“Because if you die, he will die,” she hissed in my ear. “And if he dies…” Her eyes rose skyward, but whatever she’d been about to say died on her lips. “We must get back inside.” Together we ran into the palace. It was empty.
“Where is everyone?” I asked as I followed Ana?s through the corridors.
“Helping.” The shortness of her tone made me realize how much she resented not being out there herself. “Everyone who can walk. Except for you and me, that is.”
I had never felt more useless in my life.
“You can go, now, if you want. I’m safe enough here alone.” Or maybe not. I could feel blood running down my shin.
“I’ll stay until I’m told otherwise.” Ana?s flung the doors to my room open and walked over to my closets. “Take off that dress – we can’t have you running around half-naked.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, pulling the ruined dress off my shoulders and laying it carefully across a chair. The gash on my knee was a nasty looking thing. Grabbing a handkerchief, I tried considering how best to bandage it. “Perhaps it can be mended.”
“As if I would ever wear it again.” She emerged with a gown of yellow brocade. “Here. You look pretty in this color.” She pursed her lips. “Why are you bleeding?”
“I cut myself when I fell.”
She walked over and examined the injury, and to my surprise, she began to tremble. “Why hasn’t it stopped bleeding yet? What’s wrong with you?”
I jerked away. “Because I’m not a troll, you idiot. I’m hardly going to bleed to death, but this needs to be stitched.”
“What?”
“Stitches. You can sew, can’t you?”
“You want me to sew your skin?” Her expression was one of incredulity.
“First boil this water.” I set a basin of water out, and it started bubbling within moments. I reluctantly set to cleaning the wound, my head dizzy from the pain. “Stitch,” I commanded, but the moment she pressed the needle against my flesh, I gasped in pain and jerked back. “Sorry,” I muttered. She made a second attempt with the same results. The third time I dug my nails into the upholstery and clenched my teeth so hard I thought they might crack.
“I’ll be quick,” she said, ignoring the tears flooding down my face.
Once we were through and I’d composed myself, I pulled the yellow gown on, balancing myself against the furniture when the room shook from another tremor. Ana?s flung open the curtains, went out onto the balcony, and looked up at the rocks. “If it were going to fall, I think it would have done so by now.”
She came back into the room and began placing fallen books back on the shelves. I helped her, and together we put the room back into some semblance of order. When we were finished, I sorted through smashed glassware for two unbroken cups and poured us both a heavy measure of wine.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting on one of the chairs and demurely crossing her ankles.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
“I’ve plenty of dresses, Cécile.” She took a mouthful of her wine, watching me. “Although since you stole Lessa from us, I’ve had to stand for my own fittings. It’s most bothersome.”
“I don’t mean about the dress.” And I had no intention of apologizing about Lessa.
“Oh.” I saw the dark red liquid in her cup slosh as though there’d been another tremor, but the room was still.
“You thought I’d leave today, given the chance. That was why you helped us, wasn’t it?”
“I always help Tristan when he asks something of me,” she said, composure restored.
“You’d have helped even if you’d known I wouldn’t leave?”
“I’ve never said no to him before.”
I set my glass down on the table untouched. “Enough with these vague answers. You thought I would leave and that’s why you helped. Yes or no?”
Her eyes darkened. “Yes.”
“Because if I were gone, he would spend more time with you?”
“Yes.”
“You love him?”
She drained her glass and slammed it down next to mine, cracking it. I felt power and magic roil through the room. She could snap my neck without moving. Toss me so hard against the wall my bones would shatter. But I wasn’t afraid. As much as she might hate me, she wouldn’t, couldn’t, break her word to Tristan.
“Yes.”
“Because if I were gone, then there’d be a chance he would be with you instead?”
“No.”
“You’re lying!”
Ana?s shook her head and the weight of power in the room fell away. “I cannot lie. If you’d asked me if I desired to be his wife, my answer would have been different. But it has been a long time since there was a chance of that happening.” Reaching for my untouched glass, she drained it. “For one, he has never felt that way about me. And two, I am flawed. Unfit. And there was nothing I could do to make up for it.”
I choked back a laugh of astonishment. “If you’re flawed, what does that make the rest of us? I might not like you very much, Ana?s, but you’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”