He pulled his hand away from mine, his pain making my teeth ache. I shoved my fingers through the hole, my fingernails scratching against the stone, but my manacle caught on the edge, holding me back. He’d drawn away, pulled in on himself. And as I rested my cheek against the wall, very faintly, I could hear him weeping. In a moment, he’d lost nearly all his living family, the remaining two the perpetrators.
They loved you, I mouthed against the wall, wishing he could hear, though the knowing might make it worse.
“It’s my fault.” His voice hitched. “Because of me, the gates were left unguarded. They might not have been able to stop him, but they would have slowed him down. Given my father enough time to get to her.” A sob tore from his throat. “He knew. That’s why he was running to find her, and I stopped him. Stole those precious seconds that might have made a difference.”
And I’d sent the Queen and the Duchesse running straight toward Roland. If I hadn’t told them Tristan was in the palace, perhaps they would’ve stayed hidden in the garden maze for those precious seconds. We were both complicit. But we weren’t at fault, and neither was Roland.
I clawed my nails against the stone, snagging and tearing them in an attempt to get his attention. “Stop.” Tristan pressed my hand against the ground. I retracted my arm, then turned my hand over and slid it back through, catching hold of him. Flattening his palm, I traced the letters. L.I.S.T.E.N.
Slowly, but methodically, I spelled out my message: I was there. Spoke to Sylvie before she died.
His hand stiffened at the mention of his aunt, but I continued. Angoulême made him do it. Roland wept as he struck the blow.
Silence.
I saw red even in the darkness, and Tristan said, “I’m going to rip his heart out for this. I’m going to make him pay.”
I agreed with the sentiment, but how we would accomplish the act was another matter. Roland might not wish his brother dead, might hate the Duke as much as we did, but he was wholly under Angoulême’s control, which made him an unreliable ally, to say the least. Even if he did somehow help us kill the troll who held his leash, the world would be no better off with us having our revenge. He’d be violent and uncontrollable, and without his magic, there would be no way for Tristan to stop him. Try as I might, I could not see a way through.
I squeezed Tristan’s fingers tight, refusing to give up, and a shiver ran through my body. It was cold, and growing colder by the second.
She was coming.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Tristan
The walls crackled as the moisture coating them crystallized into frost, the chill biting with every inhalation, my skin burning wherever it was exposed. But even without Winter’s familiar calling card, I would’ve known it was her. The magic she’d taken prickled with familiarity, and I felt almost – almost – as though it would do my bidding if I bent my will to it.
“Be silent, no matter what you hear,” I whispered, then I got to my feet, even as I heard a familiar clink of metal coming from Cécile’s cell.
The heavy door tore from its hinges, flipping end over end until it smashed against the end of the hallway with a reverberating crash. “I see you’ve been practicing,” I said, inclining my head to the Queen of Winter and praying Marc had bargained well.
She scowled, face fixed in the visage she’d worn when last I’d seen her. Magic slammed me against the rear of my cell, and I forced a groan into a laugh. “Careful now, I’m feeling fragile, and it would do neither of us any good if you were to accidentally kill me.”
“What makes you believe it would be an accident?” she hissed, grabbing me by the shirt and jerking me forward until we were separated by mere inches.
“Because you wouldn’t have risked coming here if there were anyone else capable of releasing you from this burden,” I said, prying her fingers loose one by one. Physically, I was stronger than her, and that was a very good thing.
Her lip curled. “Take it back. You may consider it a gift.”
I straightened my shirt. “No.”
Magic flexed in the air, and I held up one hand to stall her. “Not as a gift, but I will take it back in exchange for something from you.”
“You have no ground to stand on,” she said, lifting her chin. “You either take it or I kill you.”
“You give me what I want,” I said, “Or you remain bound to this world as surely as any troll.” It had been one of the gambles I’d made stepping outside of the safety of the castle walls. One, that couched in her offer of support was the desire to see all my kind dead before my uncle could put us to use. Two, that if I eliminated grounds for an alliance – which she intended to use as a guise for killing off as many trolls as possible – she’d take my magic to do the job herself. Three, that in taking my magic into herself, which was as corrupted by iron as was my flesh, she’d be bound to this world. Corporeal, and vulnerable.
She hesitated, and I added, “Time flows different in Arcadia than it does here. How long have you been gone from your throne? Do your people still owe you their allegiance, or have you been replaced? Have you lost the war?”
Silence. “What is it that you want?”