Dragging my eyes away from the carpet, I pushed back my hood. “It was the only way to save her, Your Majesty.” I didn’t bother mentioning that his unwillingness to help Pénélope had forced my hand, because in truth, it had only sped along my decision.
“To save her?” One of the King’s eyebrows rose. “It seems to me that the individual she most needed protection from was you.”
“Pardon?” The word slipped from my lips, not because I didn’t understand him, but because… because…
“With caution and a bit of luck, the girl might have lived to an old age but not for the pair of you falling between the sheets.” He tapped his chin with his index finger. “Magic is curiously unreliable as a safeguard in such situations, and I speak from experience.”
Lessa. It was the first time I’d heard of him acknowledging her parentage, but my thoughts were too scattered to focus on that now.
“Regardless, the fact remains that it was those activities – of which you were an integral part – that ensured her demise. So tell me: how was stealing from me and breaking my laws saving her life?”
My mouth opened and shut, my teeth clicking together. Nothing he said was untrue, and yet it twisted everything. My throat burned with bile as I struggled with what to say, before finally choking out, “The threat to her life was more imminent than that, Your Majesty. You see, her father…”
“The Duke. Yes, you mentioned his threats before.”
His voice dripped with sarcasm, but I ignored it and continued. “He found out that she was pregnant. He was angry, and he set Lessa to kill Pénélope. She managed to escape, but I knew… This was the only way.”
The King stared at me, unblinking. “So you stole from me and broke my laws not to save Lady Pénélope, but to provide her with some extra weeks or months of life, at the likely cost of your own.”
“Yes.” And I’d do it all over again.
“Because you believed her father, the Duke d’Angoulême, intended to kill her or have her killed should she remain in his household?”
“Yes.”
Opening a drawer, the King extracted a card, sliding it across the desk toward me. “It’s been some time since I was invited to an engagement at the Angoulême manor, but I suppose there was no helping it given you are my nephew. Rather interestingly, it arrived prior to you and Pénélope returning from your little sojourn in the labyrinth.”
I stared at the thick paper embossed with red and gold. It was an invitation to a bonding celebration at the Angoulême manor. My bonding celebration. And I knew in an instant that I’d misinterpreted my aunt’s foretelling. It hadn’t been a warning against me – it had been a warning for me. A warning about the Duke’s intentions.
“You didn’t save her from anything, because her life was never truly in jeopardy,” the King said, and the invitation burst into flame. “You, nephew, have been played.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Pénélope
I woke with a start in the blackness, the feel of the sheets and the scent of the air disorienting until I created a light, and Marc’s bedroom materialized around me. But the familiarity of his belongings brought me no comfort, a deep sense of unease weighing upon my mind, implacable and unshakeable, because it was not my own.
“Marc,” I murmured, then reached for the silken nightdress that lay next to the bed, the fabric cool as I pulled it over my head. He was not here, nor in the home, but it felt like I could walk toward him with the unerring precision of one holding a compass finding their way north. Though unnecessary, because wherever he had been, he was coming in this direction.
Not wherever, I thought, glancing at the clock. At the palace. The King had asked to see him first thing about his punishment, and while I was certain no physical harm had been delivered upon him, something else had. A million thoughts raced through my mind about what possible penance His Majesty might have demanded. That our bonding would be undone, though I knew this was impossible. That I’d be returned to my father, and that the most terrifying and glorious night of my life would be reduced to a reminder of what I’d lost, for however long my father allowed me to live.
“It cannot be undone,” I told myself, gulping down a glass of water to wash away the sourness rising up my throat. “They can’t take him away from you.”
But on the heels of my own reassurances came the thought that Marc was coming to regret his decision. That his unease was not from the King’s punishment, but rather the costs he must bear for bonding me against the will of everyone. No one was pleased about this union: not his parents, nor my sister, and most especially not Tristan. No one could break our bond and take him away from me, but having to live with his resentment, growing day after day, would be worse.
“Stop it,” I whispered. “Quit imagining trouble when you have more than enough as it is.”
Except there was an insidiousness to having another’s feelings in one’s head, knowing that they were real but unknowing of the cause, and try as I might, I couldn’t cage the thoughts away.
A knock sounded at the door, and I jumped. “Yes?”
A servant appeared, a gown I didn’t recognize draped across her arms. “Good morning, my lady,” she said. “Lord Marc asked that you not be disturbed, but you have a visitor waiting for you downstairs.”
“A visitor?” It could be the twins or my sister, but my skin prickled with the sense that it was someone else.
“Yes, my lady.” The woman’s jaw tightened. “His Grace, the Duke d’Angoulême.”
My father.
* * *
I forced food down my throat while the servants laced me into the gown and fixed my hair, but my stomach was flipping with such regularity that I wondered if doing so had been a mistake. The last thing I needed was to vomit on my father’s shoes.
My heels silent on the carpets, I followed the sense of power down to the parlor. Marc’s mother sat stiffly on a sofa, her husband hovering next to her arm. Across from them, and looking entirely at ease, sat my father, cane polished to a high shine and resting across his knees.
“Pénélope,” he exclaimed at the sight of me, leaping to his feet and crossing the room. Marc’s mother rose with equal speed, her hands balling into fists. There was no chance my father hadn’t noticed, but he showed no reaction as he kissed both my cheeks. “Already we feel your absence at home, darling.”
My heart was fluttering like a caged bird, my skin crawling where he gripped my arms. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I would’ve given you time to settle in, but I found that I couldn’t bear the idea of missing your reaction to the delivery of your trousseau.”
“My trousseau.”
“Yes, yes!” He dropped my arms and gestured to the corner of the room where at least half a dozen polished chests sat in orderly rows. “I’ve had your art supplies brought over as well; they are in the room that the Comte has kindly allocated for your use.”
“Art supplies,” I repeated, staring at the chests, knowing I sounded like a fool repeating his words, but he might as well have been speaking a foreign language for how much sense they made to me.