Mistwood (15 page)

Isabel woke up the next morning with her blanket tangled around her legs and the sun streaming in through the windows. For the first time that she could remember, she was not instantly awake. Sleep clouded her mind, and for a moment, staring at the green walls and tall windows that were now her life, she gave in to its pull. She wanted to sink back into that darkness and dream of nothing.

She closed her eyes, but there wasn’t nothing. There was Kaer, the thought of him, and instant concern. She shifted the fatigue from her body and went to her wardrobe.

It was early enough that there were only guards in the dim halls—northern men who watched her with surly fear and made no move to intercept her. She paused only once, outside the prince’s bedroom, steeling herself to see Kaer where she had spent so much time with Rokan. But Kaer’s bed was empty.

Daria
, she thought, and stopped in her tracks.

But he wasn’t with Daria. She tracked him up a rarely used staircase to a doorway that opened onto the roof—a different section of rooftop from the one where Ven had died, lower than the towers and surrounded on three sides by curving stone walls set with iron-grated windows. Straight ahead of her, through crumbling crenellations, she could see mountains retreating toward the horizon in green waves.

She didn’t see Kaer, but she could hear both him and his companion. They were sitting on the other side of tower, talking in low voices.

Isabel’s muscles were so tight they ached. Even from this distance Clarisse’s scent grated on her, like sandpaper against stone. Clarisse and Kaer were on this rooftop for one reason: so no one would find them. And it had almost worked. She got down on her hands and knees to sniff the rough stone, but realized when she touched the floor that she didn’t have to; if she concentrated, her fingers picked up the traces of their passing, a sense that was like scent but passed straight through the pores of her skin. She swept her fingertips slowly over the stone. No one else had come this way recently—not Daria or Owain or Albin.

You arrogant fool
, she thought, and strode around the tower.

She got a slight, mean pleasure from Kaer’s guilty start, the surprise he tried to wipe off his face. He was lounging on the battlements, heedless of the drop behind him—a carelessness that annoyed her to no end—holding a glass goblet filled with red wine. Clarisse sat on the ground with her skirts spread out about her, ridiculously out of place in a gray gown that was more lace than silk. With deliberate slowness, she rearranged her sleeves, leaned back against her arms, and lowered her lashes.

Isabel strode over to her king and knocked the goblet out of his hand. That wasn’t necessary—she could easily have taken it—but it was much more satisfying to see the shock on his face as wine arced in a spray across the rooftop. An instant later she changed her mind and dove low to catch the goblet before it hit the stone and shattered.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Kaer demanded.

There was still wine in the goblet. Its heady scent mixed with the faint tinge of fear from Clarisse—the fear that had made Isabel change her mind about letting the goblet shatter.

Clarisse was more beautiful today than in all the time Isabel had known her. There was fake color on her cheeks and around her eyes—expertly done, but Isabel could smell the chalk on her skin. She was still posing, head cocked slightly to one side so that her wealth of hair tumbled over a bared shoulder, glimmering like gold in the dawn light. But that was for Kaer. There was no hint of coyness in her eyes when she looked at Isabel. “You don’t approve of our choice of wine?”

Kaer choked on a laugh. Isabel looked at the clay wine jug on the floor near Kaer’s feet and at the empty goblet next to Clarisse, its rim stained pink.

“You needn’t worry,” Clarisse went on, a bite in her voice. Kaer’s laugh had given her confidence. “Your king isn’t as stupid as you seem to think he is. He hasn’t let me near the wine, or his goblet.”

There was still fear in the air, but not quite enough of it. Isabel lifted the goblet to her lips, shifted her tongue, and took a sip. She tasted every detail of the wine—that it had been stored in oak barrels, that some of the grapes had not been fully ripe when pressed—but could identify no poison.

Clarisse stood, her skirt falling in folds around her legs. “Do you want me to drink it?”

It might have been a bluff. And if it wasn’t, what was the harm? But Isabel folded her arms across her chest and matched the disdain in Clarisse’s voice. “No. I want you to leave.”

Clarisse looked at Kaer. After a barely perceptible pause, he nodded. Clarisse inclined her head gracefully and swept past Isabel, who had to hold herself still to keep from…she didn’t know what she might do. But it probably wouldn’t be wise.

As the sound of Clarisse’s footsteps faded away, Isabel faced her king.

Kaer spoke first. “She’s right, you know. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

“And not as smart as you think you are,” Isabel said before she could stop herself. “Clarisse is dangerous. How do you expect me to protect you if you make decisions without—”

“She’s not dangerous,” Kaer said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“She’s been on our side for a long time. Longer than
you
have.” He swung his legs up onto the battlements, turning to sit sideways. “She approached Owain days before her brother’s coronation, to discuss our plans and how she could help.”

Isabel remembered the terror in Clarisse’s eyes when Isabel asked her about Owain, and for a moment she wondered if Kaer was right. Had Clarisse intended to betray Rokan all along?

No. She shook her head. “She fooled Owain, then. She wasn’t trying to join you. She was trying to find out your plans. She was trying to find proof that
I
was part of your conspiracy, so she could prove to her brother that I wasn’t trustworthy.”

“I hardly think that’s likely. And even if it’s true, her plan failed, didn’t it? She poses no threat to me now.”

“You underestimate her. How can you trust someone who would betray her own brother? She’s ruthless and—”

“Ruthless and powerless. Without the dukes’ help, even I could have done nothing to regain my throne.”

“You’re not as smart as she is.”

Kaer’s lips tightened, and tension rippled through his muscles. Every one of Isabel’s defensive instincts snapped into alertness, but before she could move, Kaer relaxed against the battlement, his eyes cool again. “I disagree,” he said in a perfectly steady voice. “And I’m curious to know why she bothers you so much.”

It was a moment before Isabel could focus on what he was saying, rather than on the tension still strumming through him, and even then she didn’t know what to say. She knew why Clarisse bothered her so much. Clarisse’s presence meant that Rokan wasn’t completely gone. He would come back for his sister—he would never believe she had betrayed him. And because of that, Isabel couldn’t shut him out of her mind. She
had
to think about him, to prepare for his attack. It was dangerous. Even now, standing in front of her king, Isabel felt a dizzying sense of disorientation when she met Kaer’s blue eyes instead of Rokan’s brown ones.

“She bothers me,” she said finally, “because she’s a danger to you.”

Kaer hugged his knees to his chest, staring out at the pine-covered mountains. She wished he would get down from the battlements. “Her brother is the bigger danger,” he said softly. “Yet you’re doing nothing to get rid of him.”

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me. It even makes sense.” He shrugged. “I suppose I expected the Shifter to do better.”

Isabel had no reply to that. A sudden gust of wind blew past them, ruffling Kaer’s cloak and lifting the blond strands of her hair. She imagined she felt mist against her skin, though the breeze was clear.

“I want to trust you, Isabel.” He spoke with his eyes still trained on the horizon. “It’s what I’ve always wanted. When I heard you were at the imposter’s court, I waited weeks for you to realize your mistake and ride back to the Mistwood. I knew that if I could get you alone, you would remember whose side you were supposed to be on. I never stopped believing in you.”

“Then don’t stop now,” she said. “I am on your side. That’s why I’m here.”

Kaer made no reply. He turned and gazed at her wistfully, wanting something he thought she couldn’t give. Rokan had looked at her like that, too, toward the end. She hadn’t been able to give him what he wanted, either.

The stone beneath Isabel’s feet felt too thin to support her weight. She thought of half a dozen things to say, discarded them all. Kaer was right. The weeks she had spent protecting Rokan had been a fleeting mistake in the long life of the Shifter, an embarrassing deviation from centuries of loyalty. She would not fall short again. She would regain her ability to shift, she would get out of this skin with its memories of failure and confusion, and she would continue to protect the rightful rulers of Samorna. Long after Kaer was dead, long after Rokan was dead…

That
thought hurt, a pain so sharp and sudden she had no defenses against it. For a crazy moment she wished Rokan was here, that she could tell him how to stay ahead of Kaer. How to stay alive. That she could explain…

Explain what? That she wished she could betray him without caring? That he had been mistaken to think of her as anything but a weapon?

Isabel walked across the rooftop toward Kaer, waiting until the last moment before veering slightly away to hop onto the battlements right next to him. She looked down at the courtyard far below, then stepped off the edge.

Air and stone whistled past her as she fell. She thought of wings, of mist, of fog that could be lifted on the wind and scattered through the trees. She fell, heavy and solid, trapped in a body that couldn’t fly or float or disappear.

She twisted at the last moment, grabbed the edge of the windowsill she had known would be there, and pulled herself through the window with hands and arms that were inhumanly strong. When she landed safely in a pages’ dining chamber, fortunately empty at this hour, she was gasping.

Once she had thought that if she saw the ground rushing toward her, she might grow wings to carry her away. Well, she knew the truth of that now.

And what difference did it make? Even if she grew wings, they wouldn’t carry her away. Nothing would carry her away. She was here, and she shouldn’t want to leave. Not anymore, now that she was protecting the right person.

She was exactly where she was supposed to be, doing what she was supposed to do. And that was all that mattered.

Blood
everywhere.

The girl was screaming, screaming. The boy was choking and sobbing. The room was filled with the scent of panic and failure, and the soldiers were closing in.

She could see the royal children—the boy, his eyes wide with terror but his chin fiercely determined; the girl with her wispy hair and eyes squeezed shut, clutching a scrap of blanket as she screamed. It was the middle of the day; light was flowing through the high windows, softened by spiderwebs thick as cloth. There was no blood in the room, but its dark, metallic scent clung to her. Failure, thicker than blood, choked her. She felt close to madness, and in that moment she knew why the Shifter had never simply ceased to exist. She didn’t know how to.

But the king’s children. They were her charges, too. And here they were in this room and there was no way out, no way out, and she was about to fail again….

Suddenly she saw herself from the outside: a vaguely human form, shifting faster than thought, now a cat, now a wolf, now a hawk. The changes happened so fast they weren’t completed at all: a half-girl/half-cat became a half-cat/half-eagle, which kept its feathers as it turned into a deer and only lost them when the deer’s head became a wolf’s.

She knew she was dreaming, was even somehow aware of the blanket twisted between her legs, of the way she was tossing in her sleep, but the thought of waking up did not occur to her. She was trapped.
Trapped
—she who could turn into fog and drift out through the cracks under the door. But the screaming held her. She couldn’t leave.

Isabel bolted upright, barely breathing, and stared wildly around the room. It was too small, and her door was closed. For a moment she heard the soldiers pounding on it, battering it down, and felt the pain in her side where she had wrenched the arrow out.

She shivered and twisted her hand in a fold of the blanket. She knew now why she had fled to her woods, why she had never intended to come back. She could not be trapped like that again. No matter how small the chances were, it wasn’t worth the risk.

And the chances weren’t so small anymore. She couldn’t turn into fog. She couldn’t turn into anything. She could be caged as easily as a human being.

She left her room and made her way through the halls, down a side corridor, to a corner door most courtiers barely noticed. It led down to the cellars of the castle, the only area she hadn’t yet explored. She knew what lay down there—the wine cellar, the laundry room, and storage areas—places not likely to be of interest. But with the screams from the dream still echoing in her mind, she yanked the door open.

A dizzying spiral of wooden stairs wound its way downward, curving around a narrow pillar of close-set bricks. A window cut high in the wall let the faintest tinge of moonlight flow down a narrow passageway in the stone, light a human wouldn’t have noticed. It took her a few moments to adjust—long enough for panic to surge through her—but then her cat’s eyes caught that light and drank it in. She gasped with relief but still didn’t want to put her foot on the next step. She snorted. The Shifter, afraid of the dark?

At the bottom of the stairs the air was dank and chill, and it sat heavily on her skin. There were more windows set high up, but underbrush had grown over many of them, leaving narrow stone corridors that were completely black even to her.

She turned right into a room where rows of vast dark barrels lay on their sides. The wine cellar. Beyond that was the laundry. Isabel hesitated at that door, knowing there was no exit at the other end. The dank air weighed down her lungs, and she wondered why they didn’t shift in response.

The windows in the laundry were clear of foliage, making the room bright as day to her. It was long and narrow, nearly bare but for the white pillars supporting the low roof. She paced across the stone floor and peered up at a window opening. Each window was formed of two arced rectangles, with iron bars laid across them; but even without the bars, the window was too small to fit a child through….

Her heart pounded. She whirled, fully expecting an attack, but the room was empty. The chill seeped into her bones. She tried to shift it away, but she was having a hard time concentrating. There was a thin sheen of cold sweat on her forehead, and her muscles were clenched so tightly they ached.

This is where it happened.

A brilliant deduction. No wonder the Shifter was famed for her wisdom.

A sudden jumble of memories welled up in her mind. A child screaming. Outside, a steady series of thuds as the soldiers battered down the door. Now there was color, now there wasn’t; now there was depth, now the room was flat; now she saw the room as a whole, now in a shimmering mosaic of dozens of identical images. In many shapes, she could smell more strongly than she could see, and the strongest scent in the room was panic. And the strongest panic was her own.

There was nothing she could do. She
would
have given her life to save them that day—would have ended centuries of existence for the sake of the two squalling children trapped in that room.

But she had no life to give.

Intense as the flood of memory was, it lasted for less than a second. Isabel caught her breath and turned to go, and that was when she became aware that she was no longer alone.

“Trying to figure out how you failed?” a voice sneered behind her. “To make sure it won’t happen again?”

The dagger was out of her sleeve before he had finished talking, flying across the room in the direction of the voice. She knew exactly where his throat would be, and her aim was unerring. But instead of steel sliding through flesh, she heard a muted pop; and when Albin stepped away from the wall, his fleshy throat was unmarked.

Isabel coiled like a spring. I should kill him, she thought. If I can.

Of course she could. She was the Shifter. But she hadn’t sensed him until he spoke; and she should have been able to throw that knife so fast even a ward couldn’t stop it. She had thought she was killing him when she threw it.

She hissed, hoping her cat’s eyes glowed in the darkness. She couldn’t attack him, not if she might lose. But he didn’t have to know that. “That was a stupid thing to do, sorcerer.”

“Why? Are you going to kill a man who protects your king?” Albin stroked the side of his beard. “I don’t think Kaer would be happy with you if you did.”

Isabel stood perfectly still. “That’s assuming I believe you’re protecting him.”

The high sorcerer took another step out of the darkness, revealing the shimmering rainbow colors of the ward around him. “I think he’s more suspicious of you than of me right now. Why else would he have asked me to keep track of your whereabouts, just in case you tried to leave?”

That
rankled, more than she had expected. Because Kaer had assigned her a guardian? Or because she
would
leave, if only it were possible for her?

“Well,” she snarled, “as you can see, I’m doing nothing of the sort. So why don’t you pull one of your famous vanishing acts? I’m not in the mood for you right now.”

“Shifters have moods?” The corners of Albin’s lips lifted in a snide smile. “Of course, it seems Shifters have a number of things the legends don’t mention. Like divided loyalties.”

Nothing he said should have bothered her, but she had been rubbed raw by memories. “I don’t think you want to speak to me about divided loyalties, sorcerer. I am not the only one who served two princes.”

“I serve no prince.” Albin ran his fingers down the side of his robe. “I serve powers far greater, powers that will still exist years after this petty dynasty has vanished from the face of the world. Did you expect me to abandon my work, my records and experiments, just because a captain guard decided to overthrow a weak king? I don’t care who sits on the Samornian throne, Shifter.”

Isabel’s laugh was oddly hollow in the vast, gloomy silence. “How noble. But you care who stands next to the throne, don’t you? You didn’t stay for your records and experiments. You stayed for your rich robes and the fine food and for people who watch you with awe and step out of your way when you walk.” She took a step forward. “How wonderful it must have been for you when the Shifter was gone and there was no one to draw that awe away from you. How wonderful when the rogue sorceress died, and a raw young prince who would need your guidance ascended the throne. But then that prince went and found me, and I am more magical in my sleep than you are after a hundred spells. That’s the real reason you agreed to help Kaer, is it not, sorcerer? Because Rokan had me.”

Albin’s lips twisted. “An odd claim to make, Shifter, when he never had you at all.”

She stood for a moment with nothing to say, and he smirked at her, lips plump and smug between the dark bristles of his beard.

“You’re going to die,” Isabel said.

The expression on his face could not have altered more dramatically if she had shifted into a wolf right in front of him. “What?”

Isabel waited a full second, enjoying his fear. Then she said, “Eventually. You may be powerful, but you’re mortal. How long can a sorcerer extend his life—a hundred years, two hundred?” She knew it wasn’t even that long. “You
will
die, and your powers with you.”

The high sorcerer raised his hand slightly, fingers curved. Isabel didn’t think he was even aware of making the gesture, yet her whole body tensed. She was still afraid of this man. But he had no way of attacking her now, or he would have used it already.

“And you will live forever?” he spat out.

She lowered her eyelashes. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it?”

Albin’s fingers closed around empty air, and he looked at them in surprise before flicking his eyes back to her. Then he drew himself up, pulled his robe tightly around his body, and disappeared.

“Vanishing acts,” Isabel muttered at the dust motes swirling in the space where he had been. But the scorn sounded hollow even to her. It was, after all, more than she could manage.

She stood, staring at the emptiness of the room, a stark reminder of what else she couldn’t manage. She had made it here after the arrows flying past her had killed the king and queen, but not fast enough to save their children. The dynasty had ended right here.

Except it hadn’t. She had a chance, now, to reverse that failure, to keep the right king on the throne. The king—just a boy, then—whom she should have restored to his throne a decade ago.

She wished she had. If she had remained with Kaer, she would never have fled back to her woods. She would have been at his side, guarding him. She wouldn’t have returned to the castle a decade later to protect Rokan. She would have made sure Rokan died long ago.

And it would have been easy.

Why had she saved Kaer only to abandon him? What could possibly have kept her from his side?

She stood for a moment with the dank air moving in and out of her lungs. Then she turned and ran, through the cellars and up the narrow stone stairway. The silk of her gown wrapped around her legs as she ran; she reached down and ripped it off, flinging the heavy swath of blue silk down the stairs right before she slammed the door shut behind her. The silk fluttered soundlessly into the darkness; by the time it landed, she was already at the top of another staircase, in another hall.

Kaer was in his room—for the first time, she didn’t think of it as Rokan’s room—fast asleep. She smelled the rush of fear as he woke, and he was on his feet in a second with a knife in his hand.

“Shifter?” He didn’t lower the knife. Moonlight spilled into the room from his open window. “What are you doing?”

She felt a pang, thinking of that dark-haired boy who had never again felt safe enough to sleep soundly. But she pushed that away. “I want to ask you a question. Put down the knife.”

He didn’t move. She did, and before he had time to react, the knife was in her hand and the blade was pressed against his throat.

She met his eyes for a full second before she stepped back, flipped the knife, and handed it to him hilt first. “If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead. But I want to protect you, so you’re alive. Don’t play games with me.”

He took the knife without changing expression. Rokan could never have done that. “You
want
to protect me?”

“I was created to protect you. You have nothing to worry about.”

His voice was perfectly cool. “Except why you’re here interrupting my sleep.”

She took two steps back, giving him enough space so he wouldn’t feel threatened, and waited for him to sit on the bed. He didn’t. He kept his grip ready on the knife, too; she could tell by the way the air currents eddied around his stiff, trembling fingers.

“How did I get you out?”

His face didn’t so much as twitch. “I’m sorry?”

“The night your…the night of the coup. We were trapped in the laundry room, surrounded by soldiers. How did I get you out?”

“Spirits, Shifter! I was six years old and terrified. I don’t remember anything about that day.”

He was lying.

Isabel knew that as certainly as if he had blushed or avoided her gaze, though his eyes were rock steady. But if she hit him with the truth now, she would know. He was just off balance enough. She had several seconds, maybe less, before he would be as unreadable as stone.

“I didn’t save you, did I?” she said.

Bull’s-eye. He actually flinched.

“I left you behind.” She said it with disbelief.

“You weren’t yourself. You were half-mad.” The words nearly tumbled over themselves. “And I was unconscious by then. I tried to climb up to one of the windows, and I fell and hit my head. You probably thought I was dead, that it was too late. You wouldn’t have left if you knew I was alive. You’re still my protector.”

She was barely listening. He was right. She had been shifting, faster than thought, trying to think of how she could save them. There was no way she had simply left. No way she had failed…not without leaving behind so many dead soldiers she would have heard of the massacre, even a decade later.