“Wait,” I called out. “I have no light.”

Zoé hurried back over to me. “Our mother had this problem when she was alive,” she said. “I remember my father leaving lights about our home for her.”

“Your father,” I asked tentatively, “did he care for your mother?”

Her eyes widened. “Of course he did, my lady. Very much so. They were not bonded, though. It was forbidden.” Her gaze flickered down to the silver marks on my hand. “Perhaps that will change now.”

A second ball of light appeared next to us. “I’ll leave this with you, my lady. Though I’m not certain how long it will last,” she added, cheeks flushing faintly. “My magic has a tendency to wander. I’m sure His Highness will think of a better solution – he is exceedingly clever about such things.”

Alone, with only Zoé’s diminishing ball of light for company, I wandered through Tristan’s cluttered room. Not an inch of wall space had been left bare, and I examined the assorted collection of artwork, tapestries, and maps in an attempt to find insight into the mind of the creature I’d just married. There were landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes I recognized as Trianon. He had a great many paintings of men on horseback galloping after foxes, boars, and deer. Unlike the other rooms in the palace, no prevailing theme dominated, only a wild and random representation of the world outside of Trollus. The normal, unmagical, Isle of Light.

A mantle took up one wall, and I saw with amusement that he’d nailed a painting of burning logs in the empty space where a real fire ought to have been. A small sitting area surrounded the fireplace, reminding me for a moment of home. But only briefly: this room was cold, unfamiliar, and empty, which our farmhouse never was. I settled down in one of the chairs, pulling my cold feet underneath me, and began to sort through the large stack of books on the table. They were novels: adventures of pirates on the high seas, tales of knights slaying dragons, mysteries set in the underworld of cities on the continent.

The door opened and I leapt to my feet.

“I see you’ve made yourself comfortable,” Tristan said, tossing his hat on the desk.

“No thanks to you, sir,” I replied, wrapping my arms tightly around my body. “You left me locked in a closet.”

“And you came to no harm, which leads me to believe the closet might be a good place to keep you in the future.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” I gasped.

“I’ve warned you about expectations before, Cécile,” he said, pulling off his coat and draping it on the back of a chair. “Be gone!” He swiped at Zoé’s fading ball of light and it winked out.

“I heard everything you two said! I know your plans for me.” I watched him cross the room towards me, not realizing I was backing up until my shoulders hit the wall. He kept walking until we were only inches apart. The top of my head barely came up to his chest and the outlines of muscle were visible through his shirt.