“Do you want me to come with you?” Chris steered the horses off to the side of the road.
“No.” I jumped off the carriage. “Keep watch for anyone coming. This isn’t a conversation I want anyone walking into the middle of.” I started towards the beach, then paused. “Keep an eye on the dog. Cécile is fond of him, but he makes a mess everywhere he goes.” Smiling at Chris’s muttered oaths about the consequences of damaging the carriage and the ridiculousness of small dogs, I continued on my way.
The snow was compressed where countless wagons and feet had packed down a track, but I walked along the edge of it, enjoying the way it crunched beneath my feet. There was no snow on the beach, as the water rose high enough to wash away any tracks with each tide, and to the casual eye, the uneven cliff of rock concealing the entrance to the River Road appeared entirely innocuous.
I strode across the rocks and sand and into the shade of the overhang marking the entrance to the tunnel, the river flowing fresh and clean down to the ocean. At high tide, the ocean reached right up to the barrier of the curse, and bits of flotsam littered the path. Ahead, it appeared as though I were walking toward massed boulders from which the water flowed, but I knew it was an illusion. And I knew only a handful of trolls could account for the power lurking just beyond it.
“I hope you at least had someone bring you a chair,” I said, stopping a safe distance from the barrier. I was taking no chances at getting caught up in the curse’s boundary once again.
The illusion fell away to reveal my father. But no chair. I winced in mock sympathy. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
“I was admiring the view.”
I glanced back over my shoulder. “A bit limited from here.”
“Not for long.”
I looked back. “How did they react?”
“As expected.” He leaned a forearm against the barrier, his expression amused. He had no intention of giving me any information about what was going on inside Trollus. He knew it would drive me mad to be kept in the dark, and he’d use the knowledge to negotiate. His was still the position of power, and both of us knew it.
“It would seem Anushka knows Cécile is hunting her,” I said. “Last night she murdered the witch Catherine and either burned or absconded with the grimoire, which means we’ve lost any method of tracking her.”
My father’s brow furrowed, and he was silent for a moment. “Why, if she knows who Cécile is, has she not tried to kill her?”
Of course he saw right to the heart of the matter. But I had no intention of revealing Cécile’s familial connection to Anushka just yet. Just as I had no intention of revealing that I knew he controlled Aiden du Chastelier.
“The question crossed my mind,” I admitted. “I might have thought it some moral conscience or allegiance to her kind, but she has demonstrated that she’s no qualms against killing other humans. Which means there is a reason she hasn’t made an attempt against Cécile’s life.”
“There is something important about Cécile,” he said. “The foretelling led us to her, and everything she’s done has demonstrated its accuracy. This is only more proof that there is something about her that is significant, something we don’t know.”
“Something that Anushka does.”
“So it would seem.” He slipped a finger into his pocket and extracted a gold coin, flipping it back and forth across his fingers as he thought. “You have a plan?”
“Of a sort.” I watched the gold flick across his knuckles. “Cécile has explained that the curse is nothing more than an act of Anushka’s will made physical by magic. Its very existence is predicated upon her desire to keep us contained. Her hate.” I tore my gaze away from the gold. “I can only imagine how infuriating it will be for her to discover a troll has broken free of her will. And not just any troll.” I squared my shoulders. “The descendant of the one who provoked her hate in the first place.”
Which was part of my plan, if not all of it.
The gold coin stopped moving. “You intend to use yourself as bait?”
I nodded. “She’ll feel compelled to move against me. I’m certain of it.”
He went very still. Nothing showed in his expression, but that lack of motion betrayed his unease with my proposition. “If you announce what you are to the world, you’ll put the rest of us at risk. We are yet vulnerable.”
“Which is why I have no intention of revealing what I am, only who,” I said. “I’ll infiltrate their aristocracy – we know she walks among them – and then I’ll parade around in front of her until she’s driven to act, and in doing so, will reveal herself.”
“Risky,” my father muttered. “For one, she might actually kill you, and two, you’re dependent on a woman who hasn’t made a mistake in five hundred years doing just that.”
“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.
He sighed. “I assume you’ll be needing some gold.”
Thirty-Eight
Cécile