Page 27 of The Court of Venus

I had seconds of reprieve as they grappled. Miranda had soon thrown him out and kicked my stomach again. I gasped and bit my tongue, tasting copper. Then, I heard her breathing over me. How strained she sounded. She’d spent herself too quickly. Her magic was brash, as clumsy as an alehouse brawl. Had she ever been properly trained?

She must have looked down at me and thought I was finished, because she backed away, focusing now on herding the reptile. In the distance, the creature shrieked. It didn’t sound like her magic was penetrating its armored scales—she was cursing in frustration, the crowd was booing, and it had begun to rain, little whips that stung my skin and pounded hard against the earth.

I lay in the mud and listened to their battle. It raged on and on. I prayed the creature wasn’t hurt every time I heard her deep bellow. But she was thick-skinned. Impenetrable to a sword.

Who had said those words, long ago? It may have been me. I sank in and out of memory with every gasping breath I took. I saw a white dragon, flying high above an army in a tapestry. If only I had—

Scales.

The transformation ripped through my gown, my spine sprouting white spikes, plates of armored, opal scales sliding over brutalized skin. My veins ran hot; my voice became a tinder for flame. The courtiers gasped as I grew and grew, towering over the stands. I whipped my dragon head back and forth, the talon of my wing ripping through the royal canopy.

The king fell from his chair, Cecily thrown across him. The other courtiers were frantic: screaming and shoving one another as they fought to exit the stands.

Miranda stood gaping at me. My curses resounded as roars, but somewhere in the crowd, Oliver laughed, understanding exactly what I’d said.

Miranda rallied then, hurling her magic at me, cut after cut, but she couldn’t touch me. Not anymore. I snarled into her furious, pinched face, gathered fire in my throat. She leapt away just in time. Half of the tiltyard burst into flames.

A slash of my tail knocked over her cage entirely, and her with it. She was thrown into the mud, and I extended my wing to block the courtiers from fleeing the stands. I wanted them to see this. My triumph.

Down below, the reptile’s cold eyes assessed me. How would I lead her into my own cage? If I took her into my own jaws, would I crush her?

Remembering Roland’s and Oliver’s strategies, I shifted again, my body compressing and softening into a white doe. This was a hunt, after all, and I was already injured. I limped forward, tail swishing from side to side.

She couldn’t resist. She was hungry and desperate from years in the king’s menagerie, and here I was, a ready meal, already leaking blood. As I pranced away, I slipped into her mind to make her even more crazed than she already was, and she lunged only a moment too late.

The court gasped. The king had recovered his seat and was now cackling, the teeth at the back of his mouth black and hideous. Miranda whipped another slice of magic toward me and missed. She lay sprawled on the ground, crying in frustration.

I leapt into the cage, the reptile close behind me. When she heaved herself up, the tension in her body promised she would lunge again. I waited, watching her muscles shift. Waited a few beats longer. That’s when her jaw coiled back and snapped forward. As her teeth were about to clench around my leg, I shifted into a mouse, just for Roland—a twinge of amusement from somewhere in the stands—and slipped through the bars. Mouse to deer again, I slammed the iron door shut with my back, the creature trapped inside.

Across the yard, Miranda shrieked and threw a final burst of blood-red magic. It spiraled through the air, swift as an arrow.

The reptile and I locked eyes as I fell. She was thrashing inside the cage. Tormented by years of captivity, distrustful of any human kindness. As my head slammed into the ground, I thought, I’m so very sorry I had to trap you. Your scales are just like mine.

When I was seven years old, Prospero arrived at my father’s rundown inn in the bowels of the city. Wherever traveling courtiers usually stayed, it was not with us. We had our fair share of merchants and the occasional knight, if he was considerably downtrodden, unable to afford somewhere nicer. I’d never met someone from court—only knew that far away we were ruled by someone named Richard and that the king had a sorcerer, a magician who fed him tastes of the future and multiplied his heaps of gold.

I was to fetch ale and a plate of whatever bread and vegetables my father had made that day for travelers, then scurry off to scrub the floors on my knees until they were red and raw. Sometimes, if he screamed, if he was crueler than usual, I’d draw false memories inside of him out of spite. He never suspected, even when he’d speak to our guests about events that never happened, enduring their odd stares. He assumed he was too clever to be tricked by me.

I still remember the sound of creaking wood above. Of beds squeaking, and heavy boots stomping. It sounded like my life could cave in at any moment.

The stranger wore a cloak, and he accepted the meal and drink with only whispered thanks. Yet I could see his eyes were a striking blue. Magician eyes. Strange and unnatural. They were the first I’d seen other than my own.

“You,” he said, casting off his hood. His hair and beard were just as shocking. His face, however, was not in accordance with gossip. He was not ethereal or bewitching. Instead, he had homely, kind features, a nick in his ear. “Girl. Your disguise is slipping.”

I glanced over my shoulder. My father had turned his back. I lowered my voice, ducking into the seat opposite the stranger. “What do you mean, Sir—”

He indicated to himself with a flourish. “Prospero.”

Prospero. Everyone knew that name. My father said it was because of Prospero our treasury overflowed—they didn’t need our taxes to fund their petty, foreign wars, though still they collected the crowns. He got rowdy after he drank, whining to customers about Prospero, always that bastard Prospero, born under Jupiter, born into greed, who surely bathed naked in a tub of jewels and coin. Prospero, who should be hanged for theft, left for birds to peck outside one of the king’s many palaces.

Now here he was, at our little inn. His eyes were like a sunny day, just as bright, and I didn’t think he should be left on a pike for the crows like my father said. I told him so, and he laughed, a full sound that creased little forks beside his eyes.

“Which man is your father?”

I pointed. My father was a large man, hard to miss. Prospero hummed. “Best not introduce me, then. As I said before: Your disguise is slipping. Your hair is white beneath your cap.”

I reached for a strand and twirled it around my finger. It took so much concentration—too much—to alter my appearance all day and night. My father didn’t want any of his patrons to know what I was, because then they might demand to stay elsewhere. Or I might be taken away, and he’d lose the labor a daughter provided.

But I longed to be taken away. When a customer seemed important enough, I’d let my appearance slip, so that when they rode off in the morning, off to court or their manors, they would whisper that there was a bedraggled magician girl in an inn they passed through on their travels. I yearned for this very moment, trembled for it, prayed for it. I knew one day, if the whispers spread, someone would come and find me.