“I can’t recall the last time I bested you at this, Anaïs,” Tristan grumbled, hand dropping from his side. “It’s not very sporting if I’ve no chance at winning. My pleasure in your company is diminished by the broken bones.”
Anaïs smiled and slapped the flat of her blade against the palm of her gloved hand. “Are you suggesting that I let you win, Your Highness?”
“Would that be so dreadful?” He closed the distance between them, his cheeks curving with a smile as he gazed down at her.
For a handful of seconds, her face was filled with the naked adoration of a girl well and truly in love. And my heart broke, the sharp little pieces digging into my soul as I watched her bury the feelings behind a cocky smile, the tip of her blade flicking up to catch him beneath the chin.
“Yes, it would. If you wish to beat me, you’ll merely have to try harder.”
The two stood silent and unmoving, and I knew that a conversation passed between them in the wordless language of those who knew each other well. It was beautiful and wretched, and my eyes moved without thought to the image on my canvas.
“Enough banter.” Marc stepped out of the shadows where he’d been leaning against the wall, nudging the sword he held into both their ribs, driving them apart. “Tristan, I saw Anaïs’s feint plain as day, and you would have, too, if you’d been paying attention.”
My heart beat faster in my chest as he walked between them in my direction. Then he stopped, knocking a fist against an invisible barrier of magic blocking his path. “Anaïs, let me through.”
She blanched. “Oh. Sorry, Marc. I–” Breaking off, her gaze went to mine, then away.
My stomach clenched. Bad enough that she’d been protecting me, but worse that she hadn’t wanted me to know she was doing it.
The guilt on Anaïs’s face. The pity on Tristan’s. I hated both sentiments, but the last thing I wanted was to make my sister feel worse, so I said nothing. Dipping my brush in a pale grey, I turned back to my work, hoping my expression wouldn’t betray me.
Marc stopped in front of my easel, and though I did not take my attention away from my brushstrokes, I felt his presence keenly. My skin prickled and I was sure that even if I had been blind and deaf, I would still have known it was him standing beside me.
“She’s only trying to protect you, Pénélope.”
“And she is wise for it.” I added a touch more black to my grey. “Perhaps if she’d always been so vigilant, circumstances would be different.”
The truth always outs… My father might not have cared to believe it so, but there had always been a certain inevitability of my secret – my affliction – being discovered. If only it had delayed its happening, its discovery might not have even mattered. Certain things could not be undone. Like the bonding of two trolls.
“But she was not, and they are not,” he said. “And Anaïs blames herself for what happened. It was her blade that shattered.”
“And his that broke it,” I hissed, furious that my sister should feel guilt when Tristan did not.
“Do you think he doesn’t know that?”
I lowered my brush, not wanting to touch this particular piece with anger in my heart. “Can we please not discuss it? Already it weighs upon every aspect of my life, and I hoped to find some respite from it here.”
“Of course.”
Vincent and Victoria’s manor was the unspoken neutral ground between us all. The one place in Trollus where we forgot the alliances and rivalries of family, blood, and rank, and where only our friendship mattered. I glanced up to where the fifteen-year-old twins each stood silently balanced on one foot on the wall surrounding the courtyard, faces bent in concentration as they carefully removed one block at a time from a vertical puzzle floating between them. They were giants, standing head and shoulders above even Marc, who was tall, their rare condition having killed their mother in childbirth. Their father had died days later from the shock of the bond breaking. The two had been raised by half-blood servants with only minimal interference from the crown, content to share the barony that was their birthright. As such, their politics were very much based on their own unique views of our small world. Friendship mattered a great deal to them, and they had no tolerance for infighting between us six.
“May I see what you’re working on?” Marc asked.
My heart beat a little faster at the question, but if I hadn’t been ready for him to view it, I wouldn’t have brought the canvas. “If you like.”
He came around the easel, and I held my breath, waiting for his reaction. I’d been working on it before the accident, but had only recently been able to complete the finishing touches.
He stiffened, and my heart sank. “You don’t care for it?”
“No. It is wretched to look upon.”
His voice was strangled and strange in my ears, and mortification flooded my veins. Always I was shy to show my work to others, but never in my wildest dreams had I thought that Marc would be the critic from whom I’d draw harsh words. I wanted to snatch up the canvas and run, but where would I go? Rather than a haven, my home was now a hell bent on punishing me for my weaknesses.
“Of all the subjects you might have chosen, why did you paint me?”
The plea in his voice stole the breath from my chest. Rising to my feet, I let everything in my hands fall to the ground and caught hold of his sleeve. “Why shouldn’t I paint you?”
“Because no matter how good your work, it isn’t anything that anyone would want to see.”
“Why not?” I asked, hating his words. “I always want to look upon my friends, but you make it so difficult, which makes this painting more meaningful. Because it’s made from the precious few glimpses I’ve been privileged enough to have. I paint those I care about.”
“Then paint Anaïs. Or the twins. Curses, Pénélope,” he snapped. “Paint Tristan. With your talent, they’d probably hang it in the gallery of the Kings.”
For weeks my chest had felt like a powder keg waiting for a spark so that it could explode. But this moment felt like the powder keg had been tossed on a bonfire.
“How dare you suggest I paint him? How dare you!” I knew I was the one who screamed the words, but they sounded like they’d come from someone else’s lips. Like some wild and maniacal girl had taken control of my body and my voice.
I let her.
Marc took a step back, but it wasn’t really him I was angry with. Turning on my heel, I stalked toward Tristan, his blank, unreadable Montigny face fueling my fury. “Of course I should paint you! Why should I, or anyone, paint anything else? Our world is cursed. Everyone is sick or twisted or dying from the iron and the darkness. Every last one of us, except for you!”
“Pénélope, stop.” Anaïs stepped between us. “Don’t do this. Don’t say something you’ll regret.”
But what she meant was, please don’t say anything that would turn him against her. After everything, she still wanted to protect him. Still wanted to be with him. It had to end. “Move.”
She shook her head, and I knew I couldn’t force her. Anaïs was stronger than me in every possible way.
Tristan touched her arm. “Let her say what she wants to say.”
Anaïs hesitated, then reluctantly stepped aside. But she’d accomplished what she intended. My anger faltered, because I knew that dragging their broken betrothal out into the open wouldn’t matter to him. He was a black-hearted Montigny snake who cared nothing for anyone or anything but power. All I’d do was hurt the one person I cared about more than anything: Anaïs.
“Born perfect into a decaying and dying race,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Gifted with the beauty and grace of the kings of old and a power not seen since King Alexis himself. How can the broken ones like us compare with you and your… radiance?” I spat the word at him.
Something flashed across his face. A trace of… guilt? Then he sighed. “I’m sorry that fate was not kinder to you, Pénélope. I’m sorry for the part I played in th
e hurt that was done to you. But I had no more control over how I was born than anyone else.”
“I know.” My lips felt numb, and I turned away. For Anaïs’s sake, I’d always kept silent in the face of his cruel behavior, but what did it matter now if he learned what I truly thought of him? The twins had come down from the wall to stand next to Anaïs, but my eyes were all for Marc. Tristan was his cousin and closest friend, and he was loyal to him to a fault. All of them were, and I knew that what I intended to say would all but assure my eviction from our circle of friends.
But I said it anyway. “I’ll never paint you, Tristan. I paint those I love. Not those I hate.”
Chapter Two
Marc
If all the stone of the Forsaken Mountain rockslide had floated away and left Trollus bathed in sunlight, I could not have been more astonished than I was now.
“Pénélope!” Anaïs called, and started to run after her sister, but Tristan caught her sleeve.
“There’s nothing you can say. We’ve kept her in the dark all these years to protect her, Anaïs, and she needs that now more than ever. If your father comes to suspect our involvement with the sympathizers and believes she knows anything valuable, he’ll torture her to get the information. I’d rather she believe the worst about me than put her at risk.”
We all heard the words he didn’t say: that to the Duke d’Angoulême, his eldest daughter was now only a liability, and that made her expendable.
“I’ll talk to Pénélope.” The words were out before I had a chance to think about what I was saying. “I was the one who provoked her,” I added when Tristan frowned. “I… I criticized her painting.” My eyes flicked to Anaïs’s, and she nodded ever so slightly in understanding.
Tristan didn’t miss the exchange between us, but as one who lived life entrenched in secrets, he seemed to accept that we’d occasionally keep some of our own. “Go, then.”
Tossing my practice sword on a rack, I ran toward the gate to the courtyard, which was still swinging with the speed of Pénélope’s passing. The streets of the Elysium quarter echoed with the staccato clatter of her heels against the paving stones. I needed to catch her before she reached her father’s home, where my welcome was tenuous at best. Vaulting over a wall, I sprinted through grounds belonging to a very deaf and extremely reclusive Marquis and out the front gate just as Pénélope rounded the bend, skirts hiked almost to her knees and face streaked with tears.
She stumbled at the sight of me, and every instinct told me to catch her. To protect her. To do anything in my power to keep the girl I’d loved for as long as I could remember from suffering any more harm. But I’d seen her expression when she’d realized Anaïs was shielding her, and so instead I checked myself and held my ground, watching as she staggered, one shoe flying forward to land at my feet even as she caught her balance.
Slowly, she straightened, letting the skirts she clutched slip through her hands to cover her feet. “My injuries are now entertainment?”
“No.” I reached down to pick up the dainty brocade slipper. “I knew you wouldn’t fall.” Carefully, I balanced the shoe on the ground before her so that she might slip her silk-encased foot back into its confines.
“Because one who sits on the bottom can fall no further?”
I shook my head, struggling to find a way to explain that she underestimated herself. That she possessed strength greater than anyone I knew, because how else could she have endured what she had and remained so selfless?
“That’s how it feels.” Closing her eyes, she reached up and pressed her hand against her shoulder, skin still marked with black streaks of iron rot. “I hate him.”
My heart sank, and I wished for a moment that it were possible her words were a lie. Because too easily could I imagine how this would go. The choice I’d have to make. Although even calling it a choice was a mockery of the word, as I knew I’d forsake her in favor of my cousin. Tristan and I were bound by blood and friendship, but more than that, we were bound by a cause. A shared vision of a thriving Trollus, not a city falling into decay. Abandoning him would have disastrous and long-reaching implications for thousands of half-bloods, while losing Pénélope’s friendship would only hurt me. “It was an accident, Pénélope. You must know that he’d never wish harm upon you.”
“And yet how fortuitous for him that it did.”
She stepped to one side and started to walk around me, but I caught her arm, and asked, “What are you talking about? How could he possibly benefit from…” Realization dawned upon me. “Anaïs. This is about her, isn’t it?”
Her jaw tightened. “I ruined her life.”
There were only a few half-blood servants in the streets near us, but I could take no chances of anyone noting this conversation. Motioning for Pénélope to follow, I led her back onto the Marquis’s property, quietly shutting the gate and walking deeper into the neglected grounds. Stopping next to a fountain half-heartedly spraying murky water, I cloaked our conversation and said, “I know she is enamored with him, but she had to have known there was little to no chance of it happening while Thibault rules. He and your father despise each other, and the rivalry between your families goes back millennia. Neither would have consented to such a match.”
Pénélope exhaled softly. “And yet they did.”
Astonishment snaked its way through me, but in its wake came excitement, because surely if Angoulême would consent to marrying Anaïs to Tristan he’d be amicable to a match between Pénélope and me, given my father was the Queen’s brother. But anger chased the thought away. It wasn’t the same. My cousin was the greatest prize in Trollus: untouched by all the afflictions plaguing our race and destined to be king.
I was not.
Besides, whether Angoulême desired the match mattered far less to me than whether Pénélope did herself. And I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t imagine her wanting more from me than friendship.
“Please say you will not speak of it to anyone,” she continued, interrupting my thoughts. “She’s been hurt by this enough as it is without all of Trollus knowing the truth.”
“What is the truth?” I asked.
Pénélope sighed. “The deal was struck in secret some years ago,” she said. “Anaïs and Tristan were to be bonded when they were both seventeen. For a long time, only the King, my father, and my grandmother knew the contract was in existence. And by necessity, Anaïs and I knew as well. My father made it clear to us that my affliction must remain hidden – that nothing mattered more. And to ensure it, I was to always be cautious and sedate. Reclusive–” she swallowed hard “–so that when I came of age, no one would notice my regular absences from society. That I should never ask or expect to be wed, nor seek intimacy with another, because of a certainty, they would discover my illness. And that if I did all those things, my sister would become Queen of Trollus, and my father would suffer me to live. All that mattered was that the King not find out until after they were bonded. And better yet, never at all.”
But he had. “The King broke the marriage contract, didn’t he?”
Pénélope wiped her eyes, smearing the kohl lining them. “Within hours. Said he wouldn’t taint Montigny power with weak blood.” Her hands balled into fists. “Which isn’t fair. Nothing about my sister is weak. There isn’t anything wrong with her.”
Except that everyone knew this rare affliction ran in the blood. Magic and our fey nature healed injuries swiftly, and even the wicked slice of iron only delayed the process. Pénélope healed worse than a human, blood refusing to clot, bones unable to knit. And if the injury was iron-inflicted, the black rot was instantaneous. While some with the illness lived to an old age, many bled to death from minor injuries, usually in childhood. While Anaïs herself did not suffer the symptoms, her children might. And in a city where power ruled, such weakness would never be tolerated. It would certainly never be courted.
“She would’ve been a good queen,” Pénélope said. “A great queen, and because of me, the cha
nce has been stolen from her.” Her voice shook. “And perhaps I might’ve forgiven myself for this, but she loves him. And I had to watch her face as she was told that their marriage would never be. That it would be some other girl of the King’s choosing whom Tristan would bond. And that there was no power in this world or the next that would change that fact.”
“The King is cruel.” I hated him as much, if not more, than everyone else in the city, and knowing this only increased my distaste. “But this is his doing, not Tristan’s. Tristan adores Anaïs, and nothing would make him willingly cause her grief.”
“And yet he does!” Pénélope paced back and forth in front of me. “Knowing what he does, he acts as though nothing has changed. Still monopolizes her time and steals kisses from her when he thinks no one is looking. And in doing so makes it seem as though that was all she was ever good for. His entertainment.”
Her anger all of a sudden made a great deal of sense, but I knew that its motivations were misguided. “Pénélope, he doesn’t know about the contract.”
She stopped in her tracks. “You can’t honestly believe that’s true?”
“I’m certain,” I said. “He has his secrets, but this isn’t one of them.”
“I don’t believe that. He collects information like others collect artwork, and this concerns him intimately. How could he not know?”
I shrugged. “He’s fifteen. Marriage is not a matter of much concern to him.” The truth was, it was something he wished to avoid at all costs. In the one conversation I’d had with him about it, he’d said, “Marc, I’m trying to instigate a rebellion to overthrow my own father. I’m a traitor guilty of treason on many levels. How cruel would it be to bond some girl’s life to mine when there is every chance I’ll lose my head in the coming years and take her to the grave along with me.” He’d shaken his head. “I’ll not court the notion, and if he brings it up, I’ll fight it to the bitter end.”
The Broken Ones Page 2