It couldn’t be as easy as that, but try as I might, I couldn’t think of any consequences worth declining the bargain. “And if I do this, you’ll give me what I asked for? Right now,” I added, remembering the importance of specificity.

She smiled, and Sabine made a soft choking noise. “Yes.”

“All right, then,” I said. “I agree.”

The air flashed frigid, the bare skin of my face burning and my bones aching, and I felt the weight of the bargain clamp down on me like pinchers on the back of my neck. While I’d had some small ability to resist the troll king’s compulsion, resisting her was impossible. I was a feather and she a hurricane, and I was more likely to cut out my own heart than resist her power. I began to sing.

My song was no half-hearted means to an end. The ballad tore from my lips, filled with all the passion, heartbreak, and joy that I associated with the lyrics. And it felt like each word, each note, was being excised by a straight razor. I wanted to cry, to scream, to throw myself on the floor and claw at my skull, but I did none of those things for they would have stolen some of what I owed. When it was over, I clenched my eyes shut and fell to my knees, so taxed that all I could do was breathe.

“That was lovely.”

The voice was too close. Opening my eyes revealed the Winter Queen’s face only inches from my own, her breath smelling like a midwinter’s night, and it was all I could do not to cringe.

“Lovely,” she repeated, her head tipping back and forth as though she were listening to my voice inside her head. “A treasure.”

“Your turn.” My voice rasped against my aching throat.

“But of course.” She straightened and turned, the misty apparition that was her gown passing through my arms, entirely intangible. She made her way to a mirror hanging on the wall, and with one careless gesture, she tore an opening in the world. “Come, come,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “And behold your enemy.”

Rising on shaking knees, I walked over and looked through the opening.

Chapter 6

Tristan

Two-dozen soldiers poured through the shattered doors, half going to the defense of the heir and his mother, the rest turning on the apparent threat.

Me.

I winced against the thunderous echoes of firing pistols, allowing the bullets to sink into a wall of magic lest they ricochet and kill someone else.

“Cease fire!” Fred’s bellow cut through the noise, and the confused soldiers slowly lowered their pistols.

“It wasn’t him.” Marie wisely took control of the moment of duplicity, Fred bowing his head over the Regent in apparent grief. “Lachance killed my husband. He was a traitor – a spy and assassin for the troll king.” Her voice shook with real emotion as she plucked at her blood soaked gown with hands stained red. “Get that wretch’s body out of my sight.”