Malice, Heather Walter [hardest books to read txt] 📗

Kal released her from the medallion. Why he needed a Vila—someone with a breed of magic hers would recognize. The ancient Vila’s presence undulates within me, her power twining with the cord of my own and strengthening it until it is like that beastly vine I summoned in the royal gardens. At first, all I can feel is fear. Mortania’s magic is foreign. I do not trust it. But then a warm sense of certainty spreads through every limb. Like the way I feel with Aurora. Like coming home.

Go. I tell it.

The magic—Mortania’s and mine—responds in half a heartbeat. Surges out through my body and shreds the shadows like cobwebs. I retch as the darkness expels from my body.

“Aurora!”

She turns, startled, but Kal is faster. He lunges, slams her hand onto the waiting spindle. Aurora yelps, jerking back and staring at the trail of ruby blood welling on her palm.

A wound that has a thin green plume of smoke curling from its center.

I rush to her, catching her as she falls, both of us crashing to the floor in a heap.

“Aurora!” I scramble out from underneath her, pushing her hair from her face, batting at her cheeks. They’re already going cold. Her eyes are closed. A deathly tinge creeps over her face. “What have you done?”

Kal Shifts back to himself with a cold current of air. “Finished what we started. She is dying, Alyce. The last Briar heir. All that is left is to watch the realm collapse.”

“Not like this.” I shake Aurora’s shoulders. “What did you do?”

“Better to ask what you did.” There’s amusement in Kal’s voice and I want to strangle it out of him. “Surely you remember cursing the spindle.”

“That curse was for slumber. Not death.”

“For someone so terribly clever, you never did listen.” He laughs and it cuts me to ribbons. “The sleeping curse you put on this spindle was little stronger than a wish. But it was just the spark Mortania’s magic needed. Her intent is far stronger. It negates whatever pitiful attempt you made.”

Numbness trickles down my back. Dragon’s teeth…that’s what he was doing with the spindle. It’s the same as with the king’s brooches.

“I knew she was inside you.” Kal runs a finger down my cheek. I elbow him in the stomach, but he dodges the blow. “How else could you have freed yourself from the shadows? Her power could never be hindered by so simple a binding.”

My own scalding tears splash against Aurora’s marble-cast features. “You’re lying. You’ve done nothing but lie from the start.”

“It is not my fault if you were not adept enough to discern the truth.” Kal clicks his tongue. “But you misunderstand. The princess’s death is what we need. A new Briar. A beginning for creatures like us. Sacrifices must be made, Alyce.”

A new Briar. Aurora’s words, but twisted and ugly when Kal speaks them. I did this. Mortania’s magic bolstered the curse, but it’s my magic that will kill Aurora. My reckless plan that brought her here.

“She isn’t a sacrifice.” A massive gale roars against the tower. “And you’re a lunatic if you think I would trust you again after this.”

“Well.” Kal shrugs. “I already know Mortania is alive inside you. It is merely a matter of bringing her out. And I will find a way. Until then.” He snaps his fingers, attempting to summon the shadows. Frowning as they refuse to budge. Because I hadn’t just freed myself. I’d obliterated their magic.

Cold understanding bleeds across Kal’s features.

An exquisite rage builds behind my breastbone. Beats in time with my Vila heart. Dark laughter that is not quite my own bounces against the curves of my skull. Kal watches me, sensing the danger.

“Alyce.” He holds up a hand, gaze flitting to the door behind me. And some feral part of me hopes that he runs. That I can chase him down. “You are upset. But what is one life when they took thousands of ours?”

We do not need him, Mortania’s voice crows.

Confusion ripples through me. Kal said the Vila was his lover, and yet I sense nothing of affection in the jagged edges of her spirit. Did she love him? Or did that love fester and decay in the centuries she was locked inside the medallion, consumed with her own hatred and rage? Had the Shifter become a means to an end—the same as I was to him?

“I must thank you, Kal.” He stumbles over a splintered chair leg as I advance. “You really have given me more than my mother ever could. More than anyone.”

His back hits the opposite wall, chest working quickly. “You will consider what I offer? A new realm for us?”

I have considered. Listened and trusted and hoped. Let myself be leashed and controlled and manipulated. And look where it got me.

“I will let you die quickly.”

My Vila power responds like a warhorse, the scent of woodsmoke and damp earth mixing with rich, heady wine and molten steel. The tang of charred iron fills my mouth as my magic careens into Kal. His eyes bulge, hands going to his neck. I could laugh at how simple it is. Mortania laughs with me, the peals warping as they collide with the sounds of the storm.

I take one last look at the Shifter who killed Aurora. Who used me and lied and pretended to love me. But all he ever cared about was himself. And so I find the treasonous heart of his power and smash it beneath the heel of my own.

Kal sinks to the floor in a boneless heap, not even uttering a cry.

CHAPTER FORTY

Aurora’s lips are chalky against the dull wax of her skin. Her veins are showing through her cheeks, blue-black and brittle. Her limbs are stiff. Her heartbeat faint. I crush my mouth to hers, again and again, begging the magic that broke the first curse to work again. She doesn’t stir.

Not even when I reach my own power inside her, searching for Mortania’s curse,