Those who claim to be our leaders are no more than VILLAINS and OPPRESSORS more concerned with sating their own GREED and DESIRES than with the welfare of the citizens they claim to serve. Rise up and FIGHT those who would deny our right to LIBERTY and FREEDOM. Rise up and FIGHT those who would rather send us to our DEATHS than pay a FAIR WAGE. Rise up and FIGHT those who care more for PROFIT and POWER than DECENCY and EQUALITY. Rise up…
* * *
The piece of propaganda went on from there in the way of all polemic – words chosen to inspire and incite the populace against the King and the rest of the aristocracy. The populace which, at this very moment, were all staring at us with hate in their eyes. But I barely noticed, my gaze fixed on the page. On the ink. On the streaks marring the quality of the reproduction.
Lifting my head, I saw my father standing motionless, reading the piece. Then he reached into his pocket, extracting a stained packet of papers, eyes shifting between them.
“Bloody stones and sky, Marc,” Tristan snarled, staring at the sheet of paper in his hand. “How does this continue to find its way into Trollus?” Then his magic surged, his voice amplified over the crowd, mocking and cruel. “Rise up? Oh, by all means. Rise up against those who hold all that rock–” he gestured upward “–off your heads and see just how well that goes for you.” Then he stormed off through the crowd, Ana?s hot on his heels.
“I’m sorry, but I need to go after him,” Marc said.
“Of course,” I said, smoothing the page out in my hands, a dull roar filling my ears, the troll lights of those around me suddenly seeming too bright as understanding dawned upon me.
As he walked away, I couldn’t help but regard him in a whole new light. Because the page I held, and all those floating through Trollus to fuel the fires of revolution: they’d been printed on the exact same press as the twins’ comics, which my heart told me was no coincidence.
My friends were sympathizers.
And I’d just given proof of it to my father.
Chapter Eleven
Marc
The feel of her skin seemed burned into my fingertips as I followed my friends through the city, everything and everyone we passed an unfocused blur, my mind back in the throne room with Pénélope.
I hadn’t intended for that to happen.
Tristan and I had planned this ruse for weeks, but all thought of plots and politics had fallen away with her standing next to me. The spicy scent of her perfume had risen to fill my nose, her magic pressing up against mine right up to the point that it wasn’t, our powers melding together in a way I hadn’t known possible. A level of intimacy I’d dreamed of, yet never experienced until that moment.
But it had been nothing like touching her.
The feel of her rapid pulse beneath my fingertips had chased away all rational thought, the soft intake of her breath making my heart race. It had taken Tristan slamming the throne room door to bring me back to the moment, and I’d had no choice but to drop her hand or risk missing everything. Though in hindsight, missing Tristan’s performance might have been worth it.
“You’re an idiot,” I muttered to myself. Pénélope almost never attended the public audiences, so it was no coincidence that of all the places she could have sought me out, it was there. The Duke had probably sent her to distract me – or worse, to see how I reacted to Tristan’s proposal. It was all just an act on her part.
But it had felt real.
It had felt right.
I shook away my thoughts as we entered the path leading down to the flooded stadium, Tristan keeping up the act of being irritated until we were well out of sight. Then he abruptly picked Ana?s up off her feet and whirled her in a circle. “You are brilliant. That couldn’t have gone more perfectly.”
“Not even if your father had agreed to change the law?” I asked, coming up behind them.
“Wouldn’t that have been something?” Tristan replied, setting Ana?s back on her feet. “Fortunately, the Duke was there to argue against it. The last thing we need is our schemes bolstering my father’s popularity, which a change in this law would most certainly have done.”
This was an area where Tristan and I disagreed. Hundreds of half-blood lives would be saved by the King changing the laws. Yes, it would weaken momentum for the sympathizer cause, but that seemed a small price to pay. I counted every life saved, every small victory, as worthwhile, but for Tristan, it sometimes felt like it was all or nothing. I tried to temper him, to make him see those he was fighting for as individuals rather than pieces of a grand plan, but there were days I believed I’d have more luck getting water from a stone. “You might consider how much damage you’re doing to your own popularity.”
He shrugged as though he couldn’t care less what the half-bloods thought of him – what anyone thought of him – and said, “I’ll so offend to make offense a skill, redeeming time when men least think I will.”
“Be careful to whom you quote poetry written by a human, or people will start to question the veracity of your behavior.”
“Exactly,” he responded. “This is how it has to be, whether I like it or not. When I tear down the system of their oppression, they won’t care about my previous conduct.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I said nothing as his expression brightened, eyes having lighted upon the twins.
“Rise up!” Vincent shouted from where he stood on a floating platform with his sister.
“Your timing was perfect,” Tristan called back. “All those sheets of paper flying through the air the moment we stepped outside the gates – couldn’t have done it better myself.” He ran down the worn steps to the banks of the lake, then slid across the water on a sheet of magic until he stood between the twins, where their banter continued. I went to follow, then hesitated as I caught sight of Ana?s’s expression. “Is something wrong?”
“Pénélope.” She sat down heavily on an eroded step, staring blindly out over the water. “She heard me laying the trap for my father last night, and she thinks I don’t care about half-blood lives. That I sabotaged any chance of the law being changed. That I’m no better than our father.”
I sat next to her. “That was part of the plan. She can’t know that you giving your father that information was intended to bait him into riling the half-bloods into action – toward joining the revolution – because it would raise too many questions about your true loyalties.”