“Your Grace.”

He did not look away from his game, only selected one of the pale pieces, holding it carefully in one hand.

“She lost the baby.” I hated that phrase: as though Pénélope had carelessly left our child somewhere, like a glove, and that it might be found at a later date. “Our child is dead.”

“And Pénélope?”

There was a certain grittiness to the question, as though the Duke struggled to ask it.

“Dying.”

The piece in his hand split in two, the halves falling to land with a clatter against the floor. He stared at his empty palm, then said, “I assumed that was the reason Anaïs departed with such haste.” He picked up the broken piece. “That’s the trouble with wood, as opposed to gold or silver. Or steel. It can’t truly be repaired.”

“Buy another one.”

He carefully placed the halves in the box. “Some things are not so easily replaced.”

With the exception of perhaps the King, there was no greater politician in Trollus. Everything Angoulême said meant something. Had a purpose. And as much as I’d never be their match, I’d still been trained since childhood to read between the lines. To parse every phrase for hidden meanings and intent. That I did not do so now had nothing to do with lack of ability on my part, but rather that I did not care to know what lay behind his words.

“Why are you here, Marc? Come to have your revenge? You are, of course, welcome to try.”

I took the seat across from him, pulling back my hood though I didn’t know why. “No.”

One of his eyebrows rose. “No? No plans to give her the gift of my death before her own light goes out?”

“It would be no gift to her,” I responded, though it would’ve been a lie to say that I hadn’t considered it. “She’d feel no happiness over your death.”

“Would you?”

Yes. I didn’t answer.

He smiled. “I suppose that makes her better than both of us, doesn’t it? Because of a surety, I’d rend you limb from limb if the consequences of doing so were not greater than I care to pay.”

“Why?” The question was out before I had a chance to think it through. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Her death in the hope that it would kill me too?”

A stillness took him, rendering him more statue than man, only the steady beat of his heart betraying that he was alive at all.

“Do you know how I discovered Pénélope’s affliction?” he finally asked. “It was when she was a little girl, barely more than a babe. She was sitting on my knee at my desk while I worked, and I’d given her a pen to toy with to keep her happy.” The corner of one of his eyes twitched. “When I looked down, at first I thought she’d gotten into the ink. But then I realized she’d cut herself on the steel tip, and that it was iron rot working its way up her little hand. Just the tiniest injury, but it bled and worsened and almost stole her life from me.”