Malice

at me widens her eyes. Opens her mouth in a soundless scream. And then the floor hurtles up, meeting my shoulder with a sharp crack before the world winks out like a snuffed candle.
Because it was not my face in the water.
It was Aurora’s.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next day, all I can think about is Aurora’s reflection where mine should have been. The gentle slope of her nose. The hollow of her unmarred throat. I find myself looking for her in every mirror, startled when it’s my own sallow face in the glass.
I’m so distracted that I’m a half-hour late for one patron, and another has to ring the bell until it practically snaps off its cord before I answer. Three broken jars of enhancements later, I’m slogging through teatime, unable to eat a bite as Rose’s vapid court gossip washes over me.
“Alyce?”
When I look up, I find that the entire table is staring at me. My ears burn.
“Sorry,” I mumble, stirring another sugar cube into my tea and grabbing an apricot tart in the hopes that the jolt of sweetness will keep my mind from drifting. Marigold snickers.
“As I was saying,” Mistress Lavender continues, “Delphine will be rescheduling your afternoon patrons.” She slides an envelope across the table, her eyebrows arching up over her half-moon spectacles. “You have a summons from the palace.”
The flaky pastry crust balls in my mouth and glues itself to the back of my throat.
Day summons are rare, the court preferring me to ease their loved ones into death beneath the shroud of nightfall. Accidents happen, I tell myself. Sudden illnesses.
But then I see that the parchment bears a violet wax seal imprinted with a dragon in flight. The royal crest. The apricot jam sours on my tongue.
“Don’t keep them waiting,” Marigold croons.
I don’t bother to fire back a retort. And I don’t trust my voice even if I had one ready. I leave the rest of my plate and drag myself to my Lair to get my kit, then trudge through the streets of the Grace District. This autumn is colder than most. Everyone else is already wrapped in their early winter furs, but I feel nothing of the chill. Only the sharp-footed dread picking its way along my scalp. Is it Queen Mariel? Has she decided to do more than simply warn me away from her daughter? Or Endlewild—I shudder at the thought of what the Fae ambassador might want.
At the servants’ entrance, I present the summons. But I am not escorted through the usual halls. This time, we break right, directly into the royal wing. The dragon crest glowers at me from every column and windowpane. Other servants and courtiers abruptly change direction when they spot me. My escort unlocks a door to a set of back stairs, and we climb higher and higher, until sweat beads along the back of my neck and between my shoulder blades.
Unnervingly stoic, at last he slows, then ushers me through another narrow entrance. I stop short, face-to-face with a monstrous set of doors carved to look like the rough hide of a dragon. Stone wings flare out from either side of the frame, covered in golden armored scales. A neck as thick as my torso rears up from the tip where the doors meet, the ruby eyes on its head glinting in the torchlight. The handles are taloned feet, with Briar roses branded into the soles. Its jaws are opened in a scream, its mouth huge enough that it could snap me in half.
I shiver, imagining my own emerald blood dripping from between those polished teeth.
Quite against my will, I am pushed inside. And I immediately realize it was no ornamental choice that the doors resembled a dragon. That it seemed as if I was walking into the belly of a beast to enter this room.
Maps line the walls, Briar and several realms beyond the sea. Trade routes and ocean currents. Diagrams of beastly warships and lighter ones built for stealth and speed are pinned beside them. A huge ebony table, the wood shot through with silver, dominates most of the room. It’s littered with papers and waxy candle nubs and discarded quills, their inkpots left carelessly open to dry out. Maps are spread here, too, with bronze markers arranged in intricate formations.
This is the king’s room. The war room.
As per her alliance agreement with the Etherians, Leythana and her heirs cultivated a military renowned throughout the world. But the later queens grew lazy, preferring to spend Briar’s significant coin on gowns and parties and placating their husbands.
Tarkin, though, is different. Before breaking Mariel’s curse, he came from Paladay, a landlocked northern kingdom on the other side of the Carthegean Sea. It is a country famed for its horse trade, as well as its insatiable desire to expand its borders. And the Briar King clearly inherited Paladay’s lust for glory. The War of the Fae was over long before Tarkin came to power, and we’ve had no hint of conflict since. But Tarkin shovels coin at his army as if war could be declared any day. Briar’s forces have tripled in size since he married Mariel, though they have little enough to do but train in the yard, patrol the mountain border, and stage mock battles from the Fae war.
But that knowledge does nothing to calm my rabbit-quick heartbeat as I discover the floor-to-ceiling windows along the right wall. All of Briar sprawls out beneath my unsteady feet: The pastel domed and gabled rooftops of the Grace District, its elegance bleeding dry at the barrier marking the gray, gritty Common District. The thick outer walls of the realm. The sea, vast and unyielding, blurring in smudges of turquoise and indigo on the horizon. Ships the size of my fingernail cutting through the choppy water or bobbing in the harbor. There are no panes on these windows, only clear, unbroken glass, giving the illusion that this room teeters on the top of