She snorted. “For one, you have atail.” Her eyes darted to the floor, where my dark tail coiled at my ankles. “And I heard you cast a spell that night in the forest. Plus, you know your herbs and charms too well to be anything but an Alchemist.”
“Yes, I’m half Shifter.” I grounded the fleawort leaves with a pestle and mixed them with cedarwood oil until it formed a thin paste. “No, I can’t fully shift.”
“Why not?”
I knew she was merely inquisitive, and understandably so, considering she’d lived her entire life in a province surrounded by only Alchemy. She didn’t know how other types of magic worked, had probably never even had a conversation with someone from a different province before this week. But still, my biting paranoia and defensiveness crept in, making my walls flare up the way they often did when my childhood was brought to the forefront. With it came memories I didn’t want to relive, the deep well of guilt I didn’t want to drown in again.
Growing up as pariahs, as exiles in this empire, watching the world turn on our father and crush my mother’s spirit, had forced Rissa and me to lean heavily on one another. We were compelled to do things no child should have to do. Things I couldn’t take back.
Things that had changed me forever.
I turned back to the couch, where Rose stared at me expectantly. I cleared my throat. “Magic doesn’t always work the way you think it will,” was all I said in response.
She opened her mouth as if she wanted to press the issue, but thought better of it. I set my mortar on the counter, taking a seat once again and gesturing to her midsection. She stood, gingerly lifting her shirt for me.
Remembering how my touch had been cold before, I’d cast a heating spell on the cedarwood and fleawort mixture. I dipped a finger into the warm oil and slowly spread it across the massive bruise at her ribs. Her answering sigh as she rolled her head onto her neck made my stomach tighten.
“My father taught me how to make this,” I said carefully. A question burned in the back of my throat as I massaged her skin, one that had bothered me since she spoke the words. “What did you mean earlier when you said he’s the reason yours is dead?” I asked.
Her neck snapped back to attention and her entire demeanor shifted, cold and guarded once more. She assessed me with those keen emerald eyes, and I could see her thoughts churning. Could see her deciding if she trusted me enough to share whatever had made her lash out.
She ran her tongue along her teeth. “My father was killed by men who worked for Branock Aris,” she finally said, her words cutting and sharp.
My fingers stopped moving. “That’s impossible.”
“Why?” she challenged.
“When did your father die?”
She grinded her teeth together so loudly I could hear it. “Twenty years ago.”
Twenty years. So my father had still been alive. But there was no way he would have had some Alchemist from Feywood killed. He’d already abdicated his throne at that point—what reason or resources would he have even had to send someone to do such athing? Branock Aris had been a brash man with faults of his own, but he wasn’t savage, and certainly not a murderer. She didn’t know a thing about himorwhat the past years carried.
My father had more blame placed on his shoulders than any man should. He’d had his name—ourname—drug through the mud for decades now. And it was all a lie.
He didn’t deserve one more added to it. I wouldn’t stand for his memory to continue being desecrated.
“Trust me, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped, pulling her shirt down with more force than was necessary. I picked up my mortar and rose from the table the same moment she pivoted to face me. We were inches apart, her eyes blazing up at me, cheeks heated and pink.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about?” she spat. Her indignation washed over my skin. “I watched as the man who slit my father’s throat said, ‘Branock Aris sends his love,’ then left him to drown in his own blood.” She shoved a finger at my chest, the tip seeming to burn through my thin shirt. “Who are you to tell me I’m wrong? That I don’t know what I’m talking about? You have noideawhat I’ve been through, and it’s because of him. Your father.”
She slid away from me and rounded the couch, grabbing a thin, wide book from the table and reaching for her dagger on the floor as she strode toward the door. Her staggered steps were already stronger.
Her eyes flashed at me once more, the moment of tentative peace we’d created earlier now shattered. “I’ll work with you and your Sentinels, Aris. I’ll break the curse. Butdon’task me to trust you.”
23
Rose
Iwasted no time heading back to the memorial site. The fox, or…Rissa, I supposed, had brought me miles southeast of the path I’d been on, which I’d discovered after leaving their little cottage and traveling a few minutes north toward a busy street in the south sector.
Imayhave stolen Leo’s horse. Rissa’s exact words had been “we’re willing to do what it takes to help.” Surely, letting me borrow a ride fell under that purview.
Disbelief clung to me at what this day had brought. Logically, I knew Lark couldn’t have been working alone in her plan. But to find out there was an entirenetworkof rebels, both here in the capital and in the provinces, eager to stop the curse and end Gayl’s rule? That the very man I’d run into not once, but twice now, was part of this mission? That he and his sister were none other than Branock Aris’ children?
It was too much to handle. I was ashamed of my outburst earlier, when I’d tried to attack Leo with my bare hands and broken ribs. But something had snapped. Branock Aris’children. The man who, somehow or another, was behind the murder of my father. And while I understood deep down that Clarissa and Zareleon didn’t inherit the sins of their parents, I couldn’t seem toseparate their voices from the one of that Illusionist twenty years ago. Couldn’t stop seeing the blood that coated my hands whenever Leo touched me. Couldn’t wipe away the sudden surge of vengeance that rippled through me when I laid eyes on them.
How was I supposed to trust them when I could hardly look at them? When their words made that vicious snake inside of me rear its head before I forced it back?
