Tristan didn’t miss the exchange between us, but as one who lived life entrenched in secrets, he seemed to accept that we’d occasionally keep some of our own. “Go, then.”
Tossing my practice sword on a rack, I ran toward the gate to the courtyard, which was still swinging with the speed of Pénélope’s passing. The streets of the Elysium quarter echoed with the staccato clatter of her heels against the paving stones. I needed to catch her before she reached her father’s home, where my welcome was tenuous at best. Vaulting over a wall, I sprinted through grounds belonging to a very deaf and extremely reclusive Marquis and out the front gate just as Pénélope rounded the bend, skirts hiked almost to her knees and face streaked with tears.
She stumbled at the sight of me, and every instinct told me to catch her. To protect her. To do anything in my power to keep the girl I’d loved for as long as I could remember from suffering any more harm. But I’d seen her expression when she’d realized Ana?s was shielding her, and so instead I checked myself and held my ground, watching as she staggered, one shoe flying forward to land at my feet even as she caught her balance.
Slowly, she straightened, letting the skirts she clutched slip through her hands to cover her feet. “My injuries are now entertainment?”
“No.” I reached down to pick up the dainty brocade slipper. “I knew you wouldn’t fall.” Carefully, I balanced the shoe on the ground before her so that she might slip her silk-encased foot back into its confines.
“Because one who sits on the bottom can fall no further?”
I shook my head, struggling to find a way to explain that she underestimated herself. That she possessed strength greater than anyone I knew, because how else could she have endured what she had and remained so selfless?
“That’s how it feels.” Closing her eyes, she reached up and pressed her hand against her shoulder, skin still marked with black streaks of iron rot. “I hate him.”
My heart sank, and I wished for a moment that it were possible her words were a lie. Because too easily could I imagine how this would go. The choice I’d have to make. Although even calling it a choice was a mockery of the word, as I knew I’d forsake her in favor of my cousin. Tristan and I were bound by blood and friendship, but more than that, we were bound by a cause. A shared vision of a thriving Trollus, not a city falling into decay. Abandoning him would have disastrous and long-reaching implications for thousands of half-bloods, while losing Pénélope’s friendship would only hurt me. “It was an accident, Pénélope. You must know that he’d never wish harm upon you.”
“And yet how fortuitous for him that it did.”
She stepped to one side and started to walk around me, but I caught her arm, and asked, “What are you talking about? How could he possibly benefit from…” Realization dawned upon me. “Ana?s. This is about her, isn’t it?”
Her jaw tightened. “I ruined her life.”
There were only a few half-blood servants in the streets near us, but I could take no chances of anyone noting this conversation. Motioning for Pénélope to follow, I led her back onto the Marquis’s property, quietly shutting the gate and walking deeper into the neglected grounds. Stopping next to a fountain half-heartedly spraying murky water, I cloaked our conversation and said, “I know she is enamored with him, but she had to have known there was little to no chance of it happening while Thibault rules. He and your father despise each other, and the rivalry between your families goes back millennia. Neither would have consented to such a match.”
Pénélope exhaled softly. “And yet they did.”
Astonishment snaked its way through me, but in its wake came excitement, because surely if Angoulême would consent to marrying Ana?s to Tristan he’d be amicable to a match between Pénélope and me, given my father was the Queen’s brother. But anger chased the thought away. It wasn’t the same. My cousin was the greatest prize in Trollus: untouched by all the afflictions plaguing our race and destined to be king.
I was not.
Besides, whether Angoulême desired the match mattered far less to me than whether Pénélope did herself. And I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t imagine her wanting more from me than friendship.
“Please say you will not speak of it to anyone,” she continued, interrupting my thoughts. “She’s been hurt by this enough as it is without all of Trollus knowing the truth.”
“What is the truth?” I asked.
Pénélope sighed. “The deal was struck in secret some years ago,” she said. “Ana?s and Tristan were to be bonded when they were both seventeen. For a long time, only the King, my father, and my grandmother knew the contract was in existence. And by necessity, Ana?s and I knew as well. My father made it clear to us that my affliction must remain hidden – that nothing mattered more. And to ensure it, I was to always be cautious and sedate. Reclusive–” she swallowed hard “–so that when I came of age, no one would notice my regular absences from society. That I should never ask or expect to be wed, nor seek intimacy with another, because of a certainty, they would discover my illness. And that if I did all those things, my sister would become Queen of Trollus, and my father would suffer me to live. All that mattered was that the King not find out until after they were bonded. And better yet, never at all.”
But he had. “The King broke the marriage contract, didn’t he?”
Pénélope wiped her eyes, smearing the kohl lining them. “Within hours. Said he wouldn’t taint Montigny power with weak blood.” Her hands balled into fists. “Which isn’t fair. Nothing about my sister is weak. There isn’t anything wrong with her.”
Except that everyone knew this rare affliction ran in the blood. Magic and our fey nature healed injuries swiftly, and even the wicked slice of iron only delayed the process. Pénélope healed worse than a human, blood refusing to clot, bones unable to knit. And if the injury was iron-inflicted, the black rot was instantaneous. While some with the illness lived to an old age, many bled to death from minor injuries, usually in childhood. While Ana?s herself did not suffer the symptoms, her children might. And in a city where power ruled, such weakness would never be tolerated. It would certainly never be courted.
“She would’ve been a good queen,” Pénélope said. “A great queen, and because of me, the chance has been stolen from her.” Her voice shook. “And perhaps I might’ve forgiven myself for this, but she loves him. And I had to watch her face as she was told that their marriage would never be. That it would be some other girl of the King’s choosing whom Tristan would bond. And that there was no power in this world or the next that would change that fact.”