“And once Marc is dead, Tristan will have no choice but to step out of the safety of the shadows to take the reins of his little revolution, and then it’s only a matter of time until the proof of his treason is mine. Until the throne is mine and the Montigny line is no more.” Turning on his heel, he strode toward the door, cane thump thumping against the ground. “Congratulations, Pénélope. It seems you are a true Angoulême after all.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Marc
I sat across from my uncle at his desk, mindlessly giving him the necessary reports, answering his questions, and giving my opinions on the comings and goings in Trollus and beyond.
And I hated every minute of it.
Not the work. But the fact that I was sitting in my father’s chair while he and my mother both lay dead in the tombs beneath Trollus. And it was my fault.
“Marc!” The King’s voice ripped me from my thoughts, and I blinked at him, wondering how many times he’d said my name. “Yes?”
“The witch trials? Numbers?”
I rummaged through the pages I’d brought with me, extracting the report on the number of human witches who’d been hunted down and executed by our agents. “Four,” I said. “None Anushka.”
“Obviously,” he snapped. “I’m quite certain that even in your distracted state, you would’ve noticed if the curse had been broken.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I–”
He cut me off with a wave of his hand, giving his head a sharp shake. “Your father was dying, Marc. It was inevitable.”
I bit the inside of my cheeks, furious at his words. My father had been the King’s friend, and the only emotion he’d shown over his death was irritation at losing his advisor. How dead inside did he have to be to care so little? I opened my mouth to ask as much, damn the consequences, when Pénélope’s fear, terrible and horrifying, lanced through me.
This is not where it ends…
I leapt to my feet, knocking against the King’s desk and scattering papers everywhere.
“I have to… I have to go,” I blurted out, then without waiting for his permission or even acknowledgement of my words, I bolted out of his office.
Trollus was not large, but it seemed suddenly enormous as I sprinted home, knowing that something had happened, my mind running rampant with scenes of disaster after disaster. Miscarriage or injury or accident, visions of her bleeding and dying filling my eyes, not even the brilliant silver of my bonding marks giving any comfort she was well.
But as I ran into my home, following our bond up the stairs and into the solar, all I found was her sitting whole and well on a stool before a painting of my parents. And I knew in an instant what had happened.
“What did he do?” I demanded. “What did he say?”
Pénélope lifted her face, eyes glassy. “Aren’t you supposed to be attending the King?”
What did that matter?
“I was,” I said, crossing the room to pull her close, my elbow bumping a velvet pillow and knocking it to the floor. “But I knew something had happened, so I left.”
“Left?” She pushed me away, dropping to her knees to pluck up earrings that I recognized as my mother’s. “Have you lost your mind? You can’t just walk out of a meeting with the King, Marc.”
I stared at her, uncertain why she thought I would do otherwise.
“He’s probably furious. He could punish you, take away your position or worse.”
“I…”
“You can’t keep making decisions like this.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “You can’t keep throwing away everything else in your life for my sake. I won’t let you.”
My temper flared, and I kicked the foot of the easel, the canvas toppling sideways to land on the ground, my parents’ faces seeming to mock me with their expressions. They’d always made it seem so easy. “What would you have me do?” I demanded. “Sit there discussing the price of grain and late season apples when I know something horrible is happening to you? When I know your life is in the balance, and mine along with it? Is that what you want from me? To do nothing?”
“You can’t always come running. Not for every little thing.”
“How am I to know the difference? Because what I felt from you this afternoon was not some little thing.”
“I don’t know.”
“Pénélope…”
She picked up the painting, glared at it, then threw it across the room, knocking over a vase of flowers. “It’s no good. It isn’t right.”
I stared at the mess, at the dying flowers all around us. We never quarreled. Not like this. I took a deep breath. “Marcanthysurum.”
She frowned at me in confusion.
“Marcanthysurum,” I repeated, and it was strange to say it aloud twice, when I’d never said it aloud before at all. With my true name, I could be bent to another’s will. Forced to do anything, to reveal anything, whether I wanted to or not. It was the chink in every troll’s armor, and one we protected to the death, never revealing it to anyone. Or almost never. “Now the decision is yours whether you wish me to come to you or not.”
Her lips parted and she shook her head. “Marc, no. I can’t hold that sort of power over you.”
“You already do.” Pulling her against me, I tangled my fingers in the silken length of her hair. “Because there is nothing you could ask of me that I’d ever refuse.”
* * *
Sleep would not come.
I lay in the darkness, forcing myself to remain still so as not to disturb Pénélope’s rest. Yet my mind was the exact opposite of still, tossing and turning, putting aside one trouble only to latch upon another. At the center of it all sat the Duke d’Angoulême, laughing and laughing, because he had all of us dancing to his tune.
It had been the Duke who’d upset Pénélope earlier, that much I knew, though not what was said. Thus far, she had not chosen to tell me herself, and I wouldn’t press. I trusted her to tell me if it was something I should know.
I trusted her with everything.
Rolling on my side, I imagined her in my mind’s eye as she was in this instant. Eyes closed with lashes dark against her cheek. Hair spilled across the pillow, fine as any silk. Her full lips slightly parted, one hand cupped beneath her cheek, nails still bearing traces of oil paint that her maid had missed.
Perfect.
The soft thud thud of her heart was a finer thing to me than any music, able to pull upon any one of my emotions, losing none of its sweetness over the sixty-two days we’d been bonded. Never stop, I told it. Promise me you’ll never stop beating.
If only a heart had so much power.
Habit drew my focus away from her, my magic delving for that faint third power, magic pure and unfocused, a life whose only purpose was to exist.
And I found nothing.
Dread. It fell across me like a pall, and Pénélope shifted uneasily in her sleep. Sitting upright, I focused harder, searching for that tiny glow of magic, a hollowness growing inside me with every passing second, because there was nothing. It was gone.
“Pénélope.”
She jerked awake, blinking in the obscene glare of my light, which had formed without me even noticing. As though my eyes might find what my power could not. “What’s happened?” she asked, pushing onto one elbow.
The strap of her nightdress slipped down, and I stared at the dark strip of fabric that looked ominously like a slash in her skin. “I think…” I knew.
She went still. Unblinking. Unmoving. With one hand, she reached under the thick layer of blankets, then removed it as though she’d been shocked.
It was covered in blood.
Anguish rushed to fill the emptiness in my chest, hers and mine, and it was too much. More than anyone could stand to bear. And then she screamed, the sound shrill and piercing and horrifying.
A sound that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Pénélope
�
�Winter must be upon us,” I murmured, staring at the closed door, the servants having finished removing the blood-soaked linen. “It’s cold.”
My sister shifted uneasily where she sat on the edge of the bed, and warm magic brushed against me. But it did nothing to alleviate the chill permeating my skin. Or to fill the hollowness in my core.
As though sensing my thoughts, Anaïs lay next to me, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close, her chin resting on the top of my head. Just as I had done to her when we were young, in those days before we cared about power and politics, when our greatest fear was being confined to our rooms for some childish misstep. Back when my presence alone gave her comfort, because I was her older sister. Back when I protected her from our father’s wrath by taking the blame, because I knew he would not strike me.
How things had changed.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered. “Home is… different, without you there.”
Her words struck a painful chord in my heart. Anaïs needed my protection no longer, but it occurred to me that I’d left her in a home full of villains. That every waking minute she needed to be on her guard, and that with me gone, she would have no one who demanded nothing of her in exchange for their love. She’d be alone.
I’d told Marc once that Anaïs was the center of my world. That everything I was and everything that I’d done had been to ensure her success. I’d wrongly believed that success to her was bonding Tristan and becoming Queen and now, too late, I realized how much I’d underestimated my sister. That to her, success was changing our world. Overthrowing the villains like our father and the King. Fighting for the freedom of those who hadn’t the power to fight for it themselves. I was desperately proud of her, but also desperately afraid, because I knew now what our father was capable of.
And I needed to do what I could to keep my little sister safe.
I rolled so that I was facing her, the small motion exhausting. “I know you love Tristan, Anaïs. I know you’re loyal to him, and not to Father.”
Anaïs said nothing.
“And if I know,” I said, “then so does Father. And if you aren’t careful, he’ll find a way to use it against you.”
“Penny–”
I raised a finger to my lips to cut her off. “All of what has happened in these past months, I thought it was defiance on my part, but I was only dancing to his tune. We all were. This was his plan.”
She was listening now.
“Not my death.” I dragged in a few breaths. “Marc’s death. Killing me was just a means to an end. A sacrifice he was willing to make in his quest to take down Tristan and control Trollus.”
Silence. Then she said, “It will take more than losing Marc to bring down Tristan.”
“Will it?” I met her gaze, challenging her, and Anaïs looked away first.
“He played us all like a game of Guerre,” I said. “Because he knows better than we do ourselves what we want. How we will react. What we fear. Who we love.”
It seemed so obvious now, looking back. My father had known how Marc had felt about me long before I had. But more than that, he’d known that Marc would risk everything to save my life. I understood now why my father believed Marc the sympathizer leader when all his contemporaries believed him mad for thinking it. They saw a shy quiet boy who kept to the shadows, but my father saw a young man equally possessed of bravery and selflessness. And he’d exploited those attributes.
He’d seen through me just as clearly, but it had been my weaknesses he’d used to his advantage.
“I wanted a chance at life. A chance for love. A chance to believe that my affliction did not define me.” A fat tear rolled down my cheek, salty where it came to rest on my lips. “And Father manipulated those small wishes to achieve the worst possible of ends. Don’t for a moment think that he won’t do the same to you if it helps him get what he wants.”
“He can’t touch me,” she said, but there was a faint quiver in her voice. “My magic is more powerful than his.”
I gripped her hand, pushing as much urgency as I could into my voice. “What in all of this has he accomplished with magic?”
That was very nearly the worst of it – my father was guilty of everything, and yet guilty of nothing. As he’d so eloquently said himself, I’d done the work for him. We all had.
My sister went very still. “I’ll kill him.”
“Killing him will change nothing.” It was getting harder to find the strength to speak, but the last thing I wanted was her going after our father. He’d be prepared for that, and while my sister had sheer power, our father had a lifetime of experience, never mind the consequences she’d face for breaking the law if she succeeded. “It certainly won’t bring me back from the dead.”
A sob tore violently from her throat. “You’re not going to die. You’ll get well, you always do.”
“Not this time.” I’d come to terms with that already. The bleeding wasn’t stopping. It hadn’t even slowed. And there was a limit to what my body could endure.
“You don’t know that.” In a flurry of motion, she sat upright. “You need to fight, Penny. Fight to live and fight against Father’s manipulations. Because if you die, he wins.”
That was certainly what he thought. But he was wrong if he believed the inevitability of my death had rendered me powerless. I would keep fighting until the end, and when the end came, I’d give my father’s enemies the one thing they needed most to keep fighting. And they would win – I had faith in that. “Anaïs, there’s something I need you to do for me.”
“Anything.”
“I need you to bring Tristan to see me.”
* * *
It felt like days, though it was probably a matter of hours, when the bed shifted beneath me, the motion pulling me from my fugue, and I opened my eyes to see Anaïs sitting next to me. “He’s here,” she said. “Do you want me to stay with you?”
“No.”
Her lips parted as though she wished to argue, then she nodded and left the room. A moment later, Tristan appeared, invisible fingers shutting the door behind him. But there he remained, gaze shifting around the room, taking in everything with the exception of me.
“Do you intend to make me shout?” I whispered.
He glared at the carpet, then gave an aggrieved sigh and crossed the room to stand at the foot of the bed. “What do you want, Pénélope?”
The words were sharp, cruel, as was his tone. Yet I knew better than to take issue with them, because at their heart resided a grief nearly of the magnitude of my own. Not long ago, I wouldn’t have seen that. Would only have seen the cold unyielding surface. The flawlessness. The power. Now I knew differently, and instead I saw a boy with a vision for a better world, who’d buried everything good and decent about himself away in order to protect it. Who, despite being surrounded by others nearly every waking minute, felt very much alone.
“I want to save Marc’s life.”
He snorted and gave the bedpost a soft kick. “A bit late for that now, don’t you think? If only such selflessness had made an appearance earlier, none of us would be in this position.”
“I’m interested in your help, not your criticism.”
“And if I tell you they go hand in hand?”
I was too tired for this. “Do you truly wish for equality amongst all within Trollus, Tristan? Because it seems to me that the equality you envision is on your terms and under your control, which to me doesn’t seem like equality at all.”
He didn’t blink, didn’t move. Didn’t so much as twitch. But behind that impenetrable politician’s gaze, I knew he was debating whether to acknowledge the truth of his ambitions or whether to dodge the accusation, as he always did. Then he exhaled. “What is your point, Pénélope?”
“That we had the right to make the choices we did.” My voice quivered, and I drew in a ragged breath. “We knew the risks, and neither of us forced the other’s hand.”
“No, your father did that much.”
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“And given the opportunity, you would’ve forced us apart. Your reasons might have been more just, but that does not change the fact that you would’ve used your power to make us dance to your tune. To force us down a path that would be most beneficial to your ends, not ours.” My outburst left me gasping for breath, but I managed to get out, “Why should we have to live lesser lives for no reason other than that we are not perfect?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “You paint me as quite the monster.”
“I paint you as a selfish boy judging something he doesn’t understand.” Pushing up onto one elbow, I stared him down, and for the first time ever, he looked away before I did. “I hope one day you know a love strong enough that your heart will overrule your mind.”
“That sounds like a curse.”
“It’s a wish,” I whispered. “Because without that sort of passion, you will never accomplish your vision. And that would be the true tragedy.”
He did not speak, and I had neither words nor breath to fill the void.
“I need him.” The admission dragged itself out of his throat, barely audible, and he scrubbed a hand furiously across his eyes. But not before I saw the glimpse of tears. “I’m afraid of what I’ll become without him. That I’ll turn into my father. Or worse–” he met my gaze “–yours.”
“I know,” I said, my heart aching. “That’s why I’m going to give you what you need to save him.”
Chapter Thirty
Marc
What was I doing here?
I stood halfway down the drive of the Angoulême manor, with almost no memory of how I’d come to be standing here. Only that to remain in my house, surrounded by the pitying gaze of my servants, had been more than I could bear.
As had been remaining with Pénélope herself.
So I’d left, walking blindly through the streets, the weight on my heart growing even as the bonding marks on my hand dulled from brilliant silver to a dull steely grey. Which was in its own way fitting, given that iron, in one way or another, was cause of nearly every broken bond.
The Broken Ones Page 20