Hidden Huntress
Page 45

“Move.” My father shoved me aside, striding through the rubble. With the sleeve of his coat, he wiped the blood off her face, his expression surprisingly anxious. “Are you hurt, darling?”
She shook her head, tears turning pink as they ran down her cheeks. “I was so angry. So angry.” She pressed one hand to her forehead, and my heart ached watching her struggle to remember, her shoulders beginning to shake as the little pieces fit themselves together. “Tristan?” She choked out my name.
“He’s fine.” My father turned his head to look at me as though to prove to himself that I was unharmed. “He’s fine,” he repeated again, pulling her close. “Sylvie?”
“I was looking to redecorate anyway,” my aunt replied. Her words might have been blasé, but not even my mother missed the tremble in her voice.
She broke into racking sobs, and collapsed against my father’s chest. A shimmer of magic appeared around my aunt as she walled herself off from them. I should have left or done the same, but instead I sat down in the rubble and dust, watching my parents.
“I’m sorry, love. This was not your fault – it was mine.” He picked bits of broken rock out of her hair, tried fruitlessly to smooth away the dust, before resting his cheek against the top of her head. “I’m so sorry to have put you through this. I will make everything right.”
And he was sorry, I realized. He was always kind to my mother, but never before had I seen any proof that he might actually care for her. That he might even love her, and that maybe I wasn’t entirely the product of politics and social maneuvering. I held my breath, afraid that even that tiny motion might draw attention to me and disrupt what I was witnessing. I didn’t want it to end, because seeing proof that he cared for my mother meant there was a chance he cared something for me.
Metal clinked against metal. Turning my head, I saw that my ruined manacles had risen from the rubble and even now hovered in the air. Heat radiated from them, magic melting and reforming the metal until they were whole again. They settled on the ground, and when I looked up, he was staring at me, silver eyes unreadable. “The next time I see you, those had better be back on or I’ll put four more in their place.” Without another word, he took my mother’s arm and helped her through the debris and out of sight.
False, black, painful hope.
I rested my forehead on my knees, trying to shove away the old hurts behind their stone walls.
“Your Highness?” It was Élise’s voice, quiet and tentative. I didn’t move – it seemed like more effort than I could manage.
“Tristan?” A hand touched my shoulder.
Part of me wanted to shrug it off, to tell Élise, all the half-bloods, and everyone else in this cursed city to deal with their own problems. Except that what I’d told my aunt had been true – there was no one but me who could credibly oppose my father. And not just my father, but Angoulême.
I considered the clues my aunt had provided. The black-hearted Duke had control over my younger brother – had somehow managed to trick Roland into revealing his true name to him. Now that the idea was in my head, it seemed so obvious. He won’t do anything I don’t want him to. The words Angoulême had said to me at the auction repeated in my head, as well as those that had gone unspoken: He will do everything I tell him to do. If my father died tomorrow, Roland might be the one crowned king, but it would be Angoulême who ruled.
Whether I willed it or not, I had to play this game.
“What happened to anger Her Majesty?” Élise’s voice cut through my thoughts.
“To her? Nothing.” I lifted my head to meet her gaze. “That was my father’s rage you witnessed, so the question we need to ask is what angered him? Or who?”
“We?” She pulled her hand away from my shoulder. I didn’t say anything, seeing in her distant expression that she’d addressed the question not to me, but to herself. She was quiet for a long time before speaking. “I felt what you did. You can’t tell me what to do any longer.”
“Yes, I can,” I said. “Only now it’s your choice whether or not to listen. Will you?”
She didn’t hesitate. “I will.”
I expelled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Apparently her allegiance mattered more to me than I had realized. We’d known each other a long time, and there was a reason I’d chosen her and Zoé to watch over Cécile. They were loyal and brave to a fault.
As if reading my mind, she asked, “How is she?”
“Well enough, for now.” I stared at the holes in my wrists, the blood running freely. “But she made a promise to my father to do whatever was necessary to find Anushka, and we all got a little demonstration just now of how thin his patience is running.”
“Then she’s in danger?”
I nodded. “We’re all in danger. Cécile, you, me. Everyone. And I’d bet all the gold left in Forsaken Mountain that it’s going to get much worse before it gets better.”
“Will it get better?” Her head drooped, and a lock of dark hair fell across her face. “There are times when it all seems so hopeless.”
How well did I know that feeling.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s possible that no matter how hard we fight that we will still lose. But…” I stared out at the city through the broken walls of my home, the jagged pieces of marble rising up like some great monster’s teeth. “I do know that if we do nothing, our defeat won’t be just a possibility, it will be a certainty.”