Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy #3)(27)

“The better part of an hour, I expect,” Vincent replied, and I shot him a dark look, but not before Victoria countered with, “Care to make a wager?”

“Enough!” I rounded on my friend and plucked out the piece of hay she had stuck between her teeth. “Unless you have something to contribute other than jests, I don’t want to hear a peep from you. Understood?”

She nodded, then took the piece of hay back and replaced it between her teeth. “Peep.”





Chapter Sixteen





Tristan





“Are they even watching?” Sabine stomped her feet, the snow crunching beneath her boots. The wind caught at the hood of her cloak, and I reached up to keep it in place, but her hand was already there. “I’ve got it,” she snapped, and adjusted Cécile’s long braid of hair to ensure it remained visible.

Her sour temper was grinding on my nerves. I’d thought her animosity toward me had eased over the days we’d spent in and out of each other’s company, but she’d apparently been storing it up. “If you’d quit complaining and listen, then you’d answer your own question.”

She stiffened, but remained silent, and moments later, the faint thump-thump of wings reached our ears. I tracked the sound, and when the dragon circled east, I pointed at the shape outlined by the coming dawn. “There. It’s been circling outside the dome all night.”

“Why?”

I resisted the urge to slam a fist against the stone of the tower, her tone testing my patience. “Because they are watching. Obviously.”

“I know that,” she snarled. “I meant why hasn’t it come inside the dome? She knows you’re hiding behind these walls, so it isn’t because it’s afraid of you.”

I frowned at the dragon, forgetting my annoyance. “That’s a good question.”

“Shocking,” she muttered under her breath, then added, “There hasn’t been a single report of a fairy within the city since you erected that dome, with the exception of those wolves she sent after me and Cécile. And that, I think, was a fit of temper on her part. Why? Why is she leaving Trianon alone?”

A rooster crowed from somewhere in the city, and already there were people out in the streets going about their business. “They feel safe,” I said. “They think they’re protected.”

“And they have their new ruler to thank for it.”

It seemed like madness to even consider it, but the Winter Queen appeared to be aiding our cause. First, sending the dragon to attack the city, then making it seem as though my protection was keeping them away. While Roland was terrorizing the countryside, Trianon appeared a bastion of safety. She was giving the humans a reason to fight for me.

“I should have you on my council rather than those nitwits the Regent employed,” I said. “You ask all the right questions and you never mince words.”

But there was another reason why the Winter fey hadn’t descended on the Isle; only I couldn’t speak of it to anyone, because it had come from that fateful conversation where my debt had been incurred. Winter wouldn’t have forbidden me to reveal what I’d learned if the information wasn’t important, but as yet, I wasn’t sure how it factored into her game.

“Those men on the council were born to the position, they didn’t earn it,” Sabine replied, then hissed in irritation, catching at her hood as the wind threatened to take it again. “Can we go inside?”

“Soon.” I’d told Cécile I’d take one of the seeds at dawn. Which would be any minute now.

She was quiet for a few moments. “What if what the Queen wants to talk to you about is an alliance? Would you consider it?”

“Even if that’s what she’s offering,” I said, choosing not to answer her query, “it begs the question of why? What’s in it for her, and what would she want in return?”

“Might it be worth it?”

Though my ancestors had been trapped in this world millennia ago, that fact remained that we were Summer creatures, and the idea of allying with Winter felt traitorous to the core. And misguided. We were the descendants of her adversary.

To Sabine, I said, “Just because she’d help us defeat our enemy doesn’t mean we’d win in the end.” Too easily, I remembered the gleam in her verdelite eyes as we’d struck the bargain that had allowed me to keep my life. We were nothing more than pieces on their Guerre board, and I couldn’t even begin to guess how we’d be played.

It was time. Reaching into my pocket, I extracted the folded handkerchief holding the seeds.

Sabine leaned over my arm. “Stones and sky, what are those?”

“They are the product of one of Anushka’s spells.” I swiftly explained what they did as the sun crested the horizon.

“And you don’t know exactly what they will do or how long the effects will last?” She caught hold of my wrist. “Tristan, this doesn’t feel right. Please don’t take them.”

“And if something happens to Cécile? I…” Breaking off, I chewed on the insides of my cheeks, thinking of how the Regent would be alive if I hadn’t gone running her direction. If I’d kept my head. “It’s easy to stand here now and say that I wouldn’t go to her the moment she was hurt or afraid, but history has proven otherwise. It’s my weakness, and this… this is a solution.”