She did not make it far.

Anaïs’s body jerked to a stop, tangled in invisible threads of the King’s magic, her head snapping forward with a crack. She went limp and would have crumpled to the ground, but Tristan caught her, her head lolling against his shoulder, body paralyzed until her magic healed her broken neck.

“Help her,” she pleaded. “Help her, Tristan. Please!”

Face ashen, Tristan lowered Anaïs to the ground. “What’s the point in this, Father? Far be it from me to judge what you find entertaining, but standing here and watching a lady bleed seems beneath you.” Pushing past me, he walked to Pénélope, extracting a handkerchief from his pocket and reaching for the hand she had pressed against the injury. “She must have been struck by a piece of the broken blade. Bad luck, but it will m…” His final word stuck in his throat as the injury was revealed.

A tiny shard of steel protruded from her flesh, blood seeping out around it. But what made my heart lurch were the black lines of iron rot already snaking out and away from the wound. In a flash, Tristan jerked out the shard and pressed the handkerchief to the injury, but it was too late. Everyone had seen.

And everyone knew.

“Tragic,” the King murmured, then glanced over his shoulder at Anaïs, who was dragging herself to her feet. “So very, very tragic.” Then he turned back to the Duke. “The truth always outs, Your Grace. And we must all pay the consequences when it does.”

Chapter 1

Pénélope

The sharp clang of steel against steel made my hand twitch and my paintbrush along with it, leaving a streak of black where none had been intended.

“Drat,” I muttered, accepting the proffered rag from my maid and dabbing at the errant paint.

The swords crashed together again and, despite it having been three weeks since the accident, I flinched. I wondered if I ever would not.

Sighing, I rested my wrist on my knee and shifted to watch my sister fight. Anaïs was harrying her opponent backward across the yard, dulled practice blade flashing with the skill not of one trained since she was old enough to hold a sword – though she had been – but of one who’d been born to battle. She fought as I imagined a viper would, so quick I scarce saw her move but she was there, her deadliness a matter of speed and agility rather than brute strength.

My eyes took in the whirl of motion, envisioning how I might capture it with paint, but my hands almost instinctively reached for my pencil and sketchbook, because nothing else would ever capture my sister’s exquisite beauty and strength better than crisp lines of black against a plane of white. Anaïs needed no embellishments, and that’s all color would be.

She feinted left but struck right, her blow landing square against her opponent’s side with an audible crack. Tristan swore and stumbled, his gloved hand pressing against ribs that were almost certainly fractured.