Mistwood

Owain and Albin exchanged the world-weary expressions of older men dealing with rash boys. They should know better, Isabel thought. But Kaer plainly didn’t intend to share the truth Isabel had learned last night, and she wasn’t about to do it for him.

“He’ll know what you’re trying to do,” she said instead, and Kaer stopped pacing and turned to face her, a little less quickly than he might have. He nodded in agreement, the picture of confident command, but she could see the shadow of fear in his bloodshot eyes. He was afraid. Of her.

She rested her head back against the door. “How do you plan to get him here?” she asked. “Rokan won’t come for a challenge, Kaer. He’ll know there’s a trap behind it.”

Kaer went back to pacing. “We have to make him think it’s his decision, then,” he said. “Make him think we don’t know he’s coming.”

“Then why would he be coming?” Isabel asked—and as soon as the question was out of her mouth, she knew why Daria was there.

The girl stepped forward on cue. She was wearing a rose-colored gown and looked, Isabel had to admit, remarkably pretty. Her prettiness had been growing less and less understated since she had taken her place in Kaer’s court. “He would come,” she said, “for me.”

No, he wouldn’t. Did they think Rokan was stupid?

“He very well might,” Clarisse agreed. She propped her elbow on the back of the couch and rested her head on her hand. “Spread a rumor that you’re going to have her killed—maybe something about her secretly working on Rokan’s behalf, he’ll love that—and then have Albin loosen the wards around the castle for one night.”

“Rather obvious, isn’t it?” Albin said.

Clarisse slid her fingers through her hair. “Not really. The rogue sorceress told me once that no wards are constant; they’re all subject to natural unpredictable fluctuations. Rokan will be waiting for one of those fluctuations. We’ll just make sure it happens when we’re ready for him.”

Albin gave Clarisse a look of flat dislike. “Assuming he has magical assistance.”

“It seems clear that he does.” Clarisse turned away from Albin dismissively.

“And you really think he would come?” Kaer’s voice forced Isabel’s attention from the enjoyable sight of her two least-favorite people on the verge of attacking each other. The king had clasped his hands behind his back and paused at the end of the room. “That he would risk everything? Even if he’s convinced Daria’s secretly working for him, I find that hard to believe.”

You would, Isabel thought. She braced both her hands against the door. “That’s not relevant,” she said. “He won’t believe she’s suddenly on his side. Rokan can be rash, but he’s not stupid.”

“You’re right.” The statement, startlingly, came from Daria. She moved closer to Kaer, brushing his taut arm with her fingers, and he took her hand almost absently in his. “But he’ll still come. He would walk straight into a trap, knowing it might be a trap, if he thought I was in danger. I was the only person in the castle he loved.”

“That isn’t true.” Isabel was surprised to hear herself speak, and at how cold her voice was.

“Really,” Daria said, a brittle edge to her voice.

I miss her. As clearly as if she was still standing in his darkened room, she remembered the pain in Rokan’s voice. What if Daria was right?

But Rokan had learned, since then, not to trust his feelings. Daria had started the lesson, and the Shifter had finished it. A bitter feeling rose in Isabel’s throat, and she swallowed it hard.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Really.”

Daria stared at her with undisguised hate in her long-lashed eyes, but she said nothing.

“Isabel’s the one who’s been around him most,” Kaer said. He disentangled his hand from Daria’s and began pacing back across the room. “She would know. Not that I doubt your charms, Daria, but people have a way of falling out of love when you try to kill them.”

“I’m the one who’s been around him most,” Clarisse snapped, sitting straight up on the couch. “And I think Daria’s right.”

Daria’s head came up in surprise. Kaer crossed the room and took a seat next to Clarisse, who stiffened but didn’t move, though Isabel could tell she wanted to. What she couldn’t tell was whether Clarisse wanted to move closer to Kaer or farther away. “You do?”

“I do.” Clarisse didn’t turn her head toward him; she stared down at her hands, which were clenched on her knees. “I think Rokan knows about you and Daria—there are at least some people at court who are still loyal to him and could make sure information found its way to him. But he does still care about her.” She glanced up at Isabel as she said it, her eyes hard as emeralds. “Once he hears the rumors about me and Kaer, he’ll believe that Daria has been betrayed, and—”

“What rumors about you and Kaer?” Daria said.

Clarisse leaned back into the couch cushions, her eyes wide. Owain got to his feet and snapped, “You didn’t tell her?”

Clarisse lifted her hand to her mouth in horror. Isabel didn’t have to shift her sight to know there was a smile hidden behind her hand.

Perhaps because she was focused on Clarisse, she didn’t sense any danger. The sound of swishing silk warned her, and she turned just as Daria flung herself at Kaer.

It wasn’t a serious attack—Daria might have scratched up his face, but she didn’t have the strength to hurt him. Nevertheless, Isabel reacted. She was across the room before Daria’s fingers could touch Kaer, grabbing her by both wrists and flinging her to the floor.

Daria scrambled to her feet, sobbing, and went for Kaer again. Isabel grabbed one wrist this time, swinging Daria around to push her facefirst into the wall. She held her there with one hand, surprised by the vicious thrill that ran through her.

Spirits. She hated Daria.

“Let her go,” Kaer said sharply, and Isabel obeyed, more because of her own reaction than because of his. She stepped back, watching Daria crumple to the floor and dissolve in a storm of weeping.

Kaer knelt by Daria and put his arms around her shoulders, glaring over her head at Isabel. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“She attacked you!” Isabel snapped.

“Do you honestly think I’m in danger from her? You’re supposed to be helping me kill him, not attacking the few people who are truly on my side!”

“No one is on your side!” Isabel shouted at him. “No one but me!”

His face went flat and he turned back to Daria, pressing his lips to her hair. When he spoke, his voice was too low for anyone but Isabel to hear. “I wish I could believe that.”

Isabel was shaking with rage and desperation. “Daria might love you, but she tried to hurt you anyhow, didn’t she? Clarisse loved Rokan, but she’ll help you kill him.” As the words left her mouth, she suddenly realized how they could draw Rokan here; there was one person he would come for without question. And once she told Kaer how to lure Rokan to his death, she would erase this doubt forever. “I’m the only one who will stand by you no matter what, because I have no choice!”

“Try to sound a little happier about it, would you?” Clarisse murmured.

Isabel was across the room in a second, one hand on Clarisse’s throat. Only the greatest effort of will kept that hand from squeezing tight.

Clarisse’s neck muscles tensed beneath Isabel’s fingers, but she didn’t so much as flinch. “First Daria, then me? How fascinating that you feel a need to attack the exact two people who betrayed Rokan. Rather interesting choices for a creature who claims she has no choice.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Isabel hissed. But even as she said it, a part of her mind protested. Clarisse was right. The attack on Daria had been unnecessary; the attack on Clarisse even more so. The Shifter, once she had figured out how to draw Rokan into the trap, should have told Kaer immediately instead of letting herself get distracted.

She had wanted to get distracted. Because she didn’t want to tell him.

Isabel lifted her fingers from Clarisse’s neck and stepped back. She turned to Kaer, opening her mouth to say what she should have no choice but to say. But she was arrested by the sight of the dark bruises on Clarisse’s white throat. And on Daria’s arm as well. Evidence of choices she couldn’t have made.

Clarisse lifted an eyebrow at her. “Go ahead. It’s not like you haven’t betrayed him already.”

“I’m not the only one,” Isabel said despite herself. “And you—you’re his sister—”

She stopped. The realization was so sudden, and so overwhelming, that for a moment the room faded away.

Your sister might be alive, she had told Kaer. Had said it straight to his face, had asserted that the Shifter would never have left without saving the princess. And had walked away from that conversation without realizing a thing.

In her mind’s eye she saw the Shifter—as she had seen her in one of her dreams, from the outside, from terrified seven-year-old eyes. Shifting frantically from one form to the next. And then—

And then memory came to an end.

It must have been unendurable, for both of them. But it had been the only way to save her. For the Shifter, saving her was all that mattered. And that night the Shifter had seen only one way to save Kaer’s sister. She had merged herself into the girl, giving the frightened young princess the power to shift into something else and escape from the death all around her.

Isabel wondered if she had screamed as the Shifter flowed into her, if she had tried to get away from the centuries-old power invading her mortal human body. She wondered if the Shifter had made a sound. If the Shifter had thought twice.

She no longer remembered how she had escaped the guards, but it could have been any one of a million ways. She could have become a mouse or a bird or a patch of fog. The Shifter had been strong in her then, had known what to do, had been able to guide the little girl to the Mistwood, where her magic could be replenished every second. No wonder her powers were so weak once she left it.

No wonder she had been so confused…filled with the Shifter’s powers, the Shifter’s needs, but with human emotions and human needs as well. She wasn’t the Shifter, but she was. She wasn’t human, but she was.

Isabel realized that she was shaking—actually shaking—and hastily shifted her muscles still. They were all watching her now, even Kaer, and she looked back at him with her face absolutely blank. The answer she had been about to tell him, had believed she had to tell him, trembled unspoken on her lips.

Maybe she should tell him the truth instead. Tell him she was his sister.

We’d probably be better off if she was dead.

I should hate him, she thought. But she didn’t. She still remembered the brave young boy with dark hair and how much she had loved him. The Shifter didn’t feel love, not even when she was giving her life; but the scared young princess had loved her brother, refused to go anywhere without him, cried with him when the soldiers came. He had told her not to worry and tried to protect her.

And now he needed someone to protect him. He wanted her to be the Shifter so badly. Even after she had hurt him by making mistakes the Shifter should never have made, protecting the wrong person, the son of the man who had come for him when he was a child. He had stepped in front of his sister back then, but deep down he had believed the Shifter would save them both. And the Shifter hadn’t. She had chosen someone else.

It was the same dilemma. Rokan or Kaer. And she and Kaer had crouched together in a sealed room, years ago, while Rokan’s father hunted them down.

Kaer was her brother. And he was the king. The king had to be protected.