This is not where it ends…

I leapt to my feet, knocking against the King’s desk and scattering papers everywhere.

“I have to… I have to go,” I blurted out, then without waiting for his permission or even acknowledgement of my words, I bolted out of his office.

Trollus was not large, but it seemed suddenly enormous as I sprinted home, knowing that something had happened, my mind running rampant with scenes of disaster after disaster. Miscarriage or injury or accident, visions of her bleeding and dying filling my eyes, not even the brilliant silver of my bonding marks giving any comfort she was well.

But as I ran into my home, following our bond up the stairs and into the solar, all I found was her sitting whole and well on a stool before a painting of my parents. And I knew in an instant what had happened.

“What did he do?” I demanded. “What did he say?”

Pénélope lifted her face, eyes glassy. “Aren’t you supposed to be attending the King?”

What did that matter?

“I was,” I said, crossing the room to pull her close, my elbow bumping a velvet pillow and knocking it to the floor. “But I knew something had happened, so I left.”

“Left?” She pushed me away, dropping to her knees to pluck up earrings that I recognized as my mother’s. “Have you lost your mind? You can’t just walk out of a meeting with the King, Marc.”

I stared at her, uncertain why she thought I would do otherwise.

“He’s probably furious. He could punish you, take away your position or worse.”

“I…”

“You can’t keep making decisions like this.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “You can’t keep throwing away everything else in your life for my sake. I won’t let you.”

My temper flared, and I kicked the foot of the easel, the canvas toppling sideways to land on the ground, my parents’ faces seeming to mock me with their expressions. They’d always made it seem so easy. “What would you have me do?” I demanded. “Sit there discussing the price of grain and late season apples when I know something horrible is happening to you? When I know your life is in the balance, and mine along with it? Is that what you want from me? To do nothing?”

“You can’t always come running. Not for every little thing.”

“How am I to know the difference? Because what I felt from you this afternoon was not some little thing.”

“I don’t know.”

“Pénélope…”

She picked up the painting, glared at it, then threw it across the room, knocking over a vase of flowers. “It’s no good. It isn’t right.”

I stared at the mess, at the dying flowers all around us. We never quarreled. Not like this. I took a deep breath. “Marcanthysurum.”

She frowned at me in confusion.

“Marcanthysurum,” I repeated, and it was strange to say it aloud twice, when I’d never said it aloud before at all. With my true name, I could be bent to another’s will. Forced to do anything, to reveal anything, whether I wanted to or not. It was the chink in every troll’s armor, and one we protected to the death, never revealing it to anyone. Or almost never. “Now the decision is yours whether you wish me to come to you or not.”