Malice (Malice Duology #1)(69)
But when our faces were inches apart, she hadn’t seemed disgusted. I can still see myself reflected in the lavender pools of her gaze. Smell the hints of lilac and appleblossom clinging to her skin.
Dragon take me.
Since I have no hope of sleep, I turn my attention to the commission the king wants, questioning for the thousandth time my decision to work for him. I want nothing to do with Tarkin if he’s plotting against Aurora. But I have no doubt he will seek his revenge if I refuse. Whether I stay in Briar or escape beyond the sea, I’d rather like to keep my head.
I’m just finishing, packing the bracelet back into its box and writing a note for delivery, when, for the second time tonight, my door opens unexpectedly.
“Come back later,” I say automatically. It’s near dawn, I think. The servants must be rising for their morning chores.
“I do not require an invitation.”
That voice stops me cold. Thick and resonant, with an accent that reminds me of the wind in the trees and rushing water.
“Lord Endlewild.”
Callow shrieks from her perch, flapping her wings.
The Fae lord steps out of the gloom, hearth light striking against the laurel-leaf sigil pinned to his doublet. Illuminating the winter white and icy blue streaks in his neatly tied queue, the colors changed since I last saw him. His birchwood staff taps against the stones of the floor. “Will you not invite me to sit, half-breed? Offer refreshment?”
Half-breed. The insult sears the same as it did every time he uttered it during my treatments. But I force myself to breathe through the phantom pains, resisting the urge to clutch at my scar. Remind myself that he is not holding me down or cutting me open. Even so, Endlewild hasn’t been to see me in years, and never in the dead of night. Terror claws its way up from my toes and thuds between my ribs.
Callow feeds off my energy, pacing back and forth on her perch. More tiger than bird.
“Your bird dislikes me.” Endlewild studies her like he’s deciding whether to roast her for dinner.
I angle myself to block the kestrel from his view. “She distrusts strangers.”
The tips of his dagger teeth gleam. “But we are not strangers, you and I. Will you not welcome me into your…” His nose wrinkles. “Abode?”
Rage smolders in my guts. I want to take that false Fae politeness and strangle him with it. But I know better than to refuse him. I motion toward the worktable. He deigns to sit, running one of his unsettling, sticklike fingers over the surface of the wood and flicking the grime away. Then he slides an expectant look at the leftover bread and cheese.
Hands shaking, I toss what’s left of Aurora’s wine goblet into the fire and pour him another, then shove the entire platter of food toward him.
“My thanks.” He inspects a square of cheese and the lines bracketing his lips, like the grooves in a tree trunk, deepen. “You do not eat well here.”
“Apologies.” I don’t even try to keep the sarcasm from my tone.
“It is no matter.” He starts in on the bread, picking out bits of seed and letting them fall. “I have come regarding some recent incidents I find alarming.”
It takes every thread of my self-control not to react. “Incidents?”
“Do not waste my time with lies.” The orb on his staff flares, tingeing the glass amber. My skin prickles, knowing that the orb can also burn crimson. That it can leave smoking, blackened marks on my skin. “Duke Weltross’s death was most suspicious.”
“He was sick.”
“Yes. And others have fallen ill in the palace of late. One of the king’s ministers suddenly went blind. Another could hardly recall his own name. The healing Graces could do nothing to aid them.” Wood creaks as he crosses one leg over the other and I catch the faint scent of his power—dewy grass and sticky-sweet nectar. “It reeks of Vila magic.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He blinks slowly, like a reptile. “Did you know, that when you were first discovered and brought to the Grace Council, I advised the Briar King to kill you?”
I curse myself for the way my shoulders hunch and my head drops, submitting to this creature the way I have a hundred thousand times before.
“He obviously did not heed my advice.” The Etherian selects another bit of cheese and chews it thoughtfully. “Humans are always so fascinated by magic. And yours was a new toy for him to play with.”
Wind rattles down the chimney. Cinders sizzle as they fly free of the hearth and onto the freezing stone floor. Callow cries out and strains against her tether.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Such a demanding half-breed,” he croons, using that tone that has haunted my nightmares for over a decade. “Such anger. It will serve you poorly. Become your undoing, if you are not careful.”
The magic in the Etherian staff whirls in time to the tempest in my ears. Aurora said the source of the Fae lord’s magic was in that staff. How sturdy is the glass protecting it? My power aches to find out.
“I was but a child when the War of the Fae ravaged Etheria and threatened my own. But I know well enough that Vila magic is unpredictable. The power of a half-breed is even more wild and untamed. I told Tarkin that perhaps at first you would only be able to create elixirs—a Dark Grace, as they call you. But one day, your power might truly manifest. And when it did, there was no end to the havoc you could wreak.”