The shadow. He was listening. A cold dread fills my stomach.

“After a moment he went mad, throwing off his guards and running for the bridge. They had no choice but to shoot him.”

Pain washes over me like the pounding of the tide. “No,” I whisper.

“It’s very disappointing. I had further plans for him.”

“He’s not dead.”

“The royal guards are excellent marksmen, and without his cane he had no magic stored. They’re recovering his body from the river now. Such a pity.”

“You’re lying.”

“Stupid girl, if I wanted to lie, I would tell you he was alive and well and you were doing the right thing to secure his freedom. I would feed you hope. But you know how this ends. You’ve already made the decision to sacrifice everything in order to protect your precious island home. I was worried for a while, that you’d been so seduced by the pale, glittering wealth of this country, by their fine manners and dead eyes and simpering customs, that you might actually be willing to let me burn the village.”

Finn. My Finn. I want to collapse to the ground, to sink into it. This grief would consume me like a moth in a flame, and I want to let it. I want to hand over the book and be done with it right now. But then I would not be the woman Finn gave his shadow to. I refuse to be anything less than what I am.

“You won’t win.”

“I will. And after I’ve exterminated the Hallin line, I’ll be the most powerful man in the world. But you don’t need to worry about that. You’ve done your part.”

“How do I know you will not still punish Melei?”

He shakes his head. “You really are daft, aren’t you? Everyone always thought you were so smart, but you can’t see anything. I was so happy when I found you again that first time. I meant what I said, that I would have kept you for my own. You would have been happy. Maybe I still will keep you.”

“All the magic in the world couldn’t make me love a man like you.”

“Really?” He steps closer, into the soft pool of light around me. His face is covered with glimmering droplets of water. “But you’d kiss me.”

“You’re mad.”

Laughing, he pulls out a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket. “Am I?” He wipes his face. Along with the water droplets, his very skin is taken off, revealing a darker one beneath with the sharp smile and sharp eyes that I caught glimpses of all along.

“Kelen,” I whisper.

Thirty-four

KELEN’S GRIN SPREADS ACROSS HIS FACE. “IN THE flesh. Well, in someone else’s flesh. Most of the time.”

“You’re working for Lord Downpike?” I feel dizzy, unbalanced, disconnected from reality.

“I am Lord Downpike.”

“You can’t be. It’s impossible. You only left the island three years ago.”

“Don’t insult me by assuming Lord Downpike could have done all this, set it all in motion. He was so blind he could not recognize his own son when he hired me on as a servant. You weren’t the only one of us with Alben blood. Lord Downpike’s blood just happened to be more useful than pathetic Milton Miller’s. Not so precious as your mama treated you, now, are you?”

“You killed my father.”

“We bastard children have to look out for one another.” He smiles, and I cringe, trying to sink into myself and get away from him, get away from the new light this rewrites our history in. “I spent a year working for Downpike, watching him, studying his books and his magic when he was asleep. But I was the lowly colony rat servant, and he never thought for a moment I was anything more than that.”

“But how did you—you became him.”

“It was his idea, really. He was so paranoid about Hallin magic that he’d have done anything for it. He needed an alibi no one could question. So he called me into his study—powerless, faithful servant me—and cast a spell to make me look like him. I was to go and get myself jailed for the evening, which I did.”

“Finn’s parents. He killed them, then.” I wish I could tell Finn, could answer this question for him. Oh, Finn. I close my eyes against the rush of grief. Too dangerous to lose myself now. I force myself to look at Kelen.

He waves his hand, the gesture a knife in my heart. “Downpike came back, as pale as beach sand and shaking, covered in blood. He asked me to help him get the blood out of his clothes. I answered by choking the life out of him. It was no challenge at all to replace him. After I let the servants go, no one noticed a thing. These nobles do not take care of their own.”

“But why? Why any of this? Why would you want to extend Albion’s power, continue your father’s legacy?”

“Spirits below, you are obtuse. My only interest is securing so much power that I control everything. If you are not the most powerful person in the room, you are nothing. And when the Alben gentry is decimated in the coming conflict, well, that is no great loss. I’ll eliminate them all in the end, anyway. I will never be at another’s mercy again.”

I shake my head, unable, unwilling to process all of this. “You hurt me. We were friends, and you hurt me.”

“I am sorry about that, little rabbit.” This time he uses the Melenese word for rabbit, and I remember how he used to be the fox, every time we played Fox and Rabbit—how could I not have realized? “I never meant for you to get involved. I saw you the first day you met Ackerly and began watching you out of tender care. Then you gave me an opening with Ackerly, a chance to finally manipulate him. And I wanted to punish your Finn for thinking he could have you, for thinking he could claim one of my people for himself just as his country claimed my entire island. I was going to make you forget. You wouldn’t have remembered the pain, and you would have been so happy to be reunited with me. I would have protected you, Jessa. I would have kept you free from all this. He couldn’t do that for you, could he?”