“Give us a moment,” says Bryn, watching me from under half-lidded eyes, her slender fingers tented against the table. Alistair hesitates, glancing to me before dutifully moving for a doorway on the opposite wall, half-hidden beneath a dingy tapestry. He disappears into a sitting room on the other side.
Bryn crouches in front of me. Her skirts kick up, revealing layers of silk and lace petticoats, pale slippers studded with colored beads. Impractical, beautiful shoes that awaken a long-buried hunger for the dances I never had, the possibilities my mother stole from us when she stole from the king. “You can’t blame him,” she says with a bracing smile. “His mother died when he was young and his father was not the kind of man to teach delicacy.”
“Who?”
“Your majesty.”
“The king?”
“Your majesty,” she repeats, teeth clenched. “When you address me, address me like the daughter of a king, not like a Brim whore you’d leave in the morning. I mean Pem, not my father. Good god.” Rolling back her shoulders, she clutches her hands across her knees, spinning one of her rings in restless circles. “You weren’t my first choice,” she says, “but Pem wanted you to do this. Guilt, I imagine, or some other human frailty he pretends not to have. Given the circumstances, I saw no reason to deny him the request.” Her eyes rake over me, taking silent tally. “I feel confident in that decision.”
Does she expect me to feel flattered?
Leaning closer in a drift of perfume, Bryn lowers her voice, the words sharp, cut by her perfect teeth: “But I will kill your sister if you do anything to compromise my efforts. Success or failure.”
The change in her demeanor is arctic, like snowfall in the spring. Gone is the girl and here stands the future queen. Goose bumps chase down my back and I swallow hard, past the fear lodged in my throat.
“I understand,” I say.
Bryn lifts an eyebrow.
“Your majesty,” I add softly.
“I don’t have to touch you to hurt you, Faris. Remember that.” Flashing a smile, Bryn stands, smoothing her skirts and calling for Alistair, who emerges from the other room, a glass of amber alcohol held loose in one hand. Avoiding my eyes, he returns to his tools, straightening the lines I knocked askance before he drains his glass and trades it for a scalpel.
“Oh,” I say bitterly, “it gets better?”
Bryn makes a face, resting her forearm against the table. “I trust you as much as my father trusts his council.”
“Of course he trusts them,” I say. “He branded them all with loyalty spells.”
“Exactly.” Bryn winces as Alistair dips the blade into the smooth flesh of her wrist. A bead of blood emerges and she hisses through her teeth as it slides down the palm of her hand. “This is disgusting,” she says.
Alistair snorts, hair falling over his eyes. “It’s only blood.”
“But it’s my blood,” she says.
Uncorking the vial of magic, Alistair holds it to her wrist, catching a fat drop of blood within the glass. It mixes with the liquid already there, fragmenting into ruby beads as small as those sewn on Bryn’s shoes. Balancing the vial in one hand, Alistair retrieves an empty syringe and fills it with the viscous mixture before turning to me, eyebrows raised in expectation.
“This spell cannot be given under duress or you’ll be no better than your sister,” says Bryn. “A mindless slave.”
I stare at the syringe with a feeling of dread. This is the spell that Thaelan feared the most as a guard in training, the one that would bind his heart to the king’s. “Where did you get that?”
“I stole it,” she says, gloating the way I used to after stealing a handful of limes.
“Being betrothed to the executioner has its benefits,” Alistair says flatly. “Unquestioned access to the dungeons and all its offices, including Mercer’s.” He snorts. “It cost him a finger when Perrote found out he was one spell short at the end of the week.”
“Can’t they trace the spell?”
“Not unless someone casts it,” he says. “Hence the needle. An injection avoids any need for transference and ensures the magic doesn’t spill.” Then, with a humorless smile, “One of my many overlooked experiments.”
“My lovely mad scientist,” Bryn says, making a face at the track of blood running down her wrist.
Alistair shoves up his sleeve and demonstrates a battlefield of welts and ruby scabs nestled in the crook of his elbow. “I always test my hypotheses,” he says. “Neither Perrote nor Mercer will ever know.”
“Is that what those are?” I nod toward the ladder of scars on his wrists. “More experiments?”
“No,” he says tightly, tugging his sleeve back down. “I consider those more of a control.”
Like split knuckles and bruised jaws: We both wear our scars as proof of our strength, defiance of our weakness. My stomach tightens at the thought. I refuse to share anything, even this tiny human grief, with Alistair Pembrough.
“I need your arm,” he says. “If you’re willing.”
Bryn called it a choice but it’s just another formality. Even if they let me walk out of here, how long before the Guard storms my desolate attic? Or would they even bother with me? Maybe my father would be taken first, and then Cadence. This is a torture chamber, after all. Nobody leaves this room without suffering.
Scowling, I extend my arm and Alistair cradles it in his hand, threading the needle under my skin with practiced familiarity. He quickly empties the plunger and steps back, tossing the syringe into the fireplace where it shatters against the brick.
At first, I feel nothing. But then, my gods.
The magic ignites beneath my skin, drawing bright white lines of heat that braid around my wrist before darkening to the color of charcoal. And like charcoal, the lines begin to smear, forming thorny peaks as the spell anchors itself to my flesh with a dozen tiny knots, no bigger than beads. For one terrifying moment, I feel Bryn’s heartbeat echo through my chest before my own heart thunders in reply, screaming to reclaim its territory.
The spell cools, turning to ice, hardening like a bracelet of scars. Across from me, Bryn examines her own wrist, where her meager payment of blood has given way to a smear of ash and silver that unfurls into a crude symbol of a key, a half diamond intersected by a line beneath her skin.
Bryn laughs, bright and delighted, before she sobers, pinching the flesh of her forearm. Pain erupts in my own arm and I clutch at it with a strike of panic. Laughing again, Bryn takes the scalpel and draws it across the pad of her thumb. My thumb bleeds while her skin remains unbroken.
“Pem,” she says, “you are incredible.”
And now Bryn is invincible.
The dizziness returns and my movements turn slurred, clumsy. The magic begins to spread across my chest, staggering down my spine. I bend forward, hugging myself, pressing my forehead to the slick stone floor.
“Here.” Bryn kneels before me, pulling a pin from her hair and pressing the slender iron ornament to my wrist. “A trick I learned from Pem. It won’t negate the spell, but it’ll mute the pain until your body finds its balance.” Forcing a quick smile, she curls my other hand over the iron until I’m holding it in place.
“Thank you,” I manage to mumble, surprised by the kindness.
“You’re useless to me if you’re sick,” she adds.