Malice (Malice Duology #1)(25)

I will not forget.

I will not be humiliated like I was last night. Never again.

A sour taste lands on my tongue as I try, and fail, to tamp down the images from the ballroom. Arnley’s disgusted stupor. Rose’s twisted delight. I cling to another instead, as if it’s a piece of driftwood floating in a raging sea: Aurora’s moonlit face as she studied the fountain I’d muddied. Even now, the sound of her laughter skips across the waves.

    Will she have a line of suitors waiting for her this morning? Another longer one tomorrow if her true love isn’t found? My blood chills at the thought of such a curse. She must have kissed most of the men in the realm by now, entirely against her will. I shake my head to clear it. The princess was an unexpected relief when I’d needed it most. But she is a royal and not my concern. If I see her again it will be at her wedding. Or her funeral.

The encroaching storm front makes the black tower even colder and gloomier than my last visit, the sea pounding against the cliff as if it has something to prove. I enter cautiously, slipping in a few places where the worn stone is covered in moldy slime. Callow squawks her complaints.

“Kal?” His name is buried under the sound of the sea and the distant rumble of thunder. The hair on my arms begins to rise.

“You came back.”

There’s a ripple to my left. Kal appears, his hair mussed and eyes bleary, as if my arrival woke him. As the darkness unspools from his frame, Callow screeches and flaps unevenly to the ground. I soothe her with a few scraps of meat.

“I did not think you would.” The shadows waft in smoky tendrils up and down his arms. Wind around his neck and burrow into his clothes.

    “You said you could teach me about my power.” I keep a healthy distance between us.

“I can.” He watches Callow, who has grown bored of us and is hunting between the cracks in the stone for more snacks. “You have a kestrel?”

I’m in no mood for distractions. “What do you want for your information?” I thrust the sack in his direction. “I brought food.”

He shakes his head. “I cannot eat. The enchantment keeps me—the way that I am. And I require no payment to train you.”

Distrust flares like a match striking. Nothing is free, I’ve learned that well enough. I lower the sack, narrowing my eyes. “Why not?”

Kal stares at me. Shadows dart between the crooks of his elbows. “We are kin. And I knew your mother well. She would want you to understand your worth.”

“Would she?” I search every crevice of his face, bracing myself for the next question—one that surfaced in the dead of night and hounded me for hours. “You said she came here twenty years ago—before I was even born. That you were going to leave here with her. Are you…did you and she—”

“No, Alyce.” One corner of his mouth rises. And I can’t decide whether the feeling in my gut is relief or disappointment. “You and I are related only through our breed of magic. This enchantment prevents me from…”

My neck burns. “You don’t need to go on.”

Kal clears his throat. “Very well. Your mother discovered me just as you did. And she trained with me for the same purpose you are here now.”

    “You said she tried to free you and died for it. Would you ask the same of me?”

A wave crashes against the tower and Kal looks longingly to the horizon. “I will not ask anything you are not willing to give. I am alone here.” The shadows encircle his wrists like shackles. “It is enough to have some company for a time. To honor Lynnore. And then, when the time is right, if you feel that you could sever my bindings—” He lets out a shaky breath, as if the thought itself is too fragile to entertain for long. “I would be in your debt.”

I turn his words over and sideways, looking for evidence of deceit. “How are you so sure I’m a Shifter? I have a book that says Shifters have gills and hairless bodies and—”

He raises an eyebrow. “And I take it the author saw a Shifter in its true form?”

Silence is all the answer Kal needs.

“I thought not. Shifters almost never inhabit their original shapes. Only those so young they have not yet learned how to Shift. They embody a form similar to that of one of their parents.” His expression softens with regret. “You resemble Lynnore so much it hurts.”

The cry of a gull slices through the air.

I chew my lips, unwilling to accept what he says as truth. That Endlewild was right—I’m no better than the monsters in the book.

“If you train me, will you help me leave Briar?” The desire that’s wrecked my heart since I first watched the ships leaving the harbor and knew I could never board one.

    “If you let me teach you…” Kal inches as close as he dares. Callow skitters sideways, flaring her wings. “Your power will be unstoppable. You could bring the Etherian Mountains tumbling into the sea.”

A tremor at the base of my skull tells me this is too good to be true. But I want to believe. So very badly. A bell sounds from the faraway harbor, warning of the coming storm. One day, I could be aboard one of those ships. Not the Dark Grace. Just Alyce. Sailing toward a new life.

“All right,” I say at last, smothering logic and instinct with both hands. “Prove that you can do what you say.”