No one moved, all eyes on something behind me.
Turning, I found the half-blood crouched in the water, eyes fearful. Confused. And, worst of all, hopeful.
“You’re a miner?” Tristan’s voice broke the silence.
The girl swallowed hard, then nodded. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“Your team missed quota?”
She cringed, clearly afraid of him. “Yes.”
The guild crest stitched onto her grey tunic was answer enough to his questions, but I knew that wasn’t why he was asking them. My heart, which had only just begun to slow, accelerated.
“Do you know why your team chose you?”
Silence.
“Because my magic was the weakest, Your Highness.”
Tristan’s jaw tightened, silver eyes fixed on the girl, though I knew it wasn’t really her he was seeing. The half-blood had been sentenced to die. If we left her here, that was inevitable, either by sluag or starvation. But what would bringing her back accomplish? There was no way to hide her for long, and once discovered, she’d only be sent back here again. Or worse. There was only one path to her salvation, and that was for Tristan to take the throne by force. And he was considering it.
Would this be his tipping point? I held my breath, praying to the human gods, the fates, the stars, that maybe this strange twist of circumstance would conspire to provide Pénélope with salvation.
Magic filled the cavern. More and more and more of it, the weight of it making my ears buzz and my skin break out in gooseflesh. An impossible amount of power – countless times what I could ever imagine possessing. Tears broke onto the half-blood’s face, and she whimpered, dropping to her knees in the water, her pleas unintelligible as she begged for him not to kill her.
But that wasn’t his intention. This was a test. A test to determine whether all his magic, all his power, would be enough to defeat his father. To take the crown.
Then it vanished in a rush that made my ears pop. Tristan turned his head away from the half-blood, from us, and exhaled. Not enough.
A blade flashed.
The half-blood’s head fell from her shoulders.
Ana?s stood behind the corpse, face blank and unreadable.
“Why?” Tristan demanded. “What gave you the right to do that?”
“Necessity,” she said. “Because none of the rest of you would give her the mercy she deserved.” Bending, she wiped her blade on the half-blood’s tunic before sliding it back in its sheath. “And because to do otherwise would’ve put everything we’re fighting for at risk. The very fact we rescued her from the sluag was bad enough – how much worse if we’d brought her back to Trollus? She’d be discovered eventually, and even if she fought, they’d torture the information of how she escaped the labyrinth out of her. It can’t be more damning than you rescuing her from your family’s own laws.”
“She could’ve given her word not to tell.” Tristan’s shoulders were shaking with anger, but it wasn’t, I thought, for Ana?s.
“And been sent right back here for keeping her silence.” Ana?s walked over to a dead sluag and jerked the spear out of its side. “This, at least, was quick. There is much to be said for that.”
“Stones and sky, but you’re cold,” Tristan said, shaking his head.
“Only you can end all of this, Tristan,” she said. “You’re the one capable of ending your father’s rule and putting a stop to this practice. And every life lost while you delay doing so is on you.”
“You think I’m wrong to wait?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’m doing this to save lives, Ana?s.”
“I know,” she said, reaching down to close the lids of the dead girl. “But not in time to help her.”
No one spoke, and though it was a half-blood lying at my feet, all I saw was Pénélope. No matter what Ana?s said, the half-blood had died because of what she knew. Because she was weak, and that made her a liability.
Pénélope knew more.
Staring up at the sunbeam shining through the gap in the rockfall, I knew I couldn’t tell Tristan that I’d brought Pénélope into the fold. That I couldn’t tell Ana?s. And in the face of this, I certainly couldn’t ask them for help.
Pénélope and I were on our own.
Chapter Sixteen
Marc
The following three weeks were some of the best and worst of my life.
Trying to balance all the levels of deception made me feel like I was walking on a razor’s edge over a pit of fire, every conversation making me break out in sweat lest I reveal the wrong thing to the wrong person and doom myself, Pénélope, or the revolution in a moment of indiscretion. No one received the whole truth from me: not Tristan, not my parents, not even Pénélope, who insisted I keep her in the dark about the details of our plots in case her father should come to suspect and put her to the question. What I provided her with instead were carefully selected bits of information. Dozens of clues, which in aggregate bordered on proof that I was up to something, but nothing so damning that Angoulême could take them to the King as evidence of treason. Every time, I worried that I wasn’t giving her enough. Or worse, that I was giving her too much.
But it was worth it. Worth every anxious moment and sleepless night, because it meant another day of keeping her safe.
Spending time with Pénélope was no small challenge given that the depth of our relationship had to remain hidden from everyone. The lone exception was her father, who only smiled and turned a blind eye when she sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night, then back in before dawn, allowing her locks on her door so that neither Ana?s nor the servants could walk into her room and find it empty. He was our enemy, but in this, he was also our co-conspirator, and that fact sat heavily upon me as I deceived every one of my friends and allies.
“I’m being followed everywhere I go,” I muttered, kissing Pénélope’s shoulder as I fastened the last button on her dress before passing her the hooded cloak she wore to and from our sojourns. “It makes it hard to do anything without eyes watching me. Including spending time with you.” Then a flash of metal falling to her feet caught my attention, and I reached down to pick up a tiny steel knife. “What’s this for?”
Her jaw tightened as she took it back, careful to touch only the leather-wrapped handle. “It makes me feel better to have it around my father.”
I carried my fair share of weapons, and had a lifetime of training in how to use them. Most full-blooded trolls carried a steel blade or two – not because it was ever our first line of defense, but because they were the only effective weapons we had against the sluag. But Pénélope – for good reason – avoided steel at all costs.
“Pénélope…” I hesitated. “Unless you got lucky, a blade this small isn’t going to do more than anger your father. What’s more, he’s always shielded.”