I didn’t care about the bargain: I cared about what he’d been about to say. That I’d… what? What had he wished I’d done?

“The bargain was this: I let her take over Anaïs’s life in exchange for her becoming my spy in the Angoulême household.”

“Why would she want such an existence?” I asked. “She’d be living a lie. Living every day with the fear of discovery, and knowing that if she was discovered, that her life would be forfeit.” Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer.

My father shrugged. “She clearly thought the risks worth the reward.”

Better to live a lie than to live a slave.

I shifted my weight, too many thoughts filling my head. This was not the sort of conversation he and I ever had. He was treating me almost like I was his… I pushed the thought away. We were not equals. It was all tricks. Always tricks, with him. “If she killed Anaïs first, then you were released. You could have killed Lessa where she stood, but you did not. Why?”

“Bastard half-blood or not, she is my daughter.”

“Which makes you no less likely to kill her than anyone else who stands in your way.”

His fingers twitched ever so slightly. “Think what you’d like. But to answer your question, I made the bargain with her because I considered it to be to my advantage. Not only would I gain a spy in the home of my greatest adversary, I would gain a most powerful ally.”

“Because Anaïs was the heir to the Duchy of Angoulême,” I said. “Lessa could dispatch the Duke and inherit it and all of his powerful alliances.”

“Just so.”

I nodded slowly. “It was a good plan.”

“Indeed.”

I shifted my weight to my other leg. I didn’t feel well. “Lessa was the cause of what happened with Mother, wasn’t she?”

This time it was my father’s turn not to hide his emotions. His fingers clenched on the arms of the throne, and I could see a vein rise in his forehead. “Wretched creature wasn’t satisfied with becoming a duchesse, she wanted to be a princess.”

“She wants to be Queen.” My father met my gaze, and for a heartbeat, we were in perfect understanding. “Does Angoulême know Roland’s name?” I asked, knowing in my heart already that it was the case, but wanting confirmation from my father’s lips. Wanting, though I hated to admit it, some reassurance that he had a plan that would fix things.

“I have strong reason to believe that is the case.”

I expected his anger to rise at the admission, but the throbbing vein in his forehead disappeared, and he averted his gaze, looking over my shoulder at the door. Was it possible that he was upset about what was happening to my brother? Was it possible that he cared?

My heart thudded loud in my ears. Dare I say it? Was it the correct move? “You could undo all these troubles,” I said, my desire to keep the hope from my voice making it sound toneless. “You could reinstate me as heir.”