But I reach deeper, ignoring the way sinew and tendon threaten to snap. Thinking instead of Endlewild’s easiness when he promised my death. Kal is right. There’s nothing the Briar King can do to stop him. Endlewild is beholden to the Fae courts, not the mortal realm. And the Etherians wouldn’t punish one of their own for ending a Vila.
Spurred by the rage the Fae lord always kindles in me, when the moon is only a handsbreadth above the silvered waves, I’m at last able to make one of my arms disappear. Only one.
My stomach growls.
“That is the third time your belly has complained in the last hour,” Kal observes. “You need food. And it will be easier for you to slip into Briar before the sun rises.”
I settle myself on the stump of a column instead, where Callow has made her perch for the night. She opens one eye, bleary and irritated, before ruffling her feathers and turning her back on me. The sea is calmer than usual. Far in the distance, I can see the ghostly outline of one of Briar’s trading ships as it skates across the moon-kissed currents. Months ago, I’d been desperate to be aboard, starving for a life away from Briar.
It feels like years have passed since that day.
In the black silk of sea and starlight, I picture Aurora’s face. The freckle nearly hidden on the shell of her ear. The tiny dimple creasing the right side of her mouth. Her lower lip, always slightly swollen because she bites it when she’s thinking. As the details take shape, the break of the waves against the tower becomes her laugh. The breeze on my neck her touch.
She wants to make me her advisor. Me, sitting at council. Deciding what’s best for the realm. Taking back all the power the former queens lost and funneling it into Aurora’s reign. Finding ways to use my power that help instead of harm.
A shadow rustles my skirts, sending a shiver up my leg. Kal. I don’t want to leave Aurora, but I don’t want to lose him, either. Maybe I don’t have to.
“Kal?” I hesitate, choosing my words carefully. After his speech about his distrust of the royals, I know he wouldn’t approve of my time with the crown princess. “If I free you from this tower, would you consider staying in Briar?”
He turns slowly, shoulders tight. “You want to stay in Briar?”
“No.” The salty air scrapes my lungs. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Kal’s brow rumples. He joins me at the column. “I thought leaving this realm was your deepest wish. Do you want the Fae lord watching you forever? The Briar King demanding curses from you whenever the whim strikes him?”
“Of course not.” Before I can pull them back, my wild, intoxicating hopes spill free. “But what if Tarkin wasn’t the Briar King? What if Endlewild could be leashed? Banished, even?”
Questions flash in the depths of his obsidian eyes, like lightning building in the heavy underbelly of a storm cloud. “What do you have in mind, Alyce?”
“Nothing.” I squirm against the half-truth. “But if Briar was different. If it was a better place for people like us—would you stay?”
I can hardly breathe, anticipating his answer.
“It was not a random choice, to put me in this particular tower,” he says at last. One hand moves absently to his chest, tracing the outline of his medallion through his doublet. “There was a time, before these walls began to crumble, that I could climb to the upper floors and see all of the realm. Even glimpse part of Malterre—or what remained of it. Years after the war, black smoke still rose from the wreckage. I could smell the scorched flesh. Hear the screams of the dying.”
A shudder races up from my toes. I huddle deeper into my cloak.
“They selected this place as my prison so that I would see and hear and smell those things. So that I would watch as my homeland disintegrated, powerless to stop it.”
I close my eyes against the pain his words bring. Malterre was my homeland, too, even though I never set foot on the soil. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to know that everyone you loved had died. That you had to live forever with their ghosts. I reach for Kal, but he avoids me, going to stand at the gap in the wall and look out at the sea.
“The war was a long time ago,” he continues. “And I understand that things have changed. That they could change even more in the coming years.” He gives me a meaningful look, as if he knows the crown princess is hidden in my words. Heat clambers up my neck and bursts across my cheeks. “But, no, Alyce. This land holds too many ill memories. And I could never ally with a realm that utterly destroyed my own.”