The following three weeks were some of the best and worst of my life.
Trying to balance all the levels of deception made me feel like I was walking on a razor’s edge over a pit of fire, every conversation making me break out in sweat lest I reveal the wrong thing to the wrong person and doom myself, Pénélope, or the revolution in a moment of indiscretion. No one received the whole truth from me: not Tristan, not my parents, not even Pénélope, who insisted I keep her in the dark about the details of our plots in case her father should come to suspect and put her to the question. What I provided her with instead were carefully selected bits of information. Dozens of clues, which in aggregate bordered on proof that I was up to something, but nothing so damning that Angoulême could take them to the King as evidence of treason. Every time, I worried that I wasn’t giving her enough. Or worse, that I was giving her too much.
But it was worth it. Worth every anxious moment and sleepless night, because it meant another day of keeping her safe.
Spending time with Pénélope was no small challenge given that the depth of our relationship had to remain hidden from everyone. The lone exception was her father, who only smiled and turned a blind eye when she sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night, then back in before dawn, allowing her locks on her door so that neither Anaïs nor the servants could walk into her room and find it empty. He was our enemy, but in this, he was also our co-conspirator, and that fact sat heavily upon me as I deceived every one of my friends and allies.
“I’m being followed everywhere I go,” I muttered, kissing Pénélope’s shoulder as I fastened the last button on her dress before passing her the hooded cloak she wore to and from our sojourns. “It makes it hard to do anything without eyes watching me. Including spending time with you.” Then a flash of metal falling to her feet caught my attention, and I reached down to pick up a tiny steel knife. “What’s this for?”
Her jaw tightened as she took it back, careful to touch only the leather-wrapped handle. “It makes me feel better to have it around my father.”
I carried my fair share of weapons, and had a lifetime of training in how to use them. Most full-blooded trolls carried a steel blade or two – not because it was ever our first line of defense, but because they were the only effective weapons we had against the sluag. But Pénélope – for good reason – avoided steel at all costs.
“Pénélope…” I hesitated. “Unless you got lucky, a blade this small isn’t going to do more than anger your father. What’s more, he’s always shielded.”
“I know.” She tucked the knife into a hidden pocket in her cloak. “It isn’t for him. It’s for me.”
It took time for comprehension to dawn on me, and when it did, I reached forward to take the blade away from her. “No. Absolutely not.”
But she dodged out of reach, batting my hand away. “I don’t need your permission, Marc. I’ve spent my entire life being told what I can and can’t do by my father – I don’t need you attempting to do the same.”
“You can’t actually believe that I’m going to quietly accept that you’re carrying around a weapon on the chance you might need to take your own life,” I demanded, barely managing to curb the urge to take the blade back by whatever means necessary.
“Actually, I do,” she replied, walking over to the open window. “Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives, depend on the success of the sympathizer revolution, and despite your best intentions, I have enough knowledge within me to bring it all crashing down. If it comes to it, my life isn’t worth putting all those others in jeopardy.”
“It is to me.” I caught her hands, not wanting her to leave. Not wanting her to walk toward a situation where that little knife might come to use.
“I know.” She kissed my cheek. “But it’s not your choice, it’s mine. Now lower me down – I need to get home before Anaïs notices I’m gone.”
I did what she asked, but I found I couldn’t let it go. So, knowing that I might very well have cause to regret it, I dressed and made my way to the palace to find my uncle, the King.
“He’s walking in the gardens with the Queen, my lord,” Élise, one of my aunts’ half-blood servants, said.
Which could be better, I thought. Queen Matilde was kind, and my Aunt Sylvie was perhaps the only individual in Trollus willing to talk back to my uncle. Both of them might be willing to advocate on Pénélope’s behalf.
I followed the sense of power through the gardens until I caught sight of the three walking slowly along the paths. My uncle had his hands clasped behind his back and was listening to my Aunt Sylvie, but the conversation was shielded, so I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
I silently rehearsed my speech, explaining the danger Pénélope was in, appealing to the value of every full-blooded life in our declining world; to the benefit of caring for Anaïs’s sister, given she was set to inherit the duchy and would be a valuable ally to Tristan; to–
“Quit lurking in the shadows, boy!” Aunt Sylvie’s voice made me jump, and I obediently walked toward them, trying to calm the rapid thunder of my heart in my chest.
“Your Majesties; Your Grace,” I bowed low.
“Nephew.” The King fixed me with a piercing stare, as though I’d interrupted something far more meaningful than a stroll through the gardens. “What do you want?”
“I…” The words froze on my tongue. Coming here had been stupid. A waste of time. What I’d intended to say appealed to an individual’s empathy and innate decency, of which my uncle had none.
“He’s here about Angoulême’s girl,” Aunt Sylvie said, gesturing for me to come into the open space, the center of which was dominated by the Élixir fountain, the blue liquid glowing in the stone basin.
“Anaïs? What about her?” There was an unexpected edge to my uncle’s voice, a frown furrowing his brow until my aunt shook her head and said, “Pénélope.”
I scuffed my boot toe against the ground. “He treats her poorly.”
The King’s face soured. “If he treated her poorly, she’d be dead.”
“He threatens her life.”
“Words.”
Frustration burned across my skin, because I was limited in what I could say. My uncle was the last person to whom I could confess that Pénélope had been set to spy on me in the hopes of proving I was a traitor. “What if they aren’t? And even if they aren’t, she lives in terror. It’s not right.”
The Queen made a soft clucking noise of dismay, but said nothing.
“And what precisely do you wish me to do about it?”
“Take her out of his home,” I said. “Make her a ward of the state.”
“Why would I do such a thing?”
Because it was the right thing to do.
Not waiting for my answer, he said, “Just how well do you think Angoulême will take me plucking his eldest daughter from his home? Embarrassing him before all of Trollus?”
“What do you care?” My voice was unintentionally sharp. “You don’t even like him.”
“Like him?” His eyebrow rose. “What difference does that make? The Duke is a powerful troll who holds the ears of many other powerful trolls. Anger him, and I anger them.”
“So you won’t do it because you’re afraid of him.”
A soft hiss of warning escaped Aunt Sylvie’s lips, but it was the Queen, my Aunt Matilde, who rested her hand on my uncle’s arm, as though her delicate grip could restrain him. Then I thought of Pénélope, and thought maybe it could.
“Is this the sort of advice you’ll give your cousin when he ascends the throne?” he demanded. “Will you tell him to risk political suicide and the downfall of Trollus for the sake of one life?”
Maybe. “She’s popular with the people,” I said instead. “It would create goodwill.”
“Amongst those who already hold ill will toward the Duke. It gains me nothing.”
“He has Roland. Why shouldn’t you have the wardship of one of his children?”
His eyes narrowed. “Roland was part of another transaction.”
“Which no longer exists,” I snapped, not caring that I wasn’t supposed to know about Tristan’s ill-fated betrothal to Anaïs. “Tell him you want Pénélope or you’re taking Roland back.”
“That’s not a deal I can make,” he responded, and though I knew there was more to that answer, all I heard was the refusal. He wouldn’t help her.
There was nothing I could say. No argument that would sway him. Which left only one option. “Do it as a favor to me, then,” I said. “I’d be in your debt.”
The only sound was the faint drip, drip of the Élixir fountain behind me, and I wished for a moment that I could slip through the tear in the fabric of the world from which the precious liquid came.
Then, to my surprise, the King glanced at Aunt Sylvie, silent communication passing between them. I knew she sat on his council, but given their contentious relationship, she was the last person I’d expect him to take advice from. I held my breath, watching as she stared thoughtfully at the ground between us.
Aunt Matilde abruptly staggered, the King barely managing to catch her before she fell. He lowered her to her knees, my Aunt Sylvie’s body twitching and jerking from where she dangled from her sister’s shoulders, her eyes rolled so far back that only the white showed.
“What’s happening to her?” I demanded.
“Be quiet,” the King snarled, his eyes fixed on Aunt Sylvie.
Then she spoke.
“Beware the broken one,
Who is the shadowed son.”
Her voice was toneless and strange, and I unconsciously stepped back, coming up against the fountain behind me.
“Beware the love that takes
And wills a bond that breaks.
Beware the voice of lies
Or risk your greatest prize.”
The foretellings were always riddles. Puzzles given to my aunt by the fey in Arcadia through the strange connection she had with the other side. Most in Trollus believed they were intended to protect our people. To allow us to endure.
But this one was personal.
It was a warning to my uncle not to help Pénélope. Not to help me.
My fingers gripped the edge of the fountain tight enough that I felt the stone begin to crumble, a piece falling off to splash into the liquid below.
A bond that breaks…
I turned, and stared into the depths of the pool. A magic greater than anything in Trollus. A magic that could not be undone by anything other than death.
A sure way to save Pénélope, if I had the nerve to take that great a step.
“Is it over?” the King asked my aunt.
“Yes, yes,” Aunt Sylvie grumbled. “What did they say this time?”
They weren’t paying the slightest attention to me, and without stopping to consider the consequences, I created a vial of magic and dunked it into the fountain, stoppering the top and tucking it into my pocket. Some of the liquid had soaked into my glove, and it glowed faintly blue and entirely damning. I jerked my gloves off before anyone noticed.
My uncle turned on me, his face grim. He knows, my mind screamed. He knows you took it.
Yet all he said was: “Go fetch your father for me. We’ll finish this conversation later.”
Except the conversation was already over, because I knew what his answer would be. It was time to take matters into my own hands, no matter what the cost.