Gripping the door handle with magic, I swung it shut. “You sure this is the place for a discussion like this?”
“I thought we were all about taking unnecessary risks these days,” he snapped, then scrubbed a hand through his hair. “It’s as good a place as any, especially since our aunt is keeping the Duke occupied.”
I sat across from him, then immediately rose because I couldn’t stand to be still. “You’re certain that’s a wise plan?”
“We are.”
“We?”
“Me, Ana?s, and the twins.”
So they had been meeting without me. I’d suspected as much, but the confirmation hurt. “I would’ve liked to have been included in those conversations, especially given that I’m the one who knows the half-bloods. The one who’s been meeting with them the past year.”
Tristan opened a drawer in the table before him, examined the contents, then closed it again. “I thought you wanted to spend your time with Pénélope.”
“I did. I do. But…” I gave my head a sharp shake.
“But?”
“You’re followed all the time. How exactly do you plan to meet with them without getting caught?”
Putting his boots on the table, he leaned back. “I’m going to take Ana?s up on her plan. She’s already made arrangements to purchase the building next to the tavern through an agent – not that everyone doesn’t know it was her doing the buying. We’ll put in a tunnel between the two buildings so that I can go between without anyone noticing.”
“Tristan…”
“We’ve already had two rendezvous there, put on a bit of a show for those who followed us. Another few times, and they’ll start to lose interest. Then I can start meeting with the sympathizers. Once they know it’s me–”
“Tristan,” I interrupted. “It’s not the right time. It’s too soon. If you get caught now, we’re in no position to make a move and win.”
He stared at me. “Do you think I don’t know that? But what other damnable choice do I have?”
“I could–”
“You could what?” he snapped. “You’re the one forcing my hand on this, Marc. You’re the one who put us in this position.”
“I had no choice.”
“Yes, you did.” He was on his feet. “You chose her. Now the rest of us must make sacrifices to accommodate that choice.”
“It’s not like I’m dead,” I said, all the arguments I’d prepared for this moment abandoning me. “I’m still more than capable of leading. The half-bloods trust me. The humans trust me. Can you say the same?”
“No, I can’t. Which is exactly why we need to make the transition while you’re able to facilitate it. Because if we wait until the worst happens, it will go badly. It could set me back years. Stones and sky, it could end everything I’ve worked for.”
Everything we’d worked for. And I was being cut out of the decision-making completely. No longer reliable enough to lead, and how long until I was no longer reliable enough to be included at all? This had been as much my dream as his, and he was taking it away because he was angry with me for doing something without his blasted permission. A frantic sort of desperation took hold of my mind with the realization that I was about to become irrelevant. Extraneous. So I played my trump card. “Have you stopped to think that this is exactly what the Duke wants you to do?”
Tristan went deathly still, and for a heartbeat I thought I’d raised a point that he hadn’t considered. That I’d won my way back into the fold. As though such a thing were even possible.
“Yes,” he said. “Every time I see his smug face I think that we’re playing into his hand. That he’s going to take us down, and that thousands of lives will be lost along with our dream. And you’re–” he jabbed me in the chest “–the one who allowed it to happen.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Marc
It took over a month to arrange the meeting with Tips, half a dozen attempts forestalled by suspected leaks of information or concern that the Duke and his minions had infiltrated our ranks. Tips and I spent countless hours closeted away in the Dregs debating how best to proceed, and though he accepted I would not reveal the name of the revolution’s true leader until I was ready, the sense of anticipation the miner exuded was as agitating to me as ceaseless questioning would’ve been.
Because I did not want to give up my role as leader.
I knew better than anyone that it had been a false sense of power – that Tristan had always been in control, the plans all his and my task only to implement them. Yet there’d been much to that, because without me, there was no face to our endeavor, no assurance that we had the power to see it through. There would be no revolution. But once Tristan took control, he would so thoroughly fill my shoes that I couldn’t help but believe I’d be all but forgotten. By the half-bloods. By my friends. By history itself. Lost to the shadows in which I hid.
It hurt.
But the longer Tristan’s accusation sat upon my mind, the more I believed that I deserved it.
I’d known when I’d bonded Pénélope that I’d be putting my life at risk, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be risking the lives of anyone else, much less those of every half-blood in Trollus. But now every servant I passed in the hall caused a twinge of guilt to race through me, because I swore I saw accusation in their eyes. Betrayal. Fear. I’d stood before them and painted Tristan’s vision of the future – one in which they would be free of bondage. But more than I’d realized, they’d tied their hope of seeing that future to me. My power. My influence. My ambition. And I’d put Pénélope ahead of all of it. Ahead of them.
Yet I couldn’t bring myself to see that as a mistake.
Out of her father’s house, Pénélope thrived. The haunted expression that had lived on her face for so long was gone, replaced with a levity that made her more lovely than ever. I spent every spare second in her presence, filling the solar where she painted with hothouse flowers from Trianon that I imported at great expense for the pleasure of watching her smile as she inhaled their fragrance. She’d admire them for a heartbeat before promptly inviting students – low and high born – from the Artisans’ Guild to study the precious plants. My home was soon full of artists painting and sculpting and blowing glass into replicas that would be sold back into the world they imitated, but neither me nor my parents begrudged the traffic.
When she wasn’t working in her studio, I’d find her in the room she’d selected for the nursery, quietly painting a mural on one of the walls in brilliant, vibrant colors. From time to time, she’d pause, pressing one hand to her stomach, and I knew she was feeling the baby’s magic. That she loved our child. That she believed she’d be able to bring it into the world. That she’d survive its birth.
She was happy.
In some ways, that was the greatest gift of the bond. That it brought verity to our relationship, forcing us to be truthful about our emotions even if we were not always forthcoming with our thoughts. She was living life the way she’d always dreamed, and I’d given her that chance.