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

The sleeping sickness. What did that woman say last night? That her husband was a valued courtier. A council member. “That’s what the brooches were for. You poisoned your own advisors.”

“You poisoned them, Dark Grace. And not even properly. They should be dead, the mutinous snakes. Don’t think I don’t know your slip was intentional. A deathlike sleep.” He snorts, his mustache twitching. “Creative, I’ll grant you that. But defiant. I’ve yet to decide what to do with you for that little stunt.”

Mariel clutches at the king. “What have you done?” When Tarkin doesn’t answer, she wheels to me. “What is he talking about?”

“He bid me”—I struggle to find the words inside the riot in my head—“to cast a death curse on some brooches. But I cast one for sleep instead.”

“A…sleeping curse,” she repeats. And then an idea sparks in the queen’s eye. “Boy!” she barks at the servant who escorted the Graces. He steps forward cautiously. “Find those ill with the sleeping sickness and remove every article of clothing they wear.”

The servant glances furtively at Tarkin, as if for permission. Mariel claps her hands. “Now, I said! It is the command of your queen! See that it is done or I will—”

“It will not matter.” Tarkin dismisses the poor boy and he returns to his post. “You believe I am naïve enough to stake my plans on a piece of jewelry?” He laughs. “That I was not informed immediately when those who should have been dead suddenly woke—after what was attributed to a ‘fainting fit’? Exhaustion?” He glares at me. “I visited those early victims personally to inquire after their well-being. Which is when I discovered that the brooches were not needed at all. Not when those council members were pricked with the cursed item. Sleep set in instantly—and hasn’t yet lifted.”

Because my curse entered their bodies directly. And my intent was clear. The nobles will be asleep for a long time.

“But they aren’t dead,” the queen attempts. “And so the healing Graces…”

“Cannot undo her magic.” Tarkin grins.

Dragon’s teeth. I could almost laugh at my own stupidity, thinking that crafting curses for the Briar King would come without consequences. I’ve put us in this position. Jeopardized Aurora’s throne.

“You are forgetting something, husband.” The queen gathers her strength. “My crown is blessed by the Etherians. It will only rest on the head of Leythana’s heir. It will kill anyone else.” She rips the crown free of her arrangement of coiled braids and thrusts it at Tarkin. “Try it on yourself, if you want it so badly.”

The king glowers at the circlet of golden brambles, its thorns like so many gilded teeth. “Then we will get a new crown. For a new Briar. It’s time.”

A new Briar.

A hundred minuscule details sharpen into horrible focus at once. The war room, with the maps of Etheria spread over the table. The strategy markers strewn across them, indicating routes through the mountain range. The books Aurora told me the king collects, where she’d read about how the light Fae hold their magical hearts in their staffs.

The wheels of my mind begin to whirr.

Tarkin hates Endlewild. I recall the dinner here, where he asked the Fae lord about purchasing Etherian-made sails. His obsession with his army and ships and frustration with the limited scope of Grace power. His promise to grant me rank and prestige in return for my curses.

One of the shackled Graces whimpers. Dragon’s teeth. I thought he was using Graces to test my curses because they’re bound to obey him. Wouldn’t be missed. But it’s because they carry the light Fae magic. He wants to see what I could do against the Etherians.

“You’re going to invade Etheria.” The thought tumbles out as soon as it forms.

The Briar King looks at me like he sees me for the first time. One thick eyebrow raises. “Perhaps I misjudged your intelligence, Dark Grace.”

“Have you gone mad?” Queen Mariel lunges at him, swinging her crown like a weapon. “The alliance. The Graces. The Etherians will flatten us into the earth. The treaty with Leythana—”

“Is over.” Tarkin shoves her back. She stumbles and the Briar crown sings as it hits the floor. “Or it would have been. Once our last heir fell victim to the curse. Then there would have been no choice but to invade the Fae courts.”

The king sounds like a child denied his plaything. Mariel hears it, too. She shades impossibly whiter. “Are you saying—you wanted Aurora to die? Your own daughter? Your blood?”

He doesn’t deny it. Every inch of Aurora’s body stills.

“Something needed to be done,” Tarkin continues. “I knew it as soon as I arrived in this realm. Heirs dying off one by one because of that curse. There’s only one way to end it properly—start a new line.”

“A new—” Mariel swallows. “Seraphina and Cordelia. You wanted them gone, too? I always told you they didn’t have enough suitors. Begged you to invite more eligible men to the palace. I even agreed to let Seraphina kiss those from the Common District, when she came to me in her final days. But you refused. I thought your lack of concern was because you didn’t understand. You thought some miracle would happen at the last moment. But you…you isolated them on purpose. Sent them to their graves because of some—some bid for war?”

“What I understand, wife.” If Tarkin feels an ounce of remorse over what he’s done, he doesn’t show it. “What every son of Paladay understands, is how to strengthen a kingdom. You have no idea how to rule.”

“This is not a kingdom.” Pride swells in my chest at Aurora’s voice. Small, but laced with iron. “It belongs to a queen. And the curse was broken. Leythana’s alliance remains intact. I will be the next Briar Queen. Your plans will come to nothing. And I will see you answer for what you did to my sisters.”

“You will mean nothing soon enough.” Tarkin narrows his gaze at his daughter. “If my