“I’m surprised he trusted you,” Isabel said.
“He didn’t. But my father understood emotions, even though he didn’t have any. He let me take care of Rokan and made sure we faced an array of common enemies…nasty governesses, sadistic guards. Rokan was so small and helpless.” For a second Clarisse’s mask slipped and there was something real on her face. “My little brother. I used the magic I learned to protect him.”
And then the Shifter had come, and Rokan hadn’t needed her protection anymore. Isabel understood, suddenly, the light in Clarisse’s eyes at the coronation, when the Shifter had stood back and let Rokan be taken.
She wasn’t the Shifter anymore, but Clarisse was still watching her with that banked hatred in her eyes. Still afraid that Rokan would put her first? Isabel skittered around that thought, focusing instead on the implications of Clarisse’s revelation.
“So it all came from you,” she said slowly. “The trans-location spells. Rokan’s sword at the coronation. The poison that disappeared from the goblet. The knives—”
And the one other piece of untraceable magic.
Isabel almost stopped breathing. She saw by the expression on Clarisse’s face that the princess knew she had figured it out.
“You,” she said, too stunned to be angry. “You killed Ven.”
Clarisse started to step backward, but stopped in mid-motion and lifted her chin. “Who did you think it was? Rokan never realized how dangerous you could be. I did, from the start, but of course no one would listen to me. That stupid boy told you the truth about the bracelet, and he was about to tell you the truth about Kaer. He would have turned you against us.”
“I already knew about Kaer.” Isabel shook her head, remembering how she had forced Ven to answer her. “You killed him for nothing.”
“I didn’t know that. But I knew what you were capable of. I had to protect him.”
“Protect yourself.”
Clarisse pulled her shoulders back, ready to attack—an attack that, for the first time since Isabel’s arrival, would not be completely ridiculous. Clarisse could use her magic openly now, and Isabel was—almost—just a powerless girl. Isabel moved into a fighting stance and hoped Clarisse didn’t realize that.
But Clarisse merely smiled, leaving Isabel to wonder whether she had been planning to attack at all. Her smile was sharp and hard-edged, and her voice was almost calm. “What difference does it make?”
“It will make a difference.” The sound of her own voice—low, steely, icy—was alien to Isabel. “I’m part of the court now. I’ll be here for a long, long time. I know what you did, and I am very patient.” She stepped forward, and Clarisse stepped back. But still the princess’s expression didn’t change. “If you’re smart, Clarisse, you’ll leave now, and make sure I never hear from you again.”
Clarisse smiled, a real smile, and tossed her hair back. “But I’ve never been that kind of smart, Isabel.” She broke their locked gazes and raised one eyebrow. “And I’m not very good at staying out of trouble.”
“Have it your way.”
“I usually do.”
“Back when we first met,” Isabel said, “you said that you always do.”
Clarisse walked past her, opened the door, and stepped into the hall. Isabel watched her go, and stood for a long time staring at the empty doorway before she shut the door again.
Rokan came to her room early the next morning. Isabel, who still made the effort to listen for his approach, was sitting up in bed wearing the green and white riding outfit he had given her the first time he saw her.
He took a small step into her room, then another; he stopped and opened his mouth. His eyes locked on hers, half-afraid but determined. Like her riding outfit, his expression reminded her of the day they had met, when he had ridden into the Mistwood to summon a magical creature who might be his death.
He crossed the room in a few sudden, decisive strides and pulled himself up on the foot of the bed, a few feet away from her. He set his chin and said, “You were wrong.”
She kept her back straight, meeting his eyes but keeping her expression veiled. “Wrong about what?”
“I don’t want you to be the Shifter.” Rokan’s voice was quiet, and her human sense of smell told her nothing about how he felt. “I haven’t wanted that for a long time. Since before I knew it was possible for you to not be the Shifter.” A pause, and then—so quietly that even she could barely hear him—“Since before I knew I loved you.”
Without warning—though the Shifter would have seen it coming—he leaned forward and took both her hands in his.
The contact went through her with a shock. She hadn’t felt his hand around hers since that day in the Mistwood; she had forgotten the firm, callused warmth of his fingers. For a moment she almost gave in to the urge to rest her cheek against his tunic and feel his arms around her. She had wanted to do just that for so long. He was perfectly still, hardly breathing, waiting for her.
She drew in a deep shuddering breath and pulled her arms back. Rokan dropped her hands as if she had shifted them to fire. She averted her eyes, not quite quickly enough to avoid seeing the hurt in his, and struggled to find her voice.
Before she could, Rokan said—in that same quiet voice—“Is it because I killed him?”
“No,” she whispered. “You had no choice.”
“I wish I could have done it differently.” He clenched the blanket, holding his hands there with an effort. “I wish it could have happened in a way that didn’t hurt you. I wish that more than anything.”
Isabel lifted her eyes to his face and made her voice gentle. “I need a horse.”
He went absolutely still. “What?”
“I have to go to the Mistwood.”
“Isabel—” He stopped, closed his eyes. He unclenched his fingers one by one, pressing them down, before he opened his eyes. They were dark as night and watched her with a hopeless intensity. “Of course. If that’s what you need to do.”
His face was so bleak her heart twisted, and she couldn’t help herself. She slid closer to him and placed her hand gently against his cheek. She could feel the faint stubble that meant he hadn’t been shaved yet that morning, the taut line of his jaw. He lifted his hand to hold her fingers there, then let it drop back to his knee and held her instead with his eyes.
“Come back,” he whispered.
Isabel couldn’t speak. She nodded her head slowly, once, never moving her eyes from his.
He smiled then, the smile she loved—wide and unrestrained, alive with joy, as if he were free. And this time she finally did what she had been too cautious to do before, what she had wanted to do since that first day in the Mistwood.
She ran her hand down his arm, twined her fingers with his, and smiled back.
The next morning Isabel rode to the Mistwood.
The trees seemed less hostile this time when she rode into them. They still weren’t welcoming—not as they would have been for the real Shifter—but now she knew why. She rode to the center of the woods, dismounted, and carefully hobbled her horse. She knew she wouldn’t be returning as a wolf.
She waited for hours, sitting cross-legged in a bed of ferns, soaking up the power that had, she strongly suspected, given birth to the Shifter in the first place. Then she shifted.
It was hard. Not impossible, as it had been in the castle, but harder than the last time she had been in these woods. She shifted into a cat—because she had lied to Clarisse back in the beginning; it was her favorite form—and stretched luxuriously, arching her back and digging her claws into a pile of dead leaves.
She became a wolf, and then a bird. One last time she soared above the treetops, stretching her wings to catch the wind sweeping in from the south. She circled back and dove, landing on a low tree branch. She had planned to be a bird last, but on impulse she shifted into a squirrel and ran down the trunk. And then, finally, she became human again.
The mist swirled around her briefly and dissipated. Isabel stood for a second watching it, wondering what happened to each bit of the Shifter that had been slowly seeping out of her for weeks. Did it dissolve back into wind and fog, conscious-less and purposeless, nothing more than a breath of air? Or here, in the woods where the Shifter had been born, was it coalescing slowly, reforming, shifting back into what it had once been—or into something altogether different?
The Shifter wouldn’t have wasted time wondering about it. Isabel lifted her chin, felt the breeze caress her face, and smiled.
Then she mounted and nudged her horse lightly with her heel. The horse was all too happy to get out of the woods and broke into a full gallop as soon as he was able to. Isabel let him. Her hair, red-brown and tangled, whipped out behind her as she leaned low over his neck. When they had passed far enough beyond the last tree, she reined him in and looked back. The mist wreathed among the trees. It was probably only her imagination that made it look stronger, more alive, than it ever had before.
Her horse nickered and pulled at the reins. Isabel let him have his head, and they set off for the castle at a gallop.