“If that’s what you want.” My voice sounded strange and distant.
“It is.” She spun around, lavender skirts lifting enough for me to see her matching flat shoes. A sense of wrongness shot through me, slicing through the fog of guilt. Something was amiss, something about her wasn’t right. I watched her stride away, the ghostly echo in my memory of clicking high heels drowned out by the slapping of flat soles.
“Ana?stromeria,” I said under my breath. “Stop.”
She kept walking.
“Ana?stromeria, turn around.” My fingers dug into the stones of the wall I leaned against, mortar crumbling. “Ana?stromeria, come back to me.” If she’d been half a world away, she would have heard. Such was the power of a true name.
It was only the dead who could not hear.
Seven
Tristan
“What are you doing?”
I did not let my attention waver from the five white shapes bobbing about in the basin full of bubbling water. “Making lunch.”
“Boiled eggs?”
I slowly lifted my gaze to meet Marc’s, all but daring him to make a comment, but he wisely refrained.
“Did you see Ana?s? Would she speak to you?”
I snorted softly, and the water in the basin went nearly all to steam in an instant. “She isn’t Ana?s.” I poured cold water over my eggs to cool them, then set the basin aside.
“I know she seems different,” Marc started to say, but I interrupted him.
“Someone is posing as her, but Ana?s is dead.”
My cousin sat down heavily on a chair. With one hand, he pushed back his hood, his light extinguishing as he did. “How is that… Are you certain?”
“She was wearing flat shoes,” I said, as though that would explain everything.
Marc lifted his head. “Tristan…”
There was concern in his voice, so I quickly added, “Her nails were bitten, and her laugh was off key. She isn’t our Ana?s.” I picked up an egg and stared at it. “Whoever she is, she’s my father’s accomplice, and the plot was planned well. She claimed he saved her life, which means that he must have arranged to somehow do so. With a witch.” I set the egg down. “He had a witch in Trollus the entire time.” He had planned everything.
I looked up at his sharp intake of breath, certain he was about to accuse me of having lost my mind to be making such accusations. “I called her by name, and she did not answer, so I know it isn’t her. Ana?s is dead.”
Marc slumped forward, burying his face in one hand. His shoulders twitched once, then again.
You inconsiderate bastard. I directed a few more choice words at myself for realizing too late that while I had months to come to terms with my grief, Marc had not. His relationship with Ana?s had been tense since Pénélope had died, but they were still close, in their own way. Family too, if by marriage and not by blood.
“Victoria will be devastated.”
His words were thick with emotion, and they sparked multiple realizations within me. No one, with the exception of Cécile, my father, me, and now Marc, knew that Ana?s was dead. No one grieved for her. None of the death rituals of our people had been given to her, none of the words spoken, none of the songs sung. Much had been done to our friend, and much was still being done to her memory, and my father was the cause of all of it.
But the sight of Marc’s stifled grief kept me silent. Ana?s’s death was as much my fault as my father’s. I might not have put the spear through her chest, but the impostor hadn’t been wrong when she said I’d done nothing to save her. She might still be alive if only I’d tried harder, if only I’d tried bringing a witch to Trollus, if only…
“I’m sorry.” The words were clipped.
“You had to make a choice,” he finally replied. “You chose. Now you have to live with the consequences” – he squared his shoulders – “and not squander what was paid for in blood.”
The consequences: not only Ana?s’s life, but those of dozens of others. The punishment my friends endured for helping me. The sacrifice of years of planning. The destruction of the half-bloods’ hope for freedom. All to save one life.
A life that was once again in jeopardy.
“And there is always vengeance.”
A charge of eagerness surged through me, ideas and plans swirling about in my head. “There is that.”
“Do you know who the impostor is?”
“No,” I said, picking up one of my eggs, carefully cracking it and peeling away the shell. “But I intend to find out.”
* * *