Malice by Heather Walter (young adult books to read .txt) 📕

I will kill him first, a feral part of my soul vows.

I hardly feel the steps beneath my feet as I slink down the stairs. The house is dark, with only a single taper lit at the front entrance for the Graces’ return, which won’t be for hours yet.

Where are the servants? Why haven’t they come running?

The parlor at the end of the hall is bright, light from the cracked door spilling into the gloom. It’s Rose’s. Why would Endlewild be skulking in there?

Adrenaline rises to a high pitch as I approach the door. My magic is ready. I grip it as one would a sword hilt, ready to lash out at the slightest hint of danger.

Peering through the slit in the door, I hold my breath, worried Endlewild can hear even that. But there is nothing. The room is vacant. A vase is shattered on the floor. Grace-grown peonies, colors still changing from fuchsia to violet, lie in the wreckage. The armchair by the fire is overturned. And that’s when I see it. The heel of a shoe. A rose-petal pink shoe.

I burst into the room. It’s not Endlewild. No intruder at all. Sprawled on the floor, her beribboned gown sodden and ruined with muddy snow stains, is Rose.

And spreading beneath her, faster than I thought possible, is a puddle of glittering, golden blood.

—

“Rose!” I roll her over and slap her cheeks. She moans and tosses her head. One of her hands is bleeding, more than any hand wound ought to bleed, the source of the blood I’m kneeling in.

I keep calling her name, tearing off a strip of her petticoat and winding it around the slash in her palm. With the Grace powder caked on her skin, it’s hard to tell how large the wound is. I count to three and the blood has already eaten through the wrapping.

The damn bloodrot, I realize instantly.

“You stupid fool,” I curse at her, tearing off more petticoat and trying to rebind her hand. It’s useless. “Where are the damn servants?”

“Sent them away.” Rose’s words slur together.

I roll my eyes, unsurprised. “Well, I’m fetching them.”

“No.” A crinkle forms between her brows. Her skin is like ice, lips tinged dark amber. Had she walked here? “No one can see.”

Leave it to Rose to be concerned about appearances even in a moment as dire as this. But it’s more than that. I haven’t seen this much Grace blood spilled at once since Narcisse’s trial. I wince at the memory of the molten gold dripping into the vials. The sound of Narcisse’s skull hitting the marble. If I don’t help, it will be Rose’s blood tingeing silver.

“Damn it, Rose.” I wiggle my arms under Rose’s shoulders and haul her upright. She can stand, but barely, leaning most of her weight on me as I lead her out of the parlor, through the kitchen, and out the back door to my Lair. Her bandage is leaking, so I press her hand into her chest to catch the blood.

“It’s c-cold,” she stammers as I settle her in a chair by the hearth. It’s only embers now and I stoke it, adding three logs.

“There’s nowhere else to go. If you don’t want anyone to see.”

She quiets.

Quickly, I gather what I need from my stores. I’m no healing Grace, but I’ve burned and cut and bruised myself often enough doing my own work to have picked up some tricks to treat wounds. I just hope it’s enough.

Her hand is a wet, garish mess when I return. She winces as I unwrap the makeshift bandage, resting her head on the back of the chair as her eyes flutter closed.

“Wake up,” I say, thrusting a bottle of potent beetle dung under her nose. She curses, slapping my hand away and groaning.

“You’ll thank me when you don’t die.”

Rose looks from me to her hand, face shading impossibly whiter under her thick layer of powder. “All that blood,” she whimpers. “Just gone.”

“Don’t think about that,” I say, digging out a handful of balmwood moss and pressing it hard into the cut. But I know she won’t be able to think about anything else. The rug in the parlor was soaked. And who knows how much she lost before I found her. It could be years of her power drained away. Rose has been among the highest-ranking beauty Graces since she Bloomed. She had every chance of beating Pearl for the role of Royal Grace. But not after tonight. “What are you even doing here? You should be at the competition.”

“I left.”

“Because you won so handily?” I can’t seem to resist the urge to bait her. “Why aren’t you at the reception?”

Rose curses again as I pack down a fresh layer of moss. It seems to be working. The blood is slowing.

“If you must know, I didn’t make it past the first round.” Her whole body stiffens under my hands, the hollows of her collarbone deepening. “I couldn’t even turn Lady Elipsa’s hair a decent shade of ruby. And the other Graces…”

The walls of the Lair creak against the blizzard.

“It’s because you’ve weakened yourself,” I tell her, almost gently. The blood has finally clotted. I remove the moss and make to rinse the wound with a mix of mint water and chamomile leaves. “By taking those thinners and running yourself ragged.”

“I stopped taking them,” she snaps, trying to wrench her hand away.

“Be still or you’ll open the wound!”

She relaxes, but glares. “I stopped. I knew my power needed to be at its most potent.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” The water in my bowl is yellowing with her blood. “You can’t just stop taking something like bloodrot without consequence. You’d been dosing yourself too long. You needed to taper off.”

A jewel in one of her Briar rose earrings glimmers. “No one told me that.”

“I’m sure they didn’t.” I dab at the slash on her skin. “Let me guess, you kept adding more blood to