“What do you plan to do now?” she said.
His head came up. Something in that movement—in the way the black hair flew back, the jaw jutted, the eyes flashed—was so familiar her heart skipped a beat. She had loved this boy long before she ever met Rokan.
She couldn’t kill him. Never had been able to. Even the first time she saw him, in her woods…she had thought, when she let him go, that she was making a decision. But there had been no decision to make.
“You know what I plan,” Kaer said. “To kill the imposter.
Prince
Rokan.”
Rage flared within her. But it died just as suddenly, leaving her empty. Behind her, on the other side of the door, the footsteps paused and then kept going.
“You should be helping me.” Kaer pushed himself away from the wall. “Me—not him! You’re my Shifter. You have to help me win my throne back.”
“I am your Shifter,” Isabel said. The words were oddly easy to say.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “In the woods you saved
his
life.”
He was staring at her the way Rokan sometimes had, back in the beginning. Warily. It cut more deeply, now that she understood how unnatural it was for a prince to look at his Shifter with suspicion in his eyes.
Now that Rokan no longer looked at her that way.
“Stop it,” Isabel said so fiercely that Kaer blinked. She stepped toward him. “Where were you, when I needed a prince to protect? What reason did I have not to believe him?”
His jaw set. “I’m here now. And I could be sitting on my throne by now, too, if not for you.”
Out in the hall the footsteps stopped, turned, and strode back the way he had come. Every muscle in Isabel’s body clenched. If she opened the door now and let him see her, this whole horrible mess could end right now. He had the guards with him…but Kaer had her. It would be no contest.
Rokan passed the closed door and continued to the stairwell; she could hear him making his way down the stairs, back to his bedroom, to wait for her. Isabel’s stone arms shifted back to flesh; she tried to fight it, but her sense of danger had passed, and her body wouldn’t cooperate. She let her spindly human arms drop to her side. When she spoke, her voice was resigned.
“Don’t be a fool. Stealthy assassinations are no way to convince anyone of your legitimacy. If you want your throne back, it has to be a well-staged battle—public, dramatic, and with a large number of the dukes’ men in the immediate vicinity.”
Kaer chewed the side of his lip, watching her, blue eyes wary. “Owain said the same thing. He thinks I should challenge him at his coronation. Do you think that would work?”
“It has a better chance than your knife-throwing escapades.”
He flushed, but his chin went up. “It will have an even better chance if
you
publicly support me. And the best way to do that, to remove all ambiguity, would be if you were the one to kill him. Will you do that for me?”
She didn’t hesitate. She knew, deep in her inhuman soul, whom she belonged to and what she was going to do. Hesitation would have implied that she had a choice, and that would have been yet another lie.
“Yes,” said the Shifter. “When the time is right, I will kill him for you.”
“He
got away,” Isabel said in disgust, striding into Rokan’s bedroom.
Rokan was standing by the window, his dagger sheathed, holding a handkerchief to his shoulder. The handkerchief was soaked with blood and his face was white, but he spun around when she entered. “Are you all right?”
The question was too silly to deserve an answer. Isabel walked over to him and peeled the handkerchief away. The sharp, metallic smell of blood filled her nostrils. Rokan winced but otherwise stood perfectly still. There was a lot of blood, but no bone showing. Without remembering all the other wounds she had seen, Isabel knew this one wasn’t serious, though it was probably painful. She pushed away an instinctive sympathy and stepped back. “He disappeared before I could get close to him.”
“Sorcery.” Rokan swore under his breath and pressed the handkerchief back into place. The cloth was dark brown now; only the edges were still white. “Incredible. He went to all that effort to get me alone and then attacked me with the Shifter right there in my room.” He smiled at her, his eyes brilliant despite the pain that bleached his face white. “He must not know who you are.”
Isabel suppressed a wince. Kaer must have been waiting, not to find Rokan alone, but to find him alone with
her
. So he could force her to remember which side she was on. “You should have that wound checked,” she said, heading toward the door. “I’ll summon one of the healers.”
“Wait,” Rokan said. “You were gone for a while. You must have learned something. Tell me.”
“I was trying to find him,” Isabel said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “I learned nothing.”
“Could you see who it was?”
“You saw as much of him as I did.” Isabel was surprised by how difficult it was to continue the lie, even now that she knew how blatantly
he
had lied to
her
. She turned to face him. “Who do you think he was?”
Rokan’s eyes went opaque. “One of the dukes’ men, I assume. Or a hired assassin.”
Not telling her the truth was the smart thing to do, but Isabel still felt oddly hurt. “He said something before he vanished. About taking back what was his.”
“My father limited the dukes’ powers, and they didn’t think it was within his rights. But they don’t just want back what they had. They want what I have.”
Smart
and
fast. Isabel decided not to push it. Sure of her loyalty though he was, Rokan was quite capable of figuring out what had happened if she dropped enough hints. “We need to make them as frightened of you as they were of your father. You’re going to have to kill some people, you know.”
“No,” Rokan said, backing away from her, “I don’t know.”
“Even if I kill this assassin, they’ll send another.”
“Then you’ll kill that one, too.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Well, that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
He sounded almost angry. Isabel tilted her chin and raised her eyebrows, and Rokan lowered his eyes. “Sorry. It’s just…sometimes I wish my father had never rebelled.”
He wasn’t the only one. Isabel walked over to the table and picked up a game token, turning it over in her fingers. It spun around and around, faster than any human could have turned it, so fast it was a black blur. “I would be needed anyhow. Even with a secure dynasty, a king will always have enemies.”
“There wouldn’t be a secure dynasty,” Rokan said, watching the token spin. “The king my father killed was destroying Samorna. He wanted to form an alliance with the Raellians—never mind that the Raellians are interested in conquering an empire, not making peace treaties. He was obsessed with consolidating his hold on the northern dukes and never seemed to notice that the south was on the verge of secession. Samorna would not have survived the rest of his reign.” He sighed up at the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. Nobody remembers that now. The old royal family is all dead, and so is my father, so the only person they’re judging is me. But my father was right to do what he did.”
Isabel nodded and put the token down exactly where she had found it. Rokan pressed down too hard on the handkerchief and winced, and she started toward him, then held herself still.
“Do you want to be king?”
He straightened. “Of course that’s what I want.”
“Is it?” she said. “Kings don’t often get to ride alone, or marry for love. Or be free. You’re the one who wants to know what it feels like to fly.”
“But I
can’t
fly,” he said. “I’m not you. Humans can never be free.”
She had to shift away a stinging in her eyes, though she didn’t know why. “You could be freer than
this
.”
“I could.” He peeled the handkerchief off his shoulder. “But at what cost? I can’t sacrifice Samorna because I want to ride and love and imagine I’m free. I can be a good king, Isabel. Especially with you at my side.”
She made no response to that. She strode over to the dagger and picked it up, smelling steel and blood. “I’ll find out who threw this,” she said. “Have a healer bind your shoulder.”
She left without waiting for his reply. Even if she hadn’t known the truth, that would still have been a meaningless piece of politeness. The shoulder wound was minor, not worth her concern. She was the Shifter, and pain meant nothing to her at all.
It should have been harder than it was.
Isabel thought so every night, even though the days were hard enough. She sat in on Rokan’s audiences, she attended banquets and dances, she rode by his side when he ventured into the city, and she spoke privately with him each evening about what she had learned that day. Every time he leaned forward to confide in her or gave her one of his open, trusting smiles—a tiny needle went through her, not large enough to cause real pain, just enough to make sure she was never comfortable. He trusted her, and she was going to betray him.
Once, when they were discussing the dukes, he mentioned Daria, and bewildered abandonment flashed in his eyes. She thought, That’s how he’s going to think about me. And went on with the conversation.
It bothered her that she felt it, even though she had almost given up worrying about what the Shifter should or should not feel. But there was only guilt. No fear, no difficulty, no strain in keeping the secret. She didn’t bother to worry about whether Rokan suspected, because she knew he didn’t. She was very, very good and it was very, very easy for her.
She half-believed her own charade and didn’t spend enough time thinking about it to let herself realize how ridiculous that was. She spent her time searching for assassins even though she knew where the assassin was, spying on the arriving guests even though the danger had not been invited, making sure she knew everything that was happening even though none of it was the slightest bit important. She spent hours with each duke’s maids and daughters. She gathered hints and clues about what she already knew, as assiduously as she would have if she didn’t know it yet.
It all went well until the night before the coronation, when Rokan tried on his new robe and practiced walking down to his throne one final time. No one was with them; Clarisse had gone to bed in a fine fury, snapping that she couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over—Oh, yes you can, Isabel thought, but without really hearing her thoughts—and Will had ripped his own robe and was having it repaired. Isabel stood on the long maroon carpet that led from the doors to the dais, watching Rokan as he sat on the throne. His head was high, the ceremonial robe falling in neat folds from his shoulders to his ankles. Even without the crown, he looked like he belonged there, like he had been born to command. Then he ruined it by slumping and staring up at the canopy stretched over his head.
“I’m afraid,” he said, and Isabel raised startled eyes to his. She already knew he was afraid, but she also knew it was something he had never admitted aloud. “There’s a part of me that doesn’t really believe I’m going to be king.”
At that moment some barrier snapped, and Isabel knew—really
knew
—that he was right. He was never going to be king. He was going to die tomorrow, and Kaer was going to be king.
Her fingernails dug into her palms. But Rokan was watching her, a fragile expression in his eyes, so she shifted her voice steady and said, “You don’t have to be afraid while I’m here.”
“Not of that,” he said, waving off three near-successful assassination attempts as minor irritants. “I’m afraid of not being a good king. Sometimes kings make decisions and people die. I used to watch my father make those decisions and wonder how he could seem so calm. But he really was calm. He didn’t care.”
“But you do.” Isabel brushed a wayward strand of golden hair away from her face.
He gazed back up at the canopy. “I know. And what if because of that I can’t make those decisions? Because they have to be made. I’ve studied history. Nice kings are weak kings, and weak kings are bad kings. What if I’m a bad king?” He got to his feet, his eyes black as marble in the dim light, fierce and intent. “Does the Shifter help the king with such matters, even when his life is not at stake? With affairs of state, and alliances, and wars?”
This conversation was laughable, if one knew what was going to happen tomorrow. Isabel didn’t feel the slightest bit like laughing. And she didn’t know the answer to his question. But it didn’t make a difference, so…“Yes,” she said.
Rokan’s face didn’t change, but his shoulders relaxed. “That will be good. That will help. You—you can be ruthless.”
Yes, I can be, Isabel thought. And decided to say it aloud without the bitter tinge. “Yes. I can be.”
“Good,” Rokan said, and then more firmly, “Good. I’ll need you, Isabel. Even after we find out who the assassin is.”
“I know,” Isabel said, hating herself. “I’ll be there whenever you need my help.”
“I’ll be glad of it. That will make everything easier.” He smiled at her then, a wide, brilliant, unrestrained smile. She had seen that smile twice before—in the Mistwood, when he had first come for her, and outside the city when they watched the hawk fly. It lit up his face. The urge to answer it was nearly irresistible. It
would
have been irresistible had she been human.
She pressed her mouth in a firm, straight line.
Rokan leaned forward. “You won’t go back to the Mistwood, then? I’ll need your help for as long as I reign.” He hesitated, gathering his courage. “And…and I would miss you, if you left me.”
Spirits.
What she saw in his eyes now was not a command, nor a plea, but something else entirely. A hope.
Letting him believe what he wanted to believe was the best and easiest way to fool him. But Isabel couldn’t do it, even if it would allow her betrayal to succeed beyond all measures.
She held up her arm, letting the bracelet slide down along her wrist, tinkling faintly.
“As long as you need me,” she said, “I can’t leave.”
Rokan drew in his breath, held it for a moment, then let it out. In the second before he composed his face, she saw that she had hurt him; and she told herself, Best get used to it.
All at once it hurt to be near him. Isabel nodded curtly, muttered something about checking defenses, and strode out through the throne room doors. Outside, she leaned against the wall and wished more than anything that she had all her powers. If she did, she would shift into swirling mist and be gone. If she did, she would never again forget what she was.
The Shifter didn’t feel guilt. Or indecision. Or…pain. The Shifter wouldn’t have to shift the insides of her eyelids to make the prickling go away.
She spent that night trying desperately to shift, throwing herself again and again into the image of a wolf or a hawk or a cat. Over and over, until she was sweating and gasping, her failure so intense it physically hurt. She tore at her body with her fingertips, hating the flesh that kept her caged, and then shifted the bloody skin back into wholeness. And still she was trapped in a human body, a human mind that kept circling back to things the Shifter wouldn’t have bothered to think about.
Tomorrow Rokan would die.
He wasn’t the prince, so it didn’t matter.
He trusted her.
It didn’t matter.
Clarisse would be proved right.
Even that didn’t matter.
After what seemed like forever, morning came, dragging frail pink clouds across the lightening sky. She stood by her window until the horizon turned blue, first pale and powdery, then a powerful strong blue that tore the morning clouds into wisps. Then she went to do what she had to do.
“I hate ceremonial clothes,” Rokan said. “Have I mentioned yet that I hate ceremonial clothes?”
“You may have mentioned it once or twice,” Will said, swinging his legs over the edge of Rokan’s bed. “A minute.”
“Well, it will be good for my image in the south. It gives me that unpretentious demeanor that merchants like in their kings.” Rokan gave his robe a final tug and scowled at the mirror. “I’m counting on you to spread the rumors.”
“Then you could have just said, ‘Will, please spread rumors that I hate ceremonial clothes.’ Everyone would be happier.”
“He’s being sarcastic,” Rokan appealed to Isabel. “Wouldn’t you say that’s treason? Shouldn’t you be protecting me from treason?”
“I go after the greatest danger first,” Isabel said calmly. “Where’s Clarisse?”
Rokan’s answering grin was wistful; he had been melancholy ever since she arrived in his bedchambers that morning. Isabel didn’t smile back. She was, on the surface, preoccupied because she was worrying about his safety. The surface was well constructed. She had half-convinced herself.
Dangerous, that. But she let herself stay half-convinced, because she was used to it, and because it was less dangerous than thinking about the truth. The truth was that after today, Rokan would never grin like that again. Not at her. Not at anyone.
She watched for danger until the last second. Rokan had to walk into the throne room alone—a tradition that she remembered, or thought she remembered, had always irritated the Shifter. She stood with him until all the nobles were assembled in a thick colorful mass around the carpet that led from the doors to the throne. Duke Owain was one of the last to pass, his gaze sweeping over her without a hint of recognition.