My sister shifted uneasily where she sat on the edge of the bed, and warm magic brushed against me. But it did nothing to alleviate the chill permeating my skin. Or to fill the hollowness in my core.
As though sensing my thoughts, Ana?s lay next to me, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close, her chin resting on the top of my head. Just as I had done to her when we were young, in those days before we cared about power and politics, when our greatest fear was being confined to our rooms for some childish misstep. Back when my presence alone gave her comfort, because I was her older sister. Back when I protected her from our father’s wrath by taking the blame, because I knew he would not strike me.
How things had changed.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered. “Home is… different, without you there.”
Her words struck a painful chord in my heart. Ana?s needed my protection no longer, but it occurred to me that I’d left her in a home full of villains. That every waking minute she needed to be on her guard, and that with me gone, she would have no one who demanded nothing of her in exchange for their love. She’d be alone.
I’d told Marc once that Ana?s was the center of my world. That everything I was and everything that I’d done had been to ensure her success. I’d wrongly believed that success to her was bonding Tristan and becoming Queen and now, too late, I realized how much I’d underestimated my sister. That to her, success was changing our world. Overthrowing the villains like our father and the King. Fighting for the freedom of those who hadn’t the power to fight for it themselves. I was desperately proud of her, but also desperately afraid, because I knew now what our father was capable of.
And I needed to do what I could to keep my little sister safe.
I rolled so that I was facing her, the small motion exhausting. “I know you love Tristan, Ana?s. I know you’re loyal to him, and not to Father.”
Ana?s said nothing.
“And if I know,” I said, “then so does Father. And if you aren’t careful, he’ll find a way to use it against you.”
“Penny–”
I raised a finger to my lips to cut her off. “All of what has happened in these past months, I thought it was defiance on my part, but I was only dancing to his tune. We all were. This was his plan.”
She was listening now.
“Not my death.” I dragged in a few breaths. “Marc’s death. Killing me was just a means to an end. A sacrifice he was willing to make in his quest to take down Tristan and control Trollus.”
Silence. Then she said, “It will take more than losing Marc to bring down Tristan.”
“Will it?” I met her gaze, challenging her, and Ana?s looked away first.
“He played us all like a game of Guerre,” I said. “Because he knows better than we do ourselves what we want. How we will react. What we fear. Who we love.”
It seemed so obvious now, looking back. My father had known how Marc had felt about me long before I had. But more than that, he’d known that Marc would risk everything to save my life. I understood now why my father believed Marc the sympathizer leader when all his contemporaries believed him mad for thinking it. They saw a shy quiet boy who kept to the shadows, but my father saw a young man equally possessed of bravery and selflessness. And he’d exploited those attributes.
He’d seen through me just as clearly, but it had been my weaknesses he’d used to his advantage.
“I wanted a chance at life. A chance for love. A chance to believe that my affliction did not define me.” A fat tear rolled down my cheek, salty where it came to rest on my lips. “And Father manipulated those small wishes to achieve the worst possible of ends. Don’t for a moment think that he won’t do the same to you if it helps him get what he wants.”
“He can’t touch me,” she said, but there was a faint quiver in her voice. “My magic is more powerful than his.”
I gripped her hand, pushing as much urgency as I could into my voice. “What in all of this has he accomplished with magic?”
That was very nearly the worst of it – my father was guilty of everything, and yet guilty of nothing. As he’d so eloquently said himself, I’d done the work for him. We all had.
My sister went very still. “I’ll kill him.”
“Killing him will change nothing.” It was getting harder to find the strength to speak, but the last thing I wanted was her going after our father. He’d be prepared for that, and while my sister had sheer power, our father had a lifetime of experience, never mind the consequences she’d face for breaking the law if she succeeded. “It certainly won’t bring me back from the dead.”
A sob tore violently from her throat. “You’re not going to die. You’ll get well, you always do.”
“Not this time.” I’d come to terms with that already. The bleeding wasn’t stopping. It hadn’t even slowed. And there was a limit to what my body could endure.
“You don’t know that.” In a flurry of motion, she sat upright. “You need to fight, Penny. Fight to live and fight against Father’s manipulations. Because if you die, he wins.”
That was certainly what he thought. But he was wrong if he believed the inevitability of my death had rendered me powerless. I would keep fighting until the end, and when the end came, I’d give my father’s enemies the one thing they needed most to keep fighting. And they would win – I had faith in that. “Ana?s, there’s something I need you to do for me.”
“Anything.”
“I need you to bring Tristan to see me.”
* * *
It felt like days, though it was probably a matter of hours, when the bed shifted beneath me, the motion pulling me from my fugue, and I opened my eyes to see Ana?s sitting next to me. “He’s here,” she said. “Do you want me to stay with you?”
“No.”
Her lips parted as though she wished to argue, then she nodded and left the room. A moment later, Tristan appeared, invisible fingers shutting the door behind him. But there he remained, gaze shifting around the room, taking in everything with the exception of me.
“Do you intend to make me shout?” I whispered.
He glared at the carpet, then gave an aggrieved sigh and crossed the room to stand at the foot of the bed. “What do you want, Pénélope?”
The words were sharp, cruel, as was his tone. Yet I knew better than to take issue with them, because at their heart resided a grief nearly of the magnitude of my own. Not long ago, I wouldn’t have seen that. Would only have seen the cold unyielding surface. The flawlessness. The power. Now I knew differently, and instead I saw a boy with a vision for a better world, who’d buried everything good and decent about himself away in order to protect it. Who, despite being surrounded by others nearly every waking minute, felt very much alone.
“I want to save Marc’s life.”
He snorted and gave the bedpost a soft kick. “A bit late for that now, don’t you think? If only such selflessness had made an appearance earlier, none of us would be in this position.”
“I’m interested in your help, not your criticism.”