I leaned over the edge, fighting the urge to rid myself of the small amount of soup I’d eaten. “I didn’t think things could get worse.”

“I’ve warned you about the dangers of optimism.”

I laughed, but it had a strange, almost hysterical edge to it. “Does she need to see you face to face to call in this debt?”

He gave a small nod. “Which is why she was using you to try to lure me out. But a debt can only be called once. A name, though… You know as well as anyone what an effective tool that is. Be thankful it’s the one thing she can’t ask me for.”

His words sound like a barb, but they didn’t feel that way. He was past anger, slumped into the depths of indecision and regret.

“You couldn’t have known it would come to this,” I said, resting my hand on top of his, feeling the heat of his skin through the leather of his glove.

“Don’t try to give me absolution in this, Cécile,” he said. “I knew it would cost me, but with my life on the line – and yours – it was a risk I was willing to take. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have given her.”

He leaned against the wall, keen eyes delving into the darkness. “I should be out there stopping him. He’s my responsibility. But what if I step outside these walls and she calls my debt? What if whatever she asks of me not only keeps me from stopping Roland, it prevents me from protecting those in Trianon? But if I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

Another tower of silver flame lit the night sky and I squeezed Tristan’s hand. Now wasn’t the time to push an alliance with Thibault, so instead I asked, “Why hasn’t your father moved?”

“Because he knows I won’t attack him while he’s in Trollus,” Tristan said. “There’s too much of a chance of one of us bringing the mountain down on the city. And, likely, he’s using Angoulême’s actions as a way to force me into an alliance. As a way of bringing me to heel. If only he knew that I’ve already effectively been caged.”

I racked my brain for a solution, for a way to find out what the Queen intended. “What about your uncle?” I asked. “Could he stop her?”

“He can’t prevent her from claiming what’s owed to her any more than she could keep him from doing the same.” He gave me a meaningful glance that I chose to ignore.

Closing my eyes, I remembered the being I’d met in that land of endless summer. How he had seemed to glow golden like the sun. It was hard to imagine him subjugated, and it also didn’t make sense. “But he called her his wife?”

A ghost of a smile drifted across Tristan’s face. “They would’ve framed themselves in a way you’d understand. Spoken your language. Appeared in a form they believed you’d find pleasing. The higher fey are…” He paused, seeming to flounder for an explanation, “they’re not solid, static creatures populated by a soul in the way a human is. They are sentient entities that appear as they wish, and the lesser fey are their creations. Splinters of themselves that they’ve shaped into certain forms then abandoned to their own devices. When the higher fey came to this world, they formed themselves as humans to blend in with those living on the Isle. Perfect humans. And when the iron eventually bound them here, they found themselves imprisoned in their human forms.”