Free Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

anymore.”
    â€œNot in this weather,” Arsinoe agrees.
    â€œWhat do you think mainland girls are like?” Jules asks suddenly.
    â€œMainland girls? Oh, they’re terrible. Horrible.”
    â€œOf course. That’s why my beautiful mother fit in so well with them.”
    Arsinoe snorts. “If they are anything like Madrigal,” she says, “then you have nothing to worry about.”
    â€œMaybe she was right, though. Maybe I should not have come.”
    Arsinoe shoves her forward, hard.
    â€œGet down there, idiot,” she says. “Or you’ll be late.”
    So Jules goes, down toward the dock, where his familystands in their best black coats. Joseph’s boat is not on the horizon yet, but his mother, Annie, is already up on a crate straining to see. Jules could wait with them. She has been welcome with the Sandrins ever since she and Joseph were children, even before her aunt Caragh and Joseph’s brother Matthew were to be married. But instead she detours up through the square to watch from afar.
    In the square, the tents are still up. They have been partially cleaned out but not entirely. Since the festivities ended, Wolf Spring has been nursing a collective hangover. Nothing much has gotten done. Through the open tent flaps, Jules spies platters still on the head table, covered by the shifting black wings of birds. The crows have found what is left of her cod. After they have had their fill, someone will toss the bones back into the water.
    Back at the docks, more people have gathered, and not only on the pier. All around the cove, curtains and shutters have been moved aside, and here and there, folk have ventured out to pretend to sweep their porches.
    There is a nudge at her waist, and she looks down into Camden’s hungry yellow-green eyes. Her own stomach groans as well. On Jules’s bureau in their bedroom sits an untouched tray of tea and buttered bread. She could not think of eating then. But now she has never felt so empty.
    She buys a fish for Camden in the winter market, a nice, clear-eyed sea bass with a curved tail, as if it froze while still swimming. For herself she buys a few oysters from Madge’smorning catch, and shucks them with her fat-bladed knife.
    â€œHere,” Madge says, and hands her a dipper of vinegar. She jerks her head toward the cove. “Shouldn’t you be out there, clamoring with the rest?”
    â€œI don’t care for crowds,” Jules says.
    â€œI don’t blame you.” She presses another shellfish into Jules’s hand. “For the cougar,” she adds, and winks.
    â€œThanks, Madge.”
    Down at the docks, the crowd stirs, and the movement carries all the way up the hill and into the market. Madge’s neck stretches.
    â€œAye, there it is,” she says.
    Joseph’s ship has entered the harbor. It sneaked up on them; already it is close enough that Jules can make out the crewmen on the deck.
    â€œBlack sails, all,” says Madge. “Someone from the mainland is trying to kiss our arses.”
    Jules stands as tall as she can. There is the ship. Carrying with it the moment she has been dreaming of, and dreading, for the last five years.
    â€œYou had better get down there, Jules Milone. We all know it’s your face he will want to be seeing.”
    Jules flashes Madge a smile, and she and Camden dart out of the winter market. Her feet pound through the square, past the slack, flapping tents.
    There are so many people gathered around, come to the harbor after their curiosities got the better of them. She will notbe able to get through. Not even with Camden cutting a path, not unless she resorts to swatting and snarling, which Grandma Cait would never approve of and would surely hear about.
    Jules paces uneasily on the slope where she watches. They unload trunks at first. Belongings and perhaps goods for trade. Gifts. Jules peers at the mainland boat. It looks out of place in