“How very fatalistic of you,” Marc snapped. “If you can trouble yourself to move, there’s something I want you to see.”
Reluctantly, I rose and followed him out onto the balcony.
The city was mostly dark as it was the middle of the night, but scattered throughout the blackness were pockets of lights. I frowned. “What are they doing?”
“Building your structure – they started shortly after you were put in prison.”
I blinked once. “Why? On whose orders?”
“Your father’s.” Marc leaned against the railing. “Shortly after your imprisonment, he announced to the half-bloods that he would fund the construction of your project if they provided the labor.”
“Why would he do that?” I muttered, resting my elbows on the railing.
Marc shrugged. “It did much to restore his popularity with them. They practically sing his name in the streets these days.”
“He never needed or wanted their support before.” My eyes flicked between construction sites. Something wasn’t right. “Surely his actions have cost him popularity with the aristocracy.”
“Indeed they have.” Marc shifted his weight slightly from one foot to another, showing his unease. “He almost never leaves the palace these days. When he does, he always goes with a full complement of guards. Your mother, too, is guarded at all times. He clearly fears an assassination attempt.”
“He doesn’t fear anything,” I replied, scoffing at the very idea. “And his resumed control over the tree protects him – no one would dare it.”
“He didn’t resume control of the tree. He gave the task over to the Builder’s Guild. They’re taxed right to their limit in keeping it stable.”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Bloody stones! What is he thinking?”
Since the moment a permanent tree structure had been established, the ruling monarch controlled it. Part of the reason was the immense amount of power it took to maintain, but the other part was the protection it gave the King. Magic didn’t disappear the moment a troll died, but it dissipated quickly, making the death of a king a dangerous time in Trollus. Especially when the death was unexpected. Giving up control of the tree made my father vulnerable indeed.
“The reason he gave was that having the lives of all those in Trollus held in the hand of one troll had proven to be too much of a risk.”
I cringed inwardly, remembering how when he had first imprisoned me I’d threatened to pull the tree down on all our heads should something happen to Cécile. “He’s not wrong,” I said under my breath. “But that risk has always existed – why change now?”
“His actions certainly bear consideration.”
“As always,” I said, my mind sorting through possible motivations. But I couldn’t quite concentrate, because something about the construction going on in front of me was wrong. “They aren’t following my plans,” I said abruptly.
“I thought they seemed different.” Marc’s voice was mild. “Of course, I am no engineer.”
But I was – and even though the foundations of the structure were only just being laid, I could tell it would never support the weight of Forsaken Mountain.
“I thought the half-bloods had your diagrams?” Marc said. “What reason would they have to deviate from them?”
I shook my head. “I promised them the plans once I had their names – but I didn’t have the time to collect all of them, which gave me an out on my promise.”
“No wonder they curse your name. You should have handed them over as a show of good faith.”
“I didn’t trust them,” I muttered, remembering the moment as vividly as though it were yesterday. I’d collected as many names as I could before Cécile’s terror had driven me back to the palace. Just before I’d reached the gates, Anaïs had found me and told me my father was alone with Cécile. I’d given her my plans and told her to hide them, then I’d gone inside to duel with my father. Anaïs would only have had a few minutes to hide the documents before she came through my window to fight. Which meant she’d hidden them nearby.
Retreating back inside, I went to the glass doors Anaïs had broken through. Below lay my private courtyard and the wall she would have come over to get inside. Opening the doors, I hurried down the steps, barely noticing Marc trailing along after me.
Cécile’s piano still stood in the middle of the space, but it was covered in a layer of dust. I walked in a slow circle around it, then came to a halt at the bench. Stacks of music covered the seat, the paper as dusty as the piano. Wiping my hands on my trousers to remove the blood dripping down from my wrists, I began to sort through them, quickly coming up with what I’d been looking for. “Hidden in plain sight,” I said, holding them up.
“Then what are the half-bloods constructing?” Marc asked, his expression grim.
“Were you present when he told them to build?”
Marc nodded, his eyes growing distant as he remembered. “His speech was long, but he concluded by lifting a roll of parchment into the air and shouting, ‘Behold the plans for a stone tree.’”
I shook my head slowly, admiring his genius. “He gave them drawings of the tree as it is now. They’re building something that is doomed to fail – and he knows it. And by keeping the Builders’ Guild focused entirely on maintaining the magic version, he ensures none of them will have the time to do the calculations to determine that while the existing structure works for magic, it won’t work for stone.”
Marc blinked.
“You didn’t think it took me two years to come up with plans identical to something I looked at every day, did you?” I asked, shaking my head. “I assure you, these plans” – I shook the parchment – “are drastically different for a reason. The question is, why would my father let me out, knowing that I would see through his deception?”
Marc shook his head slightly.
Turning round, I pressed a piano key, the note echoing out around us. “He wants me to do something.” I pressed another key. “What does he think I’m going to do?”
“I thought you weren’t going to do anything but wait to die?”
I shot him a dark look. “I haven’t said I’m going to do anything.”
“Of course not.” Marc kept a straight face. “This is all just speculation.”
“Indeed. Something to pass the time while I wait.”
“To die.”
“Or not.” I scratched the skin around one puncture in my arm – it had finally scabbed over, but the healing itched terribly. “What does he want from me?” I murmured to myself.
“Perhaps he wanted you to lead him to where your plans were hidden,” Marc said. “Maybe we’ve just given him what he wanted.” We both looked around, but we were alone, and Marc’s magic kept our conversation private.
“Perhaps,” I replied, but I was not convinced. There was no evidence he’d even gone looking for them. “If that’s the case, he lucked out, because I didn’t know where they were.”
Marc’s brow furrowed. “Then who hid them here?”
“Anaïs,” I said. “She hid them before she came to help me fight my father.” I swallowed hard, remembering the sight of my friend impaled on the sluag spear. “She gave up everything for me,” I said, closing my eyes. “She died for me.”
I jerked them open again at Marc’s sharp intake of breath. He stood rigid in front of me, unease on his face. “Tristan,” he said. “Anaïs isn’t dead.”
“That’s impossible.” But even as I said the words, hope rose in my heart. Anaïs, alive?
“And not only is she alive,” Marc continued, “she claims your father saved her life.”
Five
Cécile
I jerked upright, my heart racing and skin damp with sweat. Shadows swam and loomed in the darkness of my room, and my eyes leapt between them, searching for the source of my fear. The only time I’d felt anything close to this was when I’d fallen and broken my light in the labyrinth. This was worse. In those twisting tunnels, I�
��d known why I was afraid, but now the danger was insidious and unknown. My senses tried to reconcile the terror with a threat, eyes twitching around the room of their own accord, spine stiffening with each gust of wind or creak in the floorboards.
The sheer curtains surrounding the bed blew inward, brushing against my face. I flinched, batting them away with one hand while pulling up my blankets to ward away the chill from the open window.
Nightmare.
Taking deep measured breaths, I clambered out of bed, dragging my blankets with me. Slamming the window shut, I flipped the latch. With trembling fingers, I turned up the lamp, but while the light drove away the shadows, the panic scorching through my veins only worsened. Because it hadn’t been a nightmare. Everything that had happened was real, and with every blink of my eyelids, I saw the whip crack through the air, the blood splatter against the curse, the look in Tristan’s eyes as he turned away from me. And echoing in my head, ceaseless and unending, were his screams.
“Tristan.” His name came out as a gasp, and I dropped to my knees. My hands twisted like claws, nails clutching and snagging the fabric of my bedding, a scream threatening to rise in my throat. I clapped my hands over my ears and buried my face in my knees, trying to drown out the sound and failing because it came from inside my own head. The voice of reason shouted warning after warning at me, and I clenched my teeth and held my breath until my chest burned. What was done was done, and I would not improve either of our circumstances by panicking.
“Get up,” I snapped as though my body was some sort of separate entity that I could order about. “Move.” My knees cracked loudly as I straightened, my numb feet hardly feeling the floor beneath me as I paced shakily up and down the room. My mind raced, coming up with increasingly elaborate waking nightmares of what was happening to him now. Should I go? Should I take Fleur, gallop through the night, and try to sneak into Trollus? But even if I didn’t get caught, what help would I be?
“Stop it,” I said. “Quit thinking.” As if such a thing were possible.
Stumbling over to my desk, I snatched up a page of lyrics. Eyes jumping from line to line, I softly sang, my voice breathless and terrible. “Again!” I said, trying to mimic my mother’s voice. “That was dreadful.”
Starting again, I sang louder, pushing everything into my voice. It was raw and wild, but like a hammer to a blade, I used it to temper my emotion into something useful, something I could control.
The door swung open, and I broke off mid-note, my hands grasping for the bedposts to keep my balance. But before I could regain an ounce of composure, my mother strode in.
“Cécile!” she snarled, but I cut her off before she could start into me.
“Mama!” I flung myself against her, burying my face in the fur collar of her coat. She smelled like perfume, cigar smoke, and spilled wine, but I didn’t care.
“What’s happened?” she demanded. “Has someone hurt you?” Her strong arms pushed me back, face pale as she examined me. “Well?”
What to say? The truth was impossible – even if I could tell her, after the way I’d just acted, I’d sound like a raving lunatic. “I woke up afraid,” I mumbled, looking away for shame of how childish I sounded.
“A bad dream?” From the tone of her voice, my mother agreed with my assessment of my behavior.
Wiping tears away with the back of my hand, I nodded.
“Stars and heavens, you will be the death of me!” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, and only then did I notice how disheveled she was. Her hair was loose of all its pins and the kohl rimming her eyes was smeared. “For a dream you wake the neighbors. Ahh!” she grimaced. “Not just the neighbors, half the dogs in the city were caterwauling along with you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re a fool of a girl.” She shook her head, her eyes blurry with something – likely wine, though it could have been absinthe. Or worse. Her hand reached for me so suddenly that I had to stop myself from jerking away. “You’ve been crying.”
Warmth filled my chest, my heart convinced I’d heard a note of compassion in her voice.
“You shouldn’t, you know. Some girls look pretty when they cry and can wield their tears like a weapon against men. But you aren’t one of them. Instead of wrapping them around your finger, you’ll send them running.”
The warmth fled, and my mutinous bottom lip began to tremble.
Her shoulders slumped a little. “Heaven knows, that’s why I never shed a tear in public.” Letting go of my face, she took my arm and pulled me toward the door. “It’s freezing in here. If you catch cold, you won’t be able to sing. And if you can’t sing…” Her mouth pressed out in a little pout. “Well, the neighbors might well be pleased.”
I steadied her arm as we walked down the stairs together. “Build up the fire a bit,” she said. “I will make us something hot to drink.”
I mindlessly stirred the coals and added wood to the fire, my mind all for Tristan and what could possibly be going on in Trollus. Where was he now? What were they doing to him? And worst of all, what was I going to do about it? The promise I’d made his father felt like it was crawling through my veins, a separate living thing that had found its way inside me against my will.
“Sit with me.”
My mother had returned to the great room with two steaming cups in her hands, the faint smell of mint and chamomile drifting through the air. I settled next to her on the well-padded settee, tucking my chilled feet underneath me to warm them. She waited until I was settled to hand me a cup, and for a long time we both silently watched the fire. It felt comfortable and warm, and for the first time ever, the austere townhouse felt almost like home and Genevieve almost like a real mother. I clung to the feeling, letting it drive away the black thoughts threatening to overtake me.
“Where were you?” I asked. The water clock showed the time as five in the morning. I hadn’t slept for more than an hour. That I’d fallen asleep at all was astonishing.
“The Marquis’ salon.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, revealing her profile. In the firelight, I could see little crinkles were starting to form around her eyes, black little lines where the kohl had caught in them. “Some gentlemen he conducts business with are here from the mainland, and he wanted them well entertained.”
I hesitated, a question that I’d been dying – but also afraid – to ask burning on the tip of my tongue. “What exactly does that mean?”
She turned her head to look at me. “What,” she asked, raising one eyebrow, “do you think it means?”
“That you sing?” I ventured, because that was what I hoped. I might have been born in the morning, but not yesterday morning. I’d heard the gossip and the rumors, and though he’d never outright explained his dislike, I believed that was why Fred refused to have much of anything to do with her.
“Sometimes.” She set her steaming cup down on the table. “But mostly, I talk.”
Not what I’d expected her to say. I took a large mouthful, burning my tongue. “About what?”
“Everything. Anything.” She pushed out her bottom lip. “Women of the nobility, or at the very least, of quality, are limited by propriety in what they can discuss. I am not.” She pointed a finger at me. “Neither are you. And that makes us far more desirable company than any of their wives.”
I started to look away in discomfort, but she caught my chin. “That is why I sent tutors for you in the Hollow, Cécile. Because for you to succeed in this world, you must not only be beautiful, you must be educated, clever, and above all things, you must be interesting.”
Her eyes searched my face, and I got the impression that I was supposed to say something. Except I didn’t know what. All these things she thought I should be were fine qualities, but I didn’t like the idea that their only purpose was for the entertainment of rich men.
“The Marquis keeps us in very fine style,” she continued. “He pays for all this,” she gestured around the house, “and for
everything you have, for everything you know.” One finger coiled around a lock of hair, her eyes intent. “But I am not getting any younger, and soon he will tire of me and look for a replacement. You could be my successor.”
I pulled my chin out of her grasp and looked at the fire, everything becoming clear. That was why she’d wanted me educated, trained, and brought to live with her in Trianon. Not because she wanted her daughter close, but because she wanted insurance that she’d be kept in the style to which she’d grown accustomed. To live off the coin I could secure by being interesting.
“The Marquis must not have much regard for you if he’d put you aside for aging,” I said coldly. I watched, waiting for her eyes to light up so that I’d know my barb had sunk deep.
Instead, she smiled and lifted her chin. “Such is the nature of men, Cécile. They will keep you only so long as there isn’t something better within their reach; then they will discard you. Best you hear that from me now than learn it the hard way later.”
The smoke from the fire made my eyes burn and water as I took in her words. “Papa didn’t discard you.”
The room seemed to shrink, sucked in and made small by the silence.
“Is that what you think?” she whispered. “Is that what he told you?”
The truth was, my father never spoke much of it at all. It was Gran who’d told us the story of how we’d come to be in the Hollow, but I knew as well as I knew the back of my own hands that my grandmother was no liar. It was my turn to lift my chin. “Are you saying it happened differently?”
She rose abruptly to her feet, tripping on the hem of her skirt as she walked swiftly over to the sideboard. I heard the clink of glass and a splash of liquid. “I should have expected that you’d believe his side of the story.”
My heart skipped a little. Was there more to it than what Gran had told us? When I was a child, I’d daydreamed that my mother had only allowed us to be separated by necessity – that secretly, she’d always wanted us to stay together as a family. Time and much evidence to the contrary had beaten those dreams out of me, but what if my child-self had been right? “It’s the only side that’s ever been told to me,” I said, trying to keep my greed for the truth out of my voice. “But if there’s more to hear, I’ll listen.”
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