“The pages without pictures are dull,” I remarked blandly, teasing her. It was something Harlan might say, though, and mean it. The thought lent me to a feeling of homesickness and a longing for the times when his youthful ignorance irritated me. What I would give now for him to be able to hold on tohis childhood longer, to be safe, and to be unburdened by the expectations of rulership.
Even if Harlan’s decisions were undoubtedly guided by the court and by his mother—an uncanny thought—it would still be an incredible shift in expectations from his prior innocence. The boy should have had more time to mature, to grow into his role. Had I not been distracted at the festival, would I have noted something off and intercepted the assassin who had taken Kaius’s life? Guilt tugged at me, and an apprehensive jitteriness seeped into my bones. When would the huntsman return?
Evera wrinkled her nose. “Just listen.” She began to read from the page. “Most children shift first between the ages of five and seven. Depending on the child’s magic and power, they may experience middle shifts for anywhere from a few months to a year from the time of their first shift.”
Middle shifts? The Queen never gave me a name for it, though I knew what Evera spoke of—the broken, horrid thing of nightmares I saw each time I met my reflection. Just as I saw it that day reflected in Thatch’s eyes and the many times after, when the Queen forced me to stand before the great mirror beneath the castle as a reminder of what I was, what I was capable of if I lost control. Where she kept me hidden until I could regain my composure, tamp my monster back down. Conceal what lurked within me.
“Until a child develops a connection with their other form, shifts can be frightening and painful, even, at times,” she read. “It is because of this—”
“Are you saying broken shifts are due to … what? A disconnect?” I shook my head. “I will not give power over to him. The fox is a monster. I know you do not see it that way, but that is the truth.”
Evera cast her gaze aside, and dejection trickled through the bond like the slow and steady drip of gathered rainfall from a leaf.
“I should not have spoken so roughly,” I apologized. What would Evera say if she knew the truth about Thatch’s death? Would she understand my resentment for the fox then? Would the truth be too much for her? Would I lose her?
When she did not respond, I wet my lips. “The middle shift you speak of … horrid, cannot describe it. When it happened to me the first time, I was young and had no knowledge of what or who I was. The form is frightening, and though I will admit the fox does not favor violence over flight, I do not have control of him. And when he is cornered, threatened, he reacts.”
“He defends himself?”
A pain stabbed at my heart, and the heat that accompanied distress coursed through my blood.
“Did the fox hurt someone?”
I set my jaw and released a shaky breath, fighting to suppress the claws of the beast that raked beneath my skin, testing my emotional instability and searching for an opening to take his hold.
“Yes.” Behind my eyelids, images flashed, replaying the horrors of that day. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and blinked to clear the memories.
“Neirin,” Evera’s voice seemed distant.
Fingers cupped my cheek, then the touch trailed higher, into my hair as she coaxed my head to turn to her. She held me, both with the physical touch of her hand that grounded me and with her scent. In a way no one else ever had been able to, she soothed my panic and calmed my soul.
“There is something that I, too, am frightened to speak of,” Evera said, her voice soft, soothing as she stroked my cheekwith her thumb. “Not a secret, just—” She averted her eyes for a moment. “Something very painful to think about.”
The sadness that seeped from her drew an instinctual need from me to put her first, to comfort her. And though my heart still raced, I reached for her hip, drawing her into my lap. As she shifted into my embrace, the book fell and became unimportant, as everything else in the room did. It all just … fell away.
With her forehead to mine, Evera found her voice. “When you are ready to speak to me about your fox, I will listen. And in time,”—she dropped her head to the crook between my shoulder and neck—“I hope that I will find the bravery to tell you about my dagger. So that we can share the weight of our pain. But for now, Neir … for now just hold me.”
38
EVERA
Sitting in the study,I closed my eyes, immensely grateful for the calm. The door was propped open, letting in sunlight and a warm spring breeze. I took a sip of white wine—light and crisp with notes of citrus.
“Thank you for this, Farren,” I said on a sigh, the tension leaving my body.
I watched her tear a piece of bread from the fresh loaf she’d brought from her family’s bakery, still warm, and cut a small bit of soft cheese to spread over it. “We both needed it, I think.” She smiled, but her usual warmth didn’t reach her eyes.
“Is something weighing on you?” I asked.
Humming thoughtfully, Farren dipped the spreading knife into a jar of fresh blackberry preserves and added it to her bread, mixing it with the cheese. “Nothing that is of any interest.”
“It is of interest to me,” I said, filling her glass back up to nearly half full.
Needing little encouragement, she swallowed her bite of bread and sighed haplessly. “Father says I must choose a suitor soon.”
From the time we were girls, Farren had always spoken highly of marriage and motherhood, and how desperately shelooked forward to them. It wasn’t my dream, but I understood her yearning, in a way. The comfort of a man in your bed each night, waking to the giggling of children and the warmth of your husband’s smile. Those things, admittedly, were desirable. It was the complacency, the starching of self that came with marriage that dissuaded me. But Farren and I were different in many ways, and I had no intention of discouraging her.
“Of all the men who have come for your hand, you do not take to any of them?” I already knew the answer, but she needed to express the her thoughts aloud to fully accept them.
