“Oh good,” she said flatly. Nothing like a psychopath to make a party go with a swing.

“Kett!” Chalia cried, wandering into the room. “Look at you!”

“Yes, I’m wearing a dress, I have breasts, get over it,” Kett said, slamming the door and debating whether to lock it. Her parents and siblings knew about Koskwim, and several of the guests were members of the Order, but she couldn’t risk an innocent member of Elvyrn society wandering in.

Assuming there was such a thing as an innocent member of society.

“What?” asked Chalia. “No, not the dress. You got laid.”

“Recently,” Striker said, looking her over.

“In the minstrel’s gallery,” Chance added, and when Kett stared, she clarified. “I swear to gods, I just happened to glance up.”

“Great,” Kett said. “Now that we’ve discussed my sex life-”

“Sweetheart, I’m just glad you’ve finally got a sex life,” Chalia said.

“You wanted to talk about-”

“I know, three years,” Chance said, appalled. “Which reminds me.” She turned her beautiful eyes on Striker.

“No,” he said warily.

“I haven’t even asked you yet!”

“Still no.”

“Striker,” Chance said, pleadingly. “Dad, please.”

Kett and Chalia gaped at her. Even Dark, still in his lion form, looked stunned.

“You never call me that,” Striker said, staring at his daughter.

“It’s true,” Chalia said, seating herself prettily on a chaise. “Since she was a baby, she called him Striker.” She grinned. “Except she couldn’t pronounce her T’s or R’s very well, so it sounded more like psycho.”

“Always said she was smart,” Kett muttered.

“Striker,” Chance said, scowling beautifully and burying her fingers in Dark’s long mane. “Have you seen the enchantment on Kett?”

All eyes turned toward Kett, who squared her shoulders and glared back at them all. Striker sauntered over, ran his fingers half an inch above her skin and frowned.

“Like a net,” he said. “Dense. Tough. Interesting.”

Kett waited for someone to say that sounded just like her, but no one did.

“It’s been on her since Nihon,” Chance said.

“What’s it do?”

“You can’t tell?” Kett asked, surprised as much as anything.

Striker gave her a narrow-eyed look and closed the distance between his hand and her shoulder.

Then he jerked it away as if he’d been burned and stared at her.

“What?” Kett asked.

“That-” He touched her again, shook his head. “Bad mojo, pet. And you’ve had it on you before.”

“No I haven’t,” said Kett, pretty sure she’d remember.

“Yes, you have. For eight years.”

His pale eyes were steady on hers as she tried to figure out what the hell he meant. Eight years of being unable to change her shape? Ever since she could remember, she’d been able to-

Ever since she could remember.

Memories that only started when she was eight years old.

“Heavy net,” Striker said. “Locks you in one shape. One form. Like your normal human form or-”

“A stone statue,” Chalia said. Chance and Dark exchanged glances, and Kett realized they’d probably never been told the story. Hell, Chance hadn’t even been born at the time.

But Striker had been the one who’d discovered Kett festering in her own anger on Koskwim. He and Chalia had uncovered the whole story of what happened to her as a child.

“This-this is the same thing that trapped me as a kid?”

Striker nodded slowly. “Penny-a-word enchantment.”

An enchantment. The kind of thing anyone could do if they knew the words. Enchantments nearly always came with an “undo” clause. But you had to know the right words for that too.

“So…the reason I couldn’t lift it is because I didn’t know the words?” Chance asked.

“No, the reason you couldn’t lift it is because you’re an ungrateful, self-denying idiot who never learned how to use her magic,” Striker said.

“So how do we remove it then?” Chance asked, but no one replied because Striker made a sudden movement, as if pulling something off Kett.

For a second she thought he was going to take her skin with him, and then…

Then she was free.

If Kett had ever worn a corset, she’d have compared the experience to shedding the restricting garment and being able to breathe freely. As it was, it felt to her like climbing out of a vault and breathing fresh oxygen, or curing a long-standing injury.

“Gods,” she gasped, almost moaning as blood seemed to flow properly through her veins for the first time in a month. “How do you stand it?”

“What?” Chance asked, and then blinked as Kett’s skin sprouted fur, then scales, turned blue and then green, grew feathers and rippled with change.

“Being stuck in the same shape all the time, it’s like suffocating.” Her mind reeling with relief, Kett moved to unfasten her dress, then thought better of it and just changed her shape to undulate out of the silk, watching it flutter to the floor as she stretched her naked body. Her bones snapped, her muscles stretched, her blood roared, and then she dropped to all fours and watched her hands become paws, felt thick fur grow, flexed her claws and swished her tail.

She paced, stretched, then backed up and went into a running leap, changing mid-air into a horse, landing on unshod hooves and whinnying with joy.

“Show-off,” Striker said, lighting a cigarette. Kett narrowed her eyes, took another leap and this time turned into an eagle, snatching the cigarette from his lips and wheeling round the room with it in one clawed foot.

“Bring that back,” he said, a rather bored threat in his voice, “or I’ll shoot you.”

Kett circled lazily then turned herself into a gryphon and landed on the card table by the window. She flowed to the ground as a snake, gripping the cigarette in her tail, then rose up and turned herself human again.

Unselfconscious, feeling invincible now she was back to her old self, she crossed the room and put the cigarette back between Striker’s lips.

“Don’t get cocky,” he said.

“Me?” Briefly, Kett entertained herself with the idea of morphing a cock, but dismissed it as an idea best explored in private. Now she could change her shape again, could shift into anything, could look like-

“Are you done now?” Striker asked, and Kett smiled as she stepped back into her dress, feeling invigorated, feeling like herself, feeling better than she had since before that damn tiger ripped her leg open.

“Thanks, by the way,” she said to Striker, who just shrugged. To Chance she added, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“About the enchantment on you,” Chance said. “I thought Striker might be able to lift it. And now,” her lovely eyes sparkled, “you and Bael have something in common.”

Abruptly, Kett’s happiness morphed into a mallet and smacked her on the head. Her smile vanished.

“Don’t you want to have something in common with him?” Chalia asked. “He’s gorgeous, Kett. And he clearly adores you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Kett said automatically.

“He’s your mate,” Chance pointed out.

“No, he’s not. There’s no such thing as mates. Not for me.”

“But-”

“He’s confused. That’s all. He thinks I’m-”

Her words snapped themselves off. He thinks I’m his mate. Someone I’m not.

What if he thinks I’m someone else?

She could change her shape again. She could make herself look like anything she wanted. It took practice, of course, and if she wanted to make herself an exact replica of something new or someone in particular, it was incredibly difficult.

But it was possible, with practice, to change her human appearance. To look like someone else. Bael’s words came back to her…

Well, you could have sex with someone else. If you’re my mate, that should be impossible.