Dragon’s teeth. I wriggle harder against the bonds, but it’s useless.
“Really, Alyce. By now, I expect more from you. It seems I still have much to teach you.” With a grunt he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. Pain spikes through my jaw and teeth with each of his jarring steps. “And I do not wish to be interrupted by a pesky Grace. Laurel, was it? Well. We shall deal with her later.”
Terror drums beneath my skin. Now I do hope there’s a blizzard on the way. Anything to keep Laurel from danger. We’ve reached my room. Kal drops me unceremoniously onto the floor in a corner.
“Kal, this is madness. We cannot take Briar by ourselves,” I reason, trying in vain to keep my voice steady. “Whatever was done to you, it’s not worth dying in some reckless act of vengeance.”
“What do you know of it?” He snarls. “Your life was a garden party compared to the last several centuries locked in this rotting cesspool. Do you know who put me here? Have you managed to puzzle it out? The same creatures who tormented you for years—Etherian filth.”
The admission snatches the breath from my lungs. Now that the enchantment is broken, Kal can speak of his captors. The smell when I reached the heart of Kal’s enchantment. Dewed grass and spring flowers. I knew I recognized it. It’s the same that lingered in my Lair after Endlewild threatened me. The same power that pulses in the Fae lord’s staff. Dragon’s teeth, I should have known. The scar on my torso aches. “But how? Etherians can only wield light magic. They couldn’t have bound you in shadow.”
Kal laughs, low in his throat. “Oh yes, the Vila have a terrible reputation for lies and trickery, but the Etherians are just as wicked. They only mask it better beneath the perfume of blessings and charms.” He moves to the window and sets the spinning wheel turning, wood clacking on wood. “They managed to imprison me in this tower because they were caging a dangerous beast. A beast. You know something about that, I think.”
Thunder growls and I shudder. I do know.
“But I was not alone here,” Kal continues.
That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never seen anyone else in the tower.
His hand goes to his neck, fishing out the medallion I discovered what feels like a lifetime ago. The raw skin of his chest has healed now that the bindings are severed. But why is the medallion intact? It should have shattered along with the enchantment.
“I was in love with a Vila once,” Kal says. “In the court of Targen, to which I served as a spy both before and during the war. But the Vila council forbade the match, insisting on keeping bloodlines pure. I wanted to leave them—start our own court, perhaps. But she wanted revenge. And she took it as ruthlessly as she could.” He fingers the thick chain and watches the sea. “Her magic bled into the Etherian lands. It was the first time in decades that the Vila had encroached on Etherian territory, and so the light Fae saw it as an act of war and struck back.”
War? But there was only one war in Briar’s history. “You mean the War of the Fae? Your lover started the War of the Fae? That’s impossible. I would have read about her.” Dragon knows I’d scoured every book I could find on the subject.
He wheels to me. A quick streak of lightning illuminates the crimson threads in his hair, like fine streaks of blood. “After the war, her name was scrubbed from all records.”
“No. There was only one Vila who—” The next clap of thunder shakes me to my core. “The Vila who cast the curse on Aurora’s family. She was…”
“Very good, Alyce.” Kal leers at me. “Yes. I helped her. Disguised myself as a servant to enter the palace and plant the Vila’s curse on the heirs. The royals deserved it. The humans poisoned our lands. Killed our kin. And so we did the same to Briar. Leythana’s daughters would live to the age of twenty-one, one year for each year of the War of the Fae. Just long enough to make the pathetic humans think they could do something to save their children. And then the poor princesses would succumb to the Vila magic. Eventually, the curse would end the royal line. Briar would be thrown into civil war, allowing the borderlands to be sieged and the mountains to be breached.”
A few pieces of the ceiling clatter to the floor as the wind howls into the chamber. Shame claws up my throat. All this time I’ve been trusting the very creature who branded Aurora’s family with the curse. Someone who just wanted to use me to tear Briar apart. My jaw clenches and I embrace the pain. I deserve far worse.
“But the princesses lived,” I grit out. “The Vila’s curse didn’t work.”
“Not as intended, no. After the Etherians managed to soften it so that it could be broken by true love’s kiss.” Kal waggles his fingers. “But it did damage enough. Quite amusing, actually, the way events unfolded. By forbidding younger daughters to produce children, the royals picked off potential heirs all on their own.”
He’s right. Aurora’s aunts have all died—childless, in order to prevent the spreading of the curse. There’s only one heir keeping the Vila’s work from being completed.
“And now it is our turn.”
“No!” I wrestle with the bonds. The shadows only wrap tighter. “You’ll have to kill me before I—”
“Oh, not you and I.” Kal laughs. “Someone far more powerful. Someone who deserves to witness the fruits of her labor.”
Storm-charged air punches through the narrow window.
“Do you mean…the Vila? You told me she was dead.”
“I lied.”
Kal unlatches the medallion’s chain and dangles it before me. Even against the pitch-dark of the storm, the gem shimmers, deep emerald and sapphire darting and
