Malice, page 23
Tarkin rises and the suffocating room falls silent. I think I can hear the patter of a hundred Grace hearts.
“My court.” Candied sunlight glints on the jewels in his rings. The Briar rose on his signet flashes scarlet. “Graces.”
There’s a tremulous ripple in the sea of gilded eyes and powdered necks. Mariel’s knuckles on the arms of her throne go white.
“Would you not agree, Graces, that the Crown shelters you?” Tarkin pins a cerulean-haired Grace with his attention until she squeaks out an answer.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Do we not honor you with our patronage? Value you above all else in this realm?”
Other murmurs of assent, laced with a slinking undercurrent of unease. I can smell it in the air. Like rotting seaweed.
“Then I am utterly befuddled,” the king goes on, false concern dripping from each word, a tone I recall from our meeting in the war room, “as to why one of you would want to openly flout the laws that keep you safe. Why you would bite the hand that so lovingly feeds you. Surely such flagrant disrespect cannot go unpunished.” He lifts the chin of a pleasure Grace with two meaty fingers. “What say you?”
The Grace’s deep brown skin is waxy beneath her armor of golden paint. She hesitates, but only for a heartbeat. “The realm is generous to us, Your Majesty. It deserves our service.”
Tarkin weighs the words. The tips of his crown shine like spears.
“My thoughts exactly.” He releases the Grace, and I can just glimpse her shoulders drooping. “We deserve your service. The Grace Laws are in effect for your protection. To keep those away who would want to monopolize your gift. To keep you here, in Briar, where we can make certain of your well-being. Where we can keep you in the comfortable lives every Grace should enjoy.”
“Not my life,” I mutter. Laurel elbows me.
Tarkin motions to Mariel. The Briar Queen sits taller at his recognition, but her expression remains stony. “My queen and I are much distressed, then, to learn of a Grace who has defied those laws—not once, but twice.”
Graces pivot right and left like snared rabbits, desperate to discern which one of them might be missing.
A side door bursts open and a Grace is hauled inside between two guards. Her simple woolen dress—a far cry from the usual Grace wardrobe—is torn at the sleeves, dirt smeared at the knees and bodice. I know I’ve seen that shade of hair before. A deep russet, with bright threads of crimson and gold.
A name begins to rustle at the outskirts of the crowd as soon as it lands in my mind.
Narcisse.
The music Grace I met at Aurora’s dinner.
Laurel’s fingernails dig into my flesh.
“Narcisse.” Even Tarkin’s booming bass is hardly audible over the rush of mutterings and shifting bodies. “Of Willow House. You stand before your peers charged with violating the Grace Laws. What say you?”
The guards shove her to her knees. Narcisse cries out, the heels of her palms skidding against the jeweled marble floor. Mistress Lavender inhales sharply.
“I did not mean to offend Your Majesty.” Her voice is barely more than a kitten’s mewl. It has nothing of the melodious ring I heard when we met before.
Tarkin looks to the mezzanine of nobles and shrugs. “She did not mean to offend.”
Laughter follows, and I wince. It’s the same fanged sort of laughter that’s hounded me for years.
“I find that hard to believe, Your Grace.” Tarkin rubs his chin. “Seeing as this was not your first offense against the Crown.” More mumblings from the nobles. Narcisse looks confused. “Indeed, two years ago, you were accused of refusing to use your gift. Isn’t that right?”
“I— I—” Narcisse looks to her sisters, chin wobbling. But no one can help her now. “I was never charged. I made a mistake. I was afraid.”
“Afraid?” Tarkin presses a hand to his heart. “What have you to fear in this realm?”
Laurel and I exchange a look. Everything. She has everything to fear.
Narcisse is weeping openly now, tears leaving tracks in the dirt on her face. “Willow House was slipping in the standings. I didn’t want to be sent to a lesser house if my elixirs were weakening. And so I asked our housemistress if I could limit my patron appointments. But I never—” She chokes on a sob. “I was taking two dozen appointments a day. I would have Faded if my patron list didn’t lessen.”
Two dozen appointments. That’s more than even Rose might see in a day. Do all the greater houses require such a schedule from their Graces? Narcisse was cruel to me at Aurora’s dinner, carelessly so. But I’d never thought of what she might be enduring beneath her mask of haughty vanity.
“Do we not provide for our Faded Graces?” A trap wrapped in velvet.
“It isn’t the same,” Narcisse insists. “The best a Faded Grace can hope for is a marriage or to become a housemistress. But I couldn’t count on either.”
“And so you acted out of greed?”
“No.” She shakes her head. Bits of copper dance in her hair. “No, I—”
But Tarkin doesn’t let her go on. He circles her like a winged Fae-beast from a story, gluttonous and ready to dive. “And then, after we granted you clemency for your infraction—allowed you to keep working and earning in your house—you attempted to leave the realm. No doubt to sell your blood across the sea and grow rich.”
Narcisse swallows. Musters the last of her strength. “It was the only thing I could do.”
A splash of heat lands on my wrist. I look to Laurel. A single tear quivers at her jawline, glittering in the sunlight.
“It was not, in fact, the only thing.” Tarkin’s grin is wolfish. He knows he’s won. “It was betrayal. Treason to the Crown. And you admit it.” His attention swivels to his audience. “I’ve summoned you today”—he rubs his thumb over the Briar rose on his signet ring—“because these Grace trials grow tiresome.”
Tiresome? It’s rare to hear of a Grace facing punishment, much less being brought to trial. A few Graces around me look puzzled, too.
“I have consulted with the Grace Council, and we are in agreement. No matter how severe the punishment, Graces continue to break the law. I mean to stop it. Once and for all.”
A few cheers sound from the mezzanine. Probably from the members of the Grace Council. Laurel stands straighter.
“Narcisse.” Tarkin wears the same look he wore when commissioning my service, and a chill needles between my shoulder blades. “You attempted to steal from the Crown when you tried to remove yourself from the realm.” More grunts of agreement from the nobles. “And so the Crown is just in taking what it rightfully owns. You, obviously, cannot be trusted.”
Dozens of vibrant Grace heads bend toward one another, trying to sort out what the king means. I find Aurora. Her lips are pressed together into a firm line.
“You, Narcisse, have forfeited your gift. You will be bled until you Fade, your blood used immediately in elixirs for the Crown.”
A heartbeat of stunned silence. And then the room explodes. The nobles are shouting and jeering. A few Graces faint, falling into one another like wilting flowers. Narcisse begins to wail, crumpling in a boneless puddle as the guards work to heave her upright.
“She will die!” a Grace pleads. “You will kill her!”
And it seems even a few of the nobles agree. Cries against the king’s decision ring sharp and clear across the hall. Tarkin ignores them.
My arm wraps around Laurel’s waist, expecting her to sway and falter. But she is rigid, steel-spined and eyes blazing. Mariel rubs her temples, her true age eating through the veil of countless Grace elixirs and revealing a bone-weary woman Leythana would not recognize as her kin. And Aurora—Aurora looks like it is everything she can do to remain seated. She closes her eyes and breathes in short, staccato bursts as several healing Graces enter the hall.
“Remember.” The king’s voice soars above the muddle. “She brought this on herself.” He jabs a finger at the Graces. “Let it be a warning.”
As if struck by lightning, Narcisse flares to life and tries to bolt, bare feet slapping the marble as her earsplitting shrieks threaten to cleave me in half. The guards are faster, catching her around the middle and swinging her back as her legs kick in the air.
And then one of the healing Graces pulls on a pair of thick leather gloves. She produces a wooden box, opens the lid, and extracts the very same golden bracelet I cursed for the king.
The room tilts and I waver with it.
No, no, no, no.
Dragon’s teeth, it was never a bracelet.
It was a shackle.
“No, no!” Narcisse’s screams are knives of panic.
The healing Grace fixes the shackle to Narcisse’s wrist. The paralysis curse hits instantly. Narcisse stills all at once, the echo of her wails ringing against my eardrums. The guards strap her to a table, and one of the healing Graces begins arranging a series of elaborate tubes. The other produces a long needle and punctures the fragile skin on the underside of Narcisse’s elbow. And then her golden Grace blood begins to flow, gushing through the tubes and dribbling into waiting vials.
Marigold collapses at the sight of so much Grace blood lost. Years and years of gift. Rose doesn’t move to help her. Like Laurel, Rose is all defiance and fury, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. But I see beneath the gilt powder on her cheeks and neck, the sallow ravages of the bloodrot. Know that what she’s doing, trying to alter her power, is a violation of the Grace Laws. She could be in Narcisse’s place in an instant.
Some of the Graces press toward the doors, but the guards keep them back. Not even the swooning Graces are carried out. Soon, the hall reeks of rancid bile and salty tears and thick, musty fear. Even the nobles are affected. Some clamor for Tarkin to ease the punishment once a half-dozen vials are filled with Narcisse’s blood. He does not. Not until that sparkling river of gold dulls. Until the roots of Narcisse’s fire-touched hair bleed silver. Only then are the doors opened and the rest of us allowed to file out, dazed and sick.
But I cannot move, transfixed by the sight of the shackle I cursed. I helped do this. Narcisse is unbound, her wooden limbs falling in unnatural angles as she slides from the table. No one even bothers to keep her head from smacking the tile. Tarkin is the one who ordered the bleeding, I tell myself. He would have done it with or without my curse. And yet he used it. He used me. And I let him.
As if called by my thoughts, the Briar King’s gaze finds mine in the thinning crowd.
He dips his chin to me, and smiles.
* * *
—
I cannot think. My skin feels too tight for my body. Narcisse’s screams chase me through the rest of the day and night. The sticky-sweet scent of her blood scalds my nostrils. The next morning, the Graces and I drift through the corridors of Lavender House in a fog. Even the patrons are skittish and avoid eye contact. Many of mine don’t show.
With nothing to do, I ricochet around my Lair, biting my nails to bits as I count the hours until nightfall, when Mistress Lavender takes the Graces with her to a party given at another house. After what happened yesterday, I can’t imagine that it will be much more than dull-eyed Graces drinking away the blood-soaked memories.
But the trial will soon be behind me. When I first began cursing items for the king, it was easy to convince myself that it was his hand committing the violence. The same way that it’s my patrons who decide how to use the elixirs I craft for them. But watching my curse used against Narcisse, her stiff, splayed limbs and silver blood pooling beneath her…I can no longer deny my own responsibility.
There is only one thing to be done.
Once I’m sure the house is empty, I gather the largest, strongest sack I can find, race up to my room, and throw in what meager belongings I care about. A few spare, worn dresses. An extra cloak. Then I’m back in my Lair, shoveling all my earnings from my safe into the sack—years’ worth of gold, plus the king’s commissions. When I toss the last coin in, the damn sack is so heavy I cannot lift it. I Shift, sending strength into my back and shoulders and arms. The muscles grow hot, stretching and expanding and bulging against the fabric of my dress. When I’m done, the sack is as light as a pillow. I sling it onto one shoulder, then take Callow from her perch and settle her on the other. Her anxious talons dig into my flesh.
I creep around the back of the kitchen and through the side gate, my hood close around my face as I tear through the Grace District, dodging late-night deliveries and irritable carriage drivers. The oil lamps are lit, casting slick pools of light on the cobbled streets. My skin itches, instinct begging me to Shift to invisibility. But I don’t think I could manage such a difficult Shift the whole way to the tower. And it would make me even more conspicuous—my sack and Callow floating in midair. So I settle on my beggar woman disguise, spine protesting as it hunches under the heavy sack.
I look back only once, when I pass through Briar’s main gates for the last time. The moon tonight is high and full, bathing the Grace District in its ethereal light. The shadow of the palace falls hard on its rooftops. Torchlight flickers over the openmouthed dragon gargoyles perched on the palace’s eaves and ripples over stained-glass windows. One of them is Aurora’s.
My heart stutters, urging me for the first time away from this plan. I’d written her a dozen notes, tossing each one into the fire when my nerve failed. I can’t explain to her why I’m leaving—that I’m little better than the Briar King’s minion. That he will require worse from me, and I’ll have little choice but to comply. Aurora would hate me. Coward that I am, I can’t stomach the thought.
Callow ruffles her wings against my cheek.
It isn’t safe for us here anymore.
But I whisper a vow that I will return when Aurora is queen. When things are different.
* * *
—
The tower is easy to spot, jutting up against the obsidian of the calm sea. My heart beats faster with every step. Knowing that what I’m about to do will change my life forever.
Moonlight streams through the gap in the wall, glinting off bits of broken stone in the staircase. The tattered banners billow and sigh in the night breeze like wraiths.
The darkness undulates and Kal materializes, his worried gaze divided between Callow and the sack I dump unceremoniously on the ground. “What is this?”
“We have to leave Briar.” I let my Shift fade away and relax back to my true form, muscles cooling and skin shrinking. “Tell me how to break your bonds.”
Kal can only stare. His shadow chains move at haphazard angles. “What happened?”
Quickly, I fill him in on Narcisse’s trial and the shackle I cursed, one eye on the entrance to the tower as I do. Part of me believes Endlewild or the king’s guard will storm in at any moment and drag me back to the castle to execute me or lock me in a cell. But there is only the lapping of waves on stone. The brine-stained, wintry kiss of the night.
“I thought I understood what I was doing. But I didn’t expect…I didn’t know—”
“There is no need to explain.” Kal’s shadows coil into him. He pauses, looking out at the clear, star-crusted night sky. “And I agree. The king’s requests will only worsen. I do not want him thinking you are a pawn he can control. But are you certain this is what you want? The last time we spoke it seemed—”
“No.” I cut him off so suddenly that Callow clacks her annoyance. “It’s time. I have enough gold for us to board the next ship out. The only thing left is to break your bindings—if I can.”
He closes the distance between us. “You already know what to do.”
“Can’t you tell me anything more than that?”
But that infuriating stillness engulfs him again. His lips mash together until they’re bloodless.
“Of course you can’t,” I mutter, raking my hands through my hair in frustration. “What kind of prison would it be if you could tell someone how to free you?”
I begin to pace back and forth, wracking my mind for what I know about Kal’s past and his bindings. As if they know they’re the subject of scrutiny, the dark tendrils curve and wend in a macabre dance around his body. My magic strains in its cage, aching to tear them to pieces. Grind them to dust.
I wheel to a halt, upsetting Callow.
Perhaps I can do just that.
The enchantment is bred from magic. And I can find magic. Control it. My power is Vila. Strong enough to build Malterre. To create an entire race even the Etherians could not crush.
Cobbling together what little confidence I have, I focus on the writhing shadows, reaching my magic out to find theirs. It connects almost instantly. But instead of another cord or a beating heart, I feel a wall of black stone like those of this tower. Slimy and ancient and impenetrable. Protections, I realize, put in place to guard the enchantment.
But they will not stand against me.
With everything I have, I push against the walls of power. The shadows groan and creak, as if they are made of rusted iron. Kal winces, his body tightening. The enchantment gives way another inch beneath the pressure of my magic. Then another. My limbs begin to shake, sweat pouring down my neck and soaking the back of my dress. But I will not give in. I will sever these chains. The groaning intensifies, like nails against glass. The scent of ice and frosted stone that I know is the enchantment’s magic burns in my lungs. I’m getting closer. The protections are so thin now. Beneath them, I can feel the brittle heart of the enchantment thrumming. All I need do is—
The sound hits before the pain. It’s a whip-crack in the thick, misty air. I am thrown backward, my concentration broken. My back finds the opposite wall of the tower and my spine and skull connect with stone. My vision blares white. All I can think or see or feel is white. And then red. And then pain. Then nothing.
“My court.” Candied sunlight glints on the jewels in his rings. The Briar rose on his signet flashes scarlet. “Graces.”
There’s a tremulous ripple in the sea of gilded eyes and powdered necks. Mariel’s knuckles on the arms of her throne go white.
“Would you not agree, Graces, that the Crown shelters you?” Tarkin pins a cerulean-haired Grace with his attention until she squeaks out an answer.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Do we not honor you with our patronage? Value you above all else in this realm?”
Other murmurs of assent, laced with a slinking undercurrent of unease. I can smell it in the air. Like rotting seaweed.
“Then I am utterly befuddled,” the king goes on, false concern dripping from each word, a tone I recall from our meeting in the war room, “as to why one of you would want to openly flout the laws that keep you safe. Why you would bite the hand that so lovingly feeds you. Surely such flagrant disrespect cannot go unpunished.” He lifts the chin of a pleasure Grace with two meaty fingers. “What say you?”
The Grace’s deep brown skin is waxy beneath her armor of golden paint. She hesitates, but only for a heartbeat. “The realm is generous to us, Your Majesty. It deserves our service.”
Tarkin weighs the words. The tips of his crown shine like spears.
“My thoughts exactly.” He releases the Grace, and I can just glimpse her shoulders drooping. “We deserve your service. The Grace Laws are in effect for your protection. To keep those away who would want to monopolize your gift. To keep you here, in Briar, where we can make certain of your well-being. Where we can keep you in the comfortable lives every Grace should enjoy.”
“Not my life,” I mutter. Laurel elbows me.
Tarkin motions to Mariel. The Briar Queen sits taller at his recognition, but her expression remains stony. “My queen and I are much distressed, then, to learn of a Grace who has defied those laws—not once, but twice.”
Graces pivot right and left like snared rabbits, desperate to discern which one of them might be missing.
A side door bursts open and a Grace is hauled inside between two guards. Her simple woolen dress—a far cry from the usual Grace wardrobe—is torn at the sleeves, dirt smeared at the knees and bodice. I know I’ve seen that shade of hair before. A deep russet, with bright threads of crimson and gold.
A name begins to rustle at the outskirts of the crowd as soon as it lands in my mind.
Narcisse.
The music Grace I met at Aurora’s dinner.
Laurel’s fingernails dig into my flesh.
“Narcisse.” Even Tarkin’s booming bass is hardly audible over the rush of mutterings and shifting bodies. “Of Willow House. You stand before your peers charged with violating the Grace Laws. What say you?”
The guards shove her to her knees. Narcisse cries out, the heels of her palms skidding against the jeweled marble floor. Mistress Lavender inhales sharply.
“I did not mean to offend Your Majesty.” Her voice is barely more than a kitten’s mewl. It has nothing of the melodious ring I heard when we met before.
Tarkin looks to the mezzanine of nobles and shrugs. “She did not mean to offend.”
Laughter follows, and I wince. It’s the same fanged sort of laughter that’s hounded me for years.
“I find that hard to believe, Your Grace.” Tarkin rubs his chin. “Seeing as this was not your first offense against the Crown.” More mumblings from the nobles. Narcisse looks confused. “Indeed, two years ago, you were accused of refusing to use your gift. Isn’t that right?”
“I— I—” Narcisse looks to her sisters, chin wobbling. But no one can help her now. “I was never charged. I made a mistake. I was afraid.”
“Afraid?” Tarkin presses a hand to his heart. “What have you to fear in this realm?”
Laurel and I exchange a look. Everything. She has everything to fear.
Narcisse is weeping openly now, tears leaving tracks in the dirt on her face. “Willow House was slipping in the standings. I didn’t want to be sent to a lesser house if my elixirs were weakening. And so I asked our housemistress if I could limit my patron appointments. But I never—” She chokes on a sob. “I was taking two dozen appointments a day. I would have Faded if my patron list didn’t lessen.”
Two dozen appointments. That’s more than even Rose might see in a day. Do all the greater houses require such a schedule from their Graces? Narcisse was cruel to me at Aurora’s dinner, carelessly so. But I’d never thought of what she might be enduring beneath her mask of haughty vanity.
“Do we not provide for our Faded Graces?” A trap wrapped in velvet.
“It isn’t the same,” Narcisse insists. “The best a Faded Grace can hope for is a marriage or to become a housemistress. But I couldn’t count on either.”
“And so you acted out of greed?”
“No.” She shakes her head. Bits of copper dance in her hair. “No, I—”
But Tarkin doesn’t let her go on. He circles her like a winged Fae-beast from a story, gluttonous and ready to dive. “And then, after we granted you clemency for your infraction—allowed you to keep working and earning in your house—you attempted to leave the realm. No doubt to sell your blood across the sea and grow rich.”
Narcisse swallows. Musters the last of her strength. “It was the only thing I could do.”
A splash of heat lands on my wrist. I look to Laurel. A single tear quivers at her jawline, glittering in the sunlight.
“It was not, in fact, the only thing.” Tarkin’s grin is wolfish. He knows he’s won. “It was betrayal. Treason to the Crown. And you admit it.” His attention swivels to his audience. “I’ve summoned you today”—he rubs his thumb over the Briar rose on his signet ring—“because these Grace trials grow tiresome.”
Tiresome? It’s rare to hear of a Grace facing punishment, much less being brought to trial. A few Graces around me look puzzled, too.
“I have consulted with the Grace Council, and we are in agreement. No matter how severe the punishment, Graces continue to break the law. I mean to stop it. Once and for all.”
A few cheers sound from the mezzanine. Probably from the members of the Grace Council. Laurel stands straighter.
“Narcisse.” Tarkin wears the same look he wore when commissioning my service, and a chill needles between my shoulder blades. “You attempted to steal from the Crown when you tried to remove yourself from the realm.” More grunts of agreement from the nobles. “And so the Crown is just in taking what it rightfully owns. You, obviously, cannot be trusted.”
Dozens of vibrant Grace heads bend toward one another, trying to sort out what the king means. I find Aurora. Her lips are pressed together into a firm line.
“You, Narcisse, have forfeited your gift. You will be bled until you Fade, your blood used immediately in elixirs for the Crown.”
A heartbeat of stunned silence. And then the room explodes. The nobles are shouting and jeering. A few Graces faint, falling into one another like wilting flowers. Narcisse begins to wail, crumpling in a boneless puddle as the guards work to heave her upright.
“She will die!” a Grace pleads. “You will kill her!”
And it seems even a few of the nobles agree. Cries against the king’s decision ring sharp and clear across the hall. Tarkin ignores them.
My arm wraps around Laurel’s waist, expecting her to sway and falter. But she is rigid, steel-spined and eyes blazing. Mariel rubs her temples, her true age eating through the veil of countless Grace elixirs and revealing a bone-weary woman Leythana would not recognize as her kin. And Aurora—Aurora looks like it is everything she can do to remain seated. She closes her eyes and breathes in short, staccato bursts as several healing Graces enter the hall.
“Remember.” The king’s voice soars above the muddle. “She brought this on herself.” He jabs a finger at the Graces. “Let it be a warning.”
As if struck by lightning, Narcisse flares to life and tries to bolt, bare feet slapping the marble as her earsplitting shrieks threaten to cleave me in half. The guards are faster, catching her around the middle and swinging her back as her legs kick in the air.
And then one of the healing Graces pulls on a pair of thick leather gloves. She produces a wooden box, opens the lid, and extracts the very same golden bracelet I cursed for the king.
The room tilts and I waver with it.
No, no, no, no.
Dragon’s teeth, it was never a bracelet.
It was a shackle.
“No, no!” Narcisse’s screams are knives of panic.
The healing Grace fixes the shackle to Narcisse’s wrist. The paralysis curse hits instantly. Narcisse stills all at once, the echo of her wails ringing against my eardrums. The guards strap her to a table, and one of the healing Graces begins arranging a series of elaborate tubes. The other produces a long needle and punctures the fragile skin on the underside of Narcisse’s elbow. And then her golden Grace blood begins to flow, gushing through the tubes and dribbling into waiting vials.
Marigold collapses at the sight of so much Grace blood lost. Years and years of gift. Rose doesn’t move to help her. Like Laurel, Rose is all defiance and fury, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. But I see beneath the gilt powder on her cheeks and neck, the sallow ravages of the bloodrot. Know that what she’s doing, trying to alter her power, is a violation of the Grace Laws. She could be in Narcisse’s place in an instant.
Some of the Graces press toward the doors, but the guards keep them back. Not even the swooning Graces are carried out. Soon, the hall reeks of rancid bile and salty tears and thick, musty fear. Even the nobles are affected. Some clamor for Tarkin to ease the punishment once a half-dozen vials are filled with Narcisse’s blood. He does not. Not until that sparkling river of gold dulls. Until the roots of Narcisse’s fire-touched hair bleed silver. Only then are the doors opened and the rest of us allowed to file out, dazed and sick.
But I cannot move, transfixed by the sight of the shackle I cursed. I helped do this. Narcisse is unbound, her wooden limbs falling in unnatural angles as she slides from the table. No one even bothers to keep her head from smacking the tile. Tarkin is the one who ordered the bleeding, I tell myself. He would have done it with or without my curse. And yet he used it. He used me. And I let him.
As if called by my thoughts, the Briar King’s gaze finds mine in the thinning crowd.
He dips his chin to me, and smiles.
* * *
—
I cannot think. My skin feels too tight for my body. Narcisse’s screams chase me through the rest of the day and night. The sticky-sweet scent of her blood scalds my nostrils. The next morning, the Graces and I drift through the corridors of Lavender House in a fog. Even the patrons are skittish and avoid eye contact. Many of mine don’t show.
With nothing to do, I ricochet around my Lair, biting my nails to bits as I count the hours until nightfall, when Mistress Lavender takes the Graces with her to a party given at another house. After what happened yesterday, I can’t imagine that it will be much more than dull-eyed Graces drinking away the blood-soaked memories.
But the trial will soon be behind me. When I first began cursing items for the king, it was easy to convince myself that it was his hand committing the violence. The same way that it’s my patrons who decide how to use the elixirs I craft for them. But watching my curse used against Narcisse, her stiff, splayed limbs and silver blood pooling beneath her…I can no longer deny my own responsibility.
There is only one thing to be done.
Once I’m sure the house is empty, I gather the largest, strongest sack I can find, race up to my room, and throw in what meager belongings I care about. A few spare, worn dresses. An extra cloak. Then I’m back in my Lair, shoveling all my earnings from my safe into the sack—years’ worth of gold, plus the king’s commissions. When I toss the last coin in, the damn sack is so heavy I cannot lift it. I Shift, sending strength into my back and shoulders and arms. The muscles grow hot, stretching and expanding and bulging against the fabric of my dress. When I’m done, the sack is as light as a pillow. I sling it onto one shoulder, then take Callow from her perch and settle her on the other. Her anxious talons dig into my flesh.
I creep around the back of the kitchen and through the side gate, my hood close around my face as I tear through the Grace District, dodging late-night deliveries and irritable carriage drivers. The oil lamps are lit, casting slick pools of light on the cobbled streets. My skin itches, instinct begging me to Shift to invisibility. But I don’t think I could manage such a difficult Shift the whole way to the tower. And it would make me even more conspicuous—my sack and Callow floating in midair. So I settle on my beggar woman disguise, spine protesting as it hunches under the heavy sack.
I look back only once, when I pass through Briar’s main gates for the last time. The moon tonight is high and full, bathing the Grace District in its ethereal light. The shadow of the palace falls hard on its rooftops. Torchlight flickers over the openmouthed dragon gargoyles perched on the palace’s eaves and ripples over stained-glass windows. One of them is Aurora’s.
My heart stutters, urging me for the first time away from this plan. I’d written her a dozen notes, tossing each one into the fire when my nerve failed. I can’t explain to her why I’m leaving—that I’m little better than the Briar King’s minion. That he will require worse from me, and I’ll have little choice but to comply. Aurora would hate me. Coward that I am, I can’t stomach the thought.
Callow ruffles her wings against my cheek.
It isn’t safe for us here anymore.
But I whisper a vow that I will return when Aurora is queen. When things are different.
* * *
—
The tower is easy to spot, jutting up against the obsidian of the calm sea. My heart beats faster with every step. Knowing that what I’m about to do will change my life forever.
Moonlight streams through the gap in the wall, glinting off bits of broken stone in the staircase. The tattered banners billow and sigh in the night breeze like wraiths.
The darkness undulates and Kal materializes, his worried gaze divided between Callow and the sack I dump unceremoniously on the ground. “What is this?”
“We have to leave Briar.” I let my Shift fade away and relax back to my true form, muscles cooling and skin shrinking. “Tell me how to break your bonds.”
Kal can only stare. His shadow chains move at haphazard angles. “What happened?”
Quickly, I fill him in on Narcisse’s trial and the shackle I cursed, one eye on the entrance to the tower as I do. Part of me believes Endlewild or the king’s guard will storm in at any moment and drag me back to the castle to execute me or lock me in a cell. But there is only the lapping of waves on stone. The brine-stained, wintry kiss of the night.
“I thought I understood what I was doing. But I didn’t expect…I didn’t know—”
“There is no need to explain.” Kal’s shadows coil into him. He pauses, looking out at the clear, star-crusted night sky. “And I agree. The king’s requests will only worsen. I do not want him thinking you are a pawn he can control. But are you certain this is what you want? The last time we spoke it seemed—”
“No.” I cut him off so suddenly that Callow clacks her annoyance. “It’s time. I have enough gold for us to board the next ship out. The only thing left is to break your bindings—if I can.”
He closes the distance between us. “You already know what to do.”
“Can’t you tell me anything more than that?”
But that infuriating stillness engulfs him again. His lips mash together until they’re bloodless.
“Of course you can’t,” I mutter, raking my hands through my hair in frustration. “What kind of prison would it be if you could tell someone how to free you?”
I begin to pace back and forth, wracking my mind for what I know about Kal’s past and his bindings. As if they know they’re the subject of scrutiny, the dark tendrils curve and wend in a macabre dance around his body. My magic strains in its cage, aching to tear them to pieces. Grind them to dust.
I wheel to a halt, upsetting Callow.
Perhaps I can do just that.
The enchantment is bred from magic. And I can find magic. Control it. My power is Vila. Strong enough to build Malterre. To create an entire race even the Etherians could not crush.
Cobbling together what little confidence I have, I focus on the writhing shadows, reaching my magic out to find theirs. It connects almost instantly. But instead of another cord or a beating heart, I feel a wall of black stone like those of this tower. Slimy and ancient and impenetrable. Protections, I realize, put in place to guard the enchantment.
But they will not stand against me.
With everything I have, I push against the walls of power. The shadows groan and creak, as if they are made of rusted iron. Kal winces, his body tightening. The enchantment gives way another inch beneath the pressure of my magic. Then another. My limbs begin to shake, sweat pouring down my neck and soaking the back of my dress. But I will not give in. I will sever these chains. The groaning intensifies, like nails against glass. The scent of ice and frosted stone that I know is the enchantment’s magic burns in my lungs. I’m getting closer. The protections are so thin now. Beneath them, I can feel the brittle heart of the enchantment thrumming. All I need do is—
The sound hits before the pain. It’s a whip-crack in the thick, misty air. I am thrown backward, my concentration broken. My back finds the opposite wall of the tower and my spine and skull connect with stone. My vision blares white. All I can think or see or feel is white. And then red. And then pain. Then nothing.
