“I gave them your brother to sweeten the pot, so to speak. The Duke agreed, and the contract was finalized.” He drank deeply. “Later, of course, we discovered that Anaïs and her sister were afflicted, and I broke off the engagement. She was unfit – something your cousin did a fine job of demonstrating when he made the mistake of bonding Pénélope.”

I was glad Marc was gone – he did not consider Pénélope a mistake.

“I did not know there was a contract,” I said.

“I know,” he said, regarding me with an unreadable expression. “Despite what you might think, there are a great many things you do not yet know.”

I shrugged. “Then enlighten me: why not take Roland back? It would be in your right.”

“And do what with him?” He drained his glass. “Your brother is a bloody menace, and the Duke’s family is the only one other than us with the mettle to control him. And I can’t very well bring Roland to the palace with Cécile wandering about. He’d slaughter her on sight. And that,” he inclined his head to me, “would be most unfortunate.”

That was an understatement.

“Anaïs knew about the contract,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “I’ve always been surprised she didn’t tell you.”

I wasn’t surprised – my friend did not suffer shame well. “Anaïs is loyal to me,” I said, “not to her father.”

“As you say,” my father replied, waving away the conversation. His eyes settled on the swirling black orb obscuring Lessa from view. “Go,” he said abruptly. “I need to deal with this.”

I quickly removed myself from his presence, sensing his mood was about to take a turn for the worse. Part of me wondered what he intended to say to Lessa – I had no fear he would harm her – but, oh, to be a fly on that wall. Having been hidden away under Damia’s wing most of her life, Lessa was something of an unknown commodity. I didn’t know anything about what she was like, only that she was powerful. And, I suspected, loyal to Angoulême.

Walking blindly through the corridors, I pushed the matter of Lessa to the back of my mind and turned instead to my father’s behavior. It was not like him to be forthcoming. And why, after all these years, bring up that I had been contracted to Anaïs? I chewed the inside of my lip as I considered what he would gain from telling me the information. Not, certainly, to provide more proof that the Duke was a deceptive bastard – that was obvious. This was to do with Anaïs – the fact she had known about the contract, but never told me. An attempt, then, to undercut my faith in her loyalty? To drive a wedge between us? It seemed counterproductive given that our friendship promised to do much in smoothing over the discord between our families.

Not friends, lovers.

“Ah,” I muttered, everything becoming clear. He must believe that it was at least partially Anaïs’s doing that I continually avoided or fought with Cécile. He was trying to drive me away from Anaïs and towards my human wife.