Malice

your earnings. I’ll not have the house suffer for your foolishness.”
Marigold looks like she might burst into flame with glee.
“I understand.” I incline my head even as the punishment stings. Given that my patrons will traipse all the way to Lavender House to learn that I’m unavailable, it’s highly likely they’ll decide the errand isn’t worth repeating. But I remind myself that I could be facing far worse than lost coin.
Mistress Lavender mutters a few more things to herself, then steers Marigold away, ranting off a list of tasks that need to be done.
“You do reek.” Laurel glides out of her parlor and I jump. How long had she been listening?
“I think we’ve covered that.” I roll my eyes and start back up the stairs.
“Not of whatever nonsense you just lied about.”
My heart kicks. “What are you talking about? I used—”
Laurel waves away my words. “Keep your secrets. You have little else of your own.”
Her answer surprises me, as did the dress and the mask she left for me what seems a lifetime ago. But I still do not trust her fully. She is a Grace.
“You smell of old books. You have for a while now.”
I almost laugh. Leave it to Laurel to detect such a scent.
“I think they’re wrong about your gift,” I say, raising my sleeve to my nose and breathing deep. All I smell is charred deathknot. “You have the nose of a bloodhound.”
She tilts her head at me. “What have you been reading? And where did you get it?”
“I thought I was allowed to have my own secrets.”
“Perhaps.” Her yew-stained fingertips beat out an impatient rhythm against the lacquered wood balustrade. “Could you bring me some?”
“Books?”
“Yes. I get so little opportunity to explore older texts. If you don’t want to say where you got them, bring me a few.”
I turn her request over in my mind. So simple, and yet it sends alarm bells clanging through my brain. It makes sense that a Grace gifted in wisdom would want rare books. Laurel’s parlor walls are lined with shelves, stuffed to bursting with texts she’s devoured. But I can’t give her the Nightseeker volumes. Or any about Vila. And to refuse would only whet her appetite further. Lure her to snoop in my Lair. I try to read the look in her golden eyes. Laurel is different from the others. Maybe not my friend. But not my enemy, either.
“Very well,” I say at last. I’ll have Aurora bring a few harmless volumes. “Give me time. But I will.”
—
The lingering stench of the deathknot does not recede enough for me to receive patrons the next day. A headache masses like a storm inside my skull as I think of the tripled appointments I’ll have to squeeze in to make up the time when the chamber is finally clear. And of the coin I’ll lose. But I’m grateful for another day to rest.
Callow perched on my shoulder, I spend the early hours of the morning gathering any enhancements I can find outside Briar’s main gates to replace common ingredients that were lost in the wake of the summoning ritual. A cheaper solution than going to Hilde’s. And then I go to the tower and visit Kal.
After turning a few pebbles into winged stone birds and coaxing them to fly around the tower, we focus on my Shifting.
It’s getting easier, but my abilities are budding at best. Kal was right, my early Shifts happened out of need and desperation, and so they came and went without my even noticing. I missed the telltale tingle of bone drifting and muscle reshaping. But I suppose I should have realized. When I was a child, and I would squeeze myself into the impossibly small corners of the cellar in order to hide from the ministrations of the healing Graces. When, stomach growling after they’d forgotten about me, I could sneak unseen into the kitchen and make off with an entire pie, I always thought I was simply being ignored.
Actual Shifts are much more difficult to maintain. The command must be given and upheld, and my grip is weak and my control unpredictable. I can employ a new face for a half an hour perhaps, before my hold on the magic tires and the illusion slips. Now that I know what to look for, I can always sense it. Cheekbones itching under my skin as they settle back into place. Scalp burning as my hair flattens and brittles.
And it’s not just other humans I can impersonate.
Kal is teaching me to summon the ears of a rabbit, which let me hear almost all the way to the gates of Briar from the black tower. Then the fins and gills of a siren, so I can breathe underwater. Even wings. These animalistic features are the most difficult to conjure, and I can maintain them for only a few heartbeats before they vanish. Kal says it’s because I’ve been in my human form my entire life. It’s the same as when the Shifters remain as animals for too long and forget how to use their magic. My own instinct doubts the Shift, making the magic wilt.
“What is it?” I ask after a round of turning my fingers into claws. Callow dislikes these Shifts, always scurrying out of my way and ruffling her feathers at my new shapes.
“Nothing,” Kal says, as though he has not been watching me like I’m a glass teetering on the edge of a table. “Only—you seem distracted. Is something wrong?”
I pinch my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose. Dark clouds gather on the horizon, changing the pressure in the air. All I’ve thought about since the ritual is the Vila and the curse and the hundred thousand lies salting my life. I’m not surprised Kal can sense my unease. And I want to tell him about how the Vila appeared…again. He would know what it meant. But then I would have to admit to helping Aurora. And I’m too