Or risk your greatest prize.”
The foretellings were always riddles. Puzzles given to my aunt by the fey in Arcadia through the strange connection she had with the other side. Most in Trollus believed they were intended to protect our people. To allow us to endure.
But this one was personal.
It was a warning to my uncle not to help Pénélope. Not to help me.
My fingers gripped the edge of the fountain tight enough that I felt the stone begin to crumble, a piece falling off to splash into the liquid below.
A bond that breaks…
I turned, and stared into the depths of the pool. A magic greater than anything in Trollus. A magic that could not be undone by anything other than death.
A sure way to save Pénélope, if I had the nerve to take that great a step.
“Is it over?” the King asked my aunt.
“Yes, yes,” Aunt Sylvie grumbled. “What did they say this time?”
They weren’t paying the slightest attention to me, and without stopping to consider the consequences, I created a vial of magic and dunked it into the fountain, stoppering the top and tucking it into my pocket. Some of the liquid had soaked into my glove, and it glowed faintly blue and entirely damning. I jerked my gloves off before anyone noticed.
My uncle turned on me, his face grim. He knows, my mind screamed. He knows you took it.
Yet all he said was: “Go fetch your father for me. We’ll finish this conversation later.”
Except the conversation was already over, because I knew what his answer would be. It was time to take matters into my own hands, no matter what the cost.
Chapter Seventeen
Pénélope
Closing the windows to my room, I pulled off my cloak and shoved it in my closet, along with my little knife. My dress I left on the floor to be laundered, undergarments following suit as I drifted toward the bath, smoothing my hands over my hips as I eyed myself in the mirror. I felt well. Strong. My skin, unmarred by injury, possessed an almost ethereal glow that hadn’t graced me since childhood, not since womanhood had subjected me to a monthly drain on my magic, leaving me exhausted for days and barely recovered by the time the moon cycled around again.
I frowned, my hand hesitating on the tap as I counted back the days. Too many. Too long.
The realization struck me like icy water to the face, and I slowly sank to the tiled floor of the bathing chamber. I stared at my stomach – focusing in on myself in a way I never had before – and faintly, I felt the press of another troll’s magic. “No,” I whispered, even as my heart swelled with unexpected happiness, logic and emotion painfully, horribly, at odds with each other.
I was pregnant.
* * *
My father must not find out. If I knew nothing else, I knew that. So for the following five days, I kept to my rooms, feigning illness from my cycle. With magic, I inflicted a small cut on my arm and used the blood to stain my undergarments and the sheets, the bleeding from the injury doing much to make me wan and tired. It terrified me to do it, for I feared the impact on the child. But the fact of the matter was, I feared discovery more.
By necessity, I had to keep the news from Marc for the duration of my internment, my stomach twisted into painful knots as I hid beneath the covers wondering how he would react. How he would feel. What he would say. And above all else, what we would do.
Part of me was deeply afraid, for no troll afflicted with my condition had ever survived pregnancy: miscarriage or childbirth had caused every last one of them to bleed to death, magic incapable of healing the damage. Another part of me was deliriously happy at the idea of having Marc’s child, it fulfilling one of the many secret wishes I’d daydreamed about for longer than I cared to admit. But dreams were not reality, and I knew that I couldn’t keep my pregnancy a secret forever. The truth always outs…
“Get dressed.”
I jumped, half in the process of removing my nightclothes, turning to find Lessa standing behind me. Her face was coated with a bemused expression that put me immediately on edge. Tonight was a full moon and there was a bonding ceremony to which I was invited. I’d intended to use the pretense of needing something from the markets in order to visit Marc and tell him the news, but it appeared that would have to wait.
“Why?” It was a struggle to keep from wrapping my arms around my body. Not to protect myself from the other girl, but to protect that which lay within from her venom.
“Your father wishes to speak with you.”
As always, my skin prickled with trepidation at an impending conversation with my father, and I half wondered if it ever would not. If I’d ever grow comfortable enough with deception to approach his interrogation without my heart pitter-pattering like that of a mouse who’s scented a cat. Or whether now that I had more to lose and more to protect, it would only grow worse.
But there was no avoiding it.
Pulling the gown on, I followed Lessa into the hallway and down to the parlor. The house was eerily quiet. Not as though it were empty, but as though everyone hid behind closed doors, holding their breath while they waited for disaster to strike.
Get control of yourself, I silently berated my overactive imagination. He has no more reason than he did yesterday to suspect. Yet all the logic and reason in the world did nothing to quell my growing urge to run. To hide.
To fight.
The air in the parlor was thick with unspent magic, and I jumped at the click as Lessa shut the door behind us, going to stand next to the wall, her arms crossed. My father stood with his back to me, elbows resting on the mantel over a fireplace that hadn’t seen flame in nearly five hundred years. Despite it being yet early, a full tumbler of amber liquid sat in easy reach.
“You wished to see me, Father?” I asked, needing to break the silence.
He snorted, the noise full of contempt. “Is there something you wished to tell me, Pénélope?”
Wished to, no. I opened my lips to spill useless information, but before I could say a word, he turned. “Let me rephrase: do you possess knowledge that I might wish to be made aware of?”
My hands and feet turned to ice, and I took an involuntary step back. No. Please no. Too late I realized that the knife I always carried with me to these meetings was still hidden in my room. Not that it mattered. There was no way I could stomach the idea of using it on myself now.
“Something,” he continued, “that might have resulted from your little trysts?”
Run.
I flung myself at the door, but I barely made it a step before magic snared me. I rotated in the air, helpless to do anything as my father approached, a knife – my knife – appearing in his gloved hand. He stopped, eyes on my stomach, then his lip curled back with disgust. “On anyone with power, it wouldn’t be noticeable. Yet despite this… child existing only a matter of weeks, its magic shines through yours.”