Page 91 of Malice

The Briar King looks at me like he sees me for the first time. One thick eyebrow raises. “Perhaps I misjudged your intelligence, Dark Grace.”

“Have you gone mad?” Queen Mariel lunges at him, swinging her crown like a weapon. “The alliance. The Graces. The Etherians will flatten us into the earth. The treaty with Leythana—”

“Is over.” Tarkin shoves her back. She stumbles and the Briar crown sings as it hits the floor. “Or it would have been. Once our last heir fell victim to the curse. Then there would have been no choice but to invade the Fae courts.”

The king sounds like a child denied his plaything. Mariel hears it, too. She shades impossibly whiter. “Are you saying—youwantedAurora to die? Your own daughter? Your blood?”

He doesn’t deny it. Every inch of Aurora’s body stills.

“Something needed to be done,” Tarkin continues. “I knew it as soon as I arrived in this realm. Heirs dying off one by one because of that curse. There’s only one way to end it properly—start a new line.”

“A new—” Mariel swallows. “Seraphina and Cordelia. You wanted them gone, too? I always told you they didn’t have enough suitors. Begged you to invite more eligible men to the palace. I even agreed to let Seraphina kiss those from the Common District, when she came to me in her final days. But you refused. I thought your lack of concern was because you didn’t understand. You thought some miracle would happen at the last moment. But you…you isolated them on purpose. Sent them to their graves because of some—some bid for war?”

“What I understand, wife.” If Tarkin feels an ounce of remorse over what he’s done, he doesn’t show it. “What every son of Paladay understands, is how to strengthen a kingdom. You have no idea how to rule.”

“This is not a kingdom.” Pride swells in my chest at Aurora’s voice. Small, but laced with iron. “It belongs to a queen. And the curse was broken. Leythana’s alliance remains intact. I will be the next Briar Queen. Your plans will come to nothing. And I will see you answer for what you did to my sisters.”

“Youwill mean nothing soon enough.” Tarkin narrows his gaze at his daughter. “If my edict passes in council. And I’ve made sure that it will. Then Briar will bemine. Etheria next.” He jerks his chin at the line of prisoners. “The Graces are trinkets compared to the magic that’s beyond those mountains. Magic that should be Briar’s. Think of what we can do with sails that need no wind and ships that never sink. Lakes that grant immortality.”

The story Aurora showed me in her book. Tarkin knows it, too. “That’s what you want. To live forever?”

“Toruleforever,” Tarkin corrects.

The queen half laughs, half shrieks. “We’ll be dead as soon as they suspect it. My people will never follow you. You’ll have a civil war on your hands if—”

“We’ve beaten a Fae race once, wife. Or do you not remember the war?” He twists his signet ring. “Besides. We have something now that we’ve never had before. That no realm has ever possessed.”

His attention spears through me.

“A Vila.”

Something. The word slithers across the floor and into my blood. Because I am not a person. Not here. Not to him. Queen Mariel gapes at me.

“Yes.” Tarkin watches me like I’m a meal to be devoured. “The Vila would have won the war were it not for human interference. And now we are the ones in control. With your dark magic, we will quash the Etherians. They cannot stand against you.”

The cord of my power ripples. “I will not be your weapon.”

Tarkin laughs, a low, lethal rumble. “And how will you stop me?”

I know exactly how.

My magic springs from its cage. Slams into the king’s chest and finds his human power. The fragile thing quivers at my touch. The Briar King falls to his knees, eyes bulging and mouth flopping like a caught fish. His huge fingers dig at his neck, jowls going purple as his strangled gasps fill the chamber. I will end him. As I should have done in the war room. As I should have done as soon as I knew I could do it.

“Alyce.”

My name knifes through the air. Aurora’s eyes are glassed over and shining. A tear streaks down her cheek and hovers at her jawline. It trembles in the sunlight before it drops to the floor.

“Don’t.”

My hold on the king’s magic loosens.

“Please.”

And then it unspools, slinking back into my body like an injured dog.

The way she’s looking at me. A crack forms in my heart and fissures outward.

I am a monster.