I did as he asked, making certain the curtains covered the front windows. “What is happening in Trollus? It feels as though fighting will break out at any minute.”

“It already has.” He passed a weary hand over his face. “The city is quite divided. After Tristan left Trollus, the half-bloods went to the King to demand their autonomy and for him to reinstate Tristan as his heir, but he refused to receive them. So they revolted and are now refusing to work until their demands are met. They’ve barricaded themselves in the Dregs, but they can’t last forever. Even if they could adequately supply themselves, Angoulême will see them put down. Already there are dead in the streets each morning, and all have been identified as those who support the half-bloods’ cause. Consorting with half-bloods not your property has become a dangerous business.”

I clutched the fabric of my cloak against the chill drifting across my skin. “Hasn’t the King done anything to stop this?”

Pierre shook his head. “He does nothing. He has played the two sides against each other too hard for too long, and now all have turned against him. He has made himself vulnerable by giving up control of the tree, and I think it only a matter of time until his life is forfeit. And with Tristan absent, there is no one capable of contesting Roland’s rise to the throne.”

“The people want him to come back?” Did he want to come back?

“They are afraid, Cécile. Tristan is their only hope.”

I forced my head to nod up and down. “I’ll tell him.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment, then Pierre broke the silence. “You took a great risk in coming here, Princess, and I think you sought me out in particular for a reason.”

“I did. We need your help.” Extracting the list of names and dates from my pocket, I handed it to him. Then I explained my suspicion about Anushka’s immortality. “I need to know if there’s a pattern.”

“Alignment of the winter solstice and the full moon,” Pierre muttered. Books floated off shelves and charts unrolled to hang in the air. I watched in silence as he flipped swiftly through the pages, eyes flicking periodically to the carefully inked charts, one hand holding a pen, which he occasionally used to jot down a date.

Though I was desperate to know if my theory was correct, I stayed silent and out of the way until he set his pen down. “Well?”

He handed me back my list, along with the page with the dates he’d written down. “Your thesis appears to be correct. Although you are missing one – the most recent.”

Knowing there was a chance the unmarked grave in the woods belonged to my maternal grandmother in no way prepared me for seeing it all but confirmed in a single, scrawled date. Now I was certain Anushka was using the lives of her female descendants to make herself immortal, and dread seeped through my veins with the knowledge that tomorrow night would be my mother’s last if I didn’t stop Anushka.