There was no less to fear as we crept back through the labyrinth, yet my heart and mind were free of that malignant emotion for the first time in what felt like an eternity. For, perhaps, the first time in my life. Because Marc was in my heart and in my mind, and no one – not my father, not the King, not Tristan or Anaïs – could do anything to change that. It was a magic that could not be undone by anyone and, to me, that was like a castaway coming across a raft in the open seas. A chance. A hope. And I intended to cling to it, to fight for it, with all the strength I possessed.
We made it back to Trollus without incident, Marc concealing us with magic as he locked the gate, his hand immediately returning to mine after he’d tucked the key away in his pocket. My face ached from smiling, and though his hood concealed his mouth, I knew he was doing the same. The knowledge, the feel of it, made me giddy with delight, and I tugged on his hand, wanting to drag him at a run through the city streets until we were back in his home, in his room, in his bed. I wanted that intimacy: not just to know what he felt when we were together, but to feel it.
But rather than allowing me to hurry him forward, Marc pulled back on my hand, his unease flooding my heart. “Something’s happened.”
Turning my head, I scanned the city. It appeared as it always did, with no sign that the tree had failed and rocks had fallen. Yet there was no mistaking the charge of magic in the air, roiling and excessive and… dangerous. A sign of angry trolls, great either in number or in power, and my skin prickled with the certainty that the unrest had been caused by us.
On silent feet we picked our way down the stairs and through the streets, the anxious eyes peering from windows causing my heart to pound a rapid beat and making me glad we remained hidden under the cover of illusion. Marc avoided my family home, but the presence of magic only grew as we approached his family’s manor, and before we rounded the bend, he pushed me to a stop. “Stay here.”
My fingers did not want to let his go, but I satisfied them by gripping the wall, peering around the corner to see what – and who – awaited him. At the sight of Anaïs pacing before the gates, I almost followed, but there were other powers nearby, so I held my ground.
The magic concealing Marc vanished, and though her back was turned, Anaïs went still.
Too still.
“Where. Is. She?”
Each word was punctuated with a tremor in the earth, steam rising from the fountain in the center of the street.
“She’s safe,” Marc said, and I wanted to scream that his confidence was misplaced, that his belief she wouldn’t hurt him was wrong, wrong, wrong, because my sister wasn’t just angry. There was no doubt in my mind that my father had told Anaïs about me. And she believed she’d been betrayed.
I moved to intervene, but collided with something hard. A wall, invisible but strong as stone, blocking my path. I tried to backtrack, but came up against more of the same. “Bloody stones and sky,” I snapped, more panicked than angry at his attempts to keep me from harm. Because he was going to get us both killed.
“Safe?” Anaïs’s voice was so quiet, I barely made it out. But the tone of it turned my hands to ice. “You call what you’ve done to her keeping her safe?”
I hammered my fist against the magic, then lashed out at it with my own, screaming that he hadn’t done anything to me. That he’d done more to keep my life safe than anyone, including her. But Marc’s shield muted my voice, allowing only theirs to pass through.
“I asked you to protect her.” Anaïs’s hands balled into fists, and the ground shook again, tiny bits of rock and gravel raining down from above. “Instead you killed her!”
“Anaïs, she’s not dead. Pénélope’s f–”
“Murderer!” she shrieked, and the rocks above us groaned and shifted, the columns of the tree glowing faintly as the magic attempted to compensate. I had to stop this, or she was going to kill us all. Or be killed, I amended, as the King stepped out of the gates of the manor, followed by Marc’s parents.
I had to get through.
Holding up the sluag spear clutched in my hands, I backed up a few paces, then gripped the steel with my magic, ignoring the way it recoiled from the toxic metal. Then I threw every ounce of power in my possession behind thrusting it through the magic barricading me away from this disaster. The effort knocked me onto my bottom, but even as it bent and warped, the steel punctured through Marc’s magic and the wall fractured, then shattered.
“Anaïs, stop,” I screamed, scrambling to my feet and running into the fray.
Everyone turned toward me, even the King, who was on one knee next to a column of the tree, flooding it with power. Tristan was sprinting up the street, shirt tails loose as though he’d been torn from sleep. “Anaïs!” he shouted, even as paving stones tore up from the ground, hovered briefly in the air, then rippled away from her and toward Marc in a tide of wrath, my sister’s fury making her deaf and blind toward everything but vengeance.
“No!” I flung myself in the path of her magic, expecting to be incinerated or pummeled to death by rock, but everything froze. Falling to my knees, I looked up to see stone and magic swirling in a barely contained vortex, and behind it all, Anaïs staring at me with wide eyes. “Penny, I could’ve killed you,” she whispered, brushing away Tristan as he reached her.
“Don’t do this,” I said, feeling Marc’s hands on my arms, pulling me to my feet. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“He’s killed you.”
“No, he hasn’t.” I wanted to go to her, but there was no way through the mass of unspent power in front of me until she relaxed and relinquished it. “I’m fine. Surely you can see that?”
“But you won’t be. Father told me that you’re… you’re…” Tears flooded down her cheeks, evaporating almost immediately from the heat of magic.
“Tristan, control that girl or I’ll kill her myself,” the King snarled. “She’s putting the entire city at risk with her outburst.”
Stepping between Anaïs and the King, Tristan eyed the storm of magic, but wisely refrained from clamping down on it. “Anaïs, what is going on?”
“Pénélope’s pregnant. She’s going to die.”
Silence.
Everyone was staring at me. Tristan and Anaïs. Marc’s parents. Even the King’s attention had been torn from the threat above, his gaze, which was normally so terrifying, full of pity. All those who’d risked coming out to see the commotion – their expressions were solemn, as though I were nothing but the paramount of tragedies. As though the life inside me were not the greatest of gifts, but a sickness. I hated them for it. Hated that my fate was deemed certain. That I was to be given no credit for having power over my own destiny.
Marc’s hands tightened on mine, the only person who understood. The only person who felt the same way as me.
Tristan broke the silence. “Marc’s no more at fault than she is, Anaïs. And killing him won’t change her fate.”
“It is more his fault.” Anaïs was shaking, anger rising once again. “I trusted him with my sister. I trusted you, Marc.” Her gaze bored past me, and I could feel Marc’s guilt, building in his mind and mine, toxic as iron. Anaïs, by both character and necessity, put her faith in almost no one, but she had put it in Marc. And she believed he’d violated it, and for that she was unforgiving.
My hair lifted and swirled on the twisted surge of magic, and I knew this was a battle that my sister wouldn’t survive. Not with the King present. But it was a battle that I could stop before it started.
Stepping out of Marc’s grip, I pulled off my glove and held up my hand, the silver bonding marks glittering in the light. “He has saved me, Anaïs. More than you can ever know.”