The horde of islanders outside the walls lost its erratic, desperate violence. People stopped pushing, stopped fighting, their arms falling limply to their sides as they listened.

“It’s working,” Marc said. “Don’t stop.”

So I sang, repeating the lullaby like a soothing mantra, watching as my people sat down in the snow and the mud; and though it was too distant for me to see their faces, I knew they were transfixed. Mesmerized. There was motion amongst them now, Fred’s men, my gran, and whomever else they’d chosen to help, moving amongst the horde, pulling out the injured and doing what they could to help them.

But it was not sustainable. Exhaustion was tugging at my limbs, and my lungs burned, the melody beginning to rasp in my throat. Hurry, Tristan, I silently pleaded.

The bridge blinked out.

I screamed, despite myself. Screamed, because hundreds of innocents were about to drown, were about to die. Men and women who’d done nothing to deserve this fate. Children who’d never had a chance to live.

Then skiffs were rising out of the water and moving toward land. Fingers of magic beyond number plucking people out of the surf and bringing them to safety.

Melusina swooped over our heads. “It’s Trollus. The magic’s coming from Trollus,” Chris shouted. “There’s hundreds of trolls on the beach bringing them in.”

Martin, I thought, knowing that was where the librarian must have gone for help. And that so many had been willing to give it meant I hadn’t been wrong to break the curse. They deserved their freedom, and right now, they were proving it.

“Can you see Tristan?” Marc shouted, and Chris shook his head. “They’re on the beach, but she won’t go close to them. I’ll try again.”

Then it happened.

I felt the air ripple, then everything rocked with a thunderous boom. My song faltered, and I struggled to keep focus, seeing the horde stir. The air pulsed again, but instead of a boom, it sounded like a thousand mirrors shattering.

Then I was falling.

Tristan was falling.

Marc’s hands were reaching for me, catching me, but it didn’t matter. “No,” I whispered, but his magic was still tangled in my voice and the word rippled across Trianon. “Please, no.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

Tristan

My magic skated over the sea, stretching in a long strip beneath Roland’s bridge, reaching both ends just before his magic vanished and the whole mess of humans and skiffs dropped on my flimsy replacement. There’d been no time to brace it against the sea floor, and the weight jerked me to my knees, dragging me forward and sending Damia’s, the Dowager Duchesse d’Angoulême’s, head rolling off into the brush.