Malice

days. No idea how little time we have left.
“You don’t know that.” But it’s a flimsy hope and it cracks around the edges.
“It’s not that I particularly mind dying,” she continues. “But I think I will very much miss living. I was never meant to wear the crown, but I can think of nothing else now. I want to do something more than simply throw balls and order gowns.” She thumbs the corner of a page. “I think I might be good at ruling.”
“You will be good at it.” Tentatively, I press my hand to her forearm, bracing for the cringe beneath her sleeve. It doesn’t come. “You will be queen. And you will give the Etherium miners a share in the profits and clean up the Common District and put women on the small council and do everything else you promise. You’ll be as great as Leythana was, and they will love you for it.”
She smiles, soft and melancholy. Placating me, but not believing me. “If I am, I will not let my husband reign in my stead, as the other queens have done. I don’t care if the Ryna prince breaks my curse. He’ll never have my throne.”
My heart soars at hearing her talk like that. “I pity the man who tries to manage you.”
I expect her to laugh, but she pulls away. “In truth, I don’t know whether I wish for the curse to be broken—” She pauses. “Or not broken.”
“You don’t want the curse to break?” I repeat slowly. “That means you’ll die.”
“I know. But you don’t understand. All those suitors. Some of them are nice enough. Charming, even.” She twines a long lock of her burnished gold hair around one finger. “But they’re strangers, Alyce. And the line grows longer every day.”
Her gaze is closer to lavender today, glistening with shades of bright, terrified blue. There’s a sharpness in her features that reminds me of a cornered animal. I know it well. I’ve seen it often enough in my own reflection.
“The curse is supposed to be broken by true love. But look what that ‘love’ has caused. Queens sign over Leythana’s legacy to their husbands. Eva and Corinne killed themselves.” Her throat works. “And then look at my parents. My father broke my mother’s curse, but do they seem like they’re in love?”
I can say nothing. It’s hard to imagine anything like love beating beneath Tarkin’s duplicitous skin.
“Maybe it was true love once. But somewhere it soured. And when I think of having to spend the rest of my life trapped with someone I no longer care about”—she hesitates, but only for an instant—“I might rather die.”
“Don’t say that. Briar can’t lose you.”
I can’t lose you, my heart whispers.
Without thinking, I move beside her and scoop her limp hand into mine. Her fingers are cold, but heat rushes through me, skipping across every nerve. It is the same dizzying feeling my magic gives me, and I lean into it.
“If I do reign”—Aurora’s voice takes on a hard determination—“things will be different for you. They will not call you Dark Grace anymore. You will be Alyce. Just Alyce.”
“Just Alyce,” I echo, the words like sugared pastry crust on my tongue. Light and sweet and utterly impossible. But I gobble down every bit anyway. Even though I know I’ll be sick.
“Advisor to the queen.”
I yank myself free of her grasp, staring at Aurora like she’s grown horns. “You don’t mean that. You can’t—”
“You are speaking to your future queen.” She lifts her chin and looks down her nose at me in the exact manner her mother achieves. “And I can do whatever I like. I desire to have only the brightest minds at my table. There’s no one more deserving.”
Heat stings behind my eyes.
Much can change between the ascension of a princess to a queen, Kal had said. And I am leaving Briar. Aurora might soon be dead.
But there’s no help for it. I feel as though I’ve drunk too much fizzy wine: tipsy and effervescent. And for the first time, I let myself envision it: Staying here. Aurora on the throne. Not needing to Shift to hide my face because I am elevated to a new rank. Respected. With Aurora, I could bury the Dark Grace without having to step foot on a ship.
“Will you accept, Alyce?”
Doubts and questions and a hundred thousand other thoughts send me reeling. But Aurora is my anchor. She takes my hand, interlacing our fingers, and I can’t tell which wildfire pulse is hers and which is mine. I let my gaze linger on an errant curl that brushes the ledge of her jawline. I want to touch it. The soft spun-gold and the warm silk of her skin. Her lips part and I find myself leaning in, unable to feel anything but a rampant, reckless desire.
A draft of frigid wind slams into my back as the door to the Lair opens.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Aurora springs away from me, drawing her hood close to her face and fleeing to the other side of the chamber. A cold panic explodes through every limb. We’ve been discovered. Aurora’s guards have followed her here and will take me to the dungeons. The queen will have my head for defying her instructions.
But it’s Laurel.
She hovers like one of Kal’s shadows just inside the Lair, golden eyes like fireflies in the darkness. My mouth opens, emitting a sound between a whimper and a croak.
“Delphine retired for the night,” Laurel says, dividing a look between me and Aurora’s trembling back. “Your door was unlocked. I assumed you were free.”
Damn it all to the sea and back. No one’s come looking for me before.
“I— I am. The appointment ran longer than expected, but the patron is leaving.”
Aurora has her scarf around her face and looks like she’s about to bolt for the door.
“If that’s a ‘patron.’ ” Laurel crosses her arms. The walls of the Lair creak.
“Who else could it be?” The last syllable curves