The blood rushed out of Lessa’s face. “You shouldn’t have said that, Tristan. You really shouldn’t have said that at all.” Before I could so much as blink, a noose of fire wrapped around my neck and jerked me off my feet, stealing my chance to respond. And my ability to breathe.

Anaïs-mask firmly in place, she smiled up at me. “Now I’m going to make you pay.”

Chapter 31

Cécile

Sabine’s face contorted with effort and she spat out the rag shoved between her teeth. Shifting closer, she bit down on the edge of the rag protruding from my mouth, then moved backwards, pulling it out.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“No,” I whisper-mumbled, my tongue dry. “Fred is helping them – Catherine gave him a spell to put me to sleep. Where’s Chris?”

Sabine’s face tightened. “He went to find Fred, in the hopes he knew where you were.” She moved closer so that both our faces were caught in a faint beam of light. “Oh, Cécile. You heard what they are planning? What are we to do?”

I licked my lips in a futile attempt to moisten them as I considered what I’d learned. My instant reaction to hearing the messenger’s plan was fury that he would use me to manipulate Tristan – it made him no better than the troll king. “I need to think.”

Lord Aiden hated King Thibault – that much was clear. He’d made promises to the troll that he had cause to regret, and he knew the only way to win free of them was to see the King dead. The only troll who could reasonably accomplish this was Tristan, but only if he was alive. Except his life hung in the balance as the result of some twisted effect of my ongoing failure to fulfill my promise.

Aiden needed to help me take advantage of the loophole for his plan to work. There was nothing to stop him from slitting my throat after the King was dead in order to take down Tristan, but why should he? Another troll would only assume control, and whoever it was would be a complete wild card. Better to keep me alive and a prisoner for as long as possible. It was a clever plan.

And one I could appropriate if only we managed to break free in time. “We need to escape,” I whispered. “We need to warn Chris and get the grimoire back.”

If we could escape, subdue Catherine, and retrieve the grimoire, I could perform the map spell again. Then I’d have a few precious hours before Aiden realized I’d escaped in which to track down the witch and attempt to take advantage of the loophole myself. It was far from a perfect plan, but it put control back in my hands, and that was where I wanted it.

“Roll over,” I whispered. “We need to try to get these ropes untied.”

Squirming around in the dirt, we managed to both roll over so we were back to back. Running my fingers over the knot binding Sabine’s wrists to see how it worked, I started picking at the rope. It was harder than I’d imagined it to be, working blind, my numb fingers with their bitten-down nails struggling against the well-tied knot.