“No.” I motioned for one of the girls to bring me another drink. “Nothing’s happened, and therein lies the problem.” I took several long swallows. “Just another day gone by where I’ve made no progress finding her. Another day gone by where Tristan suffers God knows what sort of tortures, while I sing on stage to crowds of admirers. I hate it.”

“It’s the only way you can afford to stay in Trianon. And besides, I thought you liked performing?”

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and nodded. “But I shouldn’t.”

“Cécile.” Chris reached across the table and tried to hold my mug down, but I jerked it out of his grasp and finished the contents. He grimaced. “You know that he doesn’t want you miserable every waking breath for his sake.”

“How would you know?” I asked, digging money out of my pocket to pay for another drink.

“We’ve tried everything,” he said, going with a different tactic. “For two months you’ve run in the circles you’d thought she’d occupy and not seen hide nor hair of her. You have lists and lists of women whose backgrounds you and Sabine have checked, which yielded nothing but gossip. I’ve lost count of how many witches, real or otherwise, that we’ve talked to. None of them would help us.”

“Most of them can’t.” During my recovery, I’d pressed my Gran into teaching me all she knew about magic. She’d taught me how to balance the elements, why certain plants had the effects they did, and how to time a spell casting at a moment of transition: sunrise and sunset, a full moon, and the solstices in order to maximize the amount of power drawn from the earth. She didn’t know a great deal – and nearly all of it was relating to healing injuries and curing sickness, but I’d gained enough knowledge to know magic when I saw it.

“My point is,” Chris continued, “that maybe you’ve done enough. Maybe it’s time for you to move on with your life.”

I set my empty mug down with a clatter, not bothering to keep the anger off my face. I expected this from Sabine, but not from Chris. For her, it was still half a fairytale, but he’d been to Trollus. He knew the stakes. “Are you actually suggesting I give up?”

“I don’t know.” He looked away. “He doesn’t even want you to break the curse. Maybe it would be better for everyone if you stopped hunting.”

“Better for humans, you mean,” I snapped, my words slurring together. “How can you be so selfish?”

Chris turned bright red. Hands gripping the edge of the table, he leaned toward me. “If you want to see selfish, go look in the mirror. I’m not the one willing to sell the whole world into slavery for the sake of a love affair!” He stormed away through the crowd of patrons and out of sight.

I stared blindly at my empty mug, ignoring the dampness of spilled beer and wine soaking into the sleeves of my dress. Was Chris right? Was I being selfish? Two months ago, I set out to Trianon to hunt down and kill Anushka so that the curse would be broken. There had been no doubt in my mind that I was doing the right thing, and that certainty had been unwavering.