But Pénélope knew nothing about our plans, and it needed to stay that way.

“I’ve seen the way he looks at her,” she snapped. “Seems as though he thinks about it a great deal.”

“That is another matter entirely,” I said, silently cursing Tristan for his rare lack of discretion. “He might behave differently if he knew.”

“I wish I could believe that,” she said. “But empathy is not his strong suit.”

If only she knew.

She sat down heavily next to me. “Now that you know, are you going to tell him?”

It was a piece of information Tristan would want to know: that his father was secretly negotiating his future union was no small thing. Loyalty demanded that I tell him, but… “Anaïs hasn’t told him for reasons that are her own,” I said. “It’s her secret to tell, not ours.”

Pénélope nodded, but was quiet for a long time, the only sound that of the stagnant fountain and the larger roar of the waterfall. “There are times I think that Anaïs is the center of my world. That everything I am and everything that I’ve done has been to ensure her success. That without her, my life barely exists.”

Well, I knew that feeling. Far too well. From childhood, my life had been dedicated to Tristan with little room for anything else. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way,” I said, wishing all the hopes in my heart would disappear, because I knew they would amount to nothing. “The worst has happened, and yet here you sit, alive and well. Maybe now you can live your own life the way you want without fear of discovery. Your affliction no longer owns you.”

“What you speak of sounds like a dream,” she said, and though my hood blocked my peripheral view of her face, I knew she was watching me. “Marc, why do you hate my painting?”

Sitting still in the face of that question was impossible, so I rose and walked over to a glass tree, brushing the dust off the branches. Not a day went by when I was not reminded of my own affliction, every looking glass and averted gaze reminding me of my disjointed and disfigured appearance. It made me think of what a hypocrite I was to tell her not to let her affliction own her when mine very much owned me.

“I know what I look like,” I said, forcing the words from my lips. “But sometimes I like to imagine that maybe it isn’t as bad as I think. That maybe my eyes are cruel and deceptive critics, and that maybe others see a different reality.” I bit the insides of my cheeks. “But what you painted was what my eyes have always shown me, and it reminded me that such dreams are for children and fools. What you painted was reality.”

Her skirts rustled as she came to stand between me and the tree. Even with her cosmetics smeared and her hair in disarray, she was the most beautiful girl in Trollus. Reaching up with one hand, she pushed back the hood of my cloak, and I instantly turned my head so she would see me only in profile. But she caught my chin with her slender fingers and pulled it back.