Grinning, he bowed deeply, then motioned for the children to get back to their studies. “Light requires little effort, and they are fond of parlor tricks.”

“Who isn’t?” Reaching out, I touched the magic again, allowing my hand to sink deep into the depths of the column. “How is it,” I asked, “that I can pass my hand through it, but it can still hold up all that rock?”

“It knows the difference between the two.”

“Knows?” I frowned. “Is it alive?”

Tristan stepped off the stone wall and I watched his brow furrow as he considered how to explain. It struck me that for once I was seeing the real Tristan, not an act designed to disguise his true feelings or a few kind words that accidentally slipped through. Gone was the cold callousness, and in its place was a young man content to let the little trolls pull at his sleeves with the irreverence only children can get away with.

“It isn’t alive, precisely,” Tristan finally said. “It is what I will it to be. I want it to hold up rock, but to let through the river and everything in it. The magic knows the difference, because I know the difference.”

“I see,” I said. “And what is it that you do to it every day?”

“Mostly, I fill it with power,” he said, unconsciously offering me his arm and just as quickly pulling it back. “Magic fades,” he added, sensing my confusion. “The tree constantly needs to be replenished. And when the earth shakes, it also needs to be adjusted to ensure the load is balanced correctly. That’s what takes the most time.”

“And you do this every day?” I asked. For all the grandness of the tree, it seemed a more monotonous task than milking cows or slopping pigs.

“Every day,” he agreed.

“Can’t someone else do it?”

He frowned at me. “Yes, but it is the duty of the king.”

“But you aren’t the king,” I argued. Yet. “Why doesn’t your father do it?”

“Because he entrusted me with it.” I could feel Tristan’s pride radiating through our bond. “When I was fifteen – the youngest ever to take on the task. It is a very great honor.”

I nodded gravely, although in my opinion, King Thibault’s delegating the task likely had more to do with him not wanting to drag his fat arse all around Trollus each day than trust in his son. “Is it hard?”

“It is tiring,” he said, motioning for me to follow him down an empty side street. “It requires an immense amount of my power to maintain at the best of times. When it needs adjusting, I sometimes require assistance from the Builders’ Guild – which is my guild, by the way. But not often.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

He stopped in his tracks and looked back at me. “What, then?”

“I wondered,” I started tentatively, “if it was hard knowing that everyone’s lives depend on your magic; if you worry about an earthshake coming like the one that wrecked the city.”

He started walking again. “I cannot stop the world from moving. All I can do is be prepared for when it does.”

Looking around, I saw we were alone and closed the distance between us. “You didn’t answer my question.”

The only sound in the street was the roar of the waterfall. Finally, he spoke. “I used to have nightmares about it falling down. I’d wake up certain I’d heard rocks raining on the city streets. But not anymore.”

“What do you dream of now?” I pressed, the desire to understand what went on in his mind like an itch I could not help but scratch.

“I dream of other things.” Tristan’s face was unreadable, but my mind filled with the same intense heat that had seared through me when I’d watched him change his shirt.

Desire. The word rippled through my thoughts, bringing a flush of heat to my cheeks.

“I was to leave to go live with my mother in Trianon the day that Luc brought me here,” I blurted out, desperate to change the subject. “I was going to sing on stage, you see. It was my dream…” I broke off, expecting one of the many nasty comments he usually made to me in public.

Instead I saw curiosity on his face. “It was your dream…” he prompted.

“To sing on all the greatest stages,” I said. “Not just in Trianon, but in the continental kingdoms as well. My mother… She’s very famous, but she never leaves Trianon. Ever. She rarely even comes to visit us.”

“They live apart, your mother and father.” It wasn’t a question – I knew that he knew all about me.

I flushed. “Yes. When my father was young, he left the farm to go live in the city. He met my mother, and they… well, she had my brother, my sister, and me. When my grandfather passed, my father went back to take over the farm and he brought us with him. She wouldn’t leave Trianon.”

“But she’s his wife,” Tristan said indignantly. “She is duty-bound to go wherever he wants her to go.”

“Not according to her,” I said. “And besides, duty has got nothing to do with it. What matters is that she didn’t love him or us enough to give up her career.”

“You consider love more important than duty, then?”

I hesitated. “I suppose it depends on the circumstances.”

Tristan slowly shook his head. “I think not. Otherwise individuals such as your mother, who clearly love themselves above all things, will use love as a defense of their actions. And who would be able to argue against them? Duty,” he said, pointing a finger at me, “is what keeps selfishness from inheriting the earth.”

“How bitterly pragmatic.”

He glanced down at me. “I find a certain comfort in pragmatism.”

“Cold comfort,” I retorted.

“Is better than no comfort.”

I rolled my eyes, irritated with his circular logic. But he had a point. Staring down at the paving stones, I remembered the silent sorrow on my father’s face whenever my mother’s name was mentioned. “He always gave her whatever she wanted,” I said quietly.

“And at what cost to you and your siblings?” Tristan asked. “He sounds weak.”

“He isn’t!” I retorted, my indignation rising. “He’s a good and strong man – it’s only her to whom he always gives in. I love my father. I miss him.” Sorrow shrouded me and I wrapped my cloak around me tighter. “I don’t even know her. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her since I was small.” My throat felt tight and I blinked rapidly against the sting in my eyes. “Not that it matters anymore.”

“It matters.” His voice was low, and even if we hadn’t been alone on the street, no one would have heard but me. He slowed his pace, looking over his shoulder at me. The weight of the promise he’d made to me hung in his eyes – the promise for which he’d asked nothing in return. To set me free. I focused on filling my mind with gratitude, knowing he would feel it, and hoping he would understand what it was for. Almost too late did I see the beam of sunlight crossing his path.

“No!” I gasped, throwing my weight into Tristan, knocking him down sideways into a narrow alleyway.

He stared up at me in astonishment. “Have you lost your mind or is this some sort of retaliation?”

I eyed the beam of sunlight that was still too close for comfort. “The sun.”

“What about it?”

“Everyone knows that trolls turn to stone in the sunlight,” I said, although from the look on Tristan’s face I was starting to doubt the “everyone knows” part.

His astonishment faded and to my horror, he started to laugh. Reaching out one arm, he waggled his fingers in the sun. “Oh, the stories you humans come up with,” he gasped out, and my cheeks burned.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “This is what I get for putting stock in fables.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He smiled up at me and my heart skipped a beat. “Are there any other myths I should know about?”

I felt breathless and acutely aware that I was indecently sprawled across him and he had made no move to push me away. My skin burned everywhere I was in contact with him: where my hipbone pressed against his, where my arm rested against the hard muscle of his chest, rising and falling with the rapidness of his breath. Most of all, where his hand pressed against my lower back, holding me against him.

“Well,” I said, “trolls are supposed to have an enormous fondness for gold.”

“Well, that is certainly true.”

“And you’re supposed to have great hoards of it.” I thought about the half-bloods toiling day in and day out to extract the golden metal from the mountain. And they’d been at it for centuries.

“True,” he laughed, “but I’ve also noticed in myself the tendency to hoard pocket lint and scraps of paper.”

I smirked. “The stories don’t mention pocket lint.”

He sighed. “Dreadfully inaccurate, these tales. Perhaps I should write my own in order to clear up these misconceptions. Or create new ones?”

“Pointed teeth?” I asked, pretending to growl at him.

“Perhaps hoards of human bones.”

I laughed. “I think that one already exists – trolls are supposed to boil human children in their cooking pots.”

He grimaced. “That one came into existence after the Fall – I’m sure you can speculate as to why.”

I blanched. “It’s true?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said, solemn expression at odds with the amusement I knew he felt.

“You’re horrible,” I grumbled, then thought for a minute. “The stories also say that accepting troll gold will cost you more than you think, and that it can get you into a great deal of trouble.”

“True. If the human is greedy, the trouble is far worse. Anything else?”

I hesitated and his brow crinkled. “Well?”

“Trolls,” I finally said, “are supposed to be ugly.”

He looked away, cheek pressed against the ground and eyes fixed on the wall of a house only a few inches from his face. “I suppose to you humans, many of us are.”

My thoughts turned to Marc, who was always kind to me when no one else was. “They aren’t ugly.” I bit my lip, trying to find the right words. “More like beautiful things that have had the misfortune of being broken.” Tristan turned his face back to me. I saw the sorrow in his eyes and felt it in my heart. “Why are you always so unhappy?” I asked.

“I think it is our nature to believe evil always has an ugly face,” he said, ignoring my question. “Beauty is supposed to be good and kind, and to discover it otherwise is like a betrayal of trust. A violation of the nature of things.”

“Do you think trolls are evil?” I asked.

“Do you?” His eyes searched mine as though he might find the answer there.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

He exhaled softly, reaching up and stroking my cheek with one hand. “From your lips I can almost believe it’s true.”

My breath came in short little gasps. The desire for him to touch me, to kiss me, was so strong, it felt like another entity had taken over my mind. And maybe it had. Maybe he had. I could feel his need like it was my own. It was my own. Whatever boundaries existed between our minds fell away in that moment, making it impossible to differentiate between my emotions and his. But that didn’t matter, because we both wanted the same thing.

“Cécile,” he whispered, his fingers tangling in my hair, pulling my face closer. “I…”

“This is indecent behavior, even for you, Tristan. Especially for you,” a dry voice said from behind us.

Tristan’s shock mirrored my own, but while I was busy scrambling to my feet and smoothing my skirts, he merely folded an arm behind his head and crossed his booted ankles. “Afternoon, Your Grace. Cécile, this is the Duke d’Angoulême.”

“I’m not interested in being introduced to your pet, Tristan.” The Duke leaned on his golden-handled cane. “But I am interested to know why you are cavorting with it in the shadows.”

“I had a pet mouse once,” Tristan said. “I kept it in a box in my wardrobe and fed it cheese and bread crusts until one of the maids tattled on me to my mother. Not that she cared, of course, but when my father found out, he took my mouse away. He said to me, ‘Tristan, if you are to ever have a pet anything, it will be a pet of my choosing, and it certainly won’t be a mouse.’” Tristan smiled. “When my father gives me an order, I’ve always found it’s in my best interest to listen.”

“I’m well aware that the decision for you to bond this creature was your father’s,” the Duke said, his voice frigid. “I am also aware that you protested mightily against the union – I was one of the unfortunate few forced to listen to you go on at length.” He smiled. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

A flash of irritation seared through our bond, but Angoulême never would have guessed it. “Dreadfully funny reason, really.” Tristan smirked. “Or it would be, if you had a sense of humor to speak of, Angoulême.”

“Try me.”

“I was walking along, listening to the girl prattle on about something she no doubt considered very important, when out of nowhere she shoved me clear off my feet.”

“Something we’ve all wanted to do,” the Duke said.