Isabel stepped toward her, and even the guards flinched. “Did Rokan send you?”
The woman moved her head away from the sword; the nearer guard inched closer, keeping the edge of the blade against her neck. “I don’t think I’ll tell you.”
“I think you will,” Isabel said. Not menacingly, just stating a fact.
The woman smirked and vanished.
The guard swore, sliding his sword through the empty air where the woman’s neck had been. Several noblewomen screamed. Kaer sat perfectly still, and Isabel lifted her shoulders ever so slightly.
“Not exactly unexpected,” she said resignedly.
He wondered if she meant the assassination attempt or the disappearing act. “No. Do you think she left the castle?”
“If the spell was powerful enough. It probably was, but…” The Shifter took a step back and gestured at the guards. “You saw her true face, and what she was wearing. I want you to comb the castle searching for her.”
The two guards obeyed her without question, even though it meant leaving their posts. Kaer watched them stride toward the doors.
“You can’t leave during the Challenge Hour,” the Shifter said in a low voice. “The guards will do whatever can be done.”
“I know that.” Some of his irritation over the guards’ behavior spilled into his voice. “But chasing her isn’t really doing anything, is it? We have to get rid of the one who sent her. Can I trust you to chase him?”
An expression flitted briefly across her fierce face—he would have called it hurt, if that wasn’t so ridiculous. It was close enough to make a small, mean sense of satisfaction well up in his chest. She had hurt him, after all.
And she had let a snake sink its fangs into her hand for him. Kaer opened his mouth to say something else—something grateful—but it was too late. The Shifter had already turned her back on him and was gliding into the crowd, moving with a predator’s grace that had everyone in the room drawing away.
Only then did Kaer turn to the other pair of green eyes that had been watching him all along. Clarisse inclined her head, a faint smile playing about her full lips.
It felt like a challenge. Kaer drew his knuckles across the arm of the throne and said softly, “You should be a little more afraid. You led that assassin straight to my throne. Did you know what she was?”
“How could I possibly know if the Shifter did not?”
“The Shifter saved me. You just stood there.”
Clarisse lifted one shoulder. “I am not bound by an ancient spell to protect your life with my own. Though I am aware that, given my current circumstances, things would go ill for me should you die.”
“You owe the Shifter a debt, then.”
She blew a tendril of hair out of her face. “Actually, Your Highness, I owe you a debt. It’s always a pleasure to watch that arrogant creature make a mistake.”
Kaer pressed his fingers down on the arms of his throne, so hard they went white. “You think it was a mistake that she saved me?”
“I think it was a mistake that she thought she had to save you.”
Kaer jerked back without thinking, earning himself another bruise. Her smile compressed into a smirk.
“I saw the way you were watching ‘Lady Risan,’” she said. “I guessed.”
Kaer swore. “Isabel didn’t.”
“Oh, I would never claim to be more perceptive than the Shifter.” The smirk disappeared, banished by a winsome head tilt. “But she didn’t know what to expect. I knew you were going to arrange a test for her. It’s the smart thing to do. It’s what I advised Rokan to do, back when he first summoned her here.”
Kaer regarded Clarisse narrowly, evaluating her through new eyes. She fingered the necklace at her throat, watching him back.
“Of course,” she said just before the silence grew strained, “it wasn’t a very good test. She saved Rokan, too, once upon a time. Before she turned on him.”
Kaer suppressed a flinch. “She turned on him because she discovered the truth.”
“And the truth is all that matters to the Shifter. So they say.” Clarisse hesitated a beat before continuing. “I never doubted that she would discover the truth, eventually. But I thought it might not matter. She didn’t act like the Shifter around my brother—not all the time. She cared about him.”
“She thought he was the prince.”
“About him,” Clarisse said impatiently. “I didn’t think she would actually allow him to die.” She blew out a short breath. “But it never hurts to be careful, which was why I advised my brother to be prepared. Just in case I was wrong.”
Kaer almost laughed. “And now you’re bragging to me about how you helped the imposter escape? Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“I’m telling you,” Clarisse said, “that my brother had those escape spells ready for one reason. Because even though he didn’t believe me, he listened to me.”
A faint quiver ran through that last sentence. Kaer didn’t think it was faked. This was her one chance, her last possible play for power. A final attempt to make herself indispensable, or at least useful.
She was the usurper’s daughter. He made his tone cruelly scornful. “You expect me to confer with you when I have the Shifter by my side?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t like it. How many times has she warned you against me already?”
“An understandable caution.”
“You would think so.” Clarisse lifted one finger to her chin. “But she didn’t like it when Rokan conferred with me, either.”
Kaer shrugged and motioned to Owain, who had been watching them from the other side of the room. As the duke started toward them, Kaer said, “Interesting proposition. I’ll be sure to give it some thought.”
His voice dripped with sarcasm. But he knew, even as Clarisse backed away from the throne, that he was going to take her up on it. And he was sure that she knew it, too.
Isabel woke up the next morning with her blanket tangled around her legs and the sun streaming in through the windows. For the first time that she could remember, she was not instantly awake. Sleep clouded her mind, and for a moment, staring at the green walls and tall windows that were now her life, she gave in to its pull. She wanted to sink back into that darkness and dream of nothing.
She closed her eyes, but there wasn’t nothing. There was Kaer, the thought of him, and instant concern. She shifted the fatigue from her body and went to her wardrobe.
It was early enough that there were only guards in the dim halls—northern men who watched her with surly fear and made no move to intercept her. She paused only once, outside the prince’s bedroom, steeling herself to see Kaer where she had spent so much time with Rokan. But Kaer’s bed was empty.
Daria, she thought, and stopped in her tracks.
But he wasn’t with Daria. She tracked him up a rarely used staircase to a doorway that opened onto the roof—a different section of rooftop from the one where Ven had died, lower than the towers and surrounded on three sides by curving stone walls set with iron-grated windows. Straight ahead of her, through crumbling crenellations, she could see mountains retreating toward the horizon in green waves.
She didn’t see Kaer, but she could hear both him and his companion. They were sitting on the other side of tower, talking in low voices.
Isabel’s muscles were so tight they ached. Even from this distance Clarisse’s scent grated on her, like sandpaper against stone. Clarisse and Kaer were on this rooftop for one reason: so no one would find them. And it had almost worked. She got down on her hands and knees to sniff the rough stone, but realized when she touched the floor that she didn’t have to; if she concentrated, her fingers picked up the traces of their passing, a sense that was like scent but passed straight through the pores of her skin. She swept her fingertips slowly over the stone. No one else had come this way recently—not Daria or Owain or Albin.
You arrogant fool, she thought, and strode around the tower.
She got a slight, mean pleasure from Kaer’s guilty start, the surprise he tried to wipe off his face. He was lounging on the battlements, heedless of the drop behind him—a carelessness that annoyed her to no end—holding a glass goblet filled with red wine. Clarisse sat on the ground with her skirts spread out about her, ridiculously out of place in a gray gown that was more lace than silk. With deliberate slowness, she rearranged her sleeves, leaned back against her arms, and lowered her lashes.
Isabel strode over to her king and knocked the goblet out of his hand. That wasn’t necessary—she could easily have taken it—but it was much more satisfying to see the shock on his face as wine arced in a spray across the rooftop. An instant later she changed her mind and dove low to catch the goblet before it hit the stone and shattered.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kaer demanded.
There was still wine in the goblet. Its heady scent mixed with the faint tinge of fear from Clarisse—the fear that had made Isabel change her mind about letting the goblet shatter.
Clarisse was more beautiful today than in all the time Isabel had known her. There was fake color on her cheeks and around her eyes—expertly done, but Isabel could smell the chalk on her skin. She was still posing, head cocked slightly to one side so that her wealth of hair tumbled over a bared shoulder, glimmering like gold in the dawn light. But that was for Kaer. There was no hint of coyness in her eyes when she looked at Isabel. “You don’t approve of our choice of wine?”
Kaer choked on a laugh. Isabel looked at the clay wine jug on the floor near Kaer’s feet and at the empty goblet next to Clarisse, its rim stained pink.
“You needn’t worry,” Clarisse went on, a bite in her voice. Kaer’s laugh had given her confidence. “Your king isn’t as stupid as you seem to think he is. He hasn’t let me near the wine, or his goblet.”
There was still fear in the air, but not quite enough of it. Isabel lifted the goblet to her lips, shifted her tongue, and took a sip. She tasted every detail of the wine—that it had been stored in oak barrels, that some of the grapes had not been fully ripe when pressed—but could identify no poison.
Clarisse stood, her skirt falling in folds around her legs. “Do you want me to drink it?”
It might have been a bluff. And if it wasn’t, what was the harm? But Isabel folded her arms across her chest and matched the disdain in Clarisse’s voice. “No. I want you to leave.”
Clarisse looked at Kaer. After a barely perceptible pause, he nodded. Clarisse inclined her head gracefully and swept past Isabel, who had to hold herself still to keep from…she didn’t know what she might do. But it probably wouldn’t be wise.
As the sound of Clarisse’s footsteps faded away, Isabel faced her king.
Kaer spoke first. “She’s right, you know. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
“And not as smart as you think you are,” Isabel said before she could stop herself. “Clarisse is dangerous. How do you expect me to protect you if you make decisions without—”
“She’s not dangerous,” Kaer said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“She’s been on our side for a long time. Longer than you have.” He swung his legs up onto the battlements, turning to sit sideways. “She approached Owain days before her brother’s coronation, to discuss our plans and how she could help.”
Isabel remembered the terror in Clarisse’s eyes when Isabel asked her about Owain, and for a moment she wondered if Kaer was right. Had Clarisse intended to betray Rokan all along?
No. She shook her head. “She fooled Owain, then. She wasn’t trying to join you. She was trying to find out your plans. She was trying to find proof that I was part of your conspiracy, so she could prove to her brother that I wasn’t trustworthy.”