Malice

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