“No.”

She nodded slowly, then said, “I want to hate him. To blame him for taking her away from me. For killing her.”

“He didn’t kill her.” My voice rasped against my dry throat, but I was too tired to reach for a glass of water.

“Yes, he did.”

I opened my mouth to tell her to leave – that I didn’t have the patience to argue with her, but then she said, “But he was also the only one who let her live.”

Taking Marc’s hand, she lifted it to regard his blackened bonding marks. “The rest of us thought that what mattered was keeping her wrapped up in a safe little box, protected from anything and anyone who might hurt her. Marc was the only one who saw that setting her free was what she needed. He made her happy.” Her voice cracked, and she scrubbed a hand across her eyes. “For her sake, we need to fight for him, Tristan.”

“For all our sakes,” I said.

Anaïs nodded once, then stood, leaning down to kiss my cheek. “Don’t let him die.”

She left the room, leaving me alone with Marc.

And I made my decision.

“Marcanthysurum.”

It had taken all the nerve I had to put voice to his true name, but I was rewarded when, for the first time in weeks, his head lifted, eyes fixing on mine.

“She told you my name.”

Betrayal. For a heartbeat, I wondered if Pénélope giving up his name to me would be the straw that broke him beyond repair, but his chest still rose and fell with steady breaths.

“Marcanthysurum,” I said. “I want you to believe that you gave me your name of your own volition, as a show of loyalty and goodwill, not that Pénélope betrayed your confidence.”

“That’s not the truth.”

“I know,” I said. “But I want you to believe it anyway.”

The hurt painted across his face faded away.

“Our revolution needs you,” I said, then stopped. Because that wasn’t the real reason why I was doing this. “I need you. You’re my cousin and my best friend. The only person in all the world that I trust, and you… you make me want to be better than I am. And I’m afraid of what it will mean for me to carry on without you. I need you to live.”

He stared at me, then shook his head.

Clenching my teeth, I took a deep breath. There could be no other way.

“Marcanthysurum, I want you to give me your word that you’ll live. That you will not undertake any action for the purpose of ending your life.”

His shoulders tensed, the muscles in his face standing out in stark relief as he tried to refuse my command. Seconds passed, then minutes, and terror clawed my insides that somehow – impossibly – his will was greater than the power of his true name. Before my eyes, he waged an internal war, the paper on the walls blackening and catching flame from the intensity of the struggle. But in the end, the name won out.