The Malediction: Hidden Huntress Part 3

"All?" The loss was surprisingly painful. "So I have only you."

He nodded. "And the twins, of course. But his Majesty ordered them to the mines as punishment for their actions. I believe he thought the low ceiling would trouble their backs, and perhaps it does, but I doubt he considered how well they'd take to the compet.i.tion of it all. They do well enough down there."

I gripped the edges of the tub. "He'll only find another way to make them suffer. You should all forsake me attempting to continue our friendship will only bring you trouble." I fumbled with my destroyed clothing, cursing my numb fingers. "You may go."

"Tristan, we knew what we were doing when we helped you free Cecile."

"Don't say her name," I snarled, glaring at the water. I swore I could see her eyes reflected in its depths. "Leave."

"I'm not leaving you in this state," Marc said. "You're injured let me help you, at least."

You are helpless. Fury flooded through me, and I rounded on him. "I do not need your help," I screamed. The room shook as I lashed out with magic. Marc raised a shield, but the blow still sent him staggering. If it were not for the fact I was a fraction my usual strength, what I had done would likely have killed him. "Please leave."

He eyed me warily. "I'll not leave of my own accord. If you desire me gone so badly, you will have to order me properly. You have my name."

I sagged against the tub, my wrists screaming against the pressure. "Never again," I muttered.

"Then you will have to suffer my presence."

I didn't respond. Instead, I set to ridding myself of my filthy clothing. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the steaming water and plunged down. It felt like hot pokers were sliding into my collection of injuries, but I relished the pain. And for a moment, it drowned the sense of her out of my mind. Ignoring my cousin's presence, I scrubbed away most of the blood and grime until the water was the color of rust, and then I rested my arms on the edges, breathing deeply.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?"

Ignoring the question, I watched fresh blood well out of the punctures in my arm and drip into the tub.

"Tristan!" Marc snapped and I looked at him in surprise. He was not one to raise his voice.

"Yes?"

"Your father has kept you locked in a prison cell for months, and then today, for seemingly no reason whatsoever, he has allowed you to return home. After a mysterious meeting at the mouth of the River Road. Why? Who did you go to see? What drove him to do this to you?"

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again, the words sticking in my throat.

"It was Cecile, wasn't it?"

I nodded mutely.

"Is she well?" There was more than a hint of concern in his voice.

"Yes," I said. "For now, at any rate." I swallowed the taste of bile that had risen in my throat. "He used me to exact her word that she would hunt down a.n.u.shka for him."

"A promise? Were there any loopholes?"

"Yes, but she's had no experience finding a way out of bargains and I've no way to get word to her." I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to drive away the memory of her expression as she pleaded that I be spared. "So she will either succeed, or he will ensure her failure drives her mad."

"And if she succeeds? What is your plan then?"

"I don't have one." Standing, I wrapped a length of toweling around my waist and retrieved a pair of trousers from my wardrobe, struggling into them. I discarded the idea of a shirt, the thought of the fabric rubbing against the open wounds on my back more than I cared to bear. Marc remained silent through all of it, but his unease was apparent in the way he cloaked his face with shadow.

"There will be no more plans, no more plotting," I said. "I've overestimated myself for far too long, and look at the results. There is nothing I can do but wait for the end to come."

"I can't believe you mean that," Marc said. "The cousin I know has never conceded defeat."

"Three months trapped alone in a hole changes a man," I muttered, sitting down cautiously on the chaise. "I've had a lot of time to think and to come to terms with my failures. To accept that I am, and have never been more than, a puppet in my father's machinations."

"You're giving up because he discovered one of your plans?" Marc's voice was incredulous. "Because of one lost battle you relegate yourself to the status of a puppet?"

"It's not that the battle was lost," I said, closing my eyes. "It's how it was lost." I swallowed hard. "If I had been betrayed or outwitted that I could accept. But..."

He remained quiet while I searched for the words to explain my torment. "He knew that I loved her," I finally said. "And he used my love as a weapon against me. As a weapon against my cause. He took the one thing I had that was good, and he corrupted it." My shoulders slumped. "I love her, and there is nothing I would not do to save her, and for that, I loathe myself, because all my love seems capable of accomplishing is evil. And now he means to do the same to her. To make her choose between my life and the lives of countless others." I clenched my teeth.

"Her choice is already made." His words held a trace of bitterness. "Will you leave her to struggle on alone?"

"There is nothing I can do to help her." I stared at the floor, but all I could see was her face. "She was doomed from the moment she set foot in Trollus, perhaps doomed from the moment she was born. I thought I could protect her, but I was wrong." My fingers twitched slightly and drops of blood rained down on the carpet. "She will determine all our fates the burden is hers. There is nothing I can do."

"How very fatalistic of you," Marc snapped. "If you can trouble yourself to move, there's something I want you to see."

Reluctantly, I rose and followed him out onto the balcony.

The city was mostly dark as it was the middle of the night, but scattered throughout the blackness were pockets of lights. I frowned. "What are they doing?"

"Building your structure they started shortly after you were put in prison."

I blinked once. "Why? On whose orders?"

"Your father's." Marc leaned against the railing. "Shortly after your imprisonment, he announced to the half-bloods that he would fund the construction of your project if they provided the labor."

"Why would he do that?" I muttered, resting my elbows on the railing.

Marc shrugged. "It did much to restore his popularity with them. They practically sing his name in the streets these days."

"He never needed or wanted their support before." My eyes flicked between construction sites. Something wasn't right. "Surely his actions have cost him popularity with the aristocracy."

"Indeed they have." Marc shifted his weight slightly from one foot to another, showing his unease. "He almost never leaves the palace these days. When he does, he always goes with a full complement of guards. Your mother, too, is guarded at all times. He clearly fears an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt."

"He doesn't fear anything," I replied, scoffing at the very idea. "And his resumed control over the tree protects him no one would dare it."

"He didn't resume control of the tree. He gave the task over to the Builder's Guild. They're taxed right to their limit in keeping it stable."

I sucked in a deep breath. "b.l.o.o.d.y stones! What is he thinking?"

Since the moment a permanent tree structure had been established, the ruling monarch controlled it. Part of the reason was the immense amount of power it took to maintain, but the other part was the protection it gave the King. Magic didn't disappear the moment a troll died, but it dissipated quickly, making the death of a king a dangerous time in Trollus. Especially when the death was unexpected. Giving up control of the tree made my father vulnerable indeed.

"The reason he gave was that having the lives of all those in Trollus held in the hand of one troll had proven to be too much of a risk."

I cringed inwardly, remembering how when he had first imprisoned me I'd threatened to pull the tree down on all our heads should something happen to Cecile. "He's not wrong," I said under my breath. "But that risk has always existed why change now?"

"His actions certainly bear consideration."

"As always," I said, my mind sorting through possible motivations. But I couldn't quite concentrate, because something about the construction going on in front of me was wrong. "They aren't following my plans," I said abruptly.

"I thought they seemed different." Marc's voice was mild. "Of course, I am no engineer."

But I was and even though the foundations of the structure were only just being laid, I could tell it would never support the weight of Forsaken Mountain.

"I thought the half-bloods had your diagrams?" Marc said. "What reason would they have to deviate from them?"

I shook my head. "I promised them the plans once I had their names but I didn't have the time to collect all of them, which gave me an out on my promise."

"No wonder they curse your name. You should have handed them over as a show of good faith."

"I didn't trust them," I muttered, remembering the moment as vividly as though it were yesterday. I'd collected as many names as I could before Cecile's terror had driven me back to the palace. Just before I'd reached the gates, Anais had found me and told me my father was alone with Cecile. I'd given her my plans and told her to hide them, then I'd gone inside to duel with my father. Anais would only have had a few minutes to hide the doc.u.ments before she came through my window to fight. Which meant she'd hidden them nearby.

Retreating back inside, I went to the gla.s.s doors Anais had broken through. Below lay my private courtyard and the wall she would have come over to get inside. Opening the doors, I hurried down the steps, barely noticing Marc trailing along after me.

Cecile's piano still stood in the middle of the s.p.a.ce, but it was covered in a layer of dust. I walked in a slow circle around it, then came to a halt at the bench. Stacks of music covered the seat, the paper as dusty as the piano. Wiping my hands on my trousers to remove the blood dripping down from my wrists, I began to sort through them, quickly coming up with what I'd been looking for. "Hidden in plain sight," I said, holding them up.

"Then what are the half-bloods constructing?" Marc asked, his expression grim.

"Were you present when he told them to build?"

Marc nodded, his eyes growing distant as he remembered. "His speech was long, but he concluded by lifting a roll of parchment into the air and shouting, 'Behold the plans for a stone tree.'"

I shook my head slowly, admiring his genius. "He gave them drawings of the tree as it is now. They're building something that is doomed to fail and he knows it. And by keeping the Builders' Guild focused entirely on maintaining the magic version, he ensures none of them will have the time to do the calculations to determine that while the existing structure works for magic, it won't work for stone."

Marc blinked.

"You didn't think it took me two years to come up with plans identical to something I looked at every day, did you?" I asked, shaking my head. "I a.s.sure you, these plans" I shook the parchment "are drastically different for a reason. The question is, why would my father let me out, knowing that I would see through his deception?"

Marc shook his head slightly.

Turning round, I pressed a piano key, the note echoing out around us. "He wants me to do something." I pressed another key. "What does he think I'm going to do?"

"I thought you weren't going to do anything but wait to die?"

I shot him a dark look. "I haven't said I'm going to do anything."

"Of course not." Marc kept a straight face. "This is all just speculation."

"Indeed. Something to pa.s.s the time while I wait."

"To die."

"Or not." I scratched the skin around one puncture in my arm it had finally scabbed over, but the healing itched terribly. "What does he want from me?" I murmured to myself.

"Perhaps he wanted you to lead him to where your plans were hidden," Marc said. "Maybe we've just given him what he wanted." We both looked around, but we were alone, and Marc's magic kept our conversation private.

"Perhaps," I replied, but I was not convinced. There was no evidence he'd even gone looking for them. "If that's the case, he lucked out, because I didn't know where they were."

Marc's brow furrowed. "Then who hid them here?"

"Anais," I said. "She hid them before she came to help me fight my father." I swallowed hard, remembering the sight of my friend impaled on the sluag spear. "She gave up everything for me," I said, closing my eyes. "She died for me."

I jerked them open again at Marc's sharp intake of breath. He stood rigid in front of me, unease on his face. "Tristan," he said. "Anais isn't dead."

"That's impossible." But even as I said the words, hope rose in my heart. Anais, alive?

"And not only is she alive," Marc continued, "she claims your father saved her life."

Five.

Cecile

I jerked upright, my heart racing and skin damp with sweat. Shadows swam and loomed in the darkness of my room, and my eyes leapt between them, searching for the source of my fear. The only time I'd felt anything close to this was when I'd fallen and broken my light in the labyrinth. This was worse. In those twisting tunnels, I'd known why I was afraid, but now the danger was insidious and unknown. My senses tried to reconcile the terror with a threat, eyes twitching around the room of their own accord, spine stiffening with each gust of wind or creak in the floorboards.

The sheer curtains surrounding the bed blew inward, brushing against my face. I flinched, batting them away with one hand while pulling up my blankets to ward away the chill from the open window.

Nightmare.

Taking deep measured breaths, I clambered out of bed, dragging my blankets with me. Slamming the window shut, I flipped the latch. With trembling fingers, I turned up the lamp, but while the light drove away the shadows, the panic scorching through my veins only worsened. Because it hadn't been a nightmare. Everything that had happened was real, and with every blink of my eyelids, I saw the whip crack through the air, the blood splatter against the curse, the look in Tristan's eyes as he turned away from me. And echoing in my head, ceaseless and unending, were his screams.

"Tristan." His name came out as a gasp, and I dropped to my knees. My hands twisted like claws, nails clutching and snagging the fabric of my bedding, a scream threatening to rise in my throat. I clapped my hands over my ears and buried my face in my knees, trying to drown out the sound and failing because it came from inside my own head. The voice of reason shouted warning after warning at me, and I clenched my teeth and held my breath until my chest burned. What was done was done, and I would not improve either of our circ.u.mstances by panicking.

"Get up," I snapped as though my body was some sort of separate ent.i.ty that I could order about. "Move." My knees cracked loudly as I straightened, my numb feet hardly feeling the floor beneath me as I paced shakily up and down the room. My mind raced, coming up with increasingly elaborate waking nightmares of what was happening to him now. Should I go? Should I take Fleur, gallop through the night, and try to sneak into Trollus? But even if I didn't get caught, what help would I be?

"Stop it," I said. "Quit thinking." As if such a thing were possible.

Stumbling over to my desk, I s.n.a.t.c.hed up a page of lyrics. Eyes jumping from line to line, I softly sang, my voice breathless and terrible. "Again!" I said, trying to mimic my mother's voice. "That was dreadful."

Starting again, I sang louder, pushing everything into my voice. It was raw and wild, but like a hammer to a blade, I used it to temper my emotion into something useful, something I could control.

The door swung open, and I broke off mid-note, my hands grasping for the bedposts to keep my balance. But before I could regain an ounce of composure, my mother strode in.

"Cecile!" she snarled, but I cut her off before she could start into me.

"Mama!" I flung myself against her, burying my face in the fur collar of her coat. She smelled like perfume, cigar smoke, and spilled wine, but I didn't care.