Malice

keeps me—the way that I am. And I require no payment to train you.”
Distrust flares like a match striking. Nothing is free, I’ve learned that well enough. I lower the sack, narrowing my eyes. “Why not?”
Kal stares at me. Shadows dart between the crooks of his elbows. “We are kin. And I knew your mother well. She would want you to understand your worth.”
“Would she?” I search every crevice of his face, bracing myself for the next question—one that surfaced in the dead of night and hounded me for hours. “You said she came here twenty years ago—before I was even born. That you were going to leave here with her. Are you…did you and she—”
“No, Alyce.” One corner of his mouth rises. And I can’t decide whether the feeling in my gut is relief or disappointment. “You and I are related only through our breed of magic. This enchantment prevents me from…”
My neck burns. “You don’t need to go on.”
Kal clears his throat. “Very well. Your mother discovered me just as you did. And she trained with me for the same purpose you are here now.”
“You said she tried to free you and died for it. Would you ask the same of me?”
A wave crashes against the tower and Kal looks longingly to the horizon. “I will not ask anything you are not willing to give. I am alone here.” The shadows encircle his wrists like shackles. “It is enough to have some company for a time. To honor Lynnore. And then, when the time is right, if you feel that you could sever my bindings—” He lets out a shaky breath, as if the thought itself is too fragile to entertain for long. “I would be in your debt.”
I turn his words over and sideways, looking for evidence of deceit. “How are you so sure I’m a Shifter? I have a book that says Shifters have gills and hairless bodies and—”
He raises an eyebrow. “And I take it the author saw a Shifter in its true form?”
Silence is all the answer Kal needs.
“I thought not. Shifters almost never inhabit their original shapes. Only those so young they have not yet learned how to Shift. They embody a form similar to that of one of their parents.” His expression softens with regret. “You resemble Lynnore so much it hurts.”
The cry of a gull slices through the air.
I chew my lips, unwilling to accept what he says as truth. That Endlewild was right—I’m no better than the monsters in the book.
“If you train me, will you help me leave Briar?” The desire that’s wrecked my heart since I first watched the ships leaving the harbor and knew I could never board one.
“If you let me teach you…” Kal inches as close as he dares. Callow skitters sideways, flaring her wings. “Your power will be unstoppable. You could bring the Etherian Mountains tumbling into the sea.”
A tremor at the base of my skull tells me this is too good to be true. But I want to believe. So very badly. A bell sounds from the faraway harbor, warning of the coming storm. One day, I could be aboard one of those ships. Not the Dark Grace. Just Alyce. Sailing toward a new life.
“All right,” I say at last, smothering logic and instinct with both hands. “Prove that you can do what you say.”
Kal’s smile is a slash of white in the gloom of his shadows. “We will begin with your Vila magic. It will be hard for you to Shift at first—you have been in your human form for many years. Some Shifters, when they are too long in one shape, forget how to change back.”
“You mean—will I never be able to Shift?”
“Do not trouble yourself about it now. Typically, such a thing only occurs when a Shifter spends too long as an animal. The primal instinct takes over. But tell me of your Vila magic. How are you accessing your power now?”
“Like the Graces do. I craft elixirs with my blood.”
“Like the Graces…” Kal blinks at me a few times, his mouth opening and closing. My shoulders hunch up to my ears as he studies me. “Give me an example.”
Licking my lips, I tell him about my last run of patrons. The elixirs for blemished skin and limp curls and frumpy figures, each sounding pettier than the last. He listens without speaking until I finally run out of steam. Callow’s wings brush my hem, and I know she senses my anxiety. The heavy clouds have finally begun to fissure. Rain drizzles through the gaps in the ceiling. One fat drop lands on my nose. I swipe it away.
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