And now I was here.
But to what end? Pénélope was dying. There was nothing I could do to change that. Nothing that I could do to stem the tide of life and light draining from her body, crimson and horrifying. Nothing I could do to ease the grief on her face. Indeed, my presence had made it worse. With shared emotions, the bond was like two mirrors facing each other, one reflecting the other, creating image after image until one turned away, breaking the cycle. Only turning away had granted me no respite, and every step I took through Trollus it became harder to breathe, like wet wool was being shoved down my throat and into my lungs. All I knew was that I needed to find some way to relieve it.
Which was why I was here.
Forcing my feet to carry me forward, I shoved open the doors and went inside, following the sense of power until I found the Duke seated in a gazebo at the center of the famed Angoulême atrium.
He was alone. A Guerre set floated on invisible threads of magic before him, wooden pieces polished by heavy use filling the four boards, those that had been knocked from play having been carefully put away in a matching case.
“Your Grace.”
He did not look away from his game, only selected one of the pale pieces, holding it carefully in one hand.
“She lost the baby.” I hated that phrase: as though Pénélope had carelessly left our child somewhere, like a glove, and that it might be found at a later date. “Our child is dead.”
“And Pénélope?”
There was a certain grittiness to the question, as though the Duke struggled to ask it.
“Dying.”
The piece in his hand split in two, the halves falling to land with a clatter against the floor. He stared at his empty palm, then said, “I assumed that was the reason Anaïs departed with such haste.” He picked up the broken piece. “That’s the trouble with wood, as opposed to gold or silver. Or steel. It can’t truly be repaired.”
“Buy another one.”
He carefully placed the halves in the box. “Some things are not so easily replaced.”
With the exception of perhaps the King, there was no greater politician in Trollus. Everything Angoulême said meant something. Had a purpose. And as much as I’d never be their match, I’d still been trained since childhood to read between the lines. To parse every phrase for hidden meanings and intent. That I did not do so now had nothing to do with lack of ability on my part, but rather that I did not care to know what lay behind his words.
“Why are you here, Marc? Come to have your revenge? You are, of course, welcome to try.”
I took the seat across from him, pulling back my hood though I didn’t know why. “No.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “No? No plans to give her the gift of my death before her own light goes out?”
“It would be no gift to her,” I responded, though it would’ve been a lie to say that I hadn’t considered it. “She’d feel no happiness over your death.”
“Would you?”
Yes. I didn’t answer.
He smiled. “I suppose that makes her better than both of us, doesn’t it? Because of a surety, I’d rend you limb from limb if the consequences of doing so were not greater than I care to pay.”
“Why?” The question was out before I had a chance to think it through. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Her death in the hope that it would kill me too?”
A stillness took him, rendering him more statue than man, only the steady beat of his heart betraying that he was alive at all.
“Do you know how I discovered Pénélope’s affliction?” he finally asked. “It was when she was a little girl, barely more than a babe. She was sitting on my knee at my desk while I worked, and I’d given her a pen to toy with to keep her happy.” The corner of one of his eyes twitched. “When I looked down, at first I thought she’d gotten into the ink. But then I realized she’d cut herself on the steel tip, and that it was iron rot working its way up her little hand. Just the tiniest injury, but it bled and worsened and almost stole her life from me.”
“How many times since have you regretted that it did not?”
The mask of composure that he always wore, that I’d never seen him without, fell away, revealing a white-hot fury that bordered on madness. But it was gone so quickly that it was almost a thing imagined.
Rising to his feet, the Duke d’Angoulême directed his game boards to their stand, then picked up his cane. “I protected Pénélope. Kept her safe. Gave her nearly everything her heart desired, and when I did not, it was because to do so would put her in jeopardy.”
“You threatened and terrified her,” I spat, furious that he was pretending his actions had anything to do with Pénélope’s welfare. “And it takes more than pretty dresses to make up for a life devoid of love.”
“Love?” He laughed, and my skin crawled with the bitterness in it. “Tell me, Marc, how well has love served her?”
Before I could move, his magic lashed around me, binding my legs and arms with such ferocity that I thought they would break, casting aside any doubt over who was the superior power. Magic dragged my hand upward until my gaze was bent upon my bonding marks, the tips having turned black.
“She is dying because of you,” he said, and I couldn’t hold back my groan of pain as his magic ratcheted tighter.
“You forced her into it,” I said from between my teeth. “How can you possibly claim to care about her if you’d do this to her? You might as well have slit her throat yourself!”
“She wasn’t supposed to die, you fool!” He screamed the words into my face, then clamped his teeth shut, taking a second to master his control before repeating in a cool tone, “She wasn’t supposed to die. You were supposed to love her and bond her. And when I finally caught you rallying the half-bloods and turned you over to the King, instead of falling on your sword to protect your cousin’s involvement with the sympathizers, you’d betray him to keep Pénélope safe.”
I stared at him, refusing to react lest I give him the proof he sought. But my horror at his brilliance made me sick, because what would I have done? Who would I have chosen? I didn’t know.
As though reading my thoughts, he said, “Pénélope or Tristan? Pénélope or Tristan? The innocent or the politician?” He leaned closer to me. “How unfortunate that we’ll never get to find out.”
“You could have left her alone,” I said, knowing the words were weak. “Tried to help her survive.”
“There is no way for her to survive, and no one understands that better than I do,” he replied. “You carved her fate in stone. I merely adjusted my strategy. What you fail to understand, Marc, is that the achievement of great things requires great sacrifices.”
What I understood was that this was what made him evil. This was what made him far more dangerous than any of us had realized. Not that he cared for nothing, but that he was willing to sacrifice even that which he loved to achieve his ends. “I’d rather achieve nothing than live knowing I’d had a chance to save someone I loved and hadn’t taken it.”
“I know,” he responded. “And in the end, you will have failed at both.”
“Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?” I hissed, trying to cling to my hate when all I felt was the bubbling of guilt rising in my throat.
“Tempting,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, to kill you before she died would be mercy. And I want you to suffer.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Pénélope
I knew he was with me without opening my eyes. Might have known, even without the bond, because Marc’s presence was always a comfort to me. A light in the darkness helping me find my way when otherwise I’d be lost. That hadn’t changed.
And it never would.
“You came back.” I hadn’t intended to whisper, but my words were no louder than an exhalation.
He straightened where he sat next to me on the bed, expression full of the alarm that was reflected in my heart. “Did you think I wouldn’t? Pénélo
pe–”
I squeezed his hand, forestalling him. “I didn’t.”
But his movement allowed me to see beyond to where Tristan stood in the shadows of the corner, shoulders slumped and hands shoved in his pockets as though he were cold. I met his gaze, and he nodded once, the air around him shimmering with magic, blocking away sound.
“He won’t leave,” Marc muttered.
“Good.” I coughed, my throat painfully dry. “You’ll need him.”
“I don’t–” He broke off, shaking his head with irritation that he could not deny that truth. It was no small relief for me, because I didn’t think I could stand to know that I’d broken their friendship and their camaraderie beyond repair. Still, the irritation couldn’t hide the poisonous weight of his guilt that twisted through my skull. I said, “You’ve spoken with my father.”
His chin jerked up and down.
“And he has done the same to you as he has to me: made you feel culpable. Made you feel regret.”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t believed it possible to hate my father more. I’d been wrong. Our child was dead, and as though it were not enough that my death was certain and Marc’s nearly so, my father had felt the need to poison what was good. To make us regret all that we had done. To make us feel guilty for each other’s fate. “Damn him,” I whispered. “He twists the truth into the worst sort of lies.”
“But it isn’t a lie.” Marc’s voice cracked. “He never intended for you to die. If anything… if anything, he intended for you to force me to live if I got caught.”
Somehow, I’d known that. My father bet on certain things, and while he might have banked his plans on Marc bonding me to save me, he wouldn’t have counted on the twist of fate that saw me pregnant. “In a way,” I said, “that would’ve been worse. For you to have had to choose between my life and Tristan’s. Between my life and your cause.”
“But you’d be alive,” he said.
“Alive is not the same as living,” I whispered. “How long until you’d have grown to hate me? And, feeling your emotions every hour of every day, how long until I’d have grown to hate myself? Don’t for a moment believe that our happiness factored into his plans.”
“I shouldn’t have bonded you.”
The words were a knife to my gut, which made them a knife to his, and Marc flinched. “I don’t blame you,” I said, digging my nails into my palms. “Yours has always been the greater sacrifice.”
“Not bonding you would’ve been the sacrifice!” The room trembled, his emotions seeking an outlet in his magic. “You think that I was selfless to bond you, but it was selfishness. All I wanted was to be with you, to live my life with you, and so don’t for one heartbeat believe that I did it solely to save your life. I did it for myself. Because I love you. Because I need you. And because of that, you’re lying here dying.”
All the hate for my father and what he’d done abruptly rushed from my heart, and it felt to me like the greatest of burdens had been lifted from my shoulders. “You’re right,” I said. “If not for you, I wouldn’t be here at all. Perhaps I’d be dead by my father’s hand. Or more likely, living in fear in my family’s home, suffering his abuse while all hope of a better future was stripped away from me.”
“But at least you’d have a future.”
“A future of misery!” The outburst left me gasping for breath. “I’ve been happier in my time with you than in all my life. Because of you, so much of what I dreamed of and hoped for became my reality, and I refuse to regret that. I believe that a short life lived is better than endless years of merely enduring, and given the same circumstances, the same choice, I’d choose you and life and love all over again.”
Exhaustion fell over me, my magic struggling to repair my broken body, but faltering and failing like fingers that couldn’t quite grasp an elusive bit of sand. My heart fluttered, and it hurt enough that tears flooded my eyes.
“Pénélope, please don’t leave me.” His voice was strangled and desperate, and his arms wrapped around me, pulling my body against his. I clung to him with what strength I had, my fingers curving around the back of his head as he kissed me, tasting the salt of his tears. Then he pressed his cheek against mine and said, “All my life I’ve loved you. You’re the only one who made me believe that I was good enough as I am. That I was worth wanting. That I wasn’t just a broken thing better off in the shadows. What will I be without you?”
“Yourself.” It hurt, it hurt. “A man more good and kind and loyal than any I’ve known.”
“I need you.”
Maybe he did. But Trollus needed him more. “You have to keep fighting. You cannot let him win.”
“He already has.”
His hands shook where they gripped me, and I thought of Guerre, the game of strategy that everyone around me played so masterfully, and in which I’d always been a pawn. But I’d be a pawn no more. “Only the battle,” I whispered, turning my head to look in Tristan’s direction. “The war is yet to come.”
My vision was filling with blackness, the world falling away, and I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready for it to be over. Wasn’t ready to be parted from him. “I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, kissing me gently on the lips. And though I could still feel him, still hear him, the thread binding us together was fraying. Diminishing. “Pénélope, if there’s a place we go in death, I’ll follow you there.” He sounded so distant. So far away. “I’ll find you.”
Not yet. Not yet.
“Pénélope, please.”
“I love you.” I needed him to know that, even as I was falling. Even as the world was fading. I needed that to be my legacy, the one thing he remembered above all else. “I love you. I love you. I
Epilogue
Tristan
Marc screamed.
In my life, I’d seen men injured. Tortured. Killed.
This was something different.
This was something worse.
Grief, in its purest form. The sort that carved into a soul, ruthlessly destroying everything good: love, hope, passion, devotion. Leaving behind only the blackest of emotions to drag one down and down until the slice of a knife, the twist of a neck, or a bullet in the skull seemed like a blessed relief. A mercy.
I hadn’t known there could be grief like that.
For all my preparation, it froze me in place in the corner where I lurked.
He screamed again, her name this time. Dragged her up into his arms. Pénélope’s head lolled back, silver eyes dull and sightless. Even in death, she was lovely. But lovely like an object. A thing. It was an echo of the beauty she’d once possessed, because what had made her her was gone. And even though I had not loved her – had, perhaps, even hated her in the end – the absence of that radiance hurt.
Marc sobbed into her hair, the sound ragged. His lips were pressed against her ear, and though I couldn’t hear what he said, the intention in them would have been clear even without his hand reaching for the knife concealed in his boot.
I moved.
My magic lashed around him, binding his limbs, prying his fingers from Pénélope, the sound of bones snapping and popping out of joint making my stomach twist. Marc didn’t even feel the pain, shrieking only in anguish as Pénélope’s body fell to the floor.
“Stop,” I said. “Marc, you need to stop this.”
His face twisted toward me, eyes bloody from capillaries bursting and reforming, his fractured features full of manic hate. “Let me go.”
“No.”
He howled, magic rising against mine with a strength I hadn’t known he possessed. Too much, enough that he’d burn out his life, and so I clamped down on it, contained it. Fury spewed from his mouth, a tide of hate. Things I’d thought of myself but never once believed he thought of me. And though I knew it was motivated by her loss, that did not make them less true. “Stop.”
“Why must it always be your way?” he screamed. “Let me go!”
“No.”
Anaïs shouldered past me, falling to her knees and pulling her sister into her arms. “Penny, Penny, no!” She was shaking, face coated with tears. Lifting her face, her gaze latched on mine. “Tristan…”
A broken plea for me to help her. To make this right.
But I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I said, then backed away, dragging Marc with me. Jamming magic into his mouth to silence him, because I was too much of a coward to hear anything more. The twins stood at the doorway, shoulders sagging. “Help her.”
The corridor was a blur of papered walls and carpet. Of servants staring wide-eyed as I dragged their master down the hall and into what had been his father’s rooms. My hands were shaking and icy, but I tied him to the bed. “I’m not letting you die.”
He answered me with a gaze full of hate.
The tool Pénélope had given me lurked in the back of my thoughts, but I was afraid to use it. Afraid of how such power would change our friendship. Whether it would even exist if I did.
And so my vigil began.
* * *
Days passed. Then weeks. Exhaustion like nothing I’d ever known gripped me, the few moments when the twins watched over Marc, or helped force food down his throat, not enough to compensate for the drain of watching his fury fade, his grief return, and then even that disappear along with his will to live.
My father came once.
I felt his presence behind me, and if he had told me that I was wasting my time, that my energy was better dedicated to the tree or other ventures, I think I might have tried to kill him where he stood.
“He has to find within himself the will to live,” he said. “To make him otherwise endure will only have consequences.”
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