, and he let go. His heavily lidded eyes blinked shut. He was, even after years on the island, still a mainland man and trusted that she must know best about these women’s mysteries.

“I am only going to look in on them.”

“Shall I go with you?”

She shook her head. Philippe was a strong consort, but he was too softhearted for this. If he saw the triplet queens, he might want to hold them. And if he held them, he might start to feel that they were his instead of Fennbirn’s.

Queen Camille walked down the high-ceilinged hall of the Black Cottage, one hand out along the wall to steady her. The light from the lamps in the nursery cast warm yellow light, and inside, another bright fire crackled against the cold.

Much like Camille’s king-consort, Willa slept upright in a chair. Though not, perhaps, as prettily. Willa’s mouth hung open, and her head fell over to the side. Her snore sounded like a pig searching excitedly for mushrooms.

Camille crept past. The newborn queens in the bassinets were dressed in black and affixed with the colors of their gifts. Blue buttons for elemental Mirabella, and a purple patch for poisoner Arsinoe. Pretty green ribbons for tiny naturalist Katharine. Even the bassinets had been decorated with items associated with each gift: a cloud-shaped pillow, a mobile hung with snakes and spiders, and a quilt embroidered with flowers.

“Enjoy the colors, little queens,” Camille whispered. “Soon enough it will all be black, black, black.”

She looked down on their sleeping faces—red and wrinkled, and angry-looking, even at birth. She did not blame them. Their lives would not be easy. And then two lives would be over.

Camille was a poisoner, like Queen Nicola, and Queen Sylvia before her. Three generations of poisoner queens. Almost a dynasty. But instead of growing stronger, it seemed that the blood of the poisoner queens grew thinner. The Arrons flourished in their power, as well as other poisoner families in Prynn and the capital, but Sylvia was stronger than Nicola, and Camille was the weakest of all. Over hundreds of years, the other gifts of the island had lessened: elementals lost their mastery over one or more elements, and the war-gifted lost the ability to guide their weapons with their minds. The naturalists’ familiars grew smaller and smaller. And the oracles . . . The true oracle gift was almost gone, thanks to generations of drowned oracle queens.

Something was changing on the island and within the line of queens. As a queen, Camille could feel that. Not that anyone would believe her. The Arrons never listened when she spoke of queenly instinct. They never listened to her about anything. They had been bullies her whole life, from the moment they claimed her from that very cottage. They shamed her when she failed. They did not let her rule. With each successive poisoner queen, the queen herself mattered less and less. The line of queens was not important, the Arrons said. It was the poisoners who the Goddess truly favored.

In their bassinets, the new triplets hummed with an aura of the gift each carried, that energy—like a scent or a heartbeat—that linked them to the Goddess and called to the queensblood in Camille. It was that which told her what she had given birth to, when she announced it to Willa, and named them, as though in a trance. It was like a trance. On Arsinoe and Katharine, the auras that lingered were weak. On Katharine it was barely a hint. But Mirabella still blazed with it.

“What are you doing here, Queen Camille?”

Camille flinched. Willa’s voice from behind her had sounded