Mistwood

Isabel looked away.

“Isabel?” Rokan shouted. Twigs crackled.

“Come with me,” the stranger said urgently. “You’re my Shifter.”

“Isabel?”

“Go,” Isabel said, almost spitting the word out.

He stepped toward her. “You—”

“No. Go.”

For a moment he hesitated. Then, with a quick glance back at the mist-veiled trees behind him, he dodged around her and ran.

A moment later Rokan appeared, his face smudged with dirt and dried brown leaves clinging to his hair. He took in her lone, still figure with a glance that was first relieved, then puzzled.

“Where is he?”

“He disappeared,” Isabel said. “Sorcery.”

Rokan swore. “Are you all right?”

She gave him a withering look. “Of course I’m all right.”

“You’re bleeding.”

She was. There was blood streaked over her right elbow, crisscrossing its way down her arm. The knife must have hit her a moment before she turned to mist, sliced through some skin. Absently she shifted her arm, and the gash closed.

Rokan had been reaching for her arm, his eyes narrowed in concern. He stopped in mid-motion, flushed, and dropped his upraised hand. After a moment of hesitation, he said, “Did you see him?”

She knew what the hesitation meant. So he had decided not to question her disappearance, had he? Wise move, Prince. You might not like what you hear. “Briefly. Tall, dark hair, large eyes.”

“Large eyes,” Clarisse said, emerging from the trees behind her brother. Mist swirled away from her movements. “That’s a useful piece of description. I’m glad you caught it.”

Isabel didn’t even bother to acknowledge her. A moment later Will stepped up beside Clarisse and blurted, “Why are you here?”

So much for tactfully ignoring the situation. Isabel shrugged and said, “I had to come back here. I had been away too long.”

“I don’t suppose,” Clarisse said, reaching up to extract some twigs from her hair, “that it occurred to you to let us know where you were going?”

“No,” Isabel said, “it didn’t.”

There was a long silence. Rokan finally came closer to Isabel, leaves crackling under his feet. “We were worried about you,” he said.

“Worried about me,” Isabel said, “or about what I was doing?”

Rokan’s brow furrowed. He held her gaze until Isabel stepped back, feeling a need to defend herself, not quite sure against what.

“I’m your Shifter,” she said. The possessive felt strange on her tongue; she had just heard the assassin use it, but it had never before occurred to her. Had there ever been competing claims on a Shifter? No, of course not; that’s what the Shifter is there to prevent. “But I am not your slave. What I do is of no concern to you.”

“I was worried,” Rokan said, his voice tight, “about you.”

He sounded like he meant it. But she wanted him to mean it, so how would she know if he was lying? She half-turned away, shrugging one shoulder dismissively. “Why? I can’t be hurt.”

“You were hurt once,” Rokan said almost angrily, “and you fled to your woods. Here you are again. What am I supposed to think?”

“Whatever you want,” Isabel said. “But the only thing that can hurt me is something that hurts you.”

He blinked at her, then took a deep breath. “All right. Are you ready to go back yet? You can ride behind me—”

“I don’t need to ride,” Isabel said.

Late that night the royal trio returned riding three very spooked horses. About fifty feet behind them loped a lean, gray-white wolf.

Chapter Ten

The rain started two days later and didn’t stop for a week. Relentless and rhythmic, it hammered on the stone walls and rooftops of the castle. Every time the Shifter passed a window, she saw nothing but heavy, streaking darkness, occasionally illuminated by a brief flash of lightning or punctuated by a rumble of thunder. It made her fur bristle, so she stayed away from windows.

The wolf did not like being cooped up indoors. The castle was too cold and sharp, too full of humans and noise. She was on edge, restless and snappy, and the feeling only went away when she was near her prince. Then her edge had a purpose, and her wariness an outlet.

She followed him everywhere, prowling easily and silently at his heels. The other members of the court gave her a wide berth. Isabel neither noticed nor cared—until she realized, one day as she sat at Rokan’s feet in the private audience chamber, that Clarisse was afraid of her. She rose to her feet and padded over to the princess, who sat in a carefully relaxed pose on the couch, hands open and eyes half-closed. It was a remarkable performance, but wolves could smell fear.

Isabel stood for a moment in front of Clarisse. Then she snarled and leaped.

Clarisse screamed and rolled off the couch, scraping her hip over the armrest—which had to hurt—and landing in a heap on the floor, gasping and scrambling away. Her heel caught in her gown; she kicked, it ripped, and a swath of yellow cloth fluttered away from her foot. The wolf landed lightly on the couch, turned around, and sat neatly down. She panted at Clarisse, her tongue lolling out.

Will was helpless with laughter. Rokan was trying hard to keep a straight face, but snickers kept escaping. Clarisse got to her feet and glared at Isabel, her face red.

“Bitch!”

“Under the circumstances,” Rokan commented in an almost steady voice, “that’s really just a statement of fact, you know.”

Clarisse turned her glare on him, and Rokan lost control, flopping over on the cushioned bench. Clarisse stood for a moment, breathing hard. Then she reached down, gathered up the trailing fabric from her gown, and stalked out of the room.

“That was marvelous,” Rokan gasped, sitting up. There were tears in his eyes. “You deserve a reward. A steak, or—or something. Diamonds, when you turn human. None of the legends said the Shifter had a sense of humor!”

Isabel tried to smirk, discovered that wolves couldn’t, and shifted. Still wearing the gray riding outfit she had put on two weeks ago, she crossed her legs and lifted her eyebrows. “Legends can be incomplete.”

“So they can.” Rokan laughed again, but less easily this time. He straightened and rubbed one hand on the armrest of the couch, not quite meeting her eyes. He had been more comfortable with her when she was a wolf.

Isabel had also been more comfortable with herself when she was a wolf. Then she had known what she was doing—protecting Rokan—and it hadn’t mattered why. She stretched her arms and shifted back.

Except she didn’t.

At first startled, then furious, she tried again and again. Nothing happened. Her legs remained legs, ridiculously weak and furless; her face felt flat and cold, her body ungainly. She drew her lips back in fury.

“Isabel?” Rokan said, distinctly uneasy now.

Humans couldn’t draw their lips back; it would make them look funny. Isabel took a deep breath and pressed her lips together.

“Sorry,” she said, very glad that Clarisse had already left the room. “Sometimes it takes a second for me to get used to a new shape.” She sat up straight and almost fell off the couch; her balance was different without a tail. “I like being a wolf. But I think the Lady Isabel had better make an appearance at court again.”

Rokan bit his lower lip and glanced sideways at Will. “Uh—that won’t be necessary.”

Of course it wouldn’t. She had taken charge, that day when Daria disappeared, in a way no innocent noblewoman would have. And for days a wolf had been padding along at Rokan’s heels.

She tried to think of a way to hide the slip and couldn’t, so she ignored it instead. “How are they taking it?”

“Pretty well. I think a lot of them suspected. Many are pleased, because—” A barely discernable pause. “Because if it makes me safer, it makes the kingdom more stable.”

Because it lent legitimacy to the throne. Made him seem like a real king, even though he wasn’t.

You’re my Shifter. She could still hear the intensity in that angry voice, see the sense of betrayal in those dark blue eyes. It was impossible to think he had been lying.

As a wolf, none of it had mattered. She had known she was loyal to Rokan, would have protected him with her life. That was the way it should be. She tried, one last futile time, to change back, and when nothing happened despair rose in her throat. What difference did it make whose Shifter she was, when she couldn’t be the Shifter at all?

Ven’s door was unlocked, but he wasn’t there. Isabel hesitated in the doorway, surveying the room. Ven’s scent filled the air, mingling with the dusty smell of books and the rotten tinge of potions. He had been here fairly recently. She realized that she was using a wolf’s sense of smell and sighed. Then she walked over to the table, where a book lay open.

A red-haired woman stared up at her from the page, large green eyes narrowed in a sharp, triangular face. Isabel flipped a page and met the gaze of a fat old woman with curling gray hair. The face was completely unfamiliar, but the eyes…. She frowned and turned the book over to read the title.

Portraits of the Shifter.

Isabel turned another page, then another. All of these women—a few men, too—were her. They were her as much as the familiar face she had been wearing for most of the past few weeks. She didn’t recognize any of them. A few were beautiful. Most were not. They were plain, inconspicuous—the types of people you wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t remember. Beauty had both its uses and its disadvantages. The Shifter used it only when it served her purpose. Some of the women were fat. Some were old.

They weren’t women at all. They were just masks. Isabel wondered if the old ones had felt pain in their bones, if the men had been stronger than the women. As a wolf, she had wanted to hunt. Her disguises always went more than skin deep.

Isabel continued leafing through the book. The eyes stared at her from the pages, calm and blank, revealing nothing. Nothing of who was behind the mask.

If anyone was.

Not anyone. Anything. Fog and mist, emotionless, drifting…bound to a single purpose by a magical compulsion that forced her to take on form, to deal with…life.

Maybe she was nothing but the compulsion. Maybe the compulsion had formed even the fog.

She felt a burning at the back of her eyes. Which was ridiculous. The Shifter didn’t cry.

Tears falling, not leaving a mark like the blood, and that seemed wrong….

She slammed the book shut and tracked Ven’s scent to the one window in the cluttered room. When the trail kept going, she twisted around and saw the uneven stones on the outside of the tower, suddenly understanding where he was. There were spells it would be far too dangerous to practice in a small enclosed room, spells that, perhaps, he didn’t want Albin to find him working on. Spells having to do with her?

Isabel glanced down once at the dizzying drop into the courtyard below, then reached for the first stone and pulled herself up.

When she vaulted over the battlements and onto the roof several seconds later, she found Ven sitting cross-legged on the flat surface of the rooftop. Next to him lay an open book, a bowl full of foul-smelling liquid, and several glass vials. His eyes widened.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Isabel said.

“No. It’s not—I’m glad to see you.” He started to push himself off the ground, then changed his mind and merely closed the book.

Isabel turned her back on the eagerness in his eyes and leaned her arms against the slanted wall. The sun cast faint warmth on her neck and shoulders. She could see the trees on the hills to the south; when she tried, her eyesight became even sharper, and she could see every individual leaf, red or yellow or stubbornly green. The sky was white with fog that softened the edges of the hills—as if the mist from her woods was gathering force and coming for her. A bird swooped across her view, arced, and came to rest on a rooftop below.