“Anaïs, stop,” I screamed, scrambling to my feet and running into the fray.

Everyone turned toward me, even the King, who was on one knee next to a column of the tree, flooding it with power. Tristan was sprinting up the street, shirt tails loose as though he’d been torn from sleep. “Anaïs!” he shouted, even as paving stones tore up from the ground, hovered briefly in the air, then rippled away from her and toward Marc in a tide of wrath, my sister’s fury making her deaf and blind toward everything but vengeance.

“No!” I flung myself in the path of her magic, expecting to be incinerated or pummeled to death by rock, but everything froze. Falling to my knees, I looked up to see stone and magic swirling in a barely contained vortex, and behind it all, Anaïs staring at me with wide eyes. “Penny, I could’ve killed you,” she whispered, brushing away Tristan as he reached her.

“Don’t do this,” I said, feeling Marc’s hands on my arms, pulling me to my feet. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“He’s killed you.”

“No, he hasn’t.” I wanted to go to her, but there was no way through the mass of unspent power in front of me until she relaxed and relinquished it. “I’m fine. Surely you can see that?”

“But you won’t be. Father told me that you’re… you’re…” Tears flooded down her cheeks, evaporating almost immediately from the heat of magic.

“Tristan, control that girl or I’ll kill her myself,” the King snarled. “She’s putting the entire city at risk with her outburst.”

Stepping between Anaïs and the King, Tristan eyed the storm of magic, but wisely refrained from clamping down on it. “Anaïs, what is going on?”

“Pénélope’s pregnant. She’s going to die.”

Silence.

Everyone was staring at me. Tristan and Anaïs. Marc’s parents. Even the King’s attention had been torn from the threat above, his gaze, which was normally so terrifying, full of pity. All those who’d risked coming out to see the commotion – their expressions were solemn, as though I were nothing but the paramount of tragedies. As though the life inside me were not the greatest of gifts, but a sickness. I hated them for it. Hated that my fate was deemed certain. That I was to be given no credit for having power over my own destiny.

Marc’s hands tightened on mine, the only person who understood. The only person who felt the same way as me.

Tristan broke the silence. “Marc’s no more at fault than she is, Anaïs. And killing him won’t change her fate.”

“It is more his fault.” Anaïs was shaking, anger rising once again. “I trusted him with my sister. I trusted you, Marc.” Her gaze bored past me, and I could feel Marc’s guilt, building in his mind and mine, toxic as iron. Anaïs, by both character and necessity, put her faith in almost no one, but she had put it in Marc. And she believed he’d violated it, and for that she was unforgiving.