Stolen Songbird
Page 10

A second ball of light appeared next to us. “I’ll leave this with you, my lady. Though I’m not certain how long it will last,” she added, cheeks flushing faintly. “My magic has a tendency to wander. I’m sure His Highness will think of a better solution – he is exceedingly clever about such things.”
Alone, with only Zoé’s diminishing ball of light for company, I wandered through Tristan’s cluttered room. Not an inch of wall space had been left bare, and I examined the assorted collection of artwork, tapestries, and maps in an attempt to find insight into the mind of the creature I’d just married. There were landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes I recognized as Trianon. He had a great many paintings of men on horseback galloping after foxes, boars, and deer. Unlike the other rooms in the palace, no prevailing theme dominated, only a wild and random representation of the world outside of Trollus. The normal, unmagical, Isle of Light.
A mantle took up one wall, and I saw with amusement that he’d nailed a painting of burning logs in the empty space where a real fire ought to have been. A small sitting area surrounded the fireplace, reminding me for a moment of home. But only briefly: this room was cold, unfamiliar, and empty, which our farmhouse never was. I settled down in one of the chairs, pulling my cold feet underneath me, and began to sort through the large stack of books on the table. They were novels: adventures of pirates on the high seas, tales of knights slaying dragons, mysteries set in the underworld of cities on the continent.
The door opened and I leapt to my feet.
“I see you’ve made yourself comfortable,” Tristan said, tossing his hat on the desk.
“No thanks to you, sir,” I replied, wrapping my arms tightly around my body. “You left me locked in a closet.”
“And you came to no harm, which leads me to believe the closet might be a good place to keep you in the future.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I gasped.
“I’ve warned you about expectations before, Cécile,” he said, pulling off his coat and draping it on the back of a chair. “Be gone!” He swiped at Zoé’s fading ball of light and it winked out.
“I heard everything you two said! I know your plans for me.” I watched him cross the room towards me, not realizing I was backing up until my shoulders hit the wall. He kept walking until we were only inches apart. The top of my head barely came up to his chest and the outlines of muscle were visible through his shirt.
“Good,” he said. “Saves me from having to explain what is expected of you.”
Terror flooded me. If I screamed, no one would come to my rescue. He could do whatever he wanted to me and no one would question him. Every instinct told me to grovel and beg for mercy beneath the weight of his determination, but my knees didn’t buckle. I met his piercing metallic gaze, knowing that a defiant expression would mean little when he felt my terror as though it were his own.
His face twisted in disgust that matched the emotion pounding in the back of my head. “You can take the bed,” he said, spinning away from me. “I’ll have none of this.”
Crossing the room, he threw himself down on a chaise and pulled off his boots. I stood in silence as he sorted through a stack of books, opened one and stared at the first page longer than it would take to read. With a sigh, he tossed it back on the pile, and without looking at me even once, said, “Goodnight.” His troll-light winked out, leaving me standing in absolute blackness.
One hand pressed against the wall, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness so I might make my way over to the bed, but it never happened. Swallowing hard, I rubbed my hands briskly over my arms, trying to ward off tears as much as the cold. He’ll hear you if you cry, I thought. Bad enough that he knows what I feel without giving him the satisfaction of hearing me break. But it was hard not to. Tristan’s melancholy magnified my own, and my weary and aching shoulders slumped beneath the burden.
This was not how my marriage was supposed to happen. A drop of blood rose on my lip as I bit it in an attempt to force away visions of what might have been. Gran’s dress, my friends and family feasting on a warm summer’s day. A young man from a good family who loved me as fiercely as the sun shone at noon. My wedding night… A fat tear ran down my cheek before I could wipe it away. The older girls living in the Hollow often whispered about what passed between two people who’d just been wed, and I’d wanted those things. But I also knew enough to recognize that I’d been lucky tonight.
Taking a couple of tentative steps in the direction of the bed, I gained confidence walking blind and promptly collided with a table. The furniture and I both went down with a thump, accompanied by the sound of smashing glass.
“Stones and sky, girl!” Tristan snapped. “Have you not made things hard enough without destroying everything I own?”
“I can’t see,” I shouted back at him, trying to climb to my feet and banging my head against another table in the process. “Ouch!”
A ball of light appeared above me as I rubbed the growing lump on my skull. I was starting to get quite the collection.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I snapped, getting up.
“Watch out for the…”
I winced as a sharp pain lanced into my heel.
“Glass,” Tristan finished, and sympathy filled his corner of my mind.
I hopped on one leg towards the bed, making it halfway before warm ropes of power lifted me up and deposited me on the covers. “I didn’t need help,” I grumbled, pulling on my ankle in a vain attempt to examine the bottom of my foot.
“Sorry.” He came closer. “I’d forgotten you had no light.”
The way he spoke made me feel like I lacked something as fundamental as a heart or a brain.
“Here.” He handed me the wineglass I’d brought in with me. As I touched the stem, the bowl lit up with bright silver light. “It will glow at your touch, and,” he took it again, “dim when set down.”
I snatched the precious item from him like a greedy child.
“You’re welcome,” he said, and I flushed at my rudeness. “Let me have a look at your foot.”
With one hand, he took hold of my ankle, his brow furrowing as he examined the shard embedded in my heel. I clutched my glowing wineglass and held my breath.
“Ready?” He met my gaze.
I gave a quick nod, hoping my feet didn’t smell.
A sharp sting and the pink-tinged glass floated through the air to drop on the bedside table.
“Don’t you ever do anything with your hands?” I asked. “I mean, without magic?”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, and he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, wrapping the silk around my foot. “Sometimes.”
I grew aware of the warmth of said hands on my ankle and jerked out of his grip. Avoiding his gaze, I pulled up the covers and carefully set my glass on the table, watching its light dim. He did not light another to replace it, and soon we were surrounded by darkness once again.
“Cécile?”
“Yes?”
He hesitated, the sound of him swallowing loud against the silence. “In the morning, they’ll ask… They’ll want to know if we…”
I listened to him breathing, and I waited.
“I’ll need you to lie convincingly, or I’m afraid there will be consequences for both of us.”
“If you’re so concerned about my abilities to tell tall tales, why don’t you do it?” I snapped.
I felt his irritation mount. “Because I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” I grabbed hold of my wineglass so I could see him.
“Because I can’t tell a lie. No troll can tell a lie.” He pointed to a cushion. “I couldn’t so much as claim this cushion was any color other than red.”
My brow furrowed. “I don’t believe you.”
“Of all the things that you have discovered today, this is what you choose to disbelieve?” He passed a weary hand over his face. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. Lie about it. If you don’t, and my father discovers I have disobeyed him in this, we will both suffer for it.”
“Afraid of your father?” I asked.
“I’m not…” he started, then broke off, silent for several deafening moments. “I will take his punishment before I compromise my standards in this. Of that, you can rest assured.”
I set my glass on the table, extinguishing the light. My cheeks burned and I pulled the covers up higher, hoping he couldn’t see in the dark. Knowing he would not willingly force himself upon me was a relief, but there was also a part of me stung by his words. I’d never been the girl the boys fought to dance with at festivals; that was my sister with her golden hair and sunny disposition. But neither had anyone been so blunt as to tell me I did not meet their standards. “Fine,” I finally mumbled.
I listened to him walk slowly across the dark room and settle down on the chaise, shifting back and forth several times before he lay still. His emotions were as confusing as those swirling through me. I searched for my anger, but it had abandoned me when needed most. My legs tucked close to my stomach, I stared at the blackness where my wineglass stood. My precious source of light.
“Thank you,” I whispered, and sensed him relax and slowly drift off to sleep. Let him think I was grateful for him giving me light, granting me respite, or even for bandaging my foot. He could think anything he liked, but only I knew the true reason for the hope rising in my heart. I smiled into the darkness.
He had given me the first thing I needed to escape.
CHAPTER 10
CéCILE
“Where are all my clothes?”
I jerked awake, knocking my elbow against the headboard. Any hopes of it all being a dream were dashed by the sight of Tristan, his arms full of colorful silk dresses, storming about the room. Both my maids and a grey-clad manservant stood in a row, their heads lowered. Covers tucked up around my shoulders, I watched Tristan dash into the closet and emerge with another armload of dresses. He threw them in a pile on the floor. “Why is my closet full of dresses?”
“Are they mine?” I asked with interest.
Silver eyes fixed on me. “Well, they certainly are not mine. Unless you imagine that I dress up in ladies’ clothing and prance about the palace when the mood strikes me?”
A giggle slipped out of Élise, which she promptly smothered with a hand over her mouth.
“You consider this a laughing matter?” Tristan glowered at the girl.
“Sorry, my lord,” she said. “Your clothes are in the other closet.”
“Why?”
“Her Grace thought the larger closet more appropriate for her ladyship’s gowns, my lord.”
“She did, did she?” He stormed back into the closet, returning with another armload. “That’s the last of them.”
“You are wrinkling my dresses,” I said. “Zoé and Élise will waste their entire day pressing them.”
“And then they can hang them somewhere else,” he snapped.
“You’re creating an enormous amount of unnecessary work.”
“It is the role of the aristocracy to create work,” he said, kicking the pile of gowns. “Necessary or otherwise. Without us, who knows what would happen to productivity.”
I rolled my eyes and climbed out of bed. Catching the corner of a sheet, I set to making the bed.
“What are you doing?” Tristan shouted.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Ladies do not make their own beds! It shows initiative, which is broadly considered most unladylike!”
My temper rising, I whirled about. “Dear me,” I shouted. “I must have forgotten that my new purpose in life is to create work.” Jerking all the blankets off the bed, I threw them on the floor. The pillows followed next, and I proceeded to run around the room taking all the cushions off the chairs and tossing them about the room. The last I deliberately aimed at Tristan’s head. It froze midair. “You are making quite the mess of my room.”
“Our room!” I shouted back.
“What is going on in here?” The Queen strode into the room, but it was her sister who had spoken. The Queen turned, as though out of habit, so that her sister was facing us.
“Explain to me why she must stay in my rooms,” Tristan demanded. “Surely we have the space to put her somewhere else?”
“She is your wife, Tristan. Keeping her in here with you will help remind you of your duties.”
“I am unlikely to forget them,” Tristan replied acidly. “And I would be willing to bet a great deal of gold that most men require only five, perhaps ten minutes maximum, to conduct their duties. Any longer is the business of romantics; and I dare say, I haven’t given you a reason to believe I have a single romantic bone in my body.”
“She’ll stay until I say otherwise, young man,” the Duchesse barked, crossing her arms. “And you’ll quit acting like a spoiled brat and start acting like a man.”
“I’ll act how I please!”
I smiled as I watched him storm out of the room. Only a heartbeat later, I realized his satisfaction mirrored my own. Which made no sense at all. I took in the room, which looked much as if a hurricane had passed through. In hindsight, it occurred to me that throughout his apparent tantrum, I’d never felt a bit of anger from him. An act, then. But to what purpose?
The Duchesse turned her attention to me. “Well? Is it done?”