I wanted to tell her, to trust her, but Tristan’s emotions were growing again in the back of my head. Unease. Everything merged, and I couldn’t tell if he was worried, or whether I was. I shifted, tried to rise, but my limbs felt weak. My mother smoothed my hair down my back and I settled.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she said. “I thought you were dead, or that maybe you’d hated the idea of coming to stay with me so much that you’d run away.”

“No.” The word was muddled, but I needed her to know that wasn’t it. That I had wanted to be with her. “Didn’t… didn’t go by choice.”

“Who took you?”

My teeth clenched together, the fire in the hearth seeming to blaze brighter than the sun. It hurt my eyes. “A boy from the Hollow.”

“Where did he take you?”

I squeezed them shut. “Under the mountain.”

“For what purpose?”

Everything was fading into black, a darkness foreign and stained with uncertainty. I fought it, trying to stay awake, to feel the heat on my face, and my mother’s touch. “He sold me to them. To the trolls.”

She stiffened, but I hardly felt it. My senses were numb. Everything was slipping.

“What did they want from you?” The question, insistent, buzzing and loud. Demanding to be answered. I was falling, falling, falling, but the words still slipped from my mouth.

“To set them free.”

Six

Tristan

I carefully tightened the handkerchiefs I’d tied around the manacles on my wrists, in a likely futile attempt to keep blood from soaking into the cuffs of my shirt. I had an extensive wardrobe, but eventually, I was going to have to undertake the process of laundering my clothes, and I had read somewhere that bloodstains were challenging to remove.

Dropping my fingers from the handkerchief, I scowled at the paving stones as I meandered through the nearly empty streets of the Elysium quarter, the massive homes brilliantly lit but quiet compared to the rest of Trollus. I’d been inside most of them at one time or another, but their doorways now seemed foreign and unwelcoming, and I found myself clinging to the shadows, glancing over my shoulder like an intruder up to no good.

Though our connection was muted by distance, Cécile’s mind had practically sung with tension since the moment she’d awoken. It was the feeling of someone crossing a precariously narrow bridge: unwavering focus mixed with a hint of fear, and above all, the incredible need to reach the other side. The sensation was not unfamiliar – it was much like what I, or any troll, felt after making a promise. But it felt utterly alien coming from her, as did the aggressive impatience that flared within her with increasing frequency. She seemed… changed.

The arched entrance to the Angoulême manor appeared as I rounded the corner. There were two women standing guard, and I retreated back down the street before they could see me, leaning against a wall to wait. Anaïs would have to pass by this way eventually.

The true power of a promise was not something humans gave entirely enough thought to. Those who knew of us seemed to consider the binding nature of our word a weakness only partially tempered by our ability to twist speech to suit our purposes.

What they did not understand, at least not until it was far too late, was that there was a certain reciprocity to the magic. If a human made a promise to a troll, the troll was quite capable of binding the human to her word, should he feel inclined. If the troll was willing enough to make the effort, and the promise impossible enough to fulfill, the human could be driven to the point where she would not sleep or eat – to the point where her mind cracked or her heart stopped beating over the stress of her continued failure. And I had no doubt my father was willing to make the effort in order to reach his goal.

I considered how he would use the leverage he had gained over my human wife. He would not drive her so hard as to kill her, not yet, anyway. He was patient – he’d keep pressure on her for months, slowly stripping away her mind until all that would be left was a shell with one purpose: to break the curse. Even if she survived it, she would no longer be the Cécile I knew and loved. I had to keep that from happening, but the only sure way to stop it was to kill my father, and that solution was fraught with more complications than I cared to count. Which was half the reason I was standing here in the shadows.

The other half was something else entirely.

I waited a long time until I was almost sure I’d missed her, when suddenly a familiar form came around the bend and started up the set of stairs I lurked next to. “Anaïs,” I breathed. She hadn’t noticed me, so I watched her walk, shoulders back and head high, like the princess she had almost been. She was beautiful, there was no denying that. But it was a loveliness that came from flawlessness, every feature perfect in a way that made her seem almost created by design. It was the beauty of the fey. A face echoing all those who had come before, much as was my own.

Anaïs froze mid-step, eyes scanning the shadows until they latched on to me. Lowering her foot, she stared, face expressionless.

Until recently, I’d barely gone a day without spending time in her presence. With the exception of Marc, she was my oldest and closest friend. And without a doubt, she was my most loyal accomplice. Her history was my history, our lives interwoven as only those who were childhood friends could be. I knew everything about her, all her stories and secrets, and she knew me equally as well.

As our eyes locked, I remembered what I had told Cécile before the sluag attack – that Anaïs and I had never been more than friends. Technically, that was true. But it was also a lie. Anaïs was the first girl I’d lusted after, the first I’d ever kissed, the first of many things. But I’d never loved her, not like that.