Her eyes flicked to him. “Not you.”

“Yes, well…” He turned, tugging his hood forward so that his face was obscured. “He had some advantages I did not.”

She touched his sleeve; and though they looked nothing alike, for a moment, she reminded me of Pénélope. “I think you are the better man for it.”

The room was silent for the first time in far too long, but unfortunately, it didn’t last. A knock sounded on the door, and one of Tips’s miners leaned into the room. “Got a girl here who claims to be Cécile’s sister.”

“Let her in,” Marc said, and both of them straightened in surprise as Josette de Troyes entered the room, setting Souris off into a flurry of barking.

Chapter 26

Cécile

Three days and six villages later, and we were all exhausted. As was the twins’ supply of tricks. The only strategy we had left was direct conflict between them and Angoulême’s followers, and given their drawn faces and sluggish steps, I was desperately afraid of how that would go. The thought of losing one of them terrified me, not only because they were dear friends, but because together, they represented half of the trolls we had on our side.

I rested my shoulders against the rough wood of the cabin and closed my eyes, wishing Tristan was here. Or that I was in Trianon. It was strange that we’d fought so hard to get back together, to be physically in each other’s presence, and almost as soon as we’d managed it, I’d left.

You could go back.

I bit the insides of my cheeks, knowing that if I returned to Trianon, it would be for my own selfish reasons. I hated the effects of the spell I’d cast on Tristan, hated the flat, toneless intensity of his presence in my head. It wasn’t him. Was like being bonded to a stranger. The purpose of the spell had been to allow me to leave the safety of the city, and if I went back, it would no longer be required.

But what good would I do once I was there?

The solution to our troubles was not in Trianon, but neither was it in this camp. We weren’t going to win this way. It was a stopgap, but the fact remained that Tristan was the only one capable of defeating Roland, and he was as much caged within the Regent’s steel-rimmed castle walls as he ever had been in Trollus. By the time we found a solution to his debt to the Winter Queen – if there even was one – all the folk we’d hidden in the mountains would either have starved to death or sworn oaths to our enemies in a desperate attempt to save themselves. We needed to find Angoulême, capture him, and use him to bring Roland to heel, and I knew we weren’t going to discover his hiding spot through any of his followers. I’d already lost count of how many had fallen dead at my feet as I tried every trick I could think of to extricate the information on their leader’s whereabouts. But he’d been too clever – had been planning his strategy for far too long. The only information I’d gleaned was that Lessa was the only one who knew his location.