Malice (Malice Duology #1)(55)

    “They wanted to do the same to me.” I shrug. “An ugly Grace infant with green blood.”

“I’m glad they didn’t.” She lowers her hand and it brushes against mine. Sparks shoot up my wrist. “Callow is lucky to have found you.”

“We found each other.”

I smile at my kestrel, once again struck by how similar we are. Both of us broken castoffs. Kept in the shadows, unable to fly. Callow tilts her head, as if she understands my thoughts.

“I’m sorry for her, though,” Aurora says. “It must be a miserable existence. To be caged your whole life.”

The lines of her body pull taut beneath her cloak. She knows something about that fate, I think. Beneath the crown and the lavish ballroom and expensive clothes, Aurora is little better than the Graces. A servant to the Crown instead of wearing it.

But I might be able to do something to help her.

“I have an idea. Since you are a paying customer.” I scurry along my shelves, plucking up bottles and jars and setting them on the worktable.

Aurora resumes her pacing around the room. “I wish I had chambers like this.”

“You want a lair?” I drop a dollop of magnolia-bark paste into a mortar, then sprinkle lavender heads on top, grunting as I mash it all together. “A cold, wet room that constantly stinks of smoke and blood?”

She laughs. “Remember, I like the abandoned library.”

“True.” A long tip of the valerian syrup completes the mixture. I stir everything together and funnel it into a small vial. “For your guards. A sleeping draught. It’s not an elixir, but a little bit in some tea will do the trick. Or coat a needle with it and prick them, if you’re feeling bold.”

    “Oh, I’m always feeling bold.” Aurora winks and my heart skips.

She reaches for the vial. Our hands touch again. My scaly skin juxtaposed with her bronze-kissed glow. Light and darkness. Monster and maiden.

“Aurora.” I want to keep the words back, but I can’t help them. “Are you sure you don’t mind—me being part Vila? After—”

“I’ve already answered that.” She twirls the base of the vial on the table. “Whoever that Vila was who cursed my family, she was not you.”

“But I share her blood. Her curse killed your sisters. It might—”

“Enough.” She sits across from me. “I’m sure I can come up with a long list of humans evil enough to rival a Vila with a grudge. It’s over, Alyce. There’s nothing to do about it now.”

I let her words sink in, a warmth that has nothing to do with the hearth reaching its fingers through my veins. Callow mutters on her perch in what might be approval.

“Did you find anything in the book I lent you?”

I shake my head, hoping she doesn’t ask to have it back. Damn that Kal. “Nothing of consequence. Nothing about—her.”

Aurora rubs at her temples, resting her head against the back of the chair. Firelight laps at her neck, dancing in the hollow of her throat, and an insane part of me wonders if that fragile place feels as soft as it looks. “I thought as much. In a decade I’ve come up with nothing.”

    “But you’ve been working alone,” I argue, willing my attention away from her skin. “You’ve been doing the best that you can.” I try to imagine if I’d never found Kal. I’d have been reduced to whipping up elixirs for the rest of my life.

“It’s not enough.” A wind rattles down the chimney and stirs the fire. Aurora sits up straight. “Alyce.”

I’m not sure I’m going to like what comes next.

“Do you think you could help me?”

I don’t.

“Help you—break the curse?”

“Yes.” She leans forward. The golden dragon on her necklace glitters. “You have the same blood as the Vila who cast it. Perhaps you can do something to break it.”

An image of the duke rears in my mind. Of the wicked, beastly rosebush. The stench of sulfur burns in my nose. “I don’t—that’s not how my magic works.”

“How do you know if you haven’t tried?”

A nagging instinct tells me to keep silent about Kal. About my true powers. “I just do.”

“Please.” She reaches across the table and tangles her fingers in mine. “I have less than a year left. I have to try everything.”

“If there was something that could be done with my blood, they would have used it already. Trust me—there were plenty of tests completed when I was a child.” I wrench free, the scar on my middle tingling. “It could go very badly. You could get hurt.”

    Kal promised as much. That even if the Vila wanted to remove Aurora’s curse, it would be risky. And I’m not willing to gamble with her life.

“And I will die if I do nothing.”

I rake my hands through my hair, frustration and guilt warring within me. This is madness. I’m just as likely to kill the princess as to break her curse. But—if I am in any way responsible for the curse on her family, I owe her this. Before I take the gold her father will pay me and leave Briar forever. But how could I possibly—

Kal’s book.

Aurora reads my expression. “You have an idea. I knew you would. What is it?”