Page 51 of Bound to Three Fae Beasts

I had to get out of here, and I had to make sure he didn’t follow me.

“I saw someone head into the history section,” I called over my shoulder. “They kept flickering. I think they were using magic to try to make themselves invisible.”

Red’s expression cleared. He turned on his heel and raced toward the history section. I waited until I was certain he was gone before I dashed for the passage exit. I slipped inside and hid behind the door. I looked down at my too-big hands. I glared at them, trying to move them back into my own hands.

It didn’t work. For several more moments, they remained as they were. Finally, I started down the passage.

I could no longer try to pretend this wasn’t real. First Seb’s wolf, then being invisible, then wearing Gareth’s face? It all led to one thing. I was a shape-thief. I was the boogeyman fae parents used to terrify their children into behaving. The monsters that made them shiver in fear. The ones they hunted down and murdered.

Me. A shapeshifter. Penry had talked about a prophecy about a final shape-thief, something I hadn’t seen in any of the books I’d read.

But I had been looking for reasons why I couldn’t be a shape-thief. I needed to change my focus. I needed to learn how to get myself under control. If I was going to keep from being found out, I needed to use my magic. To take these forms by choice, not out of stress, like this had been. I would have to have full control over myself and these powers.

I checked my hands, relieved when I found them to be mine once more. Still, I found a reflective surface and checked myself before I headed to the dorms. I had my face back.

Freta was busy writing an essay when I came to the dorm. She looked up, giving me a brief smile. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I froze. “About…?”

“What happened today in class. You can’t touch your beast voluntarily, can you? It’s a common ailment, especially for low-born fae,” she added. “I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Silas and Penry, because I don’t want them to be stressed about remaining unbound. But I can help you access your magic more fully.” She turned back to her essay, twisting the quill in her hand. “I expected the newly bound would have special classes. When I first accessed my badger form, I had private mentors teaching me how to access it.”

Relief washed through me. “Thank you. I’ll take you up on that.”

“We’ll start on our next rest day,” she told me. “I really need to get this essay done.”

I nodded, gathering my own books. I sat at my desk and struggled through my homework. When I was done, I grabbed the library book about different beast forms and skimmed through it.

Finally, I found what I was looking for. A section labeled shape-thieves.

“Z?” Freta said.

I lifted my head. She’d changed into her nightgown and climbed into her bed. Her hair was put into two braids, then piled on her head. It was still frizzy, her curls having escaped despite her attention. Her skin looked paler than normal, glowing in the darkness.

“Would you mind putting out the candle? I haven’t been sleeping well,” she said apologetically.

The blue lights above us blinked out of existence, but my candle still burned. I hadn’t even realized it was getting so late. Impatience burned through me, but I managed to give her a brief smile. “Sure. I’m a little wired, so I’ll just go to the Alegro room.”

“Don’t let anyone catch you breaking curfew.”

I grimaced. “They’ll know I left the dorms with the tracker.”

“Breaking curfew isn’t against the rules, though. Being caught is.”

Of course. I fought the urge to roll my eyes at that. The fae rules didn’t make any sense. But it worked out for me. As I took my book and candle to the Alegro room, I wondered if my shape-stealing affected the tracking spells on me. Would that be enough to tip the Academy staff off to what I was?

I spent the night reading. Taking other forms was called ‘skimming’ them, and was used because shape-thieves had no physical form of their own. At least, that’s what the book said. It also said that I could skim every form I touched, so long as it was direct contact. Once I touched a person, my internal ‘bank’ added their form.

A shape-thief can leak into every form they touch, the book read. They can steal a wolf’s shape from brushing the wolf. Borrow a person’s face from holding their hand. Even skim a dead person’s form from touching their bones.

The spark when I’d touched Seb during the duel. Was that when I skimmed his form? And what about Gareth? His skin had touched mine when he steadied me after Lotmas’s class. I hadn’t felt a spark then … or maybe I had, and I was just too caught up in my head to feel what was going on with my body. That must have been when I skimmed his form, though.

To be a shape-thief was a capital crime. Wearing another person’s face made the wearer a weapon, not a person. Formless, how could they be a person?

But I had a form. I had been a baby, a child, a teenager. I grew up in the orphanage. I wasn’t some formless monster that consumed everything around her like these stories about shape-thieves talked about.

I read the passage a few times before finally shutting the book. There was still a little bit of the stolen wine from the trials, and I finished off a bottle. The taste had gotten worse, sitting open on the shelf, but I didn’t mind. It was only a few swallows, just enough to calm my nerves.

This opened up so many more questions. Who was my mother? Was my father the fae-killer they said he is? Was he alive, or was he dead like my mother? Was my mother dead like I’d always thought?