“My most sincere apologies.”
She slid her arms around my neck and leaned in for a kiss, but I turned my face at the last minute so that her lips landed on my cheek. For me, this was a ruse – a valid reason to be skulking around the Dregs in the middle of the night; but for Ana?s, it was something more. Nudging the door open with my foot, I swung her across the threshold, her giggles filling the street until I shut the door behind her.
She clung to me even after I’d dropped my hands from her sides, dangling from my neck like a child. “Let go, Ana?s.”
“What if I don’t want to?” she purred into my ear, holding on easily without assistance. I walked from room to room with her feet banging against my knees, ensuring we were alone in the house, setting barriers against eavesdroppers and whispering to my magic to set off firecrackers if anyone came in.
I looked down at Ana?s. “Please?”
She made a pouty face, but let go of my neck. It was one of the things Angoulême never seemed to understand about his daughter. No one made Ana?s do anything. All you could do was ask and pray she was in an amicable mood. I didn’t thank her though. That would imply she’d done me a favor, and I already owed her enough as it was.
“You’re in a foul temper,” she said, watching as I tossed my hat across the room before flopping face down on the bed.
“Tired,” I mumbled into the dank-smelling pillow. “And I missed dinner.”
“New little wife keep you up all night?”
I glared at her with one eye. “Don’t start.”
She shrugged. “There’s already a rumor going about the city that your first-born son will reach out and shatter the barrier with his little fist.”
“They may have a long wait.”
“That isn’t what I heard,” Ana?s said, examining the contents of a basket sitting on the floor. “I heard two of my maids talking. They heard from the kitchen staff, who heard from one of the groundsmen, who heard from one of your wife’s maids that you are a vile wheezing hog. The lady Cécile reckons she’s never been so mistreated in all her life, and she’ll never read another romance novel because the knowledge of what she’s missing breaks her heart.” She plucked a pastry from the basket. “éclair?”
I munched on one of the pastries and counted the cracks in the ceiling. Well played, Cécile, I thought, if perhaps a tad overacted.
“I assume she’s lying?” Ana?s nibbled on an éclair, expression mild, but I wasn’t fooled.
“Assume what you want – it’s none of your business.”
She laughed. “My business or not, I told my father what I’d heard and added in a bit about how you were never ever cruel to me. Given that he finally thought he’d found a way to discover where your loyalties truly lie, he was furious. He was certain you’d be sweet to her in private.”
“Of course,” I murmured. Several months ago, Angoulême ordered his daughter to seduce me and spy on my activities to see if she could discover any sympathetic leanings. Ana?s had promptly told me everything. It was she who concocted the plan to pretend to do her father’s bidding, but actually feed him useless information. It had also been her idea, although I was against it, to continue the ruse of her seduction so that I might have a way to meet with the revolutionaries. I hadn’t wanted to damage her reputation, but in the end, her argument had won out. “What does my reputation matter?” she’d said. “I’m afflicted in the worst sort of way, and everyone knows it. There isn’t a man in Trollus who’d risk the odds, even if my reputation were pure as the driven snow.”
And to my shame, I’d had to agree with her.
“How is Roland?” I asked. Ana?s hesitated and my heart sunk. “Worse?”
“Yes and no. His rages in themselves are no worse, but he’s stronger. When he learned you’d bonded the human, he quite lost himself. The servants couldn’t control him and I had to step in.”
“He’s eight, how strong could he be?”
“He’s your brother, a Montigny descended from the most powerful trolls to ever walk this earth. Another few years and only a handful of us will have the power to hold him. By the time he’s grown, he’ll be nearly unstoppable. My father believes he can control him, but he’s a fool. The boy’s insane, Tristan.” She coiled a finger around a lock of hair and nibbled on the ends – a nervous habit she’d never been able to break. “I know it’s a hard thing to consider, but…”
“No.”
She threw up her hands. “Tristan, not only is he a danger to everyone around him, as long as he lives, he also puts everything you’ve worked for at risk. A steel knife in the heart would solve all our problems.”
“No!”
The air in the room grew hot, but Ana?s didn’t flinch. “You’re being a sentimental fool, which is something a king cannot afford to be.”