Malice

its spread. I may not know much about my heritage, but I’m relatively certain that the key to breaking that curse forever lies with the Vila who cast it. But she isn’t even named in this text. And try as I might, I can’t silence the needling apprehension that I’m somehow linked to her. Somehow responsible for the magic that might kill Aurora.
There’s only one person I can think of who might have answers.
And so on the third day that a patron schedule does not arrive in the morning, I put together a sack of food and return to the black tower before Mistress Lavender can decide I’m more useful assisting the servants.
—
Kal is already waiting for me when I arrive.
“You did not bring your companion.”
“No.” After what happened the last time I’d trained with Kal, I decided to leave Callow behind. She was more than slightly annoyed, and I have the beak-shaped lances on my hands to prove it. “But I’ll tell her you asked after her.”
A shadow brushes my arm, almost playful.
I slough off my pack and roll my shoulders back with a groan.
“That looks heavy,” Kal says. “When you learn to Shift, I can teach you to strengthen your muscles. You will be able to carry far more than that with ease.”
“When can we start?” I rub at the sore spot at the crook of my neck.
“Now, if you like.” His shadows coil around him, betraying his eagerness. And once more I’m struck by what a lonely life it must be for Kal. I complain about my attic room and the resentment of a realm, but Kal has been chained to darkness since the war. Alone for twenty years before I showed up. And who knows how long before my mother arrived. “Have you been practicing at all? Any of your Vila magic?”
“Yes.” He’d love to know how I terrorized Rose’s patrons. But before I can tell him, I recall another patron. Duke Weltross, his eyes glassy and bloodshot, his fragile human magic obliterated beneath my steel-dipped power.
I want to forget the duke. But the words press against the back of my teeth until I have no choice but to spit them out. “I was with a patron. He was sick—dying. I wanted to use my magic the way you taught me. To heal him.” The smell of coppery blood and rancid bile stings my nostrils. The sounds of the duchess’s screams twine with the wind. “But…”
“It went horribly wrong.”
“How did you know?”
Kal moves as close as the darkness will let him. “Because that is not your gift, Alyce. Vila cannot wield light magic, regardless of intent.”
I let out a breath and slump onto a fallen beam. “I thought that’s what you would say. But I wanted to be wrong.”
Stone crunches under Kal’s boots. “Why?”
“Because”—my cheeks burn with the admission—“I wanted…I wanted to be different. I don’t want to be a monster.”
Kal reaches for me, but I’m too far in the sunlight. “You are nothing of the kind. You should be proud of your power. Who else can boast that they punctured a storm cloud with their will alone?”
Unwelcome tears pool, hot and bitter. “And what good did that do anyone? I can only summon pain. Destruction.”
“Who told you that?”
“No one has to tell me,” I rush on. “It’s in every look flung my way. Vila are the worst sort of creature. Everyone knows it.”
He crosses his arms. “Everyone?”
I swipe my forearm across the infuriating dribble at my nose, jerk Aurora’s book out of my sack, and practically throw it at him. “Enough that there are whole books on the subject. How awful and vicious the Vila race was.”
“Not was,” Kal corrects, flipping through the pages. “You still live.”
“Dragon’s teeth, I’m in no mood for wordplay.” A wave pounds against the cliff.
“Are you not?” He snaps the book closed. “Because that is all I see in this book. Lies and trickery. And yet you write it on your heart. Demean yourself because of the opinions of”—he opens the front cover and sneers—“the illustrious Master Walburn. What gives him the right to tell you who you are?”
I don’t know how to answer that. It’s never occurred to me to question the source of the information in my books. But Kal is right. Master Walburn was employed by the royals. Trained, as I was, to despise the Vila. I think of the book Endlewild gave me when I was a child. Who wrote it? Another Etherian who wants me dead?
Without warning, Kal throws Aurora’s book through the gap and into the sea.
“Kal!” I leap after it, catching myself just before I tumble over the edge. “Why did you do that? It doesn’t belong to me.”
“If you want a history lesson, I will provide one.” Shadow laps around him like flame. “But I will not have your mind poisoned any longer. Your mother would be ashamed.”
Dragon’s fucking teeth, Aurora is going to murder me. I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Fine. If you’re such the expert, tell me what really happened.”
There’s a smile in his voice, the bastard. “I am so glad you asked. Tell me, as you are so well-informed, how the first Vila came to be.”
Gritting my teeth, I ramble off the version that now rests at the bottom of the sea.
“Wrong,” Kal interrupts before I’ve finished. “The light Fae was attacked by a Demon, that much is true. But she did not exile herself because of some selfless desire to save her kin.” He laughs. “Her court abandoned her.”
“What?”
The Etherians are known to be crafty, but they are unfailingly loyal to their own. For a light Fae to be cast out of their court is unthinkable.
“Oh, yes. Not the story you know, is it? After the Demon attacked her, the Fae was tainted in their eyes. Her own kind banished her to the edges of Etheria. But she had mated with a high-ranking member of her own court. A powerful Fae lord