And he was sorry, I realized. He was always kind to my mother, but never before had I seen any proof that he might actually care for her. That he might even love her, and that maybe I wasn’t entirely the product of politics and social maneuvering. I held my breath, afraid that even that tiny motion might draw attention to me and disrupt what I was witnessing. I didn’t want it to end, because seeing proof that he cared for my mother meant there was a chance he cared something for me.
Metal clinked against metal. Turning my head, I saw that my ruined manacles had risen from the rubble and even now hovered in the air. Heat radiated from them, magic melting and reforming the metal until they were whole again. They settled on the ground, and when I looked up, he was staring at me, silver eyes unreadable. “The next time I see you, those had better be back on or I’ll put four more in their place.” Without another word, he took my mother’s arm and helped her through the debris and out of sight.
False, black, painful hope.
I rested my forehead on my knees, trying to shove away the old hurts behind their stone walls.
“Your Highness?” It was élise’s voice, quiet and tentative. I didn’t move – it seemed like more effort than I could manage.
“Tristan?” A hand touched my shoulder.
Part of me wanted to shrug it off, to tell élise, all the half-bloods, and everyone else in this cursed city to deal with their own problems. Except that what I’d told my aunt had been true – there was no one but me who could credibly oppose my father. And not just my father, but Angoulême.
I considered the clues my aunt had provided. The black-hearted Duke had control over my younger brother – had somehow managed to trick Roland into revealing his true name to him. Now that the idea was in my head, it seemed so obvious. He won’t do anything I don’t want him to. The words Angoulême had said to me at the auction repeated in my head, as well as those that had gone unspoken: He will do everything I tell him to do. If my father died tomorrow, Roland might be the one crowned king, but it would be Angoulême who ruled.
Whether I willed it or not, I had to play this game.
“What happened to anger Her Majesty?” élise’s voice cut through my thoughts.
“To her? Nothing.” I lifted my head to meet her gaze. “That was my father’s rage you witnessed, so the question we need to ask is what angered him? Or who?”
“We?” She pulled her hand away from my shoulder. I didn’t say anything, seeing in her distant expression that she’d addressed the question not to me, but to herself. She was quiet for a long time before speaking. “I felt what you did. You can’t tell me what to do any longer.”
“Yes, I can,” I said. “Only now it’s your choice whether or not to listen. Will you?”
She didn’t hesitate. “I will.”
I expelled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Apparently her allegiance mattered more to me than I had realized. We’d known each other a long time, and there was a reason I’d chosen her and Zoé to watch over Cécile. They were loyal and brave to a fault.
As if reading my mind, she asked, “How is she?”
“Well enough, for now.” I stared at the holes in my wrists, the blood running freely. “But she made a promise to my father to do whatever was necessary to find Anushka, and we all got a little demonstration just now of how thin his patience is running.”
“Then she’s in danger?”
I nodded. “We’re all in danger. Cécile, you, me. Everyone. And I’d bet all the gold left in Forsaken Mountain that it’s going to get much worse before it gets better.”
“Will it get better?” Her head drooped, and a lock of dark hair fell across her face. “There are times when it all seems so hopeless.”
How well did I know that feeling.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s possible that no matter how hard we fight that we will still lose. But…” I stared out at the city through the broken walls of my home, the jagged pieces of marble rising up like some great monster’s teeth. “I do know that if we do nothing, our defeat won’t be just a possibility, it will be a certainty.”
élise lifted her chin and pushed back her hair. “Then we fight.”
“We fight,” I echoed, my eyes picking up the movements of those who had crept back to see what sort of damage my mother had inflicted. This conversation could not go on much longer.
“What about Cécile?” élise lowered her voice, having noticed our watchers as well.
“She’s far from powerless, and if anyone can discover a way to find Anushka, it will be her.” My stomach clenched at the words, and I desperately wished keeping her safe were a possibility. Only I knew that even if it were, Cécile would never stand for being kept out of danger while her friends were in the thick of it. “We have to trust that she will hold up her end, and focus on holding up ours.”
“Let her fight the human problem while we combat ours?”
I gave her a tight smile. “Exactly.”
A half-dozen of my father’s guards were coming through the rubble, their expressions grim. élise saw them too. “The King was already on his way to find your mother when I encountered him, but I’m certain he was coming from his study.”
“We need to find out who he was with,” I murmured.