Author: Leah Cypess

“I saw your book,” she said. “Portraits of the Shifter.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the caution in his voice. “Did you recognize any of them? Of you, I mean?”

She hadn’t, but she didn’t say so. “I’m not wearing the bracelet in any of the portraits.”

She heard his indrawn breath and knew he was about to lie to her. She didn’t turn. He would be less guarded if she couldn’t see his face. “It hasn’t been used for years. It was part of the original spell that bound the Shifter in the first place.”

The bird took wing, wheeled once, and soared over the castle walls. Isabel watched it go. “Then why bring it out now?”

“After everything that had happened, Rokan didn’t know how far you had reverted to being wild. Part of its magic was that it would keep you from harming the prince.”

That was a lie. But so, Isabel realized suddenly, was everything she had been told about the bracelet. She lifted her arm, twisting her wrist so the white and red crystals lay flat against her skin. Pretty. She could still feel Rokan’s fingers on her wrist, deftly fastening the clasp. She liked the bracelet.

“That’s not why.” She spoke slowly, but without any doubt. “He thought it could rebind the Shifter. Create an allegiance to a new king, a new dynasty.”

He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to.

“Fool. A bracelet?” She ran the fingers of her other hand along the tiny crystals. True, it had helped confuse her—but only because her jumbled memory had latched onto that one familiar thing. Focusing on the bracelet now, she could feel the tendrils of power clinging to it, thrumming with magic despite the centuries it had lain dormant.

“Fool,” she said again—but that wasn’t right. Rokan was no fool. She turned around and noted the whiteness around Ven’s lips. “Did you tell him it would work?”

Ven opened his mouth, then closed it.

A number of things were suddenly clear to Isabel. It had never made sense for Rokan to believe she wouldn’t find out the truth about his father. “Did you tell him it would make me forget my previous allegiance, and what happened last time I was here? That it would make me disregard the truth even if I did discover it?”

“I thought it…” He faltered under her gaze. “I thought it might.”

“And you wanted him to try. You wanted to see the Shifter.”

He bit his lip.

Isabel shook her head. She should have been disgusted by Ven’s disloyalty, by the way humans always placed their wants above their duties. Instead she was amused. Besides, by sorcerers’ reckoning, Ven had done the right thing by putting his studies first.

Not that there had been anything disinterested or scholarly about it. Her amusement faded, replaced by an embarrassment that was almost guilt. Ven had gone to such lengths to seek out a legend and instead found a damaged, faded version of what she was supposed to be.

“I told him what he wanted to hear,” Ven said. “He would have gone to get you no matter what I said.”

There was a moment of silence while Isabel turned that over in her mind. Then Ven added, almost in a whisper, “I’m glad you’re back.”

Isabel realized that it hadn’t even occurred to her to go tell him she was back. She hadn’t thought of him at all until she was in human form again. “I’m sorry—”

“No. I’m sorry.” He took a deep, shaky breath and got to his feet. “You left because of what I said. I shouldn’t have said it. I compared you to a legend and got angry at you because you’re not—”

“But I should be the legend.” She turned back toward the battlements, so it would be easier to say what she had to say. “If something inside me wants to be human, I have to root it out and kill it. I can’t protect Rokan this way.”

“Nothing inside you wants to be human. You were a wolf—”

“And now I’m not. And now that I’m back in this castle, I can’t shift back.” In the distance mist rolled and twisted through the trees, dimming the brilliant reds and yellows of their foliage. “I think it’s because there’s something human about the Shifter. I think maybe…maybe I was human before I ever was the Shifter.”

“No.”

Isabel turned to face him then. He didn’t want to hear this; not as much, she thought, as she didn’t want to say it. Too bad for both of them. “You’re the one who told me the origins of the Shifter are unknown. Maybe I’m not some ancient entity chained to the royal family. Maybe I was not found, but—created.”

“Isabel—”

“And maybe what they created me from,” Isabel finished, raising her voice, “was a human being!”

“It’s not true. Trust me, I’ve thought of it. All these problems aren’t your—”

“Of course they’re my fault! I’m not what I’m supposed to be!” She gripped the rough-hewn stone behind her. “He summoned me for his protection, and I can’t be what he needs me to be. I thought it might be because he’s not what he’s supposed to be, either—so I ran, just like I ran ten years ago—but then he was in danger and I couldn’t let him die. And once I had saved him, I couldn’t let him go back to the castle alone. I can’t help it, it’s what I am—what I’m supposed to be—what I want to be—”

She broke off, suddenly aware of how high her voice had risen. Ven was staring at her with wide, startled eyes, and a sudden rush of embarrassment flooded through her, hot and painful. The Shifter out of control, ranting like a mad-woman…she doubted there was precedent for that in any of Ven’s books.

“It’s all right,” Ven managed to say, though his voice sounded a bit strangled. He took a step toward her, half-lifting one hand to pat her on the shoulder. “It’s all right.”

Isabel pressed back against the battlements, feeling the firm stone against her shoulder blades and struggling to regain her composure. She almost took a deep breath, then remembered that she didn’t have to and instead shifted her breathing steady. After a moment she forced herself to meet Ven’s eyes.

“It’s not all right,” she said. “Rokan was wrong to come for me, wrong to trust me.” She pushed upright, trying to think clearly and coldly. “What possessed him to take such a risk in the first place? Other kings in other lands survive their reigns without the aid of supernatural beings.”

Ven dropped his hand back to his side, his cheekbones stained red. He was as embarrassed by her outburst as she was. “The kings of Samorna have grown used to having a bit more security.”

“His father didn’t have it.”

“Rokan is not his father.”

“That’s perfectly clear. But he could have managed without me. He had Clarisse, and the guards, and he thought he had Albin….” Ven’s fists were clenched at his sides, the color gone from his face. Isabel narrowed her eyes at him.

He took two steps back, but she leaned forward menacingly, pinning him with a predator’s glare. A fierce, sweet thrill coursed through her. She was a wolf about to go for the throat. “Tell me. Why was he so desperate?”

Ven drew in a quick, sharp breath. “Because of you,” he said. “He needed you because he was afraid of you. Because—” He stopped, eyes darting suddenly from side to side, his jaw working silently.

“What?” Isabel snapped.

“Something’s wrong.” Ven backed away—from her, she thought at first; then she realized he was moving in tiny circles, like a frantic trapped bird. “Someone just broke through my wards.”

If someone was watching them with magic, she couldn’t feel it; but she couldn’t detect spells that didn’t manifest in ways perceptible to her animal senses. Isabel’s skin tingled as she reached out with every nonhuman sense she had; she closed her eyes and knew, by the way the air moved around their bodies, that she and Ven were alone. She sensed nothing.

Until, all at once, she did.

It was the wrench of something breaking. Not a ward. Something within Ven.

She snapped her eyes open in time to see Ven’s widen. He gasped and flung his arms up. Rainbow colors shimmered for a moment in the air around his outstretched hands. Then they exploded into nothingness and were gone. Ven’s hands closed on empty air, and he fell.

He pitched forward to his knees, his eyes still fixed on her, then fell flat on his face. Isabel leaped forward, but not in time to catch him, and he landed hard on the rough stone of the rooftop. She grabbed his shoulders, rolled him over, and lowered her head to listen for breathing. There was nothing but silence.

“Ven,” she whispered, but the name died only half out of her mouth. She knew there was no one to hear her.

She was the Shifter. She knew what death looked like.

She stared for a moment at his face, at the open blue eyes and slack mouth, and something very human rose within her. She made a halfhearted attempt to block it, but the effort had no will behind it.

Two fat wet drops splattered onto Ven’s shoulder, spreading tiny moist circles on the silk of his tunic. Isabel blinked, and the next few drops curved down her cheek instead of falling. She lifted her hand automatically to wipe them dry, then stared at the streaks on her fingers in horror.

Carefully she shifted her cheeks dry, and her eyes. Then she reached within herself and did the same to that treacherous, unwanted part of her that was causing her pain. By the time she rose to her feet and slowly backed away from the body, the pain was gone and buried, and her mind was working with crisp clarity. The girl who stood gazing down at Ven’s body was the Shifter. Nothing else.

Isabel concentrated fiercely on what she had learned about sorcery in hundreds of years of defending the royal family. The knowledge came in a flood, interspersed with fragments of memory. Herself as a cat, watching a wizard at work…deflecting a spell…approaching a sorceress…coolly pushing a knife through magic wards and into flesh. At any other time the memories would have interested her most. But now she didn’t need memories. She needed information.

She had to find out who had killed Ven, because…

Grief floated at the edge of her feelings, burrowing around the defenses she had just set up; a loneliness that would overwhelm her if she let it. For a moment she stood perfectly still, barely daring to breathe. And then the grief receded and was gone, and she breathed in once.

She had to find out who had killed Ven, because he might try to kill Rokan next.

The Shifter took one last look at the body lying on the weatherworn stone. Then she turned and walked to the edge of the rooftop, making no sound as she lowered herself down the side of the wall, her movements as tight and controlled as those of an animal on the hunt.

Chapter Eleven

Isabel found Rokan in the stable yard preparing for a ceremonial ride through the capital city. It wasn’t the ideal place for any type of conversation; he was surrounded by guards and nobles and looked distinctly unhappy. But when he saw her, his face lightened, and he gestured to a stable hand to bring another horse.

“Thank you,” he said fervently when she had mounted and brought her horse up next to his. “Lady Zabia was going to ride next to me, and I couldn’t think of a way to get out of it without starting a minor war. Which I might have been willing to risk, except I’m not sure I would win it. Try to act like we’re conferring about terribly important and serious matters.”

Isabel didn’t match his smile. She waited until the procession left the castle gates and started through the steep, narrow cobblestone streets, where the clatter of hooves provided cover for her words. Then she said, “Ven is dead.”

Rokan turned his horse a bit too sharply, and the gelding snorted and tossed its head reproachfully. The prince took a deep breath, and Isabel saw how deliberately he relaxed his grip on the reins.