Malice

Aurora.
“Is it because of the trial?”
Narcisse flits between us, my Lair suddenly far colder. I fuss with the hearth, striking a match and goading a weak flame. I can’t tell her the real reason I wanted—needed—to flee. Or of the agony that consumes me now that I can’t.
“Alyce, you can’t leave. It’s too dangerous. If my father finds out—and he will—he’ll…” A thousand horrible possibilities swirl together in the heavy pause that follows. “I can’t watch him do to you what he did to that Grace. I understand that—”
“What do you understand?” She looks at me as if I’ve struck her. “Do you know what it’s like to live at the mercy of someone who can take everything away from you whenever it suits him?”
Her jaw sets as her shock heats to anger. “Perhaps not as well as you do, but yes. A little. You think I don’t want to run away? From suitors and a cloistered life and the constant judgment and criticism of court?”
“I thought you wanted to be queen.”
“Yes, but it’s not the life I would seek for myself if I could choose. And after yesterday, when—”
“A Grace was nearly bled to death in your throne room?” I’m being cruel, but I don’t care. Tarkin certainly didn’t.
She flinches. “It’s not my throne room. Not yet. And believe me, Briar is the last place I want to be right now. But when it is my turn…” She squares her shoulders. And not for the first time, I see the queen she will be one day. “Nothing like that is ever going to happen again.”
My anger ebbs a little, souring to guilt. The trial wasn’t Aurora’s doing and I shouldn’t punish her for it. “That was a callous thing to say. I’m sorry. It’s just that it was…” An image of Narcisse, the bracelet I cursed clamped around her wrist, rears in my mind. Of Tarkin’s delight as he watched vial after vial fill with her gift.
Callow’s tether jangles.
“Awful.” Aurora slumps onto a chair. “It was awful. I didn’t know until just before. I argued with my father. Tried to stop him. His mind was made up.”
That doesn’t surprise me. The last of the fight goes out of me and I sit beside her. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She watches Callow. “Then why does it feel like it is?”
“Because you’re a good person. And you’ll make a great queen.”
“Not if I’m dead.” She traces circles over the place where her curse mark rests. “I kissed fifty men yesterday, and all that broke in me was my spirit.”
Fifty. Would that I could let Callow return the favor to each of them.
“Don’t.” I put my hand over hers, stilling it. “You said you weren’t going to give up. Your idea about the Etherium mines was better than anything this realm has done in my lifetime.”
“It wasn’t my idea, really,” she says. “It was Elias’s. He thinks that—”
My skin crawls. “Elias?”
Aurora gives me a look that Laurel sometimes reserves for Marigold. “The prince from Ryna. We’ve been writing. You know that.”
The fire spits at us and Callow grumbles. “Yes. But you’ve never called him Elias before. Only the Ryna prince.”
“Well, his name is Elias.” The tiny beat of pulse at Aurora’s throat quickens. “I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with using it.”
There isn’t. But something lurks beneath her words, and I do not like it. I think of the last time she was here, when we’d almost—
What a wretched fool I am. Too blind to see that I’m only a means to an end for the crown princess. A distraction until the right man arrives and breaks her curse.
“I suppose there won’t be anything wrong with kissing him, either.”
The sentence hangs between us, swiftly growing fangs.
“I don’t know that I have much choice in kissing him,” she replies slowly. “I can’t exactly refuse my suitors.”
“You swore you wanted to rule alone.”
“I do.” She flings a gesture at the trunk where we hide the Nightseeker books. “Why would I go to the trouble of all our work if I didn’t?”
“I don’t know.” Anger builds inside me, picking up speed. I haul my sack of gold over to my safe and begin chucking the coins inside. Gold smacks against stone. “But this is different. You’ve never written to any of your other suitors before. Never learned their names or cared what they thought.”
She doesn’t argue. Tension masses around us, between us, like a storm lumbering in from the sea.
“Can you blame me if I do hope, just a little?”
I shove away from the safe and wheel to face her, my blood roiling in a way it never has with Aurora before. “So you’re not interested in breaking the curse yourself anymore?”
“That isn’t fair.” Two spots of pink burst on her cheeks.
“Maybe not.” I sense the recklessness driving me on and I tell myself to back away. But I don’t listen. I never do. “But it’s the truth. A princess needs her prince.”
Aurora blinks back tears, but her tone is hard as flint. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I thought you were different. I thought you wanted Briar to be different.”
I thought you cared for me.
“I am. And I do.” She stands and paces in front of the hearth. “I also want to break this curse. And we’re nowhere closer than we were when we started. I have months left. If Elias can break the curse, so be it.”
I snort. “I’m sure his silk trade helps. More money for balls and gowns. You should tell him to hurry. Pay for a faster ship to go and fetch him.”
The splotches on her cheeks blaze crimson. For a moment I think she will lash back at me. But then a single tear tracks down her cheek. It might as well be an ocean. I will drown in it.
“Enough,” she whispers. “I won’t do this anymore. Not with you.”
And it’s only now that I see just how tired she looks. The Grace elixirs keep her skin supple and