Lord Aiden’s gaze went back to Tristan. “I’d have a word with you, Montigny.”

“As you like.” Tristan’s tone was flat.

The other men noticed the lack of honorific and their eyebrows rose. As I followed Tristan back into the box, I met Bouchard’s gaze and rolled my eyes as though the tension were nothing more than the posturing of young men, and nothing to be concerned about.

“No interruptions,” Aiden muttered to the other guard, but allowed Fred to follow us in.

The door clicked shut, but it was magic that drowned out the voices in the corridor and the musicians tweaking their instruments in the pit. Fred frowned, and his hand drifted to the pistol at his waist.

“Don’t,” I said, and the flames of the massive chandelier overhead flared brightly. Fred blinked, then turned to me, incredulity written across his face. “And don’t you dare look at me like that,” I snarled. “Not after what you did.”

“It was for your own good,” he said. “I was only trying to help you.”

My head jerked from side to side in furious denial. “Say you did it because you don’t agree with the choices I’ve made. Say you did it because you wanted to stop me from freeing the trolls. Or because your loyalty is to him.” I jerked my chin in Aiden’s direction. “But don’t you dare claim that you did it for me when we both know you did it to control me.”

“Cécile.” He reached for me, voice pleading, but I stepped back. “Is that why you hate our mother so much? Because she didn’t make choices you liked? Because she wouldn’t change to be the person you wanted her to be?”

It was a low blow, but as I watched Fred blanch, I found I was too angry to care.

“That’s not the reason,” he stammered. “You’ve got it backwards. She made me choose between her and Father. And when I wouldn’t take her side…” He swallowed hard. “She made me pay for it.”

“And now you’re doing the same to me.” I went to stand next to Tristan, who leaned against the edge of the balcony, feeling my anger fuel his and his fuel mine. No good can come from this…

“What do you want from us?” I snapped at Aiden, struggling with the desire to have my own revenge for what he had done to me, for what he had intended to do to my friends.

“Tell me why you killed her,” he demanded. “You could have taken the book back and gone. Catherine was only a pawn – she didn’t need to die.”

I frowned, more surprised at his sentiment toward the dead woman than his accusation that we were her murderers. It had seemed to me that he’d despised her – had only allied with her out of sheer necessity. But perhaps I’d been wrong. “I thought you hated her.”

He leveled me with a dark stare. “I needed her.”