“Aye. Tore up her apartments in the palace and then had the Regent send soldiers out to scour the countryside for you.”

“She did?” I looked up, stunned. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought my mother would be so grieved by my loss.

Chris nodded and to my surprise, he knelt down in front of me. I inhaled, and I could smell the tang of ocean spray, the sweetness of hay, and the hint of sweat from exertion under the sun. He smelled human. He smelled like home.

“She’s offered fifty gold pieces for word of you, Cécile. And she’s a wealthy woman – she could pay more. Enough to buy you from them.”

I felt suddenly cold and the peach fell from my stiff fingers, rolling next to the wagon wheel. “No.”

“Just think it through, Cécile. The trolls love their gold. Your mother could pay them whatever it is they wanted, you could swear magic oaths to keep your mouth shut about Trollus, and you’d be free.”

“No.” It was the only word I could manage.

“It could happen, Cécile,” Chris insisted, mistaking the meaning of my refusal. “For trolls, there is always a price. We just have to figure out what yours is.”

I shook my head rapidly. “No, Chris. I don’t want to leave.”

His eyes widened. “Why?”

“I won’t leave Tristan. Not for anything.” I met Chris’s stunned gaze. “I love him.”

Shock turned to disgust and he recoiled back on his heels away from me. “You can’t be serious.”

“I love him,” I repeated. “I won’t leave. Ever.”

“How can you love one of them?” he asked, his face twisting like he had bitten into something bitter. “They’re monsters, Cécile. Wicked, nasty, selfish, greedy monsters. I’ve seen them slit a man’s throat for whistling at one of their women. I saw another man smothered with their magic because they thought he’d lied to them. Oh, some of them might be pretty enough to look at, I’ll give you that, but inside they’re as cold as steel.” He glanced at my troll guards who, although they were too distant to hear our words, looked none too pleased with the exchange. “Cécile, they aren’t even human. He isn’t human. You might as well be in love with a pit viper.”

I jerked back, furious. “You don’t even know him – Tristan isn’t like that.”

“I’ve been coming to Trollus almost all my life, Cécile. My father has been coming here for nearly all of his, and his father before him, and his father before that. You think you know them, but you don’t. They are pure evil.”

“You are wrong to think they are any worse than we are,” I argued. “And wrong to say we rule ourselves anymore benevolently than the troll kings have ruled their subjects.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Chris hissed. “They enslave their own. Murder their own. They are incapable of any sort of decency.”

I closed my eyes. “Tristan is different. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. He loves me.” My voice sounded plaintive and pathetic. I had no ground to stand on – I knew the trolls’ dark history. It had been Tristan who’d told me of it. But in my heart, I knew he was different. He wasn’t like the kings of past.