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Spirits She hated Daria

"Let her go," Kaer said sharply, and Isabel obeyed, more because of her own reaction than because of his She stepped back, watching Daria cru

Kaer knelt by Daria and put his ar over her head at Isabel "What do you think you’re doing?"

"She attacked you!" Isabel snapped

"Do you honestly think I’the few people who are truly on my side!"

"No one is on your side!" Isabel shouted at him "No one but me!"

His face went flat and he turned back to Daria, pressing his lips to her hair When he spoke, his voice was too low for anyone but Isabel to hear "I wish I could believe that"

Isabel was shaking with rage and desperation "Daria ht love you, but she tried to hurt you anyhow, didn’t she? Clarisse loved Rokan, but she’ll help you kill him" As the words left her mouth, she suddenly realized how they could draw Rokan here; there was one person he would come for without question And once she told Kaer how to lure Rokan to his death, she would erase this doubt forever "I’m the only one ill stand by you no matter what, because I have no choice!"

"Try to sound a little happier about it, would you?" Clarisse murmured

Isabel was across the rooreatest effort of will kept that hand froht

Clarisse’s neck ers, but she didn’t sothat you feel a need to attack the exact two people who betrayed Rokan Rather interesting choices for a creature who claims she has no choice"

"I don’t have a choice," Isabel hissed But even as she said it, a part of her ht The attack on Daria had been unnecessary; the attack on Clarisse even ured out how to draw Rokan into the trap, should have told Kaer iet distracted

She had wanted to get distracted Because she didn’t want to tell hiers from Clarisse’s neck and stepped back She turned to Kaer, opening her mouth to say what she should have no choice but to say But she was arrested by the sight of the dark bruises on Clarisse’s white throat And on Daria’s arm as well Evidence of choices she couldn’t have made

Clarisse lifted an eyebrow at her "Go ahead It’s not like you haven’t betrayed him already"

"I’m not the only one," Isabel said despite herself "And you--you’re his sister--"

She stopped The realization was so sudden, and so overwhelht be alive, she had told Kaer Had said it straight to his face, had asserted that the Shifter would never have left without saving the princess And had walked away fro

In her mind’s eye she saw the Shifter--as she had seen her in one of her dreams, fro frantically from one form to the next And then--

And then memory came to an end

It must have been unendurable, for both of them But it had been the only way to save her For the Shifter, saving her was all that ht the Shifter had seen only one way to save Kaer’s sister She hadprincess the power to shift into so else and escape from the death all around her

Isabel wondered if she had screaet away fro her mortal human body She wondered if the Shifter had er reuards, but it could have been any one of a million ways She could have beco The Shifter had been strong in her then, had knohat to do, had been able to guide the little girl to the Mistwood, where her ic could be replenished every second No wonder her poere so weak once she left it

No wonder she had been so confused…filled with the Shifter’s powers, the Shifter’s needs, but with human emotions and human needs as well She wasn’t the Shifter, but she was She wasn’t hu--actually shaking--and hastily shifted herher now, even Kaer, and she looked back at him with her face absolutely blank The answer she had been about to tell him, had believed she had to tell him, trembled unspoken on her lips

Maybe she should tell him the truth instead Tell him she was his sister

We’d probably be better off if she was dead

I should hate hiht But she didn’t She still re boy with dark hair and how much she had loved hi her life; but the scared young princess had loved her brother, refused to go anywhere without him, cried with him when the soldiers came He had told her not to worry and tried to protect her

And now he needed someone to protect him He wanted her to be the Shifter so badly Even after she had hurt hithe wrong person, the son of the man who had come for him when he was a child He had stepped in front of his sister back then, but deep down he had believed the Shifter would save them both And the Shifter hadn’t She had chosen someone else

It was the saether in a sealed rooo, while Rokan’s father hunted the had to be protected