“No.” Picking up her cloak and gloves, she donned them. “I need to be with Cécile. I don’t know what good I can do, but she needs at least one friend at her side. Help me get in the castle, or at least give me a weapon.”

Silently, I extracted the knife hidden in my boot and handed it to her hilt first. She gripped it as though she were not entirely familiar with how to use it, but was more than willing to try. “Don’t leave just yet.” I turned my gaze to Chris. “What say you?”

“I’ve been around trolls most of my life,” he said. “I know what you are capable of, and I won’t lie and say the thought of your people free to do what they wish doesn’t terrify the piss out of me. But it sounds like it’s going to happen whether I like it or not, and I’m damn well going to do everything I can to make sure ours is the winning side.” He squared his shoulders. “If I’m going to be ruled by a high-minded pretty-faced troll, it might as well be you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, trying not to smile. “Who knows what would happen to my ego if you decided to abandon me.”

Chris rolled his eyes.

“Sabine,” I said, hefting the sack of gold once more. “I’m of a mind to have a pretty girl on my arm at this party, and if she happened to have a knife or two hidden in her skirts, all the better.” I tossed the sack her direction. “Spend what you need to play the part.”

Climbing to my feet, I went to the window and peered up at the wintery sky, the cold an ominous prediction of what was to come. If all went to plan, more than just trolls would be released onto the world tonight. How long would I have until the Winter Queen’s bargain with me came due?

“There is one more person I need to speak to before we set our plans in motion,” I said. “I only hope that he’s now of a mind to listen.”

Chapter 50

Cécile

They took me to the castle in a carriage, and if the guards thought it strange that a young opera singer be treated so, they were too well trained to ask questions. Or to answer them.

They took me in a small entrance at the rear of the castle and up to a set of rooms where a steaming bath and an elderly servant woman waited. The white silk costume resplendent with feathers that Sabine had made hung on a privacy screen, but of my friend, there was no sign. Everyone I encountered wore a sprig of rowan berries, and when I enquired of their meaning to the maid, she told me they were in honor of the solstice celebration and to remove them would be bad luck.

I surrendered myself to her ministrations, the whole time my mind a whirl of how I could possibly get around the rowan’s effect on magic, which seemed much like the sluag’s effect on the trolls. There had to be a way around it, or at the very least, a way to remove its protection from Marie once I found her. I needed to hold up my end of the plan, which is why I hadn’t contacted Tristan. He was not in a good state of mind, and I was afraid if he learned our plans were in disarray, he’d come in and take the information from Marie by force. It might to come to that, but I had every intention of doing what I could to avoid it.