“How?” Sabine asked. “I’m not guessing they’ll make it easy to spy on them, and if whoever we sent got caught–”
“The trolls will kill them,” I finished. But the Regent and Tristan would send them anyway, because what other option was there? The trouble was, I didn’t think that even if the spies made it there and back that they’d have anything useful to tell us. Counting numbers and establishing positions as one might do in a battle between human armies would do us no good, because the trolls wouldn’t fight that way. What we needed was to learn where allegiances lay amongst the trolls and the half-bloods, where the balance of power sat between the Duke and the King, and above all, what was going on in the mind of Thibault himself.
I exhaled another breath against the glass, watching as the mist formed into an elaborate pattern of frost even as a plan began to form in my mind. We needed to see, and for that, we needed the help of someone who saw all. “I have an idea,” I said. “But to put it into play, we’re going to have to go into the city.”
Chapter Four
Tristan
The wave of relief I felt from Cécile was little comfort; the distraction had been momentary, but it had certainly been damning. I forced her out of my thoughts, taking in the scene before me.
The Regent was dead.
Aiden stood frozen, sword slipping from his fingers to clatter against the stone floor. “What have I done?” he whispered. “What have I done?”
What he’d promised my father he’d do.
I slammed him to the floor with more force than was necessary, knocking him out. Then I blocked the doors and, most importantly, muffled the sounds of Lady Marie’s wails. Already, her dress was soaked with her husband’s blood, and she rocked back and forth, his corpse clutched to her chest.
“How is this possible?” the advisor asked, his eyes going back and forth between the unconscious Aiden and Fred wearing his Aiden mask. “What devilry is this?” He pulled a sword that appeared more decorative than useful, but before he could decide which man to attack, Marie wrenched it out of his hands.
“Monster,” she screamed, jabbing the point at the prone Aiden. “Take off my son’s face, you wretch.”
The tip of the blade thudded against my magic, and she screamed, attacking it over and over as though by sheer strength of will she could force the weapon through. I let her do it, taking the moment to come to grip with how quickly circumstances had devolved. How quickly I’d lost control.
Aiden was regaining consciousness, his face wet with tears. His stifled sobs tickled at my magic, and I had to curb the urge to grind his bones to dust for what he’d done. For whatever weakness that had caused him to make a deal with my father, and for the lack of strength that saw him caving in the space of an hour to the will of the troll Cécile had resisted for weeks.
The Regent had been a capable ruler, well liked by the people. I didn’t have time to win the islanders over, if such a thing was even possible. I’d needed him, because the humans would have followed him. And now I was left with this: a man who had committed patricide and regicide, and in doing so, had ensured no one in their right mind would follow him.
“Do something.” Marie’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. She’d dropped the sword and was crawling through the pooled blood toward Fred, her hand outstretched. “Aiden, do something. Avenge your father.”
Fred took a step back, eyes going to mine for directive. “Tristan?”
Marie froze. “You are not my son.”
Someone pounded on the door. I had only minutes to decide what to do, how to salvage the situation. I removed the magic disguising Fred. “No, he isn’t.”
Her skin went deathly pale, eyes going back to Aiden. The realization that her own son had killed his father marched across her face, and as angry as I was with Aiden, it struck a chord in my heart. Would I see the same expression on my own mother’s face when the time came? Would my justifications matter to her, or would she only see a cold-blooded killer who’d murdered his own father?
“He’s not in control of his own mind,” I said, not sure how much of a difference knowing would make. “He’s made some sort of promise to cede the Isle to my father, and he’s under compulsion to fulfill his word.”
“Why would you do such a thing?” Her voice shook.
For a moment, I didn’t think Aiden would answer, wondered if he even could. Then he said, “I never thought it would come to this. I never believed they’d be freed.”
It was an excuse, not an answer, and to her credit, Marie understood that as well. “Why agree to it at all?”