“The King is cruel.” I hated him as much, if not more, than everyone else in the city, and knowing this only increased my distaste. “But this is his doing, not Tristan’s. Tristan adores Ana?s, and nothing would make him willingly cause her grief.”
“And yet he does!” Pénélope paced back and forth in front of me. “Knowing what he does, he acts as though nothing has changed. Still monopolizes her time and steals kisses from her when he thinks no one is looking. And in doing so makes it seem as though that was all she was ever good for. His entertainment.”
Her anger all of a sudden made a great deal of sense, but I knew that its motivations were misguided. “Pénélope, he doesn’t know about the contract.”
She stopped in her tracks. “You can’t honestly believe that’s true?”
“I’m certain,” I said. “He has his secrets, but this isn’t one of them.”
“I don’t believe that. He collects information like others collect artwork, and this concerns him intimately. How could he not know?”
I shrugged. “He’s fifteen. Marriage is not a matter of much concern to him.” The truth was, it was something he wished to avoid at all costs. In the one conversation I’d had with him about it, he’d said, “Marc, I’m trying to instigate a rebellion to overthrow my own father. I’m a traitor guilty of treason on many levels. How cruel would it be to bond some girl’s life to mine when there is every chance I’ll lose my head in the coming years and take her to the grave along with me.” He’d shaken his head. “I’ll not court the notion, and if he brings it up, I’ll fight it to the bitter end.”
But Pénélope knew nothing about our plans, and it needed to stay that way.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at her,” she snapped. “Seems as though he thinks about it a great deal.”
“That is another matter entirely,” I said, silently cursing Tristan for his rare lack of discretion. “He might behave differently if he knew.”
“I wish I could believe that,” she said. “But empathy is not his strong suit.”
If only she knew.
She sat down heavily next to me. “Now that you know, are you going to tell him?”
It was a piece of information Tristan would want to know: that his father was secretly negotiating his future union was no small thing. Loyalty demanded that I tell him, but… “Ana?s hasn’t told him for reasons that are her own,” I said. “It’s her secret to tell, not ours.”
Pénélope nodded, but was quiet for a long time, the only sound that of the stagnant fountain and the larger roar of the waterfall. “There are times I think that Ana?s is the center of my world. That everything I am and everything that I’ve done has been to ensure her success. That without her, my life barely exists.”
Well, I knew that feeling. Far too well. From childhood, my life had been dedicated to Tristan with little room for anything else. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way,” I said, wishing all the hopes in my heart would disappear, because I knew they would amount to nothing. “The worst has happened, and yet here you sit, alive and well. Maybe now you can live your own life the way you want without fear of discovery. Your affliction no longer owns you.”
“What you speak of sounds like a dream,” she said, and though my hood blocked my peripheral view of her face, I knew she was watching me. “Marc, why do you hate my painting?”
Sitting still in the face of that question was impossible, so I rose and walked over to a glass tree, brushing the dust off the branches. Not a day went by when I was not reminded of my own affliction, every looking glass and averted gaze reminding me of my disjointed and disfigured appearance. It made me think of what a hypocrite I was to tell her not to let her affliction own her when mine very much owned me.
“I know what I look like,” I said, forcing the words from my lips. “But sometimes I like to imagine that maybe it isn’t as bad as I think. That maybe my eyes are cruel and deceptive critics, and that maybe others see a different reality.” I bit the insides of my cheeks. “But what you painted was what my eyes have always shown me, and it reminded me that such dreams are for children and fools. What you painted was reality.”
Her skirts rustled as she came to stand between me and the tree. Even with her cosmetics smeared and her hair in disarray, she was the most beautiful girl in Trollus. Reaching up with one hand, she pushed back the hood of my cloak, and I instantly turned my head so she would see me only in profile. But she caught my chin with her slender fingers and pulled it back.
“I painted you as you are, because I love you as you are,” she said. Before I could say a word, she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed me. And was gone so quickly that I wondered if I was a fool lost in a dream after all.
Chapter Three
Pénélope
I walked swiftly through the streets, one hand pressed to my lips, my heart racing, and my mind scarcely capable of comprehending what I’d just done.
I’d kissed Marc.
And in doing so, I’d broken one of the rules my father had forced me to live by: thou shalt not court intimacy. But what did my father’s rules even matter anymore? Marc’s words had rung through me and shattered enough of the walls containing my spirit that I was finally able to see that I might have a chance at life. My secret was out. The damage had been done. And though I hated the idea that I might profit from my sister’s downfall, I could not help but reach greedily for that which had been denied me for so long.
I loved Marc. I could scarce remember a time when I hadn’t loved him, for a kinder, more compassionate boy I’d never met. It wasn’t that I was blind and didn’t see how iron and the curse’s confinement had afflicted him – I did. But whereas others turned their faces and grimaced at the sight of him, I was always struck at how extraordinary it was that he who fate had treated with such cruelty managed to be so wholly good. Because good was a rare trait in our world.
I only wished I knew if he felt the same way about me.
And though I had no reason to believe that he did, I couldn’t help but let my imagination run wild with visions of a future with him. Bonding wouldn’t be possible, that much I knew. The crown possessed the only source of the magic required for the ceremony, which meant matches only occurred when the King approved them. Given he’d refused to allow Tristan to bond Ana?s after finding out my secret, he’d certainly refuse to allow his nephew to tie his life to mine. But that didn’t mean Marc and I couldn’t be together. Given who I was, no one would even bat an eye at the break in tradition.
My family did not bond.
Ana?s would have been the first in two thousand years. My father had pretended to agree to the concession in order to gain the wardship of Prince Roland, but I knew it was because the bond ensured their union could not be undone if I was discovered. But given the secrecy surrounding the union, and given the nature of my illness, no one would be surprised at all if I didn’t bond my husband.