I found Tristan at the twins’ manor, the three of them surrounded by books, though my cousin appeared to be the only one studying, half a teacake in one hand, the other scribbling calculations on a scrap piece of paper.
“Examinations?” I asked, taking a seat across from him.
He nodded and finished his cake. “Next week.”
Royal children all trained with the Builders’ Guild – the heirs because they’d take control of the tree along with the crown, and their siblings, just in case they should find themselves on the throne. I had only a rudimentary understanding of the craft, having studied economics in preparation for assuming my father’s role, but as Tristan pulled a large schematic in front of him, I recognized the cavern over Trollus as well as the tree. What he was sketching over the top of the diagram was unfamiliar to me. “What is that?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he muttered, tapping his pencil against his chin. “An idea… Or not. We shall see.”
“It’s now or never, I suppose,” Victoria said from across the room, and both twins left off what they were doing and rose.
“Good luck,” Tristan said to them. “Remember, cheating is always a valid option.”
They grinned as they departed, and I shook my head at him. “You’re a bad influence.”
He inclined his head. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Dropping the pencil, he leaned back in his chair, the doors to the room clicking shut, magic shutting out sight and sound. “Well?”
“The half-blood ranks are growing,” I said. “More and more are committing to the cause, are swearing that they’ll fight when it comes to it, but…”
“But?”
“Too many refuse to commit without knowing who the leader is.”
“They’re supposed to think it’s you.”
“They know it’s not me, Tristan.” I leaned back on my chair, balancing it on two legs. “I haven’t the mettle to overthrow the crown – they know I’m a stalking horse, but they want proof that whoever I represent has the power to see this through.”
Taking another cake from the tray, Tristan’s eyes went distant as he chewed, finishing the dessert before he asked, “Do they suspect me?”
“No. Tips has told me at least a dozen of the popular theories, but no one has marked you for the role of revolutionary. Why overthrow a crown that is destined to be yours anyway?”
What I didn’t say was that no one would suspect the tyrant prince would ever have sympathetic leanings to half-bloods – he’d played his part too well for that. Maybe a little too well, I thought, remembering Pénélope’s outburst. There was no love lost for him by those who had kindness in their hearts.
“They believe,” I added, “that our friendship is false on my part – that I’ve been planted to spy on you, or perhaps to take you out when the time is right.”
“Who do they favor for the role?”
I hesitated. “My father.”
Tristan winced, then rested his elbows on the table. “I’m sorry for that. I know it puts your entire family at risk, but you’re the only one who can do this. If I could…”
He trailed off: the explanation for why it was impossible for him to take on the burden was not worth voicing. Tristan’s movements were too well scrutinized for him to meet with the half-bloods without notice, and there was too much risk that once they knew his identity, the knowledge would fall into the hands of those who’d use it against us, namely, the Duke. Or worse, the King. Everything was predicated upon his ability to defeat his father, and as powerful as my cousin was, Thibault was more powerful still.
“I know it’s demanding of me to ask this of you,” Tristan said, “but for now, you’re the heart of our revolution, Marc. Without you, everything we’ve worked for will collapse. Trollus depends on you.”
I toyed with the arm of my chair, the speech I’d been planning since I’d spoken with my father sticking in my throat, his warning ringing in my ears: think long and hard about what it will mean for your friendship if you ask for his permission and he refuses to give it.
Because he would refuse to give it. Not out of cruelty, but because his commitment to saving our people consumed him and he’d not willingly allow anything to jeopardize our cause. There was nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice for what he saw as the greater good of Trollus, and he demanded the same from me, Anaïs, and the twins. He didn’t want anything more from life.
But I did.
As if sensing my thoughts, Tristan said, “Another three years. Maybe four. Then this will all be over.”
Logically, I knew that it wasn’t such a long time. But it felt like an eternity. Longer than an eternity, because even though once Tristan was on the throne there should be no reason for him to deny my wish to be with Pénélope, I knew there would be. Too easily my father’s haggard face came to mind, the pressures of a lifetime as the right hand to the King dragging him to an early death. Tristan was not his father, but in his own way, he was equally as demanding. Was that to be my fate?
Was it selfish of me to want more?
A loud knock sounded at the door, and Tristan’s magic shifted, allowing the visitor to enter. He glanced up once, then did a double take, so I turned.
At first I thought it was Pénélope, not Anaïs, but the weight of the power that came with her was distinctly that of the younger Angoulême sister. She was wearing a purple gown, ribs corseted tight and hair hanging to her waist in elaborate curls. Her silver eyes were rimmed with kohl, full lips stained a pale pink that made them very… kissable in appearance.
“Another Angoulême party that I’m not invited to?” Tristan asked.
“No.” Anaïs flung herself with force into the chair next to me, then wrenched off the heeled shoes she wore and threw them across the room. “I’m seducing you.”
“I see. In that case, carry on.” A faint smile formed on Tristan’s face, and I fought the urge to kick him under the table.
Anaïs needed no defenders. “Your Highness,” she said, “if you are under the mistaken impression that I can’t beat you bloody wearing skirts and heels, I’d be happy to demonstrate otherwise.”
“No need for that. I believe you.”
Both of us remained silent, waiting for the teeming swirl of Anaïs’s power to settle, along with her temper.
“My father wants to put Roland on the throne,” she finally said.
“Why would he want that? Roland’s insane and as much a Montigny as I am myself.”
“Because he believes that he can control him.”
“A puppet king.” A frown creased Tristan’s forehead. “Can he control him?”
Anaïs was silent for a long moment, then she said, “Yes. Roland is incapable of true affection toward anyone, but he seems to value my father. He listens to him.”
“That’s new.”
Anaïs said nothing, which made me wonder whether she’d been keeping this particular development to herself.
“For that to happen, I’d have to be disinherited,” Tristan said. “Or dead. And my father is the only one who could manage that.”
I raised one eyebrow.
“Manage it without consequence, that is,” he amended. “Which means the Duke believes there is something Anaïs can discover that would push my father in that direction.” Tristan’s frown deepened. “He suspects I’m a sympathizer.” His eyes fixed on Anaïs. “What’s changed?”
It was a struggle not to hold my breath as I waited for her to respond. What had changed was that Anaïs was no longer destined to be Queen, forcing the Duke to pursue another angle to gain control, but would she admit as much given she’d kept their betrothal a secret for so long?
“He didn’t say why or for how long he’d suspected you, only that he believed you to be plotting against your father and that I was to find proof.”
She hadn’t answered his question, but if Tristan had noticed, he didn’t show it, likely too consumed with thought over how he’d aroused the Duke’s suspicions to consider that Anaïs might be deceiving him. Which put me in the position of choosing between keeping Pénélope’s confidence and telling him the truth.
“And he believes I’m more likely to reveal such proof under intimate circumstances?”
“Yes.”
Anaïs’s eyes flicked to me, then away again. Did she suspect I knew about the broken betrothal? Had Pénélope told her?
No one spoke, the only sound in the room the tick tock of the clock on the wall. Tristan rose to his feet, pacing back and forth before finally saying, “Tell him I rejected your advances. To do otherwise and have you claiming not to have learned anything of value would be suspicious, and that’s the last thing we want. We need him to trust you, otherwise we’ll lose all insight into his faction’s plans. As it is, you’re going to have to start giving him better information or he’ll begin to question your loyalties.”
I knew his rejection, despite it only being to her plan, had to have hurt. A fact to which he was likely oblivious. But no reaction showed on Anaïs’s face. Given she lived life as a spy, she’d made a practice out of ensuring it never did. Originally, her father had set her to sniff out details on the Montignys, but she’d come over to Tristan’s side long ago. Now she spied on his behalf, for the good of the sympathizer cause. One did not live such a double life without becoming a master of self-control.
“I think that’s a mistake,” she said. “We can use this opportunity to feed him information of our choosing without him becoming suspicious. Plus, it gives you a reason to sneak around that will seem innocent by comparison to the truth.”
It was an awful idea that was destined to end badly, but on the heels of the conversation we’d just had, there was no chance Tristan wasn’t considering it. Everyone would be too caught up in the scandal of the future Duchesse d’Angoulême lowering herself to the status of a Montigny mistress to question whether there was another reason Tristan was disappearing for hours at a time. It would cost him nothing and her everything, and I couldn’t help but wonder how badly Pénélope would take it. I opened my mouth to voice my opinion, but Tristan beat me to it.
“No,” he said, eyes on the diagram in front of him rather than her face. “It wouldn’t just be your father we’d be deceiving in this, it would be everyone. People would gossip. Things would be said that I don’t want said about you.”
“Oh, please.” Anaïs twisted a curled lock of hair around one finger and rolled her eyes. “What does my reputation matter? I’m afflicted in the worst sort of way, and everyone knows it. There isn’t a man in Trollus who’d risk the odds, even if my reputation were pure as the driven snow.”
Except that it did matter, because everyone would see it as a concession to Montigny rule. An admission of weakness. And in Trollus, power ruled.
“You’re not afflicted,” Tristan muttered.
“As good as,” she replied. “You know it runs in the blood. Besides, you have no other options.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think about it too long,” she replied, winking. “I might go looking elsewhere for my entertainment.”
They both laughed, but looking down, I saw the silk of her skirts was twisted and soaked with sweat from where she gripped them. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “Yesterday afternoon, my father tried to kill Pénélope.”
I was on my feet in a flash. “Is she hurt?”
“She’ll recover.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“No, you’re not,” Tristan said, and not for the first time, I considered taking a swing at him.
“I intervened,” Anaïs said. “And if he doubted my power exceeded his own, he does no longer. I threatened him if any harm should come to her, but…”
“You think he’ll call your bluff?” Tristan asked.
She nodded. “Obviously it’s a circumstance I wish to avoid.”
“Why?” I spat, furious that despite being wholly innocent and uninvolved with our machinations, Pénélope’s life should be twisted up in them. “Because killing him doesn’t align with our plans?”
“I was thinking that killing him won’t bring her back from the dead,” Anaïs said. “But there is that as well.”
“We have to do something, Tristan,” I said. “We can’t just leave her in this situation.”
Tristan exhaled a long breath. “If she was anyone other than who she is, my father could make her a ward of the state. But to do so would be a slap to Angoulême’s face – practically a declaration of war, for which he’d gain nothing.”
“Pénélope is not nothing.”
Tristan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Don’t twist my words, Marc. You know what I mean: to my father, she isn’t a powerful enough asset to interest him. That doesn’t mean she means nothing to me. Far from it. This is exactly what I’m fighting against, and you know it.”
“And yet you have no intention of doing anything to help her.”
“When did I say that?”
Pulling back my hood, I glared at him, feeling a strange twist of satisfaction and disappointment when he looked away.
“If I make my move against my father now, I’ll very likely lose,” he said. “Then I’ll either be dead or disinherited, and Angoulême will get exactly what he wants, with Pénélope no better off. And what sort of ruler can I claim to be if I sacrifice the welfare of thousands for the slim chance of saving one?”
“Then kill Angoulême.”
Anaïs shifted uneasily next to me, but I ignored her.
“And how is that any better? Awful as he might be, he hasn’t done anything. I can’t go around killing trolls because of what they might do.”
“Then let her bond someone.” The words were out before I had a chance to think them through, and I instantly regretted them, because I was going to get an answer to my request, and it wouldn’t be the one I wanted.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
Tristan’s eyes shifted once to Anaïs before going back to me. “Fine. Make me the ass for saying what we all know: no one – at least no one Pénélope would want – would agree to that sort of risk. And even if someone would, my father would never give his permission.”
“You could.”
“But I won’t. I’m not sentencing someone to a short life for the sake of giving her a few more years.”
I punched him in the face.
“Have you lost your damned mind?” he snarled, wiping the blood from his already healing lip.
It felt like it. “Maybe I have lost my mind given I’ve been trying to put a heartless bastard like you on the throne.”
He lunged at me and we both went down, fists flying while furniture toppled and broke around us. Then magic had me around the waist, slamming me against the wall hard enough that the room shuddered. “You would resort to magic,” I started to shout, then saw Tristan pressed against the opposite wall. And Anaïs standing between us, arms crossed.
“Are you two about finished?” She glared at both of us, then her magic relaxed, dropping Tristan and me to the floor.
“There is another way to keep her safe,” she said, “and that’s to make my father believe she’s more useful alive than dead.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Tristan asked, straightening his coat and giving me a malevolent look before righting one of the chairs and taking a seat.
“I’ve already done it,” she said, turning her eyes on me in a way that made my skin prickle with apprehension, because whatever solution she’d come up with, it wouldn’t be one I liked.