Malice

for the Fae lord. If he knew I shared the blood of another creature of Malterre, he would have slit my throat on the spot. “And I would never betray you.”
Dragon knows I’ve wanted to tell Aurora about Kal often enough. But I can’t trust that she wouldn’t reveal Kal’s existence, even by accident. And if Endlewild wants to kill me simply because of my ancestors’ perceived crimes, I don’t want to think about what he would do to Kal.
“I believe you.” His shadows roll like a tide behind him. “But we must be more careful.”
“I’ll Shift every time I come. I managed it the whole way just now.”
He beams, a brilliant slash of white in the gloam, and for a moment I let his pride fill me up, replacing the queasy dread that’s plagued me for days. “Wonderful news. But it is not enough. Not quite.”
That shot of happiness fades. “What else can I do?”
“I will teach you a new Shift. It is difficult, but I believe you have the potential to master it. And you must.”
My magic wriggles, already eager for the challenge. To prove that I’m worthy of Kal’s confidence. That I’ll do anything to keep him—us—safe from Endlewild’s claws. “What is it?”
His jet eyes glow. “I will teach you to be invisible.”
—
Difficult is an understatement.
I’m already bone-tired from my sleepless nights, and my power was stretched as thin as spider’s silk after I held the Shift on the way to the tower. The key to invisibility is focus. The Shifter must be in constant flux, altering herself with each step to reflect the changing environment. The best Shifters, Kal tells me, are able to remain invisible even at a run. Even on horseback. But it takes decades of practice and patience.
The Shift itself is excruciating, requiring precise concentration on a hundred details at once. An ache starts at my temples and hammers down my tender vertebrae, into the exhausted muscles of my shoulders. My joints don’t want to re-form into the molds I bid them take, and they balk and buck at every command.
But I reach deeper, ignoring the way sinew and tendon threaten to snap. Thinking instead of Endlewild’s easiness when he promised my death. Kal is right. There’s nothing the Briar King can do to stop him. Endlewild is beholden to the Fae courts, not the mortal realm. And the Etherians wouldn’t punish one of their own for ending a Vila.
Spurred by the rage the Fae lord always kindles in me, when the moon is only a handsbreadth above the silvered waves, I’m at last able to make one of my arms disappear. Only one.
My stomach growls.
“That is the third time your belly has complained in the last hour,” Kal observes. “You need food. And it will be easier for you to slip into Briar before the sun rises.”
I settle myself on the stump of a column instead, where Callow has made her perch for the night. She opens one eye, bleary and irritated, before ruffling her feathers and turning her back on me. The sea is calmer than usual. Far in the distance, I can see the ghostly outline of one of Briar’s trading ships as it skates across the moon-kissed currents. Months ago, I’d been desperate to be aboard, starving for a life away from Briar.
It feels like years have passed since that day.
In the black silk of sea and starlight, I picture Aurora’s face. The freckle nearly hidden on the shell of her ear. The tiny dimple creasing the right side of her mouth. Her lower lip, always slightly swollen because she bites it when she’s thinking. As the details take shape, the break of the waves against the tower becomes her laugh. The breeze on my neck her touch.
She wants to make me her advisor. Me, sitting at council. Deciding what’s best for the realm. Taking back all the power the former queens lost and funneling it into Aurora’s reign. Finding ways to use my power that help instead of harm.
A shadow rustles my skirts, sending a shiver up my leg. Kal. I don’t want to leave Aurora, but I don’t want to lose him, either. Maybe I don’t have to.
“Kal?” I hesitate, choosing my words carefully. After his speech about his distrust of the royals, I know he wouldn’t approve of my time with the crown princess. “If I free you from this tower, would you consider staying in Briar?”
He turns slowly, shoulders tight. “You want to stay in Briar?”
“No.” The salty air scrapes my lungs. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Kal’s brow rumples. He joins me at the column. “I thought leaving this realm was your deepest wish. Do you want the Fae lord watching you forever? The Briar King demanding curses from you whenever the whim strikes him?”
“Of course not.” Before I can pull them back, my wild, intoxicating hopes spill free. “But what if Tarkin wasn’t the Briar King? What if Endlewild could be leashed? Banished, even?”
Questions flash in the depths of his obsidian eyes, like lightning building in the heavy underbelly of a storm cloud. “What do you have in mind, Alyce?”
“Nothing.” I squirm against the half-truth. “But if Briar was different. If it was a better place for people like us—would you stay?”
I can hardly breathe, anticipating his answer.
“It was not a random choice, to put me in this particular tower,” he says at last. One hand moves absently to his chest, tracing the outline of his medallion through his doublet. “There was a time, before these walls began to crumble, that I could climb to the upper floors and see all of the realm. Even glimpse part of Malterre—or what remained of it. Years after the war, black smoke still rose from the wreckage. I could smell the scorched flesh. Hear the screams of the dying.”
A shudder races up from my toes. I huddle deeper into my cloak.
“They selected this place as my prison so that I would see and hear and smell those