Malice

The candle on Aurora’s dressing table teeters, then whooshes out as it crashes to the floor.
Aurora is kissing the skin above my neckline, every nerve aflame, but I push her away, motioning at the fallen candle as I try to catch my breath. Her eyes fly wide, swollen lips parting in a silent gasp. The quaking intensifies. We grab for each other before we tumble to the carpets. Glass pops as fissures map their way across the dressing-table mirror. Windowpanes implode. I throw myself over Aurora, shielding her from soaring bits of glass. Books and vases clatter to the rugs. The walls groan, and for a moment I’m worried they will cave and bring the ceiling down to crush us both.
But then, just as suddenly as it started, everything stops. Aurora lifts her face from the crook of my shoulder.
“Was that—something from the sea?” It is the only thing I can guess. A massive wave, or a squall. A ship turned back into a dragon by some fantastical bit of magic.
But Aurora doesn’t answer. She’s staring at her arm, her sleeve yanked up to her elbow.
“Are you hurt?” I bend down, inspecting the spot, but there is only clear, unbroken skin. No glass. No cut or bruise.
And then it hits me.
Aurora’s eyes shine as they meet mine. “It’s gone.” She lets out a sob. Tears glisten on her cheeks. “You broke the curse.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“No.” It seems the only word I’m capable of speaking. Because what Aurora is saying is impossible. “I didn’t. I couldn’t have. You must have done something.”
She grins, pressing our foreheads together. “Yes. I kissed you. And you kissed me. And it broke the curse.”
I pry her fingers loose and put as much distance between us as I can. “That’s impossible.”
Aurora laughs, giddy. “Why do you doubt it? The mark is gone. I feel—” She takes a long, deep breath in. “Incredible. Lighter than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Because of you.”
“Not because of me.”
“Why not?”
“Because”—my chest tightens—“because my magic can only accomplish wickedness. I’m part Vila. I don’t break curses.” I cross my arms, choking on the bitterness of my next words. “I make them.”
Aurora pads across the rugs. Glass crunches under her feet. A frigid wind snakes through the jagged holes in the windows, billowing the curtains.
“Maybe the curse breaking has nothing to do with your magic,” she whispers along my jawline, “and everything to do with this.”
Her lips meet mine and that same jolt of lightning forks through me. I want to wrap my arms around her and never let go. Lose myself in the honey taste of her mouth and the addictive scent of her skin. But this is madness. I push her back.
Aurora traces circles over the place where her mark used to be. “You know, I always wondered about the true love stipulation of the curse.” She picks up a candlestick. A handful of pins. “Even before I lost my sisters, I would read about the queens who ruled before us. They had one thing in common: terrible marriages.”
When I think of Tarkin and Mariel, I’m hardly surprised.
“It confused me. After all, it was the Etherians who softened the original death curse. Theirs is light magic. If true love could break the curse, why couldn’t it last? Had the Vila’s magic somehow soured that love even after the curse was broken?”
The back of my neck prickles.
“But then, as I grew older and watched my parents, I realized that it wasn’t the light Fae or the Vila who were to blame for the love lost between the royal couples. It was the humans themselves. Briar is an isolated realm. Consumed with our own importance and wealth—that’s what undermined the marriages of the other queens. Not some magical force outside their control.” She relights the candle. “Once I figured that out, I stopped fearing my own death. Instead, I was afraid that I would find my true love. And that I would have to watch that love corrupt and re-form into something ugly. That’s why I insisted on breaking the curse myself and ruling alone.” She pauses. Holds my gaze. “But tonight that fear is gone.”
I can hardly breathe around my desire to believe what she says. The distance between us hums, both too much and not enough.
“Do you trust me?” Aurora asks.
“Yes,” my heart answers for me.
“Then you’ll stay with me. Rule beside me?”
“Rule?” I hold on to her bedpost to steady myself. I’d barely begun to imagine myself as her actual true love, let alone ruler of Briar.
“Princesses always marry those who break their curse, don’t they?”
“They marry dukes and earls and princes,” I correct. “Who then become kings. And you said you didn’t want to marry.”
Aurora raises an eyebrow. “Well, I wish to marry you. Two queens of Briar. What could be better?”
A hundred thousand things. Even if I did accept her offer, the rest of Briar would revolt against me. I’d be dragged out and burned alive. Aurora has no idea what she’s asking. There’s never been a queen like me—never could be one.
But her lips land on mine before I can argue. “You said you trusted me.”
And I do. Enough to drown myself in that depthless, forget-me-not gaze, in the taste of summer berries on her lips, and never look back. Like a fool, I nod.
“Good.” She threads her fingers through mine. “Come with me.”
Does she mean to tell her parents tonight? This moment? My blood turns to ice water and I balk as she tries to drag me away. “We’re not—we can’t.”
She waves away my worry, guessing my thoughts. “Not now, no. But they’ll be coming to check on me soon. I’m surprised they haven’t already, with all that racket. And I don’t want them to find us yet.”
Find us. My heart thumps.
“Tonight”—she pulls me close, whispers in my ear—“is only ours.”
—
We take the servants’ halls, keeping our heads down and our feet swift. But they all must