Chris looked surprised, but didn’t argue as we continued down the street toward my brother’s favorite drinking establishment. Sidestepping a brawl out front, we pushed our way into the busy tavern. Almost everyone inside was a soldier of some sort – not the sort of place artists such as myself were normally found – but everyone knew I was Frédéric de Troyes’ little sister, and no one would bother me here.

“Cécile! Christophe!” Fred shouted when he caught sight of us. He released the barmaid he had his arm around long enough to order a round of beer and deposit the flagons in our hands. He resumed whatever tall tale he was telling the girl, then his eyes went back to me.

“Best I let you get back to work before the barkeep tosses me out,” he said to the girl, waiting for her to go back to serving drinks before adding, “You look terrible, Cécile. You should be at home in bed.”

I grimaced, knowing that home meant the Hollow, not our mother’s townhouse. He was worse than Sabine, because not only was he adamantly against my hunt for Anushka, he was against my being in Trianon at all. “Don’t start.”

He set his drink down on the bar with a clank, casting a black glare at a group of men who jostled against me as they passed. The tension radiating from him told me that he was looking for a reason to scrap. Any reason at all. He was angry all the time now. At my mother, at me, at the world.

“You’re not going to listen to a word I say anyhow,” he muttered. “Might as well go on and do what you do.”

Chris tugged on my elbow, drawing me towards a table at the back. “Fred only wants to protect you, Cécile,” he said. “He blames himself for what happened. For not being there for you.”

“I know.” His first reaction to hearing my story had been a vow to burn Trollus and all its inhabitants to the ground, and the verbal brawl between us when I’d told him my intention to do the exact opposite was probably heard three farms away. Not only did he not agree with my decision, he didn’t understand it. And that made Fred angry. But then again, it didn’t take much to set him off these days – and I knew that that had nothing to do with the trolls. Something had happened long before my disappearance. Something that had occurred when he’d first come to Trianon. Something that had to do with our mother. He hated her, and there were times I thought he believed I’d betrayed him by choosing to live and work with her in Trianon.

Sitting at the sticky table, I proceeded to drain my beer, hoping to wash away thoughts of my brother and everything else.

“Easy there,” Chris said, sipping his brew at a more measured pace. “I take it something has happened, and it isn’t Fred’s perpetual sour mood.”