It was an awful idea that was destined to end badly, but on the heels of the conversation we’d just had, there was no chance Tristan wasn’t considering it. Everyone would be too caught up in the scandal of the future Duchesse d’Angoulême lowering herself to the status of a Montigny mistress to question whether there was another reason Tristan was disappearing for hours at a time. It would cost him nothing and her everything, and I couldn’t help but wonder how badly Pénélope would take it. I opened my mouth to voice my opinion, but Tristan beat me to it.

“No,” he said, eyes on the diagram in front of him rather than her face. “It wouldn’t just be your father we’d be deceiving in this, it would be everyone. People would gossip. Things would be said that I don’t want said about you.”

“Oh, please.” Anaïs twisted a curled lock of hair around one finger and rolled her eyes. “What does my reputation matter? I’m afflicted in the worst sort of way, and everyone knows it. There isn’t a man in Trollus who’d risk the odds, even if my reputation were pure as the driven snow.”

Except that it did matter, because everyone would see it as a concession to Montigny rule. An admission of weakness. And in Trollus, power ruled.

“You’re not afflicted,” Tristan muttered.

“As good as,” she replied. “You know it runs in the blood. Besides, you have no other options.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think about it too long,” she replied, winking. “I might go looking elsewhere for my entertainment.”

They both laughed, but looking down, I saw the silk of her skirts was twisted and soaked with sweat from where she gripped them. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “Yesterday afternoon, my father tried to kill Pénélope.”

I was on my feet in a flash. “Is she hurt?”

“She’ll recover.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“No, you’re not,” Tristan said, and not for the first time, I considered taking a swing at him.

“I intervened,” Anaïs said. “And if he doubted my power exceeded his own, he does no longer. I threatened him if any harm should come to her, but…”

“You think he’ll call your bluff?” Tristan asked.

She nodded. “Obviously it’s a circumstance I wish to avoid.”

“Why?” I spat, furious that despite being wholly innocent and uninvolved with our machinations, Pénélope’s life should be twisted up in them. “Because killing him doesn’t align with our plans?”

“I was thinking that killing him won’t bring her back from the dead,” Anaïs said. “But there is that as well.”

“We have to do something, Tristan,” I said. “We can’t just leave her in this situation.”

Tristan exhaled a long breath. “If she was anyone other than who she is, my father could make her a ward of the state. But to do so would be a slap to Angoulême’s face – practically a declaration of war, for which he’d gain nothing.”