But I said it anyway. “I’ll never paint you, Tristan. I paint those I love. Not those I hate.”

Chapter 2

Marc

If all the stone of the Forsaken Mountain rockslide had floated away and left Trollus bathed in sunlight, I could not have been more astonished than I was now.

“Pénélope!” Anaïs called, and started to run after her sister, but Tristan caught her sleeve.

“There’s nothing you can say. We’ve kept her in the dark all these years to protect her, Anaïs, and she needs that now more than ever. If your father comes to suspect our involvement with the sympathizers and believes she knows anything valuable, he’ll torture her to get the information. I’d rather she believe the worst about me than put her at risk.”

We all heard the words he didn’t say: that to the Duke d’Angoulême, his eldest daughter was now only a liability, and that made her expendable.

“I’ll talk to Pénélope.” The words were out before I had a chance to think about what I was saying. “I was the one who provoked her,” I added when Tristan frowned. “I… I criticized her painting.” My eyes flicked to Anaïs’s, and she nodded ever so slightly in understanding.

Tristan didn’t miss the exchange between us, but as one who lived life entrenched in secrets, he seemed to accept that we’d occasionally keep some of our own. “Go, then.”

Tossing my practice sword on a rack, I ran toward the gate to the courtyard, which was still swinging with the speed of Pénélope’s passing. The streets of the Elysium quarter echoed with the staccato clatter of her heels against the paving stones. I needed to catch her before she reached her father’s home, where my welcome was tenuous at best. Vaulting over a wall, I sprinted through grounds belonging to a very deaf and extremely reclusive Marquis and out the front gate just as Pénélope rounded the bend, skirts hiked almost to her knees and face streaked with tears.

She stumbled at the sight of me, and every instinct told me to catch her. To protect her. To do anything in my power to keep the girl I’d loved for as long as I could remember from suffering any more harm. But I’d seen her expression when she’d realized Anaïs was shielding her, and so instead I checked myself and held my ground, watching as she staggered, one shoe flying forward to land at my feet even as she caught her balance.

Slowly, she straightened, letting the skirts she clutched slip through her hands to cover her feet. “My injuries are now entertainment?”

“No.” I reached down to pick up the dainty brocade slipper. “I knew you wouldn’t fall.” Carefully, I balanced the shoe on the ground before her so that she might slip her silk-encased foot back into its confines.

“Because one who sits on the bottom can fall no further?”

I shook my head, struggling to find a way to explain that she underestimated herself. That she possessed strength greater than anyone I knew, because how else could she have endured what she had and remained so selfless?