Malice, page 28
“It’s something we discovered when we were writing to each other.” Aurora crosses her arms and gives me a pointed look. “He agreed to come to Briar. If his kiss worked, we would not be married, but we would work closely together during my reign. As a younger son of Ryna, he likely wouldn’t be king in his own right. But he could be an ambassador of sorts here. We could share ideas, strengthen relations with all realms, create a better world for both peoples. All without marriage.”
The fight goes out of me in a single breath, leaving my limbs like rubber.
“You never told me.”
“You never let me! Any time I mentioned Elias you did nothing but argue and bait me. You hated him as soon as I spoke his name.”
I focus on the Briar roses stitched on the rug, ashamed. Dragon’s teeth, I’d been so wrapped up in jealousy that I didn’t believe in her.
“It doesn’t matter now.” She kneads her thumb over her thorned curse mark. “I decided before he arrived that I will have some control over my own life in these last months. Regardless of the outcome, Elias would be the last man I kiss.”
“But…” My chin trembles, imagining Aurora’s lifeless form laid out on a funeral pyre, her face waxy and body stiff. “Briar. You’re the last heir.”
“Yes, and I’ve been the last heir for some time now. My mother must have some arrangement with the Etherians. They have to start including me in those negotiations. I will do everything I can to help them establish the next ruler. I have a few months. We’ll find a solution. Think of it this way”—she picks up a bottle on her dressing table and sets it down again—“I’ll have no daughters. And there’s no extended family remaining—my mother’s sisters have all passed. And so I’m ending the curse forever.”
My mouth goes dry. “No.”
“For the last twenty years of my life, every waking moment has been centered on this curse.” A stubborn curl spills out of a loose pin. The spun gold shines in the candlelight. “I may be a spoiled princess. But it hasn’t been a life. Not at all. Did you know that even when I was a child, visiting dignitaries would kiss me? And their sons?”
A sour feeling churns in my stomach.
“Indeed.” She smiles, but it’s weak. “One never knows when a true love will appear. I had a great-aunt whose curse was lifted at the age of eight by a man thirty years her senior.”
Eight. Hilde’s long-ago words about Graces being cursed instead of blessed float back to me, and I wonder if the same could be said about the cure for Aurora’s curse.
“Since I could read, I’ve been drilled in the stories of the women before me. Who lived, who died, who found their true love and at what age and how.” She sucks in a breath and exhales slowly. “I have had enough. Even with you, the one place I had a rest from court, all we did was talk about the curse.”
No wonder she’d been only half interested in the books during her last visits. I’d accused her of giving in to the Crown. Of wanting Elias. The last stone of my doubt collapses into itself. I am a fool. A selfish, utter fool. “That’s why you stopped coming.”
“No.” Aurora closes the distance between us and grasps my shoulders. “I told you the truth. My mother employed every snare she knew to keep me locked inside these walls. She even had a spinning wheel brought in so that I could better understand Ryna’s silk trade.” The veiled object in her sitting room. “But I should have sent word. I’m sorry for that.”
She owes me no apology. Her hands fall away, leaving cold spots in their wake. “You can’t just stop accepting suitors.” I think of the king. Of how easily he outmaneuvered me. “They won’t allow it.”
Her expression hardens. She’s thought about this a great deal, I realize. And the blood of her ancestors pumps from her heart. Warrior queens. “They can try what they like. But I will see no more. These last months are mine.”
Aurora goes to the window, pulling open the gossamer curtains and looking out into the garden below. It’s the same one where we first met, though the fountain has been restored. The gurgling water has been dyed lavender for the celebrations—as though the incident with mud never happened.
“When I’m not helping with the succession, I plan to do exactly as I please. Until it’s time.” There’s an undercurrent of anxiety in her words, but her body is rigid. She turns to me, moonlight lending a halo around her form. “And there’s only one person I plan to kiss.”
“I thought you said—”
And then her finger is on my lips. My heart kicks up, fire racing through her fingertip and into my bloodstream. I can only stare down, cross-eyed, at my nose.
“I want to kiss you, Alyce.” I can hardly hear her over the stampede in my ears. I drag my gaze up. Her eyes are an indigo-amethyst and glimmering with something I can’t name. The neckline of her bodice rises and falls in a rhythm that matches my own. “You’re the first and last person I’ve ever wanted.”
I cannot feel my feet. That is the only thought that loops through my mind as her face nears. I will fall. My legs are numb. This cannot be real.
But the scent of her washes over me, lilies and apples and cool, night things. Another lock of her hair wriggles loose of its fastening and drops to brush against my arm. Tentative, her hands cup the underside of my jaw, thumbs tracing my cheekbones. I close my eyes. No one has ever touched me like this before. I expect her to pull away at the clamminess of my skin. The flaky, scaly surface of me. But she only leans closer, the space between us as thin as any hope I’ve ever dared dream.
“Will you kiss me, Alyce?”
My heart is a wild thing. Fast as a hummingbird, steady as a hammer. It will break me in half. Burst out of my chest and flail on the rug like a caught fish. And I would be glad of it.
Logic and reason scream at me to pull away. This is the crown princess. We live in two different worlds and we could never—but my lips have other ideas.
Aurora yelps as my mouth crushes against hers, and then she tightens her hold on my neck. My own hands reach up, not sure where to go, but knowing that they must go somewhere. Must do something to pull Aurora closer to me. One snakes into her hair, uncaring as pins scratch and scrape me. The other finds her waist, wrapping tight and reeling her in. She tastes of warm sugar and the dry, fizzy wine from the celebration downstairs. Of hope and freedom and everything lacking in my life.
A rumble reverberates through my bones as I deepen the kiss, both petrified and electrified at my own boldness. An entirely new sound escapes Aurora’s throat, traveling from her mouth into mine in a way that will be my undoing. She slumps a little. I hold her up, parting her lips with my tongue and exploring the velvet within. She pushes me backward, until I’m flat against the wall, her hands spreading wildfire down from my neck and over the sides of my breasts. Her teeth find my earlobe. The furious cadence at my throat.
It’s then that I notice the shaking.
The rumbling I’d thought was my own tremulous body is real. The wall is vibrating behind my shoulder blades. The candle on Aurora’s dressing table teeters, then whooshes out as it crashes to the floor.
Aurora is kissing the skin above my neckline, every nerve aflame, but I push her away, motioning at the fallen candle as I try to catch my breath. Her eyes fly wide, swollen lips parting in a silent gasp. The quaking intensifies. We grab for each other before we tumble to the carpets. Glass pops as fissures map their way across the dressing-table mirror. Windowpanes implode. I throw myself over Aurora, shielding her from soaring bits of glass. Books and vases clatter to the rugs. The walls groan, and for a moment I’m worried they will cave and bring the ceiling down to crush us both.
But then, just as suddenly as it started, everything stops. Aurora lifts her face from the crook of my shoulder.
“Was that—something from the sea?” It is the only thing I can guess. A massive wave, or a squall. A ship turned back into a dragon by some fantastical bit of magic.
But Aurora doesn’t answer. She’s staring at her arm, her sleeve yanked up to her elbow.
“Are you hurt?” I bend down, inspecting the spot, but there is only clear, unbroken skin. No glass. No cut or bruise.
And then it hits me.
Aurora’s eyes shine as they meet mine. “It’s gone.” She lets out a sob. Tears glisten on her cheeks. “You broke the curse.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“No.” It seems the only word I’m capable of speaking. Because what Aurora is saying is impossible. “I didn’t. I couldn’t have. You must have done something.”
She grins, pressing our foreheads together. “Yes. I kissed you. And you kissed me. And it broke the curse.”
I pry her fingers loose and put as much distance between us as I can. “That’s impossible.”
Aurora laughs, giddy. “Why do you doubt it? The mark is gone. I feel—” She takes a long, deep breath in. “Incredible. Lighter than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Because of you.”
“Not because of me.”
“Why not?”
“Because”—my chest tightens—“because my magic can only accomplish wickedness. I’m part Vila. I don’t break curses.” I cross my arms, choking on the bitterness of my next words. “I make them.”
Aurora pads across the rugs. Glass crunches under her feet. A frigid wind snakes through the jagged holes in the windows, billowing the curtains.
“Maybe the curse breaking has nothing to do with your magic,” she whispers along my jawline, “and everything to do with this.”
Her lips meet mine and that same jolt of lightning forks through me. I want to wrap my arms around her and never let go. Lose myself in the honey taste of her mouth and the addictive scent of her skin. But this is madness. I push her back.
Aurora traces circles over the place where her mark used to be. “You know, I always wondered about the true love stipulation of the curse.” She picks up a candlestick. A handful of pins. “Even before I lost my sisters, I would read about the queens who ruled before us. They had one thing in common: terrible marriages.”
When I think of Tarkin and Mariel, I’m hardly surprised.
“It confused me. After all, it was the Etherians who softened the original death curse. Theirs is light magic. If true love could break the curse, why couldn’t it last? Had the Vila’s magic somehow soured that love even after the curse was broken?”
The back of my neck prickles.
“But then, as I grew older and watched my parents, I realized that it wasn’t the light Fae or the Vila who were to blame for the love lost between the royal couples. It was the humans themselves. Briar is an isolated realm. Consumed with our own importance and wealth—that’s what undermined the marriages of the other queens. Not some magical force outside their control.” She relights the candle. “Once I figured that out, I stopped fearing my own death. Instead, I was afraid that I would find my true love. And that I would have to watch that love corrupt and re-form into something ugly. That’s why I insisted on breaking the curse myself and ruling alone.” She pauses. Holds my gaze. “But tonight that fear is gone.”
I can hardly breathe around my desire to believe what she says. The distance between us hums, both too much and not enough.
“Do you trust me?” Aurora asks.
“Yes,” my heart answers for me.
“Then you’ll stay with me. Rule beside me?”
“Rule?” I hold on to her bedpost to steady myself. I’d barely begun to imagine myself as her actual true love, let alone ruler of Briar.
“Princesses always marry those who break their curse, don’t they?”
“They marry dukes and earls and princes,” I correct. “Who then become kings. And you said you didn’t want to marry.”
Aurora raises an eyebrow. “Well, I wish to marry you. Two queens of Briar. What could be better?”
A hundred thousand things. Even if I did accept her offer, the rest of Briar would revolt against me. I’d be dragged out and burned alive. Aurora has no idea what she’s asking. There’s never been a queen like me—never could be one.
But her lips land on mine before I can argue. “You said you trusted me.”
And I do. Enough to drown myself in that depthless, forget-me-not gaze, in the taste of summer berries on her lips, and never look back. Like a fool, I nod.
“Good.” She threads her fingers through mine. “Come with me.”
Does she mean to tell her parents tonight? This moment? My blood turns to ice water and I balk as she tries to drag me away. “We’re not—we can’t.”
She waves away my worry, guessing my thoughts. “Not now, no. But they’ll be coming to check on me soon. I’m surprised they haven’t already, with all that racket. And I don’t want them to find us yet.”
Find us. My heart thumps.
“Tonight”—she pulls me close, whispers in my ear—“is only ours.”
* * *
—
We take the servants’ halls, keeping our heads down and our feet swift. But they all must be tending to other matters, for we pass no one on our way to the abandoned library. Anticipation skitters down my spine and burrows into my bones as we enter. I have never been alone with anyone like this. Never thought that I would be.
Aurora lights some of the fat, dripping candles, their paltry glow cutting through the gloom. It seems the blast that broke the curse reached even this ancient part of the palace, though it isn’t as bad as in Aurora’s rooms. Many of the books were shaken free from their shelves and lie in haphazard piles on the shabby rugs. A rusted chandelier groans as it swings back and forth, one of its moorings pried loose.
I need something for my hands to do, so I set a table right and pick up the books that spilled. “Did you know it would be like this? The curse breaking.”
“No.” Aurora rubs her upper arms against the chill. “My mother spoke of a slight wind. And there are records of light. Music sometimes. It’s different for everyone.”
“But it was so violent this time.”
“Yes.” Aurora appears at my side, gently stilling me. I let the book fall, forcing my gaze to hers despite the flock of birds in my stomach. “Maybe it’s ended for good.”
Her long, graceful fingers comb through my hair, freeing it from its braid. I lean into her touch, craving more. Scared of the way my pulse races, chest aching like it might explode.
“You’re beautiful, Alyce.”
I stiffen. “No. Nothing like you.”
She smiles softly. Sadly, almost. “Me? I have no idea what I look like.”
“What do you mean?” The palace has no shortage of mirrors.
“The moment I was born, the Graces were summoned. Every inch of my body is planned. The length of my legs. The width of my hips. My hair color. I think I was born with black hair, actually. I know my mother was.” She examines the tip of a curl. “So what you see isn’t much better than a trick. Turning a regular child into a beautiful princess with a few drops of magic.”
I turn this over carefully in my mind. In her own way, Aurora is a Shifter, too.
“Sometimes I think about letting the Grace elixirs wear off,” she muses. “But I’ve never gotten very far. Whenever anyone notices even a hint of a blemish, I find a fresh bottle of beauty elixir on my breakfast tray. And if I ignore that”—she grimaces—“they slip it into my tea.”
A prisoner in a lovely cage.
“But you”—Aurora unbuttons my sleeve and traces the underside of my forearm in a way that makes my blood sing—“are entirely natural. I want you just like this. Always.”
Before I can stop her, she lifts my hand to her lips and kisses each fingertip, slow and deliberate and sure. Heat bursts at that satin-softness, rolling up my arms and down my back. Her mouth moves to my palm. To the tender skin of my wrist, where every nerve is alive and thrumming. Her teeth bite down and I cannot wait any longer.
Letting all my jittery hesitation disintegrate, I grab Aurora by the waist and pull her close. My lips stumble into hers, bruising as the intoxicating taste of her fills my mouth. She deepens the kiss, her hands roving down my back and snarling in my laces. I let go of her only long enough to untie them, the front of my dress gaping open. She yanks at my sleeves until they’re hanging at my sides, and then there’s only my shift beneath.
Instinctively, my arms go over my body, hiding skin that looks like spoiled milk. Green veins like the poorly made seams of some grotesque doll.
“No. I’m—” Disgusting. Hideous. Vila.
The wounds from my early years split open and ooze. The horrified stares I receive from the courtiers at the palace—from my own patrons, paying me for the very blood that brands me a monster. I don’t want Aurora to look at me that way.
But she does not. Her eyes are so bright, like violet stars. She steps away and fusses with the fastenings at her back. The gown drops from her shoulders and pools like ink at her feet.
I cannot breathe.
Her moon-stained skin, soft and unbroken and utterly perfect. Without thinking I reach out and run my fingers along her pearlescent bare arm, gasping at the sensation. At the image of my greenish, scaly skin against her unblemished marble. But Aurora is not repulsed. Gently, she tugs my other arm down, ignoring my noise of protest—or terror. Her hands explore my exposed chest, clever fingers slipping under the straps of my shift and easing them off my shoulders. My heart is beating so hard, I’m sure she can hear it. The entire palace probably can, and they’ll storm in here at any minute and drag us apart.
But I can’t think about that once Aurora leans in and kisses my neck. A sound I’ve never made before escapes me, and I grapple for purchase, finding the slippery fabric of her shift that is so close to her skin I might combust. Aurora finds the dip of my waist. The sides of my breasts, her thumb caressing those curves in agonizing circles. Her lips follow, on my sternum, over my stomach, until she is kneeling and looking up at me, her expression like she’s worshipping a goddess.
