It had seemed all the magic and brilliance and beauty of Trollus had been on display just for us, as though the city itself had known how important tonight was to me. A gift I’d wanted but never expected to receive. If there was a way I could go back and live through it over and over again, I’d do it, because I feared it was something that could never be replicated. Though perhaps that, in part, was what had made it so special.

With the exception of the end.

I’d almost kissed Marc beneath the glowing willows of the glass gardens – a moment so perfect that it was the stuff of which stories were written. Then the clocks in the palace had chimed the midnight hour, reminding me of my purpose, and the brilliance of the evening had come crashing down around me as my predicament was remembered.

It had seemed, in that heartbeat, a fell thing to allow his lips to touch mine with my motivations as murky as they were. It would be a betrayal and one, if discovered, that Marc would take harder than most. To describe him as fragile would be a fallacy, for he was not. Yet I knew better than most that his appearance made him feel unworthy of another’s desire, and if he were to learn of my father’s involvement, he’d believe every word and action on my part were motivated by self-preservation rather than a product of the sentiment in my heart. I would not do that to him.

So instead I’d ransacked the moment, asking about Tristan in a desperate attempt to redeem my purpose, rendering both of us uncomfortable and me without a damnable thing to report back to my father. And so the dream now descended into a nightmare as I walked up to the door, because there would be consequences to my failure.

There always were.

At first, the house was quiet, and I breathed a breath of hope that Anaïs was out with Tristan or the twins and my father was caught up in the salon of some other lord or lady.

Then I heard the screams.

As always, they came from deep in the lower level, a place of blackness and horror to which I never, ever ventured. Roland at play with whatever half-blood or human had been drummed up for the purpose of indulging the young prince’s violent proclivities. For appeasing him and winning him over to our side.

Our side.

I cringed, hurrying across the foyer, but before I reached the stairs, footsteps and the clack clack of my father’s cane against the marble filled my ears.

“Pénélope.”

Taking a deep breath, I turned. My father stood next to the table in the center of the room, the crystal lamp atop it casting shadows on his face as he dabbed at the droplets of scarlet splattered across his skin with a silken handkerchief. And not for the first time, I wondered how much of the horror that went on below was not for Roland’s amusement, but for my father’s.