Malice, page 22
I curse myself for the way my shoulders hunch and my head drops, submitting to this creature the way I have a hundred thousand times before.
“He obviously did not heed my advice.” The Etherian selects another bit of cheese and chews it thoughtfully. “Humans are always so fascinated by magic. And yours was a new toy for him to play with.”
Wind rattles down the chimney. Cinders sizzle as they fly free of the hearth and onto the freezing stone floor. Callow cries out and strains against her tether.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Such a demanding half-breed,” he croons, using that tone that has haunted my nightmares for over a decade. “Such anger. It will serve you poorly. Become your undoing, if you are not careful.”
The magic in the Etherian staff whirls in time to the tempest in my ears. Aurora said the source of the Fae lord’s magic was in that staff. How sturdy is the glass protecting it? My power aches to find out.
“I was but a child when the War of the Fae ravaged Etheria and threatened my own. But I know well enough that Vila magic is unpredictable. The power of a half-breed is even more wild and untamed. I told Tarkin that perhaps at first you would only be able to create elixirs—a Dark Grace, as they call you. But one day, your power might truly manifest. And when it did, there was no end to the havoc you could wreak.”
“You’re saying you’re afraid of me?”
Endlewild’s cruel, catlike eyes narrow, his easy grace chipped at the edges. “I am saying that if I find you are more Vila than I first perceived, I will not hesitate to put you down. And not even the Briar King can stop me.”
I don’t grant him a response. Callow rages from her perch.
“It would be a kindness to you,” he goes on. “You do not understand your power. It will consume you, Alyce. And take everything around you down with it.”
My own name shudders through me, colder than any winter wind.
Lord Endlewild rises. “I will be keeping watch. I hope I do not have cause to return. Or”—he pauses at the door, his profile lit up by the magic of his staff—“perhaps I do hope so.”
The door snicks closed behind him, a lingering scent of meadows and rain the only sign that he was ever here.
An all-too-familiar shame scalds my chest, coupled with a wave of fury so strong that I have to dig my fingernails into my flesh to keep from razing this Lair—this house, the entire realm—to rubble. But it’s not just the Fae lord. I hate myself. Hate the fact that I still cower before the Etherian. That I still fear him.
In all my training with Kal, in my time with Aurora, I thought I had shed that weakness. But I’m no better than the child I once was. Huddled in the darkness, just waiting for the next kick to land.
Unable to reenter Lavender House lest the servants see the red limning my eyes, I untether Callow and curl up in a corner by the hearth. Whether through need or by command, I Shift as I did when I was a child, making myself as small and compact as possible. Callow scoots close to me, wedging her body in the warm crook of my neck.
And then I let myself drift in the inky waters of my despair, until my bell rings and announces my first patron of the day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
There’s a party held that evening to honor one of Tarkin’s newly minted generals, yet another excuse for the entire Grace District to drink their weight in wine until sunrise, and so my patron schedule empties shortly after midday. I know I won’t be seeing Aurora, either, and so I snatch a few hours’ rest, gather Callow, and escape to the black tower.
If Endlewild knew what I was doing with Kal, he would have made good on his threats. And probably burned the tower down for good measure. But I know his promise to watch me was not an idle one. And so after I’m clear of the Common District checkpoint, I push my Shifter magic to its limits. For the first time, I’m able to hold a Shift for longer than a few minutes. I become a beggar woman with a weathered face that not even the guards at the main gates bother to question. Still, I think I feel eyes on my back with every step.
Between lack of sleep, restless anxiety, and spent magic, I’m a jumble of buzzing nerves by the time I reach the tower and let my Shift fall away. Callow sails ungracefully to the ground, complaining when she lands at an awkward angle.
“Haughty Fae beast,” Kal spits out when I’ve told him of Endlewild’s visit. “He has no right to threaten you. His kin murdered your own.”
“It’s not the first time he’s threatened me, and I doubt it’s the last.” I pull my cloak closer against the shards of icy sea spray. “When I told you of my childhood—all the tests and treatments were done under Endlewild’s direction. He wanted the Briar King to kill me when they found me. Now he’s just waiting for an excuse to do it himself.”
Kal tenses with each word, his shadows like spears in the dimness. “He will not kill you. Not as long as I live.”
I don’t see that there’s much Kal can do from this prison, but I hold my tongue. The sentiment means more than I can say. “He can’t prove anything about my power, otherwise he would have already executed me. And the Briar King doesn’t want me dead—not yet.” When I escape Briar, he might change his tune.
“That will not stop the Fae beast.” Kal paces along the perimeter of the chamber, which is submerged in the deepening indigo of twilight. “Does he know you are part Shifter?”
“No.” Of that much, I’m certain. Being half Vila is bad enough for the Fae lord. If he knew I shared the blood of another creature of Malterre, he would have slit my throat on the spot. “And I would never betray you.”
Dragon knows I’ve wanted to tell Aurora about Kal often enough. But I can’t trust that she wouldn’t reveal Kal’s existence, even by accident. And if Endlewild wants to kill me simply because of my ancestors’ perceived crimes, I don’t want to think about what he would do to Kal.
“I believe you.” His shadows roll like a tide behind him. “But we must be more careful.”
“I’ll Shift every time I come. I managed it the whole way just now.”
He beams, a brilliant slash of white in the gloam, and for a moment I let his pride fill me up, replacing the queasy dread that’s plagued me for days. “Wonderful news. But it is not enough. Not quite.”
That shot of happiness fades. “What else can I do?”
“I will teach you a new Shift. It is difficult, but I believe you have the potential to master it. And you must.”
My magic wriggles, already eager for the challenge. To prove that I’m worthy of Kal’s confidence. That I’ll do anything to keep him—us—safe from Endlewild’s claws. “What is it?”
His jet eyes glow. “I will teach you to be invisible.”
* * *
—
Difficult is an understatement.
I’m already bone-tired from my sleepless nights, and my power was stretched as thin as spider’s silk after I held the Shift on the way to the tower. The key to invisibility is focus. The Shifter must be in constant flux, altering herself with each step to reflect the changing environment. The best Shifters, Kal tells me, are able to remain invisible even at a run. Even on horseback. But it takes decades of practice and patience.
The Shift itself is excruciating, requiring precise concentration on a hundred details at once. An ache starts at my temples and hammers down my tender vertebrae, into the exhausted muscles of my shoulders. My joints don’t want to re-form into the molds I bid them take, and they balk and buck at every command.
But I reach deeper, ignoring the way sinew and tendon threaten to snap. Thinking instead of Endlewild’s easiness when he promised my death. Kal is right. There’s nothing the Briar King can do to stop him. Endlewild is beholden to the Fae courts, not the mortal realm. And the Etherians wouldn’t punish one of their own for ending a Vila.
Spurred by the rage the Fae lord always kindles in me, when the moon is only a handsbreadth above the silvered waves, I’m at last able to make one of my arms disappear. Only one.
My stomach growls.
“That is the third time your belly has complained in the last hour,” Kal observes. “You need food. And it will be easier for you to slip into Briar before the sun rises.”
I settle myself on the stump of a column instead, where Callow has made her perch for the night. She opens one eye, bleary and irritated, before ruffling her feathers and turning her back on me. The sea is calmer than usual. Far in the distance, I can see the ghostly outline of one of Briar’s trading ships as it skates across the moon-kissed currents. Months ago, I’d been desperate to be aboard, starving for a life away from Briar.
It feels like years have passed since that day.
In the black silk of sea and starlight, I picture Aurora’s face. The freckle nearly hidden on the shell of her ear. The tiny dimple creasing the right side of her mouth. Her lower lip, always slightly swollen because she bites it when she’s thinking. As the details take shape, the break of the waves against the tower becomes her laugh. The breeze on my neck her touch.
She wants to make me her advisor. Me, sitting at council. Deciding what’s best for the realm. Taking back all the power the former queens lost and funneling it into Aurora’s reign. Finding ways to use my power that help instead of harm.
A shadow rustles my skirts, sending a shiver up my leg. Kal. I don’t want to leave Aurora, but I don’t want to lose him, either. Maybe I don’t have to.
“Kal?” I hesitate, choosing my words carefully. After his speech about his distrust of the royals, I know he wouldn’t approve of my time with the crown princess. “If I free you from this tower, would you consider staying in Briar?”
He turns slowly, shoulders tight. “You want to stay in Briar?”
“No.” The salty air scrapes my lungs. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Kal’s brow rumples. He joins me at the column. “I thought leaving this realm was your deepest wish. Do you want the Fae lord watching you forever? The Briar King demanding curses from you whenever the whim strikes him?”
“Of course not.” Before I can pull them back, my wild, intoxicating hopes spill free. “But what if Tarkin wasn’t the Briar King? What if Endlewild could be leashed? Banished, even?”
Questions flash in the depths of his obsidian eyes, like lightning building in the heavy underbelly of a storm cloud. “What do you have in mind, Alyce?”
“Nothing.” I squirm against the half-truth. “But if Briar was different. If it was a better place for people like us—would you stay?”
I can hardly breathe, anticipating his answer.
“It was not a random choice, to put me in this particular tower,” he says at last. One hand moves absently to his chest, tracing the outline of his medallion through his doublet. “There was a time, before these walls began to crumble, that I could climb to the upper floors and see all of the realm. Even glimpse part of Malterre—or what remained of it. Years after the war, black smoke still rose from the wreckage. I could smell the scorched flesh. Hear the screams of the dying.”
A shudder races up from my toes. I huddle deeper into my cloak.
“They selected this place as my prison so that I would see and hear and smell those things. So that I would watch as my homeland disintegrated, powerless to stop it.”
I close my eyes against the pain his words bring. Malterre was my homeland, too, even though I never set foot on the soil. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to know that everyone you loved had died. That you had to live forever with their ghosts. I reach for Kal, but he avoids me, going to stand at the gap in the wall and look out at the sea.
“The war was a long time ago,” he continues. “And I understand that things have changed. That they could change even more in the coming years.” He gives me a meaningful look, as if he knows the crown princess is hidden in my words. Heat clambers up my neck and bursts across my cheeks. “But, no, Alyce. This land holds too many ill memories. And I could never ally with a realm that utterly destroyed my own.”
Shame sinks its talons deep. He’ll never be able to separate Aurora from the humans who poisoned Malterre. And how could I ask that of him? After everything he’s seen? Perhaps I should feel the same. I still don’t know who killed my mother. Endlewild will execute me as soon as he has the chance. With Briar as Etheria’s ally, could anything really change?
“I cannot tell you what to do or how to feel.” Kal takes my face in his hands, and ice crackles along my jawline at his touch. I taste the sharp bite of frost. “But sometimes, Alyce, you must choose a side.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Y-your Grace?”
I slam the Nightseeker book closed with a yelp. I’d been poring over another ritual Aurora wants to try and hadn’t even heard the door open. One of the housemaids hovers at the entrance, her hand still braced on the door handle, as if she’s debating whether she ought to turn and bolt. I’ve half a mind to give her a reason to do it.
“Your Grace?” the trembling thing repeats.
Dragon’s teeth, I hate it when the servants address me that way. They always make it sound like they’re spitting out something sour. Or begging me not to kill them.
“Well, what is it?” I give her my best glower.
“Mistress Lavender says you’re to come at once.”
I glance at the clock on the mantel. I’m expecting a patron before long. She wouldn’t dare take me away from the business of earning coin for the house. Not when the mid-year Grace standings have our rank dipping below the middle—lower than it’s been in years, apparently.
“What for?”
But the maid doesn’t need to answer. A muffled ringing chips its way through the stone walls of my Lair. High and grating, one toll clanging after the other in a discordant loop.
The alarm bells. They’re used only when there’s a sudden squall or storm.
Or an attack.
I’m on my feet and pushing past the terrified girl in an instant. The house is in chaos, servants tripping over one another as they try to keep up with Mistress Lavender’s frenzied demands. Rose and Marigold are huddled together whispering, their mink-lined Grace cloaks already fastened and hoods drawn. Another maid shoves my own black cloak into my hands before flitting to her next task.
“Alyce, there you are.” Mistress Lavender is breathless. A fine sheen of sweat glistens on her neck like quicksilver. “There’s no time to waste. Come now, the carriage is waiting. The sooner we leave, the better.”
“But where are we going?”
Sunlight streams through the main parlor windows—no sign of a storm. And I can detect no sounds of battle or invasion, not that I would recognize them.
“It’s a Grace.” Laurel is beside me, her voice low. “She’s on trial.”
My stomach sinks, more for Laurel’s sake than for mine.
“Another?” Grace trials are rare. The last incident was a year ago, in which a Grace was convicted of supplying vials of her blood to a smuggler to be sold in other realms. I’d heard about it through the other Graces. She’d been sentenced to spend the remainder of her gift in one of the stricter houses, all her profits ceded to the Crown. Though to Rose, the true punishment was the fact that the Grace was banned from parties and royal events.
But there hadn’t been any alarm bells announcing her trial. And we certainly weren’t summoned to watch.
Laurel nods, and I can see the same thoughts etched onto the sharp lines creasing her forehead. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
* * *
—
We’re forced to abandon the carriage. The streets are too crowded for it to be of any use. Marigold is quite put out. But even her rambling complaints are drowned in the swell of rumor and gossip that eddies like a reeking tide pool around us.
I hear that this Grace accepted bribes. That she took a lover and provided him with elixirs for free. That she drugged the other Graces of her house and bled them in their sleep to steal their gifts.
With each snippet of speculation, Laurel’s jaw clamps tighter. And though I have no love for the Graces, I can’t help but feel sorry for her. What if it was a Vila on trial? My own mother, for the emerald in her blood? Kal?
It takes nearly an hour to pass through the palace gates and into the throne room. The entire Grace District must be here, nobles and Graces pressed against one another like pickled fish in a jar. For once, no one seems to notice me. Not even the guards, who can barely keep to their posts for all the jostling of the citizens passing through.
The Graces are steered into the first-floor viewing area, the rest of the court looking down from the mezzanine. Mistress Lavender prods us forward until we’re as close as possible to the low gilded railing separating the rest of the room from the royal dais and thrones. If Endlewild is here, I don’t see him. King Tarkin and Queen Mariel are already seated. Tarkin looks exactly as Calliope had when the ratty dog succeeded in dragging Rose’s breakfast plate from the table and gobbling up every crumb. But Mariel looks thin and drawn despite her Grace gifts. And she’s restless, constantly rearranging the pendant at her throat or smoothing her skirts.
Beside them—a jolt flashes through me.
Aurora.
Her eyes are more blue than violet today, like forget-me-nots in a morning sun. But there’s a gray cast to her skin. She scans the crowd and does a double take when her gaze passes over me. Her lips twitch like she wants to say something, but she only gives a barely perceptible dip of her chin, and then looks away.
“Whatever this is, I wish they would get on with it,” Rose mutters in annoyance. But her hands quaver as she fluffs the lace at her neckline.
We don’t have to wait long.
