“No!” Isabel said more sharply than she had intended. “We don’t tell Rokan.”
Ven frowned at her, puzzled. “He’s counting on your abilities. You’re putting him in danger. If he knew, he might be more careful—”
“Rokan doesn’t know how to be careful,” Isabel snapped. Her fingers twisted in her gown; she loosened them with a deliberate effort. “It would make no difference in his behavior.”
“But why don’t you want him to know?”
“You really have to ask that?”
Ven’s hands thudded down on the table. “You can’t mean to say you’re embarrassed!”
“Why can’t I?” Isabel demanded. “It’s embarrassing, isn’t it?”
“Embarrassment is a human emotion,” Ven said stiffly.
She folded her arms. “So are anger, and irritation, and fear. I feel all of those, don’t I? Why is embarrassment any more human than the rest?”
“Because it serves no purpose,” Ven snapped, slamming the book shut. “Those other emotions are related to your loyalty to the royal family. Your irritation with Clarisse, for example, stems from the fact that you can’t figure out whether or not she’s a threat to Rokan.”
“The only reason for my irritation with Clarisse is Clarisse!”
“The Shifter is above—”
“Stop telling me what the Shifter is! I know what the Shifter is.”
“Do you?” He stepped around the table, and she saw that he was angry. “Nothing I’ve read gives any indication that the Shifter can lose her powers. They’re still there. If you can’t use them, it’s because some part of you doesn’t want to.”
Isabel opened her mouth, shut it, and clenched her jaw.
Ven’s words emerged in short, curt bursts. “You want to be human. That’s why you can’t shift, that’s why you delude yourself into feeling these things, that’s why you care what Rokan will think when he finds out the truth. I don’t know what happened ten years ago, but it changed you. You’re not the Shifter of legend.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Isabel said.
He didn’t even try to deny it. He shook his head and turned back to his books. “There are millions of humans in the world, too many for anyone to bother counting. We live and we die and we fade away, and eventually nobody remembers us or cares. But there’s only one Shifter, and she lives forever. Maybe you should ask yourself if you really want to be human.”
Chapter Nine
That same night Isabel stole a horse and rode back to her forest.
It was ridiculously easy. Nobody stopped her or questioned her. One of the stableboys even saddled the horse for her. She considered stopping off in the kitchens and asking for food, but decided against it. The Shifter could fend for herself. Change into a hawk or wolf and hunt for dinner, if she had to….
The prey making that one fatal mistake. The lunge, and the crack of bone. Something warm and limp between her jaws…
Or if she wanted to.
She rode out through the castle’s southern gate, hooves clattering on cobblestones, and spurred the horse into a gallop as soon as she left the city behind.
It was a moonless night too dark for shadows, the stars a swirl of light against an ocean of black. The galloping was easier than before but still not comfortable; even so, she didn’t slacken the pace, shifting the soreness away every half hour or so. Her horse became difficult about ten miles from the woods, and when they reached the first line of trees, he flatly refused to move on. Isabel realized that the horses Rokan had chosen for his journey to summon her must have been battle-trained; she was riding a palfrey, and no amount of kicking or urging would convince him to move forward. She slipped out of the saddle, and the horse was gone before she could so much as slap his hindquarters, his hooves raising black wraiths of dust as he ran.
She watched him go, refusing to imagine that she was still on his back, then turned resolutely and faced the trees. She understood the horse’s reluctance. They seemed aloof and menacing, living creatures guarding their domain, hostile to any stranger who would dare walk between them.
But not hostile to me, Isabel thought forcefully. These woods are mine.
It sounded good. But the trees didn’t look any different.
There you had the power of the Mistwood to draw upon, Ven’s voice whispered in her mind. Maybe that makes a difference.
Maybe it did. Here in her woods, before Rokan came for her, she had known what she was. Had known how to be what she was, shifting her body as easily as fog, never staying in one shape long enough to be confused by it.
The power of the Mistwood to draw upon…
Isabel swallowed hard and walked between the trees.
On the third day they came searching for her.
She was still human. She had not tried to shift; as soon as she entered the woods, the need to do so left her. She did not have to prove what she was. The forest accepted her, knew her: she was the Shifter. She would shift when there was a reason to, not before. She drank from a brook that flowed by a sunlit meadow and soaked in the mist that rolled between the trees and didn’t feel the need to eat.
She knew every inch of the forest, every narrow path that twisted and wound its way beneath the silver branches, and this time her ankle wasn’t hurt. This time—she admitted it, finally—she did not want to be found. She waited until the pounding hooves were so close that she could hear the twigs cracking beneath them, and then she shifted.
It was so easy, like mist swirling into a different form. She flapped her wings and rose into the treetops as the horses came thundering into the small clearing.
She should have shifted into a hawk, caught an updraft, and soared away. They were nothing to her, the riders of the horses; even the one in the lead, with his angular jaw and determined dark eyes. She was merely curious, and that was her mistake. The sparrow perched on the lowest branch of a maple tree and watched.
The second rider pulled off her hood. Blond hair spilled over her black cloak, obscuring for a moment the fury on her face. “Well? Why are we stopping? To give her a perfect target?”
“Be quiet, Clarisse. I’m trying to listen.”
“For what? You’ll be dead before you hear anything.”
“She’s not going to try to kill us.”
“That’s right. She’s going to succeed.”
“Would you be quiet?”
“It’s obviously not a good idea. I was quiet when you first came up with the whole Shifter idea, and you see what came of that.”
Rokan turned and stared at her. “That was quiet?”
“For her it was,” Will said. “Can’t the two of you stop? If the Shifter is watching us, I’m sure she’s greatly amused.”
The Shifter was not amused. She was disturbed. On the other side of the clearing someone was moving closer, a slim, dark shape that cast jagged shadows on the underbrush.
There was no reason she should care. These weren’t the people she was meant to protect. They had fooled her into thinking they were, even after she should have known better, but that didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t have to care about what happened to them.
She didn’t have to care about what happened to anyone.
“Well, I’m glad someone is amused,” Clarisse said. “Did I mention that I am not having fun at all?”
“I think I picked up on that,” Rokan said.
“How perceptive of you.”
Something glinted through the trees. The sparrow became a hawk, and the hawk’s sharper eyesight saw the knife in the man’s hand. He was creeping closer. The mist rose through the ferns like tiny feathers and swirled away from his movements.
“Did you hear something?” Rokan asked.
“No. I don’t know what you’re listening for. Mist can move without making any noise.”
The man had risen into a half-crouch. He flipped the knife to hold it by its blade.
“She might not be mist.”
“Right. She might be fog, or a bird, or a rat, or one of a hundred other things you wouldn’t be able to hear. This is a waste of time. You won’t find her unless she wants you to find her, and if she does, she’ll just come back to the castle and—”
The man raised his arm to throw, and suddenly the hawk was a girl and the girl was screaming, “Watch out!”
Rokan turned—toward her, not toward the knife. Isabel half-leaped, half-fell through the air, knocking him off his horse. The knife hit her instead, blade first.
She turned into mist as it pierced her skin. The knife flew through her body and stuck, hilt quivering, in the trunk of the tree she had been watching from.
Rokan grunted as he landed on the ground with Isabel’s hazy outline on top of him. Before he could even lift his head she was gone, racing through the underbrush, her paws digging into the earth and her sharp wolf’s nostrils making sight all but unnecessary.
She caught the would-be assassin before he had gone thirty yards, circling around to cut him off, her ears laid back. He didn’t try to get by her, but stood and stared at her, his eyes afraid but direct. The wolf became a girl, and Isabel crossed her arms.
“That was foolish,” she said. “In the Shifter’s forest itself? Did you think you would get away with it?”
“I’ve been waiting for him to come back here,” the young man said. “I didn’t think you would protect him.”
He was tall and thin, with a scruffy, sharp-jawed face and dark blue eyes. She guessed he was about the same age as Rokan, but his gauntness made him appear older. He was trembling—not that she needed to see that, the wolf smelled his fear—but his face was expressionless, and his eyes were trained directly on her.
“Why not?” Isabel said. “I’ve protected him before, haven’t I?”
“But you left the castle. You must know the truth now.”
“I knew the truth then.”
He flinched. “The Shifter is supposed to be loyal.”
“I am the Shifter.” That was becoming a very useful line, even if she only half-believed it herself.
“The Shifter is the protector of the royal family. You must be an imposter.”
She dropped her arms to her side and stepped toward him. “Do you need me to turn wolf again to convince you?”
He tensed, but he didn’t step back. “Would you?”
She smiled, taking another step. “No.”
“No, of course not. You never would.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know me?”
She stared at him.
“You were there when they came for us. His father’s soldiers. You tried to protect me and my sister.”
Isabel shifted her hands into hands that wouldn’t shake, her expression into blankness. “Is this some sort of trick?”
“I swear it’s not.” He leaned forward, legs still poised to leap. “You got me out. You didn’t fail. There’s still a royal family for you to protect. You don’t have to serve those imposters.”
She should have stayed a bird. She should have stayed away. Isabel bit back a whimper and said, “I don’t—”
“Please!” He swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving her face. “You know me. You saved my life.”
She crouched, curling her lips in a wolflike snarl. But he didn’t run. He didn’t even flinch. “You have to stop them. You have to kill him.” She had never known a word could contain such hatred. “You’re the Shifter. You must know which one of us is truly meant to be king.”
“Isabel?” Rokan called. The mist muffled his voice, but it didn’t sound like he was far.
The would-be assassin tensed. His eyes moved from hers for the first time, to search the trees. “You can’t give me to him.”