“Pénélope is not nothing.”

Tristan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Don’t twist my words, Marc. You know what I mean: to my father, she isn’t a powerful enough asset to interest him. That doesn’t mean she means nothing to me. Far from it. This is exactly what I’m fighting against, and you know it.”

“And yet you have no intention of doing anything to help her.”

“When did I say that?”

Pulling back my hood, I glared at him, feeling a strange twist of satisfaction and disappointment when he looked away.

“If I make my move against my father now, I’ll very likely lose,” he said. “Then I’ll either be dead or disinherited, and Angoulême will get exactly what he wants, with Pénélope no better off. And what sort of ruler can I claim to be if I sacrifice the welfare of thousands for the slim chance of saving one?”

“Then kill Angoulême.”

Anaïs shifted uneasily next to me, but I ignored her.

“And how is that any better? Awful as he might be, he hasn’t done anything. I can’t go around killing trolls because of what they might do.”

“Then let her bond someone.” The words were out before I had a chance to think them through, and I instantly regretted them, because I was going to get an answer to my request, and it wouldn’t be the one I wanted.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

Tristan’s eyes shifted once to Anaïs before going back to me. “Fine. Make me the ass for saying what we all know: no one – at least no one Pénélope would want – would agree to that sort of risk. And even if someone would, my father would never give his permission.”

“You could.”

“But I won’t. I’m not sentencing someone to a short life for the sake of giving her a few more years.”

I punched him in the face.

“Have you lost your damned mind?” he snarled, wiping the blood from his already healing lip.

It felt like it. “Maybe I have lost my mind given I’ve been trying to put a heartless bastard like you on the throne.”

He lunged at me and we both went down, fists flying while furniture toppled and broke around us. Then magic had me around the waist, slamming me against the wall hard enough that the room shuddered. “You would resort to magic,” I started to shout, then saw Tristan pressed against the opposite wall. And Anaïs standing between us, arms crossed.

“Are you two about finished?” She glared at both of us, then her magic relaxed, dropping Tristan and me to the floor.

“There is another way to keep her safe,” she said, “and that’s to make my father believe she’s more useful alive than dead.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Tristan asked, straightening his coat and giving me a malevolent look before righting one of the chairs and taking a seat.

“I’ve already done it,” she said, turning her eyes on me in a way that made my skin prickle with apprehension, because whatever solution she’d come up with, it wouldn’t be one I liked.