Malice, page 9
Kal clasps his hands behind his back, bristling as he paces. “This is exactly what I mean. The Graces have wrangled you into their mold. Repressed your true power.”
An unwanted memory resurfaces. A tight circle of Graces, flinging whispers back and forth as I lay strapped to a bed. A basin rests under each of my arms, catching streams of my blood. Already, my mind is fuzzy. The room blurs. But I can still hear them.
“Do you think that’s too much?”
“No. The Lord Ambassador said we must bleed it out of her. Her blood is that terrible color because of the toxins. The touch of evil. It must be obliterated.”
A wind rips through the tower. The stones groan.
“But the Vila are…were—”
“Lies.” Kal wheels to face me, his shadows sharpening to knifepoints. “All of it lies. I will not have you repeating such filth about your own. Vila blood is worth ten times that of the Etherians. They require those despicable staffs to command their magic. But you—if you have half the power of Lynnore, you will be formidable.”
Thunder rumbles again, closer now, echoing in the emptiness of the tower. My mother carried the same loamy blood that beats at my wrists. A power that could be my key to escaping Briar. The sea churns, pitching waves against the base of the cliff as the storm lumbers inland.
“What do you mean?”
“You are not like those vainglorious Fae bastards, the Graces. They are forced to drain themselves to access their magic. But you are better than that.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I turn away. “They…”
Another memory rears its ugly head. I’m soaked and shivering after they’d dunked me in an ice bath laced with cleansing elixirs and Etherium. Pinned my shoulders as I’d fought and flailed against the vise of panic squeezing my lungs. The fevered, impossible count to one hundred before they finally allowed me to surface. Their hushed conversation as I retched the frigid water back up.
“Something’s wrong.”
“How long was she under?”
“Too long.”
“Not natural.”
And one that I don’t want to think about, but that punches through anyway.
“Is it kinder to just put her down?”
“They tried everything to bring out my power.”
Kal is close enough to touch me. “Everything they knew.” He lifts my chin gently. “Which cannot be much.”
That coaxes a weak smile from my lips.
“Your power is in your blood, Alyce. As with any Vila. You have lost some of your connection to it because you live in the borderlands and not in Malterre where you belong. The realm of your ancestors was thick with dark magic. You could have tapped into it as easily as breathing.”
“That’s why the humans wanted Etheria before Leythana’s reign.”
“Yes. In their ignorance, the mortals believed the power in the Fae courts was tangible. Able to be scooped up and contained. Like an elixir in a bottle. It is not so simple. The magic in Etheria is a living thing, as it was in Malterre.” He takes my hand and traces the stark veins at the inside of my wrist with his alabaster fingers. I don’t pull away. “You are trueborn. You have more than one way of accessing and guiding your magic. Magic that, in your long life, will not Fade. It cannot be bled out and expended the way the Graces’ can.”
“More than one way? All I know are my elixirs. Without enhancements, my power won’t act as I wish.”
“Would it not? Have you never noticed your power working outside of an elixir?” Kal reads my expression. One eyebrow quirks. “Perhaps there has been some sign?”
I tell him about the jug of cream I spoiled. The fountain. The frequent complaints of the healing Graces when I was a child that the effects of my blood were unpredictable and disastrous. It took years before my elixirs started working, and even then the results were often unexpected. Noses grew bumps when hair was supposed to brittle. Toes turned stubby when warts were meant to sprout.
Kal is grinning at me before I’ve finished. “That is because your blood was not meant for elixirs, Alyce. You have never required enhancements to shape your magic.”
I think of all the years I spent testing boiled nettles against carrion crow feathers for a proper ugliness elixir. Mixing swamp water with crushed nightshade. “That can’t be true.”
“It is,” Kal says simply, stoking my frustration. “Your power centers on intent. From what you have told me, it sounds as though you wanted your elixirs to work. And it was that desire, once it was given proper direction, that steered your elixirs. Not the enhancements.”
“No.” My tone is sharp enough that Callow bridles. “I never wanted to be the Dark Grace. No one would—”
“But you did want the experiments to stop. The torture.”
The scar on my middle throbs.
“Yes.”
One of Kal’s shadows creeps forward, curling as though it would caress me. “Do you not see? In your own way, you wanted your magic to behave like a Grace’s. And you wanted it so badly that your power obeyed. You used your true gift without even realizing.”
The crash of the ocean presses against my eardrums. I despise the Graces. But how often did I look in my own spotted mirror and wish I was one of them? How many years did I yearn for my magic to be like theirs?
“If I don’t have to employ enhancements, then how else do I wield my power?”
“Magic is everywhere,” Kal explains, his shadows lively and eager. “Even humans carry a spark of it in their fragile, fickle souls. All you need to do is reach out and find it. Twine it with your own, and you can control it.”
Lightning flashes through the gap in the wall and suspicion sends a tingle down my spine. My skepticism must show in my face.
“Try for yourself.” The storm heaves overhead, the bellies of the clouds deep and rolling. “Your mother likened her power to a tether that lived inside her. An invisible limb, if you will. And she said the magic in other things had their own shape as well. Often, she described them as beating hearts. Some stronger than others. All you need do is find that heart.” He points overhead. “There happens to be a perfectly good source of magic at your fingertips.”
“The storm?” He can’t possibly be serious. “No one can control the weather.”
“Maybe not. But you can control magic. You can already sense the energy pulsing in the air. It will be a small thing to send your power out and find the heart of the storm.”
It doesn’t seem like a small thing to me. A raindrop splatters on my forehead, as if to taunt me.
“Close your eyes,” Kal says. “Trust me.”
Doubt gnaws at me, but a whisper-thin hope sings through it. The Graces shackled me with their gilded chains since the moment I was delivered to the Grace Council. If I can do what Kal says, nothing could stand in my way.
“Feel the charge in the air,” he continues, pacing in the shadows. “Find the magic.”
I squirm, catching only drizzle and the briny wind. “I don’t know what that feels like.”
“You mentioned turning the water in a fountain to mud. What were you feeling then?”
“Anger,” I answer immediately. “Pain.”
“Yes. Your magic has much to do with emotion. Feel something, Alyce. Deep inside. Here.” His hand presses against my abdomen. I gasp. “It will answer you.”
Letting Kal brace me, I try to follow his direction. Every slight and insult and humiliation I’ve ever suffered comes hurtling back to me. The mask crushed beneath Rose’s shoe. The pointy-toothed smiles. The jeers. Rage builds, hot and strong behind my breastbone. There’s something else there, too. Something I’ve never noticed before. A thrumming of darkness, thick and taut like a tightly braided rope. It seems to coil and uncoil at my attention, like Callow pacing on her perch. I concentrate harder and it stretches and lengthens—exactly as my mother described. Another thought and the cord of my magic snakes out of my body and through the air, wriggling past the cracks in the ceiling and out into the clouds. The scents of woodsmoke and loam and leather flood my nose, stronger than I’ve ever smelled them. I can even taste something like charred wood on the back of my throat.
This can’t be real. I would have known if I could do something as miraculous as this. And yet that rope of dark magic obeys as I tell it to veer this way and that. To find what I seek. In fact, my power seems to know what I want better than I do. It navigates the leaden clouds, darting and diving like a fish in the sea until—
There.
My power brushes against another, the impact cold enough to shock. Where mine is a long tether connected to my soul, this one is a knotted ball of energy. An angry thing that hums and vibrates in time with the thunder rolling through the tower.
It’s the storm.
The realization hits me like a slap in the face and my power retreats at my own surprise. But I summon my courage and push it back out. Bid my new dark limb to fist around the storm’s heart. I feel the faint pulse of the storm. The crackle of lightning and the patter of rain. Hazy, bumbling things that could be the storm’s thoughts drift in and out of my consciousness.
Come. I push the command through my own tether and into the storm as hard as I possibly can. My entire body is warm and buzzing. I feel well and truly alive for the first time since I can remember.
The heart of the storm resists.
Come!
A deafening clap of thunder rattles my bones. Callow screams. White flashes across my eyelids. And then the clouds above the tower empty their contents on top of our heads.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Though I wouldn’t have dreamed it possible to crack a storm cloud like an egg, flooding the black tower with rainwater up to my knees, Kal says it was a simple feat. Natural forces like storms are brimming with magic. Their hearts are louder, he’d said, and therefore easier to find. And it had been easy. There were no special incantations. No delicate mix of ingredients, as I use for my elixirs. Everything I thought I knew about my power was false—just as Kal claimed.
Once the rainwater drains through the gap in the wall and back into the sea, I spend the rest of the day experimenting with my newfound abilities. Finding the storm’s heart was simple compared to seeking out other sources of magic—like those in the fallen stones of the tower. It takes a full hour for me to rouse the magic in even one small rock and send it skipping across the waves. The power of the sea breeze is slightly easier. I can tame its evasive heart after a few tries, making small cyclones dance between our ankles.
But like a muscle that’s never been used, my power soon tires. And the deeper a heart of magic is buried within an object—as with the stones—the more control it takes to command. By the time I’m done practicing, there’s a hammering behind my eyes and a strange weakness in my mind that softens my brain until it feels like putty. My whole body aches, as if I’ve run up the Etherian mountain range and down again. Even so, I am exhilarated. And when I at last begin to wander home through the humid haze of the storm’s wake, Callow still bristling over nearly having drowned when the storm emptied on her back, I vow to show Briar exactly what the Dark Grace can do.
* * *
—
I return to Lavender House through back alleys dark enough to hide my face and enter through the kitchen. Cook and the servants have already cleaned up from dinner, but I find an apple and don’t even bother wiping the juice from my chin as I inhale its tart sweetness. I’d eaten all the bread and cheese I’d taken to the tower and am still ravenous. That was another thing Kal warned me about: As my magic wakes, I’ll need more food to fuel it.
I’m more than happy to oblige my hunger and begin rooting around the kitchen, hunting leftover tarts and treats to appease Callow. But a few moments later, Mistress Lavender’s screeching can be heard from the main parlor several doors down. It kills the rest of my appetite. I bid Callow keep quiet and tiptoe closer to the kitchen door, then out into the hallway, melting into the shadows.
“But where is she?” The question bounces off the papered walls. “I can’t send the servant back empty-handed. There will be consequences. The house will be—”
“Here she is. Lurking, as always.”
Dragon’s teeth. I’m usually excellent at hiding. The servants typically glide right past while I’m eavesdropping, as if I’m no more than a window treatment.
Because you’re a Shifter, a nasty part of my mind whispers.
Marigold glares, hands planted on the waist of her honeysuckle dressing gown. “And she has that filthy bird.”
Mistress Lavender explodes into view, silver ringlets springing in every direction. One cheek is still rouged. Her painted lips are smeared, coral pink smudged onto her chin. Someone interrupted her evening toilette. My stomach sours. This cannot bode well for me.
“Alyce, where have you been?” She doesn’t even wait for a response as she grabs my arm and tows me into the parlor. Callow clicks her beak and ruffles her wings, and I struggle to calm her. “Delphine had to reschedule three patrons for tomorrow, so now you’re double booked. If you disappear like that again, you’ll owe the house for the lost time. Do you understand me?”
I mumble my assent, seething at Marigold’s haughty smirk. A servant I don’t recognize waits in a corner, wringing a wine-colored cap in his hands. I’m not sure if his nervousness is because of Mistress Lavender’s fuming or my own presence.
“And you’re needed at the palace. At once.”
“Why?” The servant, a jittery slip of a boy, isn’t wearing royal livery.
“It’s Duke Weltross.” Mistress Lavender drops her voice, shoving a rumpled paper into my free hand while keeping a wary eye on Callow. I register the burgundy seal of the duke’s house and my heart clenches. His wife, the duchess, is often a patron of Lavender House, one of Marigold’s. And I’d heard her husband was ill. I did not think he was ill enough for my sort of treatment. “The duchess sent word. He’s in a bad way, Alyce.”
I don’t have to open the summons to know what Duchess Weltross wants. A swift, gentle passing for her husband. Freedom from her duties as nursemaid. The queasiness that always accompanies my terminal patrons already begins to churn and the ache in my temples increases by tenfold. Dark Grace. Bringer of death.
“My kit is downstairs” is all I can say.
“Marigold, go and fetch it,” Mistress Lavender instructs. “And take the bird with you.”
“But I—” Marigold gapes at Callow like she’s a dragon instead of a tame kestrel. But Mistress Lavender doesn’t let her finish.
“Go! And don’t dawdle. She’s late enough as it is. I’ll fetch her cloak.”
My limbs feel made of lead. I want to refuse this errand. I’m better than this. More than the villain they’ve created. I close my eyes, consider tapping into the magic of the wood and stones and mortar of this house and bringing it all down around their ears.
But I do not. Because I’m a coward.
And so I transfer Callow to Marigold’s trembling arm. My poor kestrel looks as happy about the situation as I am. Marigold winces as Callow’s angry talons pierce the thin silk of her dressing gown, and then she sulks off, muttering to herself and watching Callow like the sullen bird might peck out her eyes. I hope Callow does.
“Where have you been all day?”
The voice makes me jump. I hadn’t noticed Laurel when I came in. She’s tucked herself into a reading chair, the embroidered Briar roses on her wide sleeves gleam in the soft light of a swan-shaped lamp at her side. Her book is still open on her lap.
“You look terrible.”
I almost laugh. Laurel. Graced in wisdom, but not tact.
“I’ve been out.”
“Obviously.” Her stoic gaze lingers on the mud stains splotched up to my knees and the windblown mess of my hair. “If I’d known you insist on making such a state out of all your clothes, I never would have given you that dress.”
Guilt snakes up my throat. I never thanked Laurel for what she did. “I’m sorry about that. And I—” I pause, unused to giving apologies that I mean. “I should have told you how much I appreciated it. The gown was beautiful.”
Laurel shuts her book. “You seemed like you were having a good time in it.”
“Yes.” Happiness ghosts through me, remembering the way Arnley had whirled me around the dance floor. How he looked at me like I was some radiant courtier. And how that look had withered. Laurel guesses the direction of my thoughts.
“Rose is confined to her rooms when she doesn’t have patrons.” One corner of her mouth quirks. “Mistress Lavender didn’t want to punish her in front of the court to protect the reputation of the house, but she received quite the tongue-lashing all the way home.”
“Well, that’s something.” Not enough. But better than nothing.
“And her wages are forfeit until the dress and mask are paid for. And they were very expensive.”
A sliver of satisfaction cuts through my resentment. The punishment won’t harm her Grace standings, but it will keep her from adding to her precious wardrobe. “Now I’m sorry I missed the look on her face.”
Laurel’s grin widens. “It was quite entertaining.”
A warm moment passes between us, one I’m not used to sharing with a Grace. “If Mistress Lavender gives me the money, I’ll pass it along.”
“Keep it.” Laurel waves away the offer. “You’re owed more than that for the night you endured.”
I’m not sure what to say, and so I’m silent, balling up the summons in my fist.
“Rose was wrong.” The silk of Laurel’s dressing gown rustles. “You’re not hated, Alyce. Not by all of us.”
The crisp points of the crumpled parchment dig into my palm. “Not by all,” I answer. “But by enough.”
