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.