Free Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake Page A

Sealhead Cove, painted bright white and with plenty of gold and silver around the windows and rigging. Beneath the bleak Wolf Spring day, it practically glows.
    And then Joseph steps onto the gangway.
    She would know it was him even without his mother’s wail. She would have known it even though he is taller, and older, and all the boyhood softness in his face has melted away.
    The Sandrins throw their arms around him. Matthew picks him up in a great hug, and his father claps both of their backs. Joseph ruffles Jonah’s hair. Annie has not let go of the edge of Joseph’s jacket.
    Jules takes half a step back. Five years is a long time. A long enough time to forget about someone. What will she do if he sees her on the hill and smiles politely? If he nods to her as he walks past with his family?
    She is already backing up when he calls out her name. And then he shouts it, loud, over everyone. “Jules!”
    â€œJoseph!”
    They run toward each other, him fighting through the crowd, and her headlong down the slope. His black jacket flies open over a white shirt, and they collide.
    It is no fairy-tale meeting, nothing like she imagined or daydreamed about in all the time he was away. Her chin runs into his chest. She does not know where to put her arms. But he is there, real and solid, both changed and not changed at all.
    When they pull apart, he holds her by the shoulders, and she him by the elbows. She has started to cry a bit, but not from sadness.
    â€œYou’re so . . . ,” she says.
    â€œSo are you,” he says, and wipes her cheek with his thumb. “My God, Jules. I was afraid I wouldn’t recognize you. But you’ve hardly changed!”
    â€œHaven’t I?” she asks, mortified suddenly that she is so small. He will think her still a child.
    â€œI didn’t mean that,” he amends. “Of course you’ve grown. But how could I ever worry that I wouldn’t recognize these eyes.”
    He touches her temple, beside her blue eye, and then the other, beside her green. “For the longest time I was certain I would see you, if I just looked hard enough.”
    But that was impossible. The council had allowed for no correspondence between them. Jules and his family had known only that he was on the mainland, fostered, and alive for the time being. His banishment was absolute.
    Camden slips around Jules’s leg and purrs. The movement almost seems shy, but Joseph jumps back.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” asks Jules.
    â€œWh-what’s the—?” he sputters, and then laughs. “Ofcourse. I suppose I have been away a long time. I had forgotten how strange Fennbirn can be.”
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘strange’?” she asks.
    â€œYou would understand if you left.” He holds his hand out to Cam for her to sniff, and she licks his fingers. “He’s a familiar.”
    â€œ She is a familiar,” Jules corrects him. “This is Camden.”
    â€œBut,” he says, “it can’t be . . . ?”
    â€œYes,” Jules says, and nods. “She is mine.”
    He looks from the girl to the cougar and back again. “But she should be Arsinoe’s,” he says. “To have a familiar like this, it must make you the strongest naturalist in the last fifty years.”
    â€œSixty, or so they say.” Jules shrugs. “A naturalist queen rises, and the gift rises with it. Or have you forgotten that as well?”
    Joseph grins and scratches Camden behind the ears. “What does Arsinoe have, then? And where is she? There are people here I want her to meet. One more than the others.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œMy foster brother, William Chatworth Jr. And his father. They have a delegation this year.”
    He regards her with mischief. The temple will not like that they are here. Delegations are not allowed to arrive until the Beltane Festival, and suitors are not allowed to converse with the