“What he intends may not matter,” he replied softly. “If everything goes according to plan. My plan.”

An odd sense of relief went through me at his admission. “You’re a sympathizer. You’re their leader, aren’t you?”

He nodded and took hold of my shoulders, giving me a gentle shake. “If you betray me to Angoulême, he’ll tell my father. And my father won’t just kill me. He’ll kill Zoé and Élise, and countless others you haven’t even met. And even if by some miracle you survive my death, he’ll make sure it isn’t for long.”

“I understand,” I said. “You have my word that I won’t say anything.”

Still gripping my shoulders, he said, “In a year, I’ll be eighteen, which is when troll magic matures and reaches its full strength. I’m…” He hesitated. “I’m already a match for him now. By then, I’ll be stronger. Stronger than any troll alive; and in Trollus, power is king.”

I gasped. “You intend to depose your own father?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and let go of me. “In a manner of speaking.”

Coldness swept over me. “You plan to kill him.”

“Sometimes,” he said, so quietly I could barely hear him, “one must do the unthinkable.”

“It’s treason.” Worse than treason, what he was contemplating was patricide. The murder of his own father.

“Yes.”

“What about your mother? If you kill your father, won’t she die too?” I thought about it for a minute. “And your aunt?”

Tristan looked sick and felt worse. “It’s a possibility, but my aunt believes she can keep my mother alive.”

“She knows then? What about your mother?”

He gave a slight nod. “Only my aunt – it is easy enough to muffle our conversations with magic. My mother isn’t the suspicious sort.” He rolled his shoulders, the movement reflecting his discomfort. “It was my aunt’s plan from the beginning. She despises him and how he rules Trollus.”

There had to be more to it than that. “Why?”

“She had a… a friend. He was a half-blood and they were very close.” Tristan grimaced in discomfort. “Because of the conjoined nature of my mother and aunt, my father has a tendency to consider them both his. When he found out about my aunt’s… friendship, he had the man flayed in public. Twice.” He closed his eyes. “Even a half-blood can survive a great deal of torture. I believe the executioner deliberately sliced the artery in the man’s leg for fear that if he survived, my father would order him flayed a third time. And a fourth.”

My knees wobbled at thought of enduring so much torture – if there was a downside to the troll’s near-invincibility, this was surely it.

Tristan continued. “He’s never ordered the execution of a full-blooded troll – there are too few of us left – but he orders the deaths of half-bloods for the slightest offence. And they are never clean deaths.”

Gruesome, horrible deeds, but such is the nature of kings – human or troll. I could understand the Duchesse wanting to see him dead because of what had been done to her friend, but what had pushed Tristan over the edge so that he would consider killing his own father?