Mistwood (17 page)

Isabel closed her eyes briefly. There was no agonized decision-making left, no conflict. Just dull numbness. “Yes. I’m sure.”

Two
nights later Isabel found herself in Clarisse’s room, waiting for Rokan to come so she could kill him.

She spent those two days in a daze, following instructions. She no longer made suggestions, or gave advice—she wasn’t the Shifter, after all, just a human girl with a few odd powers.

I’m human, she thought every once in a while—not for any particular reason, just at random.
I’m human
. And she would stare down at her thin, pale hands that would never be anything else, never stretch into wings or curve into claws. She would feel her body, both more solid and more weak than it should have been, and know it was a trap. A trap she could never get out of, because it was a trap she had been born into.

She was trapped in her body and now in this room. The lamps had all been put out, and the delicate wood furniture and chests had been moved to the wall near the bed, leaving a large clear space for whatever was going to come. Clarisse’s room was surprisingly large, once the clutter had been cleared away. There was nothing in the center of the room but a single plush chair, where Clarisse sat with her arms tied to the armrests and her legs bound to the chair legs. Isabel had tied the cords herself. Much to her disgust, Clarisse had agreed to their plan without a murmur.

Standing in the far corner of the room, she kept her eyes human, but her hearing was a cat’s. She could hear Kaer in the corner to her right, his breathing fast and loud. The high sorcerer’s breathing was slightly calmer, as were those of the two soldiers whom Kaer had decided could be trusted. But calmest of all was Clarisse.

She wondered how much longer she would be able to do this. If she returned to the Mistwood frequently, she might be able to keep her minor powers for a while, but she suspected that eventually they would drain away completely. She had been growing more human day by day. Eventually she would be all human, and the Shifter would be just a memory. And then not even that.

What would Kaer do with her, once she was no longer useful?

We’d probably be better off if she was dead
. The phrase had been ringing in her head for two days. He had said it thinking she really was dead, of course; it didn’t mean he meant it.

If he felt no loyalty for his sister, why should his sister feel loyalty for him?

The thought made her feel as if she had stepped off a high ledge. Then she realized there was someone else in the room.

He was breathing fast and deep, afraid but trying not to be. There was nothing else to indicate that he had arrived—no light, no sound, no sense of magic. It was a very good spell.

Nobody else knew he was there. She should tell them. She should grab him before he could move. Her hand touched the hilt of the dagger at her waist.

She concentrated and shifted her eyes.

He looked tired. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes underlined by dark shadows. His hair was neatly combed, though, and he was wearing black velvet. He stood tense and poised, peering around carefully, even though there was no way he could see anything in this darkness.

And still Isabel didn’t move. She could see Clarisse, sitting in a chair in the center of the room, as still as Daria had sat when she was bait. Several paces behind the chair, Kaer stared straight ahead into the darkness. The high sorcerer’s eyes were closed. One of the soldiers was fidgeting.

Rokan whispered, “Clarisse?”

Everything happened at once. Albin opened his eyes, and the room was full of light. Rokan squinted, momentarily blinded. The two soldiers drew their swords and stepped forward.

Clarisse turned in her chair and made a sharp, abrupt motion with her arm. The knife shot from her hand and imbedded itself into the chest of the soldier to her left. She was instantly on her feet with another knife. The second soldier dodged, and her knife sliced through a frayed tapestry before hitting the floor.

The rope Isabel had so carefully pulled around Clarisse’s limbs lay slashed on the floor. Isabel didn’t know where the knives had come from and had no time to figure it out. The first soldier was sprawled across the floor, blood spreading in a slow circle from underneath him. The second soldier whirled on Clarisse, who shouted, “I can take care of him! You take Albin!”

Rokan was already halfway across the room. The high sorcerer raised his hand. A flash of sizzling light hit Rokan in the chest and vanished. Rokan drew his sword and kept coming.

He aimed straight for the sorcerer’s heart. Albin muttered something under his breath, and Rokan’s blade vanished. Rokan grunted in shock, and—unable to stop his momentum—stumbled into the high sorcerer’s arms. Albin lifted him and threw him, harder than humanly possible, at the far wall.

Isabel didn’t think. She sprang and collided with Rokan in midair, seconds before he would have hit the stone wall. They fell in a tangle, her briefly stone legs hitting the ground first, breaking their fall.

She heard Kaer yell something, and rolled to her feet. The true king, her brother, was running across the room at them, sword drawn. Isabel heard a hiss of power beside her as Rokan raised his hand. She leaned down and struck his wrist. A bolt of green fire missed Kaer by several yards.

Kaer flinched and slowed down. Rokan leaped to his feet, glaring. Not at Kaer. At her.

Isabel didn’t need more than a glance to know that all her agonizing, all her thoughts and struggles about Kaer, had been wasted. This had never been about Kaer.

It was like the time in the woods when Rokan hadn’t seen the knife coming. And she hadn’t been thinking, in that split second, about what the Shifter would do or how the Shifter would feel. She had just acted.

Clarisse screamed. Rokan turned, away from both Isabel and Kaer, and Kaer leaped forward. Isabel shifted her hand to stone and grabbed Kaer’s sword by the blade.

“Shifter!”
Kaer shouted, as if to remind her of what she was. “I trusted you!”

No, you didn’t, Isabel thought. But that was irrelevant. She pulled the sword out of his hand and looked at Clarisse. Clarisse was on the floor with blood all over her gown, but from the way she was screaming, it couldn’t be fatal. The soldier sprawled next to her wasn’t screaming at all.

Kaer followed her gaze. “Traitor,” he snarled. “She’ll get what you get.”

Isabel remembered a much younger boy, with the same black hair and the same determined eyes, yelling at her. She had been older, but he had always taken the lead, and she had wanted his approval so desperately. She had followed him everywhere, and sometimes he had relented and they had laughed together and played tricks on their nurse. And he had always protected her. No matter how angry he was.

He didn’t know who she was now, though. And suddenly she didn’t want him to know. Let him think she had betrayed a prince, not a brother.

Rokan leaped to his feet, and there was a sword in his hand. It hadn’t been there a second ago. Kaer lunged past her for his own sword, which she had thrown to the floor, but there was no way he could get to it in time. The air in the room was taut with power. Across the room, Albin sizzled with magic. For a moment Isabel saw his eyes glow.

She was shaking so hard it was distracting, but she didn’t have the focus to shift her muscles steady, not when her weak human heart was being torn in half. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Albin stretch out his hand.

And she killed her brother.

She killed him as surely as if it was she, and not Rokan, who plunged the sword into his chest. For one last blinding moment everything the Shifter had given her was hers again. She was across the room faster than humanly possible, faster than possible for any animal she knew of. For a split second she was the wind. And then she was solid again, and the hand that had slammed the dagger into Albin’s throat was shaking.

And covered with blood. The blood was warm. Something unseen sizzled and crackled inches from Albin’s palm but got no farther. There was nothing to stop Rokan’s sword from sliding between Kaer’s ribs.

Kaer screamed, in fury and pain but mostly fury, and fell to his knees. The high sorcerer didn’t scream. He made a gurgling sound and started to turn his head toward her. He didn’t finish the motion.

Isabel stepped back and let go of the dagger, watching him drop, glad he hadn’t met her eyes. A globule of blood pooled between her thumb and finger and dropped all the way to the floor.

Blood. On her hands, dripping to the floor as she ran out of the room.

She made one last effort to remember, in detail, everything that had happened that day long ago. How she had tried to kill Rokan’s father. How she had succeeded in killing someone else—anyone else. She was the Shifter; she must have killed people. She wouldn’t have cared.

She tried to remember what it felt like not to care.

But she couldn’t find the Shifter inside herself. She was nothing but a small, confused girl crouching on the floor and crying and holding her brother’s hand.

“It was my throne,” Kaer gasped. Blood bubbled from his lips with the words. “Mine, and you stole it from me.”

“I’m sorry,” Isabel whispered, even though he was talking to Rokan. She squeezed his hand tight, but he didn’t look at her. “I’m so sorry.”

Clarisse managed to raise her head and stare at her, eyes narrowed with pain and suspicion. But Rokan kept his eyes on the face of the man he had just killed.

“You would have destroyed it,” he said.

Kaer opened his mouth, but this time only blood came out. His head fell back.

Rokan raised his eyes to Isabel then. For a moment she was afraid he would smile, or glare, or—worst of all—thank her. Instead he said, “I’m sorry.”

“He was my brother,” Isabel said numbly, and didn’t gauge anyone’s reaction to that. Suddenly it didn’t matter what they had known, what anyone had known, or how things should have happened. Nothing made sense. Kaer’s hand was limp in hers, the bottom half of his face splattered with blood, obscuring the features that had always been so hauntingly familiar. As the Shifter, she was his. As a human, she was his, too, his blood, his family. It shouldn’t have made a difference. Her actions should have been the same.

Except she was human, and she had a choice. So what she should have done, and what she did, were two different things entirely.

Rokan dropped the sword and went toward her, hesitantly, one hand out. His sleeve was soaked with blood. Isabel turned away and made one final, frantic effort to shift—into anything, anything at all. A wolf, a bird, a gust of air. She wanted to be mist, drifting through her forest, as cold and insubstantial as clouds.

Instead she was heavy and hot, and sobbing so hard her throat felt ready to burst. Rokan didn’t try to touch her again. She heard him go and murmur to his sister and drape something over the bodies and say things about arrangements and coronations and the populace. She heard him say no sharply, and realized that Clarisse was suggesting they imprison her, the Shifter who was no longer trustworthy, who never had been trustworthy. And Rokan was saying, “No. She stays.”

And so she returned to the green-lined room she had woken up in lifetimes ago with no idea of who she was or what her destiny in this castle would be. Nor what it had been. She went to the window and remembered the last time she had stood here and thought about jumping. But then she had thought she would spread wings in midair and fly away. Now that she knew she couldn’t fly away, she also knew she wouldn’t jump.

She stays.
For a searing moment she wondered if she had made the wrong choice, if she should have let the sorcerer work his magic. Because she
would
stay. If it had been Kaer who lived, she could have gone back to her forest and her mist and lived in a hundred different shapes for the rest of her life. But Rokan would be king, and she would stay with him. Her skin felt tight, holding her together, holding her in.

The
Shifter would have been there. Helping Rokan put his kingdom back together, reassert his authority, maintain his legitimacy. Helping him deal with the currents and waves after the death of the true king, with the imprisonment of dozens of minor nobility, with the sudden appearance of the other true heir to the throne. The Shifter would not have let her own feelings keep her in her room, sleeping and sobbing and staring at the walls until everything had died down.

She spoke to Rokan only once, briefly, to explain what had happened to her and who she truly was. Rokan listened without visible disappointment, leaning against the wall of her room while she sat stiffly in one of the chairs near the bed. She kept her senses purely human, not wanting any inkling of what he really felt. Besides, purely human senses were all she had a right to.

When she was finished, Rokan pushed away from the wall and said, “I’m truly sorry, Isabel. Even if it meant you were able to save my life. I know being human was never what you wanted.”

Damn what she had a right to. Isabel shifted her face expressionless, shifted away the moisture that welled up in her eyes, shifted away the burning in her throat. She sat still as a statue, hating the pity in those intent dark eyes.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to reply, Rokan cleared his throat and said, “Owain disappeared. Nobody knows where he’s gone.”

Isabel drew in a breath and leaned against the back of the chair. “I’m not surprised,” she said in the steadiest voice she could manage. “He’s the sort to always plan for things going wrong, and then plan for that plan going wrong, too. I don’t think he’ll come back, though.”

Rokan’s eyes never left her face. “You were right, you know. You and Clarisse. I trusted Owain right up to the coronation. Clarisse couldn’t make me listen, so she tried to find out his plans without telling me what she was doing. She didn’t tell me she was going to stay behind to try to thwart them, either.”

She didn’t tell you a lot of things, Isabel thought.

“I thought he was an honorable man,” Rokan added in a tone so bewildered she didn’t have the heart to remind him that there was nothing dishonorable about deposing an imposter.

She said instead, very quietly, “And Daria?”

Rokan’s eyes skittered away from hers, then back. “I sent her to live with one of the northern dukes. Duke Samar—he’s a minor nobleman whose estate abuts Owain’s. It’s a poor land, and he has barely enough soldiers to hold it.”

He also had a thirty-year-old son, recently widowed and reputed to be quite charming. Isabel didn’t mention that.

Rokan smiled ruefully and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in black tufts all over his head. “I suppose you think I should have executed her?”

“I don’t think you could,” Isabel said. “You love her.”

Rokan studied her for a long time, but when he replied he focused on the wooden floor instead of on her face, his hands clenched at his sides. “I don’t. I don’t think I ever did.”

Isabel couldn’t look at him, either. She shrugged. “Maybe you don’t anymore. That doesn’t mean you never did.”

“I was lonely. After my father died, I…all right, I loved her.” His chest moved once with a quick, shallow breath, and he looked up, the pretense stripped from his face. “But Isabel, it was different from—I mean, it wasn’t like—” He stopped, something like a plea in his eyes.

Isabel braced her hands on the chair cushion, refusing to meet his eyes. She had seen that plea once before, right before she betrayed him; she couldn’t bear to answer it now, so soon after she had betrayed someone else. Not when that betrayal was the reason she finally
could
answer it. “What about the rest of the northern dukes?”

“They’ve mostly slunk quietly back to their estates.” His voice was dispassionate again, but his eyes matched neither his words nor his tone. “Clarisse thinks we should do something public and messy to the ones I still have in custody, but I don’t see the point. There were too many people involved in the conspiracy to punish them all. Clemency is a better strategy in this case.” He paused, then said carefully, “Do you think I’m right?”

Human though she might be, she knew enough by now of the intricacies of the northern alliances to be almost sure he
was
right. She opened her mouth to answer, but then he leaned forward eagerly, and suddenly
almost
was nowhere near good enough.

“I can’t—” The words came out bitter, burning her throat. She gripped her knees. “I can’t help you the way you want. I’m not what I was. Not the Shifter. I’m sorry.”

“I know what you are,” Rokan said. “And it’s
your
help I want.”

She shook her head and laughed, a short, harsh sound that made Rokan flinch. “I’m nothing but a girl who once was the Shifter.”

“A girl who once was the Shifter,” he said, but his inflection gave the phrase an entirely new meaning, imbuing it with wonder instead of bitterness. “A girl who remained herself despite being the Shifter. Smart and funny and loyal and brave. There’s nothing ordinary about you.”

“You thought that was part of who I was. Now it’s all I am. You need me to be the
Shifter
.”

Rokan shook his head. His eyes were very intent on her. “That’s not what I need.”

She leaned back, laughing again. “You just haven’t accepted the reality of what I am. That never was your greatest strength, was it?”

“That’s not—”

“In the meantime,” Isabel said, her voice emerging harsher than she had intended, “I just want to be alone. Please.”

After a moment he nodded shortly and walked past her, his shoulders bowed. When he reached the door he hesitated, but he didn’t turn his head. He walked away, and he didn’t come back, though she spent the next half a day listening for his footsteps.

She had to emerge for the coronation. She stood next to the throne in a blue silk gown, no expression on her face, and passed the crown to Rokan so he could put it on his head. The crowd erupted into cheers. She stared out at them, forcing a smile, and didn’t even look at the new king. Her presence was proof that the last of the old royal family believed Rokan should be there.

Afterward she sat at Rokan’s side during the banquet, staring at her plate, making monosyllabic replies to his hesitant, hopeful attempts to talk to her. As soon as she thought it wouldn’t be noticeable, she went back to her room.

Clarisse was waiting there for her.

Rage flared up within her; this room was hers, her sanctuary, where nothing of her past or present or future was supposed to touch her. But the anger died before it got past her eyes. A part of her was still hundreds of years old, far too old to believe such foolishness. She closed the door behind her and said, “Why are you here? To tell me again that Rokan shouldn’t trust me?”

“I’m here to find out why you’re treating him this way,” Clarisse said. She stood with her back to Isabel’s bed, her elaborate ivory gown framed by the closed green canopies. “Can’t you see how unhappy he is?”

“Am I supposed to believe you care?” The pins on her head were pulling her hair too tight, and had been for hours. Isabel started to shift the pain away, then changed her mind and began pulling out the pins instead.

Clarisse lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “He’s my brother. Sometimes I do hate him, but he’s still my brother. You don’t understand that, do you?”

“Oh,” Isabel said softly, “I think I do.”

Clarisse was silent for a moment, shrewd green eyes assessing her. “Would you have killed him with your own hand in the end, if you had to?”

The smart thing would be to say yes. Kaer was already dead. But Isabel wasn’t sure she could get away with it. The knowledge of what was happening to her seemed to have sped up the process; already, it took a great deal of effort to shift her voice. She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Clarisse smiled faintly. “That’s what Rokan said. I told him you would have.”

Isabel dropped her hands to her sides. Her head no longer hurt, but there were curly tendrils of auburn hair tickling her face. “Do you want me to thank you?”

“No. I just want you not to tell Rokan that you weren’t sure.”

“Rokan is not an idiot,” Isabel said.

Clarisse took a few steps forward—the better, Isabel thought, to judge her reaction. She concentrated on keeping her face still, though a part of her wasn’t sure why she even cared. “Do you hate him for killing your brother? Is that what it is?”

“I don’t hate him. He did what he had to do.” Speaking the words aloud, Isabel suddenly knew they were true. She didn’t hate Rokan; she could never hate him. It wasn’t his fault that she had made her choice because of him. She spoke carefully, knowing Clarisse would repeat what she said to Rokan. “I just can’t bear him being grateful to me for
letting
him.”

Clarisse grimaced. “You think that’s what he’s feeling—grateful?”

“He should be. Everything worked out wonderfully for him, didn’t it?”

“You really
don’t
understand humans, do you?” Isabel looked at her blankly, and Clarisse sighed. “I suppose it did work out. Rokan doesn’t have a Shifter anymore, but then he doesn’t need as much protection. The rival prince is dead, the conspiracy broken. And with the one remaining member of the old royal family on his side, Rokan’s rule is nearly secure.”

There was a way to make it even more secure, but Isabel didn’t say anything, just as she had said nothing when Rokan went over the political situation with her. It was too obvious to miss; Clarisse, and Rokan, would have thought of it already. It was odd, in fact, that both of them were studiously not mentioning it.

“He doesn’t need the Shifter, does he?” Isabel said sourly. “He has a knife-throwing sister to protect him.”

For what was probably the last time, she caused surprise to flicker across Clarisse’s face; but this time she hadn’t intended to. Isabel straightened slowly, astonished at how stupid she had been. If she had spent more than one second this past week thinking instead of crying, she would have known.

“You can’t throw knives,” she said. “That was a spell.”

Clarisse shrugged. “Spells are useful things. Why would I have wasted my time training with knives?”

Isabel remembered the dozens of times when she had sensed something, when Clarisse had appeared disoriented or unsteady, and Isabel had dismissed it as too much wine. Remembered the princess alone in her room, without a single maidservant or lady-in-waiting to see what she was doing. “Rokan got his spells from you.”

“Of course. Did you think my father actually trusted Albin? He had a rogue sorceress begin training me when I was ten years old.”

“I’m surprised he trusted you,” Isabel said.

“He didn’t. But my father understood emotions, even though he didn’t have any. He let me take care of Rokan and made sure we faced an array of common enemies…nasty governesses, sadistic guards. Rokan was so small and helpless.” For a second Clarisse’s mask slipped and there was something real on her face. “My little brother. I used the magic I learned to protect him.”

And then the Shifter had come, and Rokan hadn’t needed her protection anymore. Isabel understood, suddenly, the light in Clarisse’s eyes at the coronation, when the Shifter had stood back and let Rokan be taken.

She wasn’t the Shifter anymore, but Clarisse was still watching her with that banked hatred in her eyes. Still afraid that Rokan would put her first? Isabel skittered around that thought, focusing instead on the implications of Clarisse’s revelation.

“So it all came from you,” she said slowly. “The trans-location spells. Rokan’s sword at the coronation. The poison that disappeared from the goblet. The knives—”

And the one other piece of untraceable magic.

Isabel almost stopped breathing. She saw by the expression on Clarisse’s face that the princess knew she had figured it out.

“You,” she said, too stunned to be angry. “You killed Ven.”

Clarisse started to step backward, but stopped in mid-motion and lifted her chin. “Who did you think it was? Rokan never realized how dangerous you could be. I did, from the start, but of course no one would listen to me. That stupid boy told you the truth about the bracelet, and he was about to tell you the truth about Kaer. He would have turned you against us.”

“I already knew about Kaer.” Isabel shook her head, remembering how she had forced Ven to answer her. “You killed him for nothing.”

“I didn’t know that. But I knew what you were capable of. I had to protect him.”

“Protect
yourself
.”

Clarisse pulled her shoulders back, ready to attack—an attack that, for the first time since Isabel’s arrival, would not be completely ridiculous. Clarisse could use her magic openly now, and Isabel was—almost—just a powerless girl. Isabel moved into a fighting stance and hoped Clarisse didn’t realize that.

But Clarisse merely smiled, leaving Isabel to wonder whether she had been planning to attack at all. Her smile was sharp and hard-edged, and her voice was almost calm. “What difference does it make?”

“It
will
make a difference.” The sound of her own voice—low, steely, icy—was alien to Isabel. “I’m part of the court now. I’ll be here for a long, long time. I know what you did, and I am very patient.” She stepped forward, and Clarisse stepped back. But still the princess’s expression didn’t change. “If you’re smart, Clarisse, you’ll leave now, and make sure I never hear from you again.”

Clarisse smiled, a real smile, and tossed her hair back. “But I’ve never been that kind of smart, Isabel.” She broke their locked gazes and raised one eyebrow. “And I’m not very good at staying out of trouble.”

“Have it your way.”

“I usually do.”

“Back when we first met,” Isabel said, “you said that you always do.”

Clarisse walked past her, opened the door, and stepped into the hall. Isabel watched her go, and stood for a long time staring at the empty doorway before she shut the door again.