He slumped, taking several measured breaths before fumbling about in the mud for his cane. What for a troll of his power should have been nothing had drained him to exhaustion. On what must have been sheer willpower alone, he rose to his feet, then reached down and jerked me up. “We’re going.”

“I don’t think so.”

Angoulême turned, and Tristan’s fist caught him square in the face, sending him sprawling back to land unconscious in a puddle.

Tristan lowered his arm, his breath coming in swift pants as though he’d been running hard. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, they were gleaming liquid bright. I stumbled the few paces between us, collapsing into his arms. We stood there in silence, the mist collecting in little beads on our faces, the weight of what we’d accomplished rendering us speechless. We’d caught Angoulême. But now…

“Roland’s in either Trianon or Courville, I don’t know which.” Tristan turned his head in the direction of the coast, though it was impossible to see anything from where we stood. The cities were in opposite directions, and if we chose wrong, the chances of us making it to the other in time to save it were slim. Stones and sky, I thought, there’s little enough hope of us making it in time if we choose right.

My sense of accomplishment fell away as I turned back to the already stirring Duke. Even lying there in the mud, bound with Tristan’s magic and cut off from his power, he still had the upper hand. And as his silver eyes flickered open and met mine, I knew he knew it.

“Did you know,” Angoulême said, “that Roland wept when I told him you would have to die for him to be king? The same when I told him he would have to kill your father, which is why I sent him after Matilde instead. Too much of a chance he’d hesitate and Thibault would finally grow the stones to put an end to him.” A cruel smile grew on his face. “For all that he knows I cannot lie, he refuses to believe you’ll hurt him. The innocence of childhood, I suppose.”

It was the worst thing he could have said. His jaw bulged as Tristan jammed magic between his teeth to shut him up before encasing him in a black box, probably as much to protect him as to closet him away. Then he twisted away from me and strode over to one of the broken statues. He took one deep breath, then another. Then in a blur of motion, he punched the stone, a piece breaking off even as he swore and doubled over.

I watched in silence, knowing what it felt like to prefer the rush of physical pain to the relentless and inescapable press of emotional anguish.

“This is why, Cécile,” he shouted, rounding on me. “This is why I didn’t want the curse broken. Because this is my life now – running up and down this blasted Isle trying to keep my people from harming yours. Roland will be the first I have to put down, but not the last. He probably won’t even be the last child I have to kill. How long until it drives me mad; or worse, how long until I start to like it?”