The Young Queens (Three Dark Crowns #0.2) - Kendare Blake Page 0,2

like Mistress Arron.

“Nothing.” She straightened her shoulders as Willa rose from her chair and came slowly to join her. “Only looking in on them. The messengers have been dispatched?” Messengers, summoned to the Black Cottage upon her labor, to ferry word to Rolanth, Indrid Down, and Wolf Spring. The elemental, poisoner, and naturalist cities, respectively.

“They have. They rode out at dusk.”

Camille sucked in her cheeks. A messenger to Indrid Down was hardly necessary anymore. The poisoners were so assured of their destiny.

Camille nodded to the baby in the storm-blue blanket.

“Her, there. Mirabella. She will be the next queen.”

Willa, still a servant of her temple teachings though no longer a priestess, made a pious gesture, touching first her eyes and then her heart.

“The Goddess decides,” Willa said. “Only she decides who rules her island.”

Camille took a deep breath. The walls of the cottage where the queens would spend their first six years, where she spent her own first six years, closed in, squeezing her out. Here they would play and have their hair braided. Here they would learn to walk and run, and if they were lucky, to not love one another too much.

“She decides,” Camille said. “But the queen knows. And I was mistaken about those two.” She pointed to poisoner Arsinoe and naturalist Katharine. “Arsinoe is a naturalist. Katharine . . . a poisoner.” She almost said war-gifted, to deny the Arrons a queen at all. But they would never believe it. They would investigate and look too closely.

“Camille . . .” Willa turned to her, and shook her head.

Camille clenched her jaw. She was still bleeding, and exhausted. For all she knew, she was slowly dying. But she willed herself to look strong. To look like the queen she was, for once.

“Mirabella will be queen. I can see that. Feel that. And she will be a great one. These other two will not survive long. Katharine’s gift is so weak, it will never fully quicken. And Arsinoe . . . Another poisoner queen will not sit the throne. But if the Arrons have a gifted poisoner, they will make her suffer. Training and belittling. Beating her when she gets it wrong. Like they did to me.”

“And what would they do with Queen Katharine?” Willa asked.

“What could they do with a giftless girl but leave her alone?” Camille swallowed hard. That was a lie. The Arrons could do plenty to a giftless girl. Everything they ever did to Camille, and worse. But at least they would fail. At least they would have no winning queen.

She looked down at little Katharine. The child was doomed already. “Change the queens’ gowns, Willa. So they are right.”

Willa looked from Arsinoe to Katharine. “If Mirabella is the chosen queen, then it will not matter.”

“It will not matter,” Camille agreed. She had known Willa since she was a girl. Willa had been a young woman then, deep in her midwife training, when she presided over the births of Camille and her sisters, and she was the one who raised them. She showered them with sweets and games. And they were happy.

“You cared for me so well, Willa,” said Camille. “You loved me.”

“I loved you all.”

“And you love me still.” Camille pressed her lips together. Through the nightmares, and the screaming fits, and the black blanket of depression that coiled round and round a queen’s neck as the birth neared. Through the days full of tremors, when Camille had tried to claw the babies out of her stomach. Willa was there. She brewed her teas to calm her. She told her it was normal. That the bearing of queens was always haunted by the fallen ones who came before, and the Black Cottage was full of ghosts. Even Camille’s own poisoned sisters.

It was the first time Willa had spoken of Camille’s sisters. After they were dead, fallen queens were never spoken of. They were forgotten, except by the families who had raised them, and the sister who survived. Camille had survived and become queen. Her sisters had not. The sisters of a true poisoner, they had died on the same day, in the same hour, writhing. Spitting blood.

“I love you still, and I will always, Camille,” said Willa. “But I cannot do this.”

“I am doing it.” Camille lay her hand on her Midwife’s shoulder. “I know that I took my crown off and threw it at you. But I am still the queen.”

In the morning, Queen Camille and her king-consort readied themselves to leave the