Page 60 of Malice

“I’ll thank you now,” Marigold pipes up. “You will invite me to the palace, won’t you? Often? You won’t forget?”

“You’ll have to beat Pearl.” The name is soft on Laurel’s lips, but it might as well have been a dagger flung into Rose’s chest. She slams her napkin down.

“I can charm circles around that haughty—”

“Good morning, Graces.” Mistress Lavender bustles into the room, bringing a thick swell of the cloying scent of her namesake that burns in my nostrils. Calliope sneezes from her post at Rose’s feet. But before the housemistress can even settle into her chair, Marigold is babbling, regurgitating the details of the morning’s events as she thrusts the palace’s letter under Mistress Lavender’s pointed nose.

Laurel and I exchange a smirk. But then I notice Rose and my stomach sinks a little. She does not look the part of a confident Grace, poised to take her place among the royals. She looks weak and ill and so very frightened.

I excuse myself without another word.

—

“I don’t envy the subject of those thoughts.” Aurora’s voice brings me back to the present late that evening. She appears regularly as clockwork now. Twice a week, on the nights her guards play cards and descend into drunken half-wits. I find myself wishing they would do so more often.

After breakfast, I’d returned to the Lair to find yet another commission waiting. A solid gold bracelet the king bid me curse to paralyze the wearer. Its mahogany box glares at me from where I’d stashed it on a shelf.

“Is something the matter?”

“No.” Another lie piled atop countless others. I have enough to build the black tower twice over. “Just a hectic week.”

“I think I witnessed your handiwork at court.” Aurora selects a miniature jam tart and pops it into her mouth. “One of my mother’s ladies, a skilled dancer, could do nothing but stumble over her own feet once a single note of music was struck.”

I cringe, remembering that particular elixir from a few days ago. Another lady-in-waiting commissioned it. But I can’t divulge that.

“It was quite the entertainment,” Aurora says around her next bite. “I ordered the most complicated dances played the rest of the night and kept throwing partners at her.”

I can’t help but laugh, shaking my head at her strange sense of humor. Pearl’s words from so long ago come back to me, though. That Aurora is only interested in me because I’m vile and hideous. I bite down on my tongue until the thought fades.

“Oh, and have I told you about the prince’s letter?”

“Prince?” I scramble to keep up. She hasn’t mentioned a prince lately. Except—“You mean the Ryna prince? The one whose star chart matches yours. He’s writing to you?”

“Apparently we’re supposed to be getting to know each other.” I might be imagining it, but it seems she won’t meet my gaze. “Even if he isn’t the one who breaks my curse, I suppose it can’t hurt to establish diplomatic relations.”

Maybe not. But a pang lands between my ribs, even as I scold myself for being unreasonable. It’s no business of mine to whom Aurora writes. Or why. And yet she’s never spoken of the other suitors this way. The thought of her writing this prince—sharing her secrets and reading his flattery—festers.

“What sort of things do you discuss?”

“He’s as dull as can be expected.” She’s looking through Kal’s book again, studying an illustration of an Imp using its magic to turn a pile of stones into a steaming feast. An Imp’s power is small in comparison to the other creatures that once lived in Malterre. Typically, Imps can only manage little feats like mending things or conjuring food or drink—which is why they were once used as slaves in Etheria. Their magic wasn’t dark or strong enough to harm the light Fae. But while summoning a feast may seem more a blessing than a curse, the Imps are full of their own special kind of tricks. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that the decadent food in the illustration turned back into stones once eaten. “But he did tell me of a practice in his kingdom that quite interests me. All of the silk workers in Ryna are given a small claim to the trade’s profits. The prince writes that, as a result, the workers care more about producing the best silk possible. That they’re happier and work faster.”

I have to admit that it’s a good idea—grudgingly. I’ve seen some of the wretches who mine Etherium for the nobles, half-starved and miserable. Many don’t even look old enough to have left their mothers. And the Common District is so poor. They certainly don’t see any of their masters’ coin.

“I want to implement that system here,” Aurora rushes on. I love seeing her this way—the same breathless passion as when she told me her plan to break the curse. “I want to bring it up at the next council meeting, but my secretary keeps forgetting to add me to their agenda. I’ve told her a hundred times that I need to start participating in political affairs. But, dragon’s teeth, she’s so absentminded. I’ll never get anything done.”

Absentminded.A thought taps at the edges of my mind. The chalice the Briar King bid me curse causes memory loss. It could be a coincidence, I tell myself. Aurora’s secretary could be forgetful for other reasons. And why would Tarkin bother cursing such a woman? Surely he would view her as insignificant. Aurora told me that not even the small council takes her role as future queen seriously. Not until she breaks the curse, at least.

But perhaps that’s the point. What if Tarkin used the cursed chalice on Aurora’s secretary specifically to keep his daughter out of political matters? If he’s trying to cripple her rule before she even takes the throne—or to prevent that rule entirely?

My instinct screams at me to warn her. But that would mean admitting I have an agreement with her father. And confessing my true powers and perhaps even revealing my meetings with Kal. I can’t betray him that way. And more than that, I doubt Aurora would still come to see me if she knew the truth. I’ve become accustomed to having a friend, and it’s like breathing clean air after years of sucking down the brackish odor of the Common District. I don’t want to give her up just yet.

“Any luck with that book?” I ask, steering the subject abruptly away from pesky, star-chosen princes and people I might have unwittingly cursed.

The summoning ritual was ages ago, but we’ve found nothing else that might aid in breaking the curse. Against my better judgment, I attempted several other rituals from the Nightseeker book. One for cleansing, in the hopes that we could clear the curse from her blood, but it only suffocated us in a haze of sage smoke so dense I could chew it. And another to reverse a binding, which promptly unraveled the hem of Aurora’s gown and popped the seams of her sleeves. Aside from those, the princess has swallowed dozens of antidotes for poisons and hexes. But the deadly Briar rose on her forearm has stubbornly refused to budge.

The only experiments I’ve outright refused to conduct again are any rituals that use my blood. After what happened with the summoning—after seeing the ancient Vila—it’s far too risky. I have no idea what else can be called by my power. And no amount of her clever reasoning will convince me otherwise.

“No.” She frowns down at the sketch of the Imp. “I still don’t understand why the Etherians hated these creatures so much. I’d love to employ someone who could magic me a cream puff anytime I wished.”