The Broken Ones (The Malediction Trilogy 0.6)(66)

It had been the Duke who’d upset Pénélope earlier, that much I knew, though not what was said. Thus far, she had not chosen to tell me herself, and I wouldn’t press. I trusted her to tell me if it was something I should know.

I trusted her with everything.

Rolling on my side, I imagined her in my mind’s eye as she was in this instant. Eyes closed with lashes dark against her cheek. Hair spilled across the pillow, fine as any silk. Her full lips slightly parted, one hand cupped beneath her cheek, nails still bearing traces of oil paint that her maid had missed.

Perfect.

The soft thud thud of her heart was a finer thing to me than any music, able to pull upon any one of my emotions, losing none of its sweetness over the sixty-two days we’d been bonded. Never stop, I told it. Promise me you’ll never stop beating.

If only a heart had so much power.

Habit drew my focus away from her, my magic delving for that faint third power, magic pure and unfocused, a life whose only purpose was to exist.

And I found nothing.

Dread. It fell across me like a pall, and Pénélope shifted uneasily in her sleep. Sitting upright, I focused harder, searching for that tiny glow of magic, a hollowness growing inside me with every passing second, because there was nothing. It was gone.

“Pénélope.”

She jerked awake, blinking in the obscene glare of my light, which had formed without me even noticing. As though my eyes might find what my power could not. “What’s happened?” she asked, pushing onto one elbow.

The strap of her nightdress slipped down, and I stared at the dark strip of fabric that looked ominously like a slash in her skin. “I think…” I knew.

She went still. Unblinking. Unmoving. With one hand, she reached under the thick layer of blankets, then removed it as though she’d been shocked.

It was covered in blood.

Anguish rushed to fill the emptiness in my chest, hers and mine, and it was too much. More than anyone could stand to bear. And then she screamed, the sound shrill and piercing and horrifying.

A sound that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.





Chapter Twenty-Nine





Pénélope





“Winter must be upon us,” I murmured, staring at the closed door, the servants having finished removing the blood-soaked linen. “It’s cold.”

My sister shifted uneasily where she sat on the edge of the bed, and warm magic brushed against me. But it did nothing to alleviate the chill permeating my skin. Or to fill the hollowness in my core.

As though sensing my thoughts, Ana?s lay next to me, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close, her chin resting on the top of my head. Just as I had done to her when we were young, in those days before we cared about power and politics, when our greatest fear was being confined to our rooms for some childish misstep. Back when my presence alone gave her comfort, because I was her older sister. Back when I protected her from our father’s wrath by taking the blame, because I knew he would not strike me.

How things had changed.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered. “Home is… different, without you there.”

Her words struck a painful chord in my heart. Ana?s needed my protection no longer, but it occurred to me that I’d left her in a home full of villains. That every waking minute she needed to be on her guard, and that with me gone, she would have no one who demanded nothing of her in exchange for their love. She’d be alone.

I’d told Marc once that Ana?s was the center of my world. That everything I was and everything that I’d done had been to ensure her success. I’d wrongly believed that success to her was bonding Tristan and becoming Queen and now, too late, I realized how much I’d underestimated my sister. That to her, success was changing our world. Overthrowing the villains like our father and the King. Fighting for the freedom of those who hadn’t the power to fight for it themselves. I was desperately proud of her, but also desperately afraid, because I knew now what our father was capable of.

And I needed to do what I could to keep my little sister safe.

I rolled so that I was facing her, the small motion exhausting. “I know you love Tristan, Ana?s. I know you’re loyal to him, and not to Father.”

Ana?s said nothing.

“And if I know,” I said, “then so does Father. And if you aren’t careful, he’ll find a way to use it against you.”

“Penny–”

I raised a finger to my lips to cut her off. “All of what has happened in these past months, I thought it was defiance on my part, but I was only dancing to his tune. We all were. This was his plan.”

She was listening now.

“Not my death.” I dragged in a few breaths. “Marc’s death. Killing me was just a means to an end. A sacrifice he was willing to make in his quest to take down Tristan and control Trollus.”

Silence. Then she said, “It will take more than losing Marc to bring down Tristan.”

“Will it?” I met her gaze, challenging her, and Ana?s looked away first.

“He played us all like a game of Guerre,” I said. “Because he knows better than we do ourselves what we want. How we will react. What we fear. Who we love.”

It seemed so obvious now, looking back. My father had known how Marc had felt about me long before I had. But more than that, he’d known that Marc would risk everything to save my life. I understood now why my father believed Marc the sympathizer leader when all his contemporaries believed him mad for thinking it. They saw a shy quiet boy who kept to the shadows, but my father saw a young man equally possessed of bravery and selflessness. And he’d exploited those attributes.