The Malediction: Hidden Huntress Part 5

Denying it was impossible.

"I'm sorry," I said, searching her face for some sign that this was an act. A strategy she'd employed while I was in prison to protect herself from punishment. But there was nothing. "I have no right to even ask for your forgiveness."

"Then spare me and don't," she hissed, wiping her hands on her dress. I fixed on those hands, her usually perfectly manicured nails bitten down to the quick. "If you want to make it up to me, stay far away."

Words were incapable of undoing what I had done to her. What I hadn't done for her. But part of me couldn't reconcile the Anais standing before me with the girl who had calmly ordered me to take Cecile and go. Anaistromeria, no more tears. My last command to her echoed through my mind, and I fixed on the damp streaks marring her face.

"If that's what you want." My voice sounded strange and distant.

"It is." She spun around, lavender skirts lifting enough for me to see her matching flat shoes. A sense of wrongness shot through me, slicing through the fog of guilt. Something was amiss, something about her wasn't right. I watched her stride away, the ghostly echo in my memory of clicking high heels drowned out by the slapping of flat soles.

"Anaistromeria," I said under my breath. "Stop."

She kept walking.

"Anaistromeria, turn around." My fingers dug into the stones of the wall I leaned against, mortar crumbling. "Anaistromeria, come back to me." If she'd been half a world away, she would have heard. Such was the power of a true name.

It was only the dead who could not hear.

Seven.

Tristan

"What are you doing?"

I did not let my attention waver from the five white shapes bobbing about in the basin full of bubbling water. "Making lunch."

"Boiled eggs?"

I slowly lifted my gaze to meet Marc's, all but daring him to make a comment, but he wisely refrained.

"Did you see Anais? Would she speak to you?"

I snorted softly, and the water in the basin went nearly all to steam in an instant. "She isn't Anais." I poured cold water over my eggs to cool them, then set the basin aside.

"I know she seems different," Marc started to say, but I interrupted him.

"Someone is posing as her, but Anais is dead."

My cousin sat down heavily on a chair. With one hand, he pushed back his hood, his light extinguishing as he did. "How is that... Are you certain?"

"She was wearing flat shoes," I said, as though that would explain everything.

Marc lifted his head. "Tristan..."

There was concern in his voice, so I quickly added, "Her nails were bitten, and her laugh was off key. She isn't our Anais." I picked up an egg and stared at it. "Whoever she is, she's my father's accomplice, and the plot was planned well. She claimed he saved her life, which means that he must have arranged to somehow do so. With a witch." I set the egg down. "He had a witch in Trollus the entire time." He had planned everything.

I looked up at his sharp intake of breath, certain he was about to accuse me of having lost my mind to be making such accusations. "I called her by name, and she did not answer, so I know it isn't her. Anais is dead."

Marc slumped forward, burying his face in one hand. His shoulders twitched once, then again.

You inconsiderate b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I directed a few more choice words at myself for realizing too late that while I had months to come to terms with my grief, Marc had not. His relationship with Anais had been tense since Penelope had died, but they were still close, in their own way. Family too, if by marriage and not by blood.

"Victoria will be devastated."

His words were thick with emotion, and they sparked multiple realizations within me. No one, with the exception of Cecile, my father, me, and now Marc, knew that Anais was dead. No one grieved for her. None of the death rituals of our people had been given to her, none of the words spoken, none of the songs sung. Much had been done to our friend, and much was still being done to her memory, and my father was the cause of all of it.

But the sight of Marc's stifled grief kept me silent. Anais's death was as much my fault as my father's. I might not have put the spear through her chest, but the impostor hadn't been wrong when she said I'd done nothing to save her. She might still be alive if only I'd tried harder, if only I'd tried bringing a witch to Trollus, if only...

"I'm sorry." The words were clipped.

"You had to make a choice," he finally replied. "You chose. Now you have to live with the consequences" he squared his shoulders "and not squander what was paid for in blood."

The consequences: not only Anais's life, but those of dozens of others. The punishment my friends endured for helping me. The sacrifice of years of planning. The destruction of the half-bloods' hope for freedom. All to save one life.

A life that was once again in jeopardy.

"And there is always vengeance."

A charge of eagerness surged through me, ideas and plans swirling about in my head. "There is that."

"Do you know who the impostor is?"

"No," I said, picking up one of my eggs, carefully cracking it and peeling away the sh.e.l.l. "But I intend to find out."

We spent the rest of that day in mourning, first delivering the news to Vincent, who took it badly, and then later, when the mining shifts changed, to Victoria, who took it worse.

In quiet voices, Marc and I debated who could be impersonating Anais. The list was short. For one, Anais had been one of the most powerful trolls living, and there were only a few women with enough raw power to fool those close to her. Two, the troll would need to have known Anais well enough to imitate her voice and mannerisms. And three, it had to be someone who could go absent for days at a time without it being noticed.

"Her grandmother?" Marc suggested. "Damia's always been something of a recluse."

I frowned, bending my mind around the idea of the Dowager d.u.c.h.esse posing as her granddaughter. "If anyone could manage it, it would be her. But..." It didn't feel right. Whoever it was, she was in collusion with my father, and those two hated each other. "I don't see how she or Angouleme could profit from this sort of deception." I shook my head once. "I don't think it's her."

"Then who? Who could it possibly be?"

I tilted my head from side to side, listening to my neck crack. "I have no idea." Not only that, I had no idea how she was doing it. Creating the illusion was easy enough, but keeping it in place day and night, never letting it slip. That was no mean feat. It wasn't only a matter of walking around and looking like Anais, it was a matter of becoming her. A fragile act that could be destroyed with one direct question: are you really Anais? Because no troll could say yes.

The door swung open, and our voices cut off as Vincent stepped inside, his face drawn and exhausted, his hair coated with grey dust so that he looked twenty years older than he was.

Vincent coughed once. "Took some convincing, but he agreed."

My blood started to race, and I stood up, feeling the need to act. "When?"

"Tonight." Vincent met my gaze. "But he had one condition."

"Anything." The word was out before I thought through what meeting Tips tonight would actually entail.

Despite his exhaustion, Vincent must have noticed my slip, because he winced. "His condition was that the conversation take place in his territory."

I forced myself to nod, the movement jerky. "Fine. I'm in no position to argue."

But b.l.o.o.d.y stones and skies did I want to, because Tips's territory was the one place in Trollus that I never went. The one place that I hated above all others.

The mines.

Eight.

Cecile

"Don't you have a bed?" A sharp poke in the ribs pulled me out of my dreams, and I opened one bleary eye to regard my brother. His face was only inches from mine, full of a mixture of curiosity and amus.e.m.e.nt. "Your breath stinks," he informed me.

"Shut up." I tried to bury my face in the settee, but the fabric was stiff and unyielding, and all the action accomplished was making my nose hurt.

Why was I asleep on the sofa? Memory of the night before came crashing down on me, from the events at the mouth of the River Road, to my mother stumbling in drunk, to her tearful justification of her abandonment of us. And then...

I sat upright, the motion making me dizzy. When the stars cleared, my eyes fixed on the empty teacup on the table. "She drugged me!"

One of Fred's eyebrows rose.

"Mother," I muttered, arranging my nightclothes so that I was decent.

My brother laughed, but he didn't sound all that amused. "Sounds about right. She probably got tired of pretending to be a parent."

I grunted in agreement, but Fred wasn't through. "I'm fairly certain that's where my predisposition for strong drink came from that she fed me whisky as a babe to stop the squalling."

"Don't start." I shivered. The fire had all but gone cold, and the great room was freezing. "I really don't understand why you hate her so much. You might not agree with the choices she's made, but it isn't as though she's harmed you."

It was the wrong thing to say. Fred's face darkened, and he tossed two letters on my lap. "One for you from father. Another for Sabine from her parents that you'll need to read for her." He turned and walked toward the door. "She's far from harmless, Cecile, but maybe the only way you'll learn is the hard way."

"Wait!" I called after him, but he kept walking. Stumbling off the sofa, I scuttled around so that I was between him and the door. "I'm sorry. Stay for breakfast."

He glared at me.

"Please?" I pantomimed a sad face. "I hardly see you."

"I have work to do." He picked me up and set me to one side, but this was a well-worn routine of ours. "Please!" I mock-pleaded.

"Don't got time for you."

I flung myself at his knees, wrapping my arms around one leg so that he dragged me forward with every step. "Please!"

"Let go. What sort of reputable lady acts this way? You're behaving like a child off the streets of Pigalle."

I clung tighter.

He stopped walking long enough to rub the bottom of his boot on my hair.

"We've got bacon," I said, trying not to laugh and hating that laughing was even possible after last night. "And apricot marmalade."

He switched directions and started toward the kitchen, dragging me along with him. I let go after a few steps, and getting to my feet, trailed after him. Our cook was working away, and was only now setting the bread dough aside to rise. My mother didn't keep live-in servants. She said it was because of the cost, but I expected it was more a matter of privacy.

"What hour is it?"

"Almost noon," Fred replied, sitting down at the table. He was wearing his uniform, with both a sword and pistol buckled at his waist. He had always been tall, but at nearly twenty, he had finally filled out his frame. He looked quite dashing, I thought, bending to examine the badges of rank adorning his chest.

"My brother will be joining me for breakfast," I said to the cook, taking the seat closest to the fire. My mother would have insisted we eat in the dining room or the parlor, but the farm girl in me wouldn't let go of the kitchen.

"Yes, mademoiselle." She did not look up from her dough. My mother did not encourage familiarity with the servants, and she was a difficult woman to work for. The maids changed so often, I could scarce keep track of their names for trying.

"I saw Chris this morning," Fred said quietly, b.u.t.tering a piece of yesterday's bread. "He told me your reclusive friends from the south are stirring up trouble."

I sighed and nodded, wishing for a moment that I'd never told him the truth. But keeping it a secret from my family had never even occurred to me, even if I could have pulled it off.

Other than my family, only Sabine, Chris, and his father knew the truth. Gran's magic hadn't been strong enough to heal my injuries entirely and we'd been forced to come up with a tale to explain them. She told everyone that I'd been attacked by a madman, and only by the grace of G.o.d had the Girards been in town to rush me home in time for me to be saved. It was a truth and a lie in one, a fact I was reminded of every time I undressed and saw the six-inch red scar running the length of my ribcage. It was a mark I'd bear for the rest of my life.