Her eyes flicked to mine. “Revenge?”
I shrugged. “At the very least, you could discover the truth.”
“Why would you help me?” she asked, suspicion in her eyes. “What interest have you in this?”
“A very personal one,” I said. “Because I believe the witch whose curse I wish to break is the same one who orchestrated your fall from grace.” I purposefully refrained from telling her that I suspected her former mistress knew the witch’s identity.
All the color fled from her cheeks, but before I could garner much more than surprise from her expression, she dropped her head. “Marie warned me to stay away,” she said. “I need to think hard about the consequences of doing otherwise before I take any action.”
I wanted to demand that she decide now – the promise all but forcing the words from my lips, but I clamped them shut. Better for her to come around to the idea herself than for me to try to bully her. She’d be a stronger ally if she acted of her own accord. “Very well,” I said, rising to my feet. “If you decide you want to discover the identity of the woman who ruined your life, send me word.”
Twenty-Six
Tristan
He had gone too far.
Brushing aside the guards as though they were little more than flies, I flung open the doors to the throne room and then bound them shut behind me with enough magic to ensure we wouldn’t be interrupted.
It was disgusting. An abomination.
The heels of my boots thudded against the marble as I strode toward the throne, the lamps flaring up as I passed, my power looking for an outlet as it filled the room.
He had to be mad – what else could drive him to make such a match?
My father was alone in the room, and he did not bother to look up at my approach, which infuriated me all the more. There was a table spread in front of the throne, laden with enough food to feed two dozen men; but of him, all I could see was the top of his head as he bent over a steaming platter.
“You great gluttonous pig.” The words were out before I could even think, the icy coldness of my voice at odds with the fire burning through my veins.
The hand holding a leg of chicken paused in its rise, but still, he did not look up. “Have you no shame?” I hissed. “All your people suffer food rations, and here you sit, shoveling all you can fit and more down your gullet.”
His gluttony was not what I was really angry about, but it would serve. I wasn’t ready to put words to the real reason, though it hung between us like the stench of a sewer.
My father set the chicken leg down. And then he raised his head.
He looked as weary as I had ever seen him, eyes drooped and shadowed, lines I had never noticed before marring his skin. “Tristan,” he said, leaning back on the throne and resting his elbows on the arms. “I have very, very few pleasures in life. I will not begrudge myself this one. Not as long as I am king.” He tilted his head slightly to one side. “Unless, of course, that is why you are here?”
Reaching up over his head, he lifted the crown from where it was casually hooked over the back of the throne. “Finally come to take it? Here.” He tossed the golden circlet over the table. “Have it.”
It landed with a loud clank against the stairs of the dais, bounced once, then rolled across the floor before coming to a stop at my feet. I stared at it, astonishment chasing away my anger and giving me a moment of clarity. A moment was all I needed to realize what had happened.
I looked up. “It’s frustrating, isn’t it, when your pawns don’t play by your rules?”
He stared silently back at me, but I needed no confirmation that he understood. I knew now what Lessa had done to provoke his wrath, the knowledge solid in my mind as only the truth was. “This is Lessa’s doing. She has her own endgame in mind.”
Very slowly, he nodded. “How long have you known?”
“That Ana?s was dead, or that it was my own sister who had stolen her place?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I knew it wasn’t Ana?s within moments of speaking with her. Lessa is not so fine an actress as she thinks.”
“Fine enough to fool the girl’s own father.”
I laughed, the sound harsh. “Angoulême never bothered to know Ana?s. He saw her only as he imagined her to be.”
“And now she is as he imagined her to be.”
I grimaced. “Even so.”
“And how did you know it was Lessa?” He sounded genuinely curious, as though this were all a game with no lives at stake.
“There are few with power enough to manage it,” I said. “Fewer still who could go so long without their absence noted. And only one capable of this level of duplicity.”
His eyes gleamed. “I was curious as to when you would figure out the half-bloods’ talent. Did they tell you directly, or did one of them slip up?”