“Isolde.”
I turned my head and looked at Adrian. He stood naked on the stairs of his palace.
“Tell me what is wrong.”
“I don’t know,” I said, frowning. Then I turned and looked toward the garden, bolting again. As my feet carried me at what felt like an abnormally fast pace, my bones broke.
It was the only way I could describe it.
The pain sent me to the ground, and I screamed. Tears welled in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks, and as strange as it was, the only thing I could think about was water.
Water is rebirth.
You will survive in the water.
And it was near. I could smell it.
I reached out with my hand to crawl when a set of claws burst from my fingertips. Blood dripped onto the snow and while I screamed, I dug into the earth, using my claws to pull myself forward, propelled by my one and only goal—water.
Even as I crawled, my bones moved, fusing into something that made me feel completely other. The knowledge that I was no longer human passed through my mind before I rose to my feet with what energy remained in my body and staggered into the grotto.
My vision was blurry, but I knew where I was because of the lingering scent of jasmine in the air. I came to the edge of the pool and broke the ice layer on top as I waded into the depths. The water cradled my body in a cold embrace, and the burning in my blood and the ache in my bones ceased.
“Isolde.”
Adrian stood on the bank, and even in the dark, his eyes glittered.
“Stay,” I said. “I will be back.”
Then I submerged myself beneath the water, and there was no pain as I felt my body transform and become a foreign thing—an animal, covered in thick black fur.
Reemerging, I crept to the shore on all fours, holding Adrian’s gaze as I sat, allowing a long, black tail to curl around my feet.
The corner of my husband’s lips lifted.
“Aren’t you a beautiful beast?” he said.
I narrowed my eyes at him, allowing a growl to escape my mouth. I did not appreciate his humor so shortly after becoming the very same creature that had killed so many of my people.
I had become an aufhocker.
I was an omen of death.
Six
Isolde
When I woke, it was cold.
I sat up, holding my blankets to my chest, noticing the shutters were open. Snow had gathered on the ledge while flurries fell, languid and delicate, to the floor.
I rose, naked, and crossed to the window.
Adrian’s room overlooked part of the palace gardens. Yesterday, everything had glittered with a dusting of icy crystals. Today, nothing was visible above heavy drifts of red-stained snow.
Gavriel had been right. Winter did come fast.
I should close the shutters, but I couldn’t look away from the garden below as I remembered toiling through the snow to reach water, and when I had emerged, I had been something monstrous.
A darkness gathered in my chest, as I recalled that I had become an aufhocker.
The very thing that had killed my people in Cel Ceredi.
And while I was somehow once again in my human form, I felt different, altered. I looked at my arm, where the aufhocker had bit me, where Adrian had bit me—it was fully healed. I looked at my hands, spreading my fingers wide—fingers that had sprouted claws last night. Something gathered in my throat, a hysteria I wasn’t certain I could quell.
I did not want to be this—whatever this was. A shifter. A creature that craved extinguishing life.
The door opened and I turned as Adrian entered the room.
He stared at me, his eyes like embers, and as his gaze trailed my body, I warmed beneath it despite the winter air.
He was dressed in black, with gold accenting the clasps of his surcoat and securing his cloak, which draped over his right arm in a pool of deep red. There was always a sharpness to his features, but this morning they seemed far more menacing.
“Am I a monster?” I asked.
He chuckled, amused by my question, but his response only made me angry. “It would seem so,” he said.
“So you failed,” I said. It wasn’t a fair thing to say, but I felt like fighting because he had laughed and I…I was afraid.
Adrian narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to the side. It was as if I had slapped him. “If I had failed, you would not be here now in human skin.”
I cringed at his words.
“I am human.”
His smile twisted my stomach.
“Not anymore.”
“What is this pride you have?” I demanded. “I am a monster.”
“So am I,” he said. “Does it make you sick to be like me?”
“But I am not like you!” I snarled. “I am a creature, an animal! I do not even know who I will be when I shift. What if I murder innocent people? What if I am murdered by your people?”
It was a fair question. I would look just like every other black hound in a pack.
Adrian’s mouth tightened. “You will not be killed,” he said.
“And you can control that?”
“I will,” he said.
We glared at each other for a moment. I was the first to turn away, closing the shutters. I crossed to the bed where Adrian’s robe lay folded on a chair, pulling it on.
“You are failing to see the potential in this power,” Adrian said.
“It is hard to do so when I do not know what this means for me,” I said. I had already expressed my fears. Did I need to repeat myself?
“What happened last night?” I asked. “After I turned.”
“You came out of the water and collapsed and turned back into…you,” he said. “I brought you inside, and you were still feverish, so I opened the window while you slept.”
I did not know what to say, so I remained silent, attempting to process everything that had occurred.
“Do you think I will leave you to figure this out on your own?”
The angry part of me did not want to figure this out because I did not want to be this.
“And how will we do that?” I asked.
“You are not the only shifter in this kingdom, Isolde,” Adrian said. “There are others like you.”
“Sorin is a falcon, not a—”
“Monster?” Adrian cut me off. “But he is a monster. We all are, and we all have sides of us we must learn to control. You are no different. You never have been.”
I clenched my jaw hard. Right now, I did not feel like controlling myself. I wanted to tear him to shreds. I wanted to eviscerate him with my words. I wanted to lash him with my tongue.
And he must have been listening to my thoughts because he laughed. “I would take the tongue-lashing,” he said, “if it meant I could fuck you on your stomach.”
“You haven’t even tried to understand my fear,” I said. “What makes you think I would let you touch me?”
Adrian’s gaze hardened, and it was my turn to smile, though there was nothing entertaining about this.
“Get dressed,” he said, and I bristled at the order. “High Council is in an hour.”
He left, and I flinched as he slammed the door behind him. I took that as a sign I had succeeded in my goal to hurt him, though to my own detriment, because I did not like that he had left before we could discuss High Council. I wanted to know his agenda, and I wished to communicate mine without the noblesse present. I did not trust that they would support me. Though it was not as if I wanted something that did not align with Adrian’s goal of conquering Cordova.