ARC: Stolen Songbird

by Danielle L. Jensen

  CHAPTER 37

  CéCILE

  The next several hours passed in a haze of semi-consciousness. I was aware of Anaïs’s presence, of Tristan’s aunt ordering that I be cleaned up so that I might die with dignity, of my maids holding my body rigid with magic while they laced me into an elaborate evening gown, and of the weight of the jewels they fastened to my ears, wrists, and throat.

  Of the King arriving, a liveried Lessa trailing at his heels.

  “Leave us,” he barked. Zoé and Élise dashed from the room, but Anaïs remained. “I won’t let you hurt her,” she said, her shoulders set.

  “If that was what I intended,” he said, “do you think you could stop me?”

  “Then I’m going to go get Tristan,” she said, and bolted from the room.

  The King waited until the door slammed shut behind her and said, “Please do, Anaïs. Please do.” Then he jerked his chin at Lessa. “Follow her.” A faint smile rose to her lips as she hurried off.

  I watched, frozen, as the King came across the room towards me.

  “Do not look so afraid, Cécile. Right now you are more useful to me alive than dead.” He smiled. “I have a witch-woman waiting to heal you once Tristan makes his move.”

  What was he talking about? My sluggish mind tried to puzzle out the meaning of his words. If he had someone here who could heal me, what was he waiting for? Alarm bells went off in my head.

  “He never made mistakes before you arrived,” the King mused, the bed groaning as he settled his bulk on the edge. “Now he behaves rashly, making decisions based on emotion rather than logic. Which has served my purposes, but is not a good quality in a future king. He will learn much from suffering the consequences.”

  “You’ve been manipulating him,” I said, my words sticky and thick on my tongue. “If you knew he plotted against you, why didn’t you stop him? Why did you let it go so far?”

  “I’ve been training him,” the King clarified. “This plot will fail, but he will soon begin afresh. Perhaps he will fail again. And again. But one day, he will wrench the crown from my cold dead hands and, by then, he will be the man he needs to be to rule Trollus. Not a sentimental, idealistic boy.”

  The loud clamor of the bells signaling the beginning of curfew sounded, echoing through the room.

  He sighed. “You see Cécile, as a child, Tristan was entranced by humanity.” He twisted a golden ring around one thick finger. “He was constantly sneaking out of the palace to go see the human traders in the market; was always pestering them with questions and playing with their animals. As he grew older, his minders constantly found him at the end of the River Road, staring at the world beyond. He had no interest in politics or in the concerns of our people, and it grew increasing clear to me that his sympathies lay contrary to my own. But no matter how hard I tried to bring him to heel, he would not bend. He was too secure in his position as my sole heir.”

  “So you had another child to replace him?” I whispered.

  The King shook his head. “Only to threaten his position. But do you know what he said when his brother was born?”

  I shook my head.

  “That he was glad to have a brother because now he wouldn’t have to be king.” The memory brought fury to his face. “As if being a king were a choice! So as punishment, I made him watch as I tore one of his favorite humans, a charming little old man, to pieces. I told him that if I ever caught him associating with the traders again, I would kill whoever it was. And he wept, but by the very next day, he had begun his pursuit of the crown.”

  The door opened and a troll I did not recognize hurried inside. “Your Majesty, the half-bloods are rioting in the streets,” he gasped.

  “Indeed.” The King’s face was neutral – he’d expected this. “Order them contained, but keep casualties to a minimum. Do you understand?”

  The troll’s eyes widened. “But they’ve gone wild, sir. I do not see how we can contain them without violence.”

  The King rose to his feet. “I do not desire my people killed,” he snapped. “Let that be known. And see that they are contained peaceably. They are not acting under their own volition.”

  The troll nodded rapidly and bolted from the room.

  “Already he grows harder,” the King mused. “He has promised the death of his own brother. He has deceived his followers in the worst of ways to further his own ends. He is sending men to their deaths to protect a life he considers more important than theirs. And he is right. You, my little witch, are the key to our freedom.”

  “No,” I whispered, my heart filling with horror. “You lie.”

  “I cannot lie.” The King cocked his head as though listening. “He will not be long now.”

  Sure enough, my ears caught the sound of boots pounding down the hall, and I could feel Tristan coming towards us. I opened my mouth to scream a warning, but magic muffled my attempt. “You see, Cécile, I will break him as many times as I need to in order to make him the heir I need him to be.” Picking up a pillow, he loomed over me.

  The door flew open.

  “Get away from her,” Tristan shouted, and magic slammed his father away from the bed. The King howled with laughter and Tristan staggered back beneath the onslaught of invisible fists.

  “You’re a fool, boy,” he cackled. “Ordering a rebellion now, when you are at your weakest. If only you’d waited, you might have had a chance.”

  The air grew so thick with magic that I could scarcely breathe. And it was getting hotter, the temperature rising until the room blistered with the heat of an oven. I lay paralyzed on the bed, helpless. All I could do was watch.

  To my eyes, it was a battle of invisible weapons made known only by their effects. Blades of magic slashed through the air with a whistling sound, clattering against magical shields like steel on steel. Tristan and his father both landed blows, jagged wounds opened on pale skin, healing over seconds later, leaving only bloody smears to show they’d been injured at all.

  But blind to the magic as I was, it was still clear to me that Tristan was losing. The fear and exhaustion I felt in my mind were reinforced by the dark shadows on his face, the tearing gasp of his breath. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead, and I hissed in terror as the King landed a blow on his arm, sending him staggering. Too many sleepless nights, the sluag attack, and the effort of shoring up the tree had taken their toll.

  “Enough of this,” the King muttered, and the air around me seemed to compress as magic surged across the room, crashing against Tristan’s opposing force like a thunderclap. I struggled to breathe – the air was burning hot, searing my lungs with every gasp I dragged in. My body twitched and jerked, my fingers clutching at the blankets in a feeble attempt to drag myself off the bed to find a weapon. Something, anything, that could help. Tristan fell to his knees, his face twisting, while his father wasn’t even winded.

  I watched in terror as the King, never removing his gaze from Tristan, pulled a knife from his belt and threw it at me.

  “No!” Tristan screamed. The knife clattered against a wall of magic, dropping harmlessly to the bed. But the damage was done. I sobbed in terror and pain as the King’s magic pinned Tristan against the wall. He gasped soundlessly, his fingers clawing futilely at the magic choking his throat.

  “Pathetic,” the King sneered. “Just like your little army dying out in the streets against their wills.”

  Tristan slumped against his father’s magic. Pain filled his eyes as they locked with mine, his mouth moving soundlessly to form the words, “I’m sorry.”

  Sucking in a mouthful of the burning air, I screamed. The sound was shrill and terrified, like a dying animal.

  Then Anaïs was there. Dressed in boy’s clothes, she smashed through the glass-paned doors like a warrior maiden of legend. She rolled to her feet, the force of her magic sending the King staggering into the corner. Tristan fell away from the wall, his chest heaving as he sucked in precious air. The air in the room compressed again as
their joint power dueled with the King.

  It did not take long. As Angoulême had said, Anaïs was military trained. And unlike Tristan, she was utterly ruthless.

  “Got him,” Anaïs shouted with triumph, and my ears popped as the battle ended. The King slumped to his knees, holding up one hand in apparent defeat.

  “Now it is your turn to do what I say,” Tristan said, striding across the room. “You’ll let us bring help for Cécile. You won’t interfere or threaten her life anymore. And I want your word on it.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  Tristan’s face hardened. “Then you die.”

  Thibault cowered before his son. “You won’t kill your own father,” he pleaded. “That would make you a monster – not the sort of man your dear wife wants you to be.”

  Tristan’s face turned in my direction. I saw the King reach for something on the floor and shouted a garbled warning. The lights flashed out, including mine, and all I could hear was the crash of something heavy hitting the floor, a wet thud, and a soft cry of pain. One orb of light flickered back into existence: the King’s. Tristan lay on the floor, conscious, but bound with cords that glowed when he fought against them. Anaïs lay against the far wall, a sluag spear embedded in her chest.

  “It seems you are to face the same fate as your sister,” the King said, walking over to caress the side of Anaïs’ face. “Pity. You were a lovely thing to look at.”

  She spat, a glob of spit which flew through the air only to be brushed away by a bit of magic.

  He frowned. “Foolish girl.” Grabbing the haft of the steel spear, he jammed it the rest of the way through her chest. Anaïs tried to scream, but it came out as a gurgle, blood staining her lips. Her fingers latched on the spear, but she did not pull it out. The King laughed and turned from her to me.

  I was terrified. Dying was an easy thing to accomplish, effortless in its agony. It was living that was hard, requiring endless toil and labor, and for all one’s efforts, it could be stolen in an instant. My entire time in Trollus had been one long struggle at death’s doorstep. But instead of breaking my will to live, it had made me stronger. I wasn’t just fighting for my life, I was fighting for Tristan’s.

  Nor was I completely powerless.

  “Poor Cécile,” he said. “Poor fragile human, how you suffer so. I want to let you live, but I feel you will forever be a liability for him.”

  I saw Tristan shout something, but heard nothing – the King had blocked away the sound of our voices. But not Anaïs, she was closer.

  “You’ve no intention of letting me die,” I choked out. “Why else bring a witch into Trollus to save me?”

  “True,” the King said, stepping in between Tristan and me so that we were blocked from each other’s sight. “But Tristan doesn’t know that – and even here, he controls the actions of his half-breeds on the streets. He has their names. I want this played through to the end. I want to see how far he will go.”

  The half-bloods were dying in the streets for me – I had to do something.

  “I opened Anushka’s grimoire,” I whispered. For all the politics and intrigue between Tristan and his father, I knew that the King’s desire to break the curse trumped them all.

  He hesitated.

  “I know her secrets – the magic she used against the trolls. If you stop this now, I’ll tell you everything.”

  The King laughed. “Oh? If you have the witch’s spells, why don’t you use them now?”

  The smell of blood was thick on the air, heady and metallic. Anaïs moved, the end of the sluag spear dragging against the carpets. I didn’t dare look in her direction, though. I could only trust that she would know what to do.

  “You’re lying,” he said, leaning over me. “You know nothing.”

  My breath came in short, shallow gasps. With every minute that passed, more people would die. And I had only once chance to end this.

  “I know enough to stop you,” I whispered.

  A cup flew across the room and blood splattered against the King’s face, hot droplets raining down onto my cheeks. The northern words felt foreign on my lips, but I instinctively knew what they meant.

  Bind the light.

  I felt strength surge into me, rising from the earth beneath us. Wind rushed through the room, cold and fresh, pushing away the burned stench of the battle. But as it had when I healed Tristan in the labyrinth, it was from the blood that I drew power, directing the strange magic in a way no troll could use it.

  “Not possible,” the King hissed.

  “Sometimes,” I whispered, “the truth hurts.”

  The King collapsed backwards, Tristan’s magic binding him to the floor and muffling his curses.

  “Cécile!” Tristan was at my side in an instant. “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head. “Help Anaïs.”

  I watched as he knelt beside her, blood running in bright red streams down the steel sluag spear. “Anaïs?”

  She opened her eyes. “Kill him, Tristan. Now, while you have the chance.”

  I watched him turn to look at his father. From my position on the bed, I couldn’t see the King, but I could well imagine the fury in his eyes. Cut off from his magic by my spell and physically restrained by Anaïs’s and Tristan’s magic, he was helpless. Yet I doubted he was afraid – for all his faults, cowardice was not one of them.

  Tristan drew his sword, examining the sharp steel edge as though he’d never seen it before. “I can’t,” he whispered. “Not like this.”

  “He’ll eventually break free, Tristan. You have to do it now,” Anaïs argued, her voice strained. I closed my eyes, her words faint noise in the background of my mind. She was right, but I knew that Tristan wouldn’t be able to kill his father. Not in cold blood while he lay helpless on the floor, no matter how much the King might deserve it.

  “Then let me do it!” Anaïs’s words interrupted my thoughts and I opened my eyes.

  “No,” Tristan said, his voice resolute. “You will not.”

  Anaïs slumped lower against the wall. “I need you to pull the spear out, then. It’s troubling my magic.” Her hand stretched out in front of her, fingers reaching for something invisible.

  “You’ll bleed to death,” Tristan argued.

  “I’m as good as dead, and if you think otherwise, you’re a blasted idiot.” She smiled, beautiful as ever, despite the gore. “I’ll keep him bound for as long as I can, buy you some time. Now go.”

  Tristan remained frozen, face full of indecision.

  “I can’t leave you like this,” he said.

  “You owe me a good number of favors, Tristan, and I’m calling them in now. Get Cécile out of here, and leave the slate between us wiped clean.”

  Tristan nodded slowly. “You’ve never failed me, not once.”

  “And I don’t intend to now,” she whispered. “Go, and live.”

  I watched in silence as Tristan took hold of the spear haft. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything. For not being able to give you what you wanted, for not…” His voice broke. “For not giving you what you gave me.”

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “You deserved better.”

  “I love you,” she said, her tears turning the blood on her lips from red to pink.

  Tristan’s hands trembled around the spear. “Anaïstromeria,” he said, the name spoken as though it were an invocation. Her pupils dilated, fixing on him with a preternatural intensity.

  “No more tears,” he commanded, and her eyes immediately dried. The words he spoke after that were in a language I’d never heard before – one not of this world. But I could tell from his tone they were a valediction – a final farewell between friends. When he finished speaking, Tristan leaned forward and kissed her. When he pulled back, the spear came with him.

  The keening wail of pain made me cringe.

  “Go,” she gasped. “There isn’t much time.”

  Tristan came over to my side
. “He knew everything,” I choked out. “I tried to warn you, but…” A racking cough tore through my chest. “He has a witch somewhere in the city.”

  Tristan’s eyes flicked over to his father. “He’ll never tell me where. It’s better we leave Trollus now, while we have the chance.”

  A small, satisfied little smile rose on the King’s face.

  Tristan carefully wrapped my torso in magic to keep my ribs from moving, then scooped me up off the bed, my dying, drugged body limp in his arms. “Thank you,” I whispered to Anaïs as he walked to the broken window.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “Thank you anyway.”

  Over Tristan’s shoulder, I saw the King on the ground, held in place by magic. As I suspected, there was no fear in his eyes, but what sent a thrill of terror through my body was the calm thoughtfulness on his face. It made me afraid that despite how things appeared on the surface, the situation had still gone according to his plans.

  Tristan stepped out onto the balcony and through the sound barrier. Shouts and screams filled the air.

  “I ordered the sympathizers to start the rebellion.”

  “I know,” I croaked. “You need to make them stop.”

  “Not yet,” he muttered, hurrying over to the wall. “Victoria? Vincent?”

  “Here!”

  I rose up into the air and felt another set of magic hands catch hold of me, lowering me down until I was in Vincent’s big arms. “Don’t you worry, Cécile,” he said, grinning. “We’ll get you out of here.”

  Tristan dropped down next to us and took me back in his arms. “Marc’s waiting?”

  They nodded.

  “Let’s go then.”

  “The fighting’s thickest down at River Road,” Victoria whispered as we ran down dark alleys, making our way stealthily through the city. “They think that’s the way you’ll try to take her, so we engaged them there to keep up the ruse.”

  I heard magic break against magic, sword against sword. The screams of the dying hung in my ears, blood flashing in my eyes. Dying because of me. Dying because Tristan had ordered them to. But it all seemed to be part of a dream. My delirium.