Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1)(99)

“Dead.”

He nodded and lowered his voice. “I’d tell him otherwise, if I could, but I can’t even get my lips to form the words. Makes me sick to my stomach to even try. I’m sorry, Cécile.”

I stared at the half-eaten peach in my hand, not feeling hungry anymore. It was one thing to know that my family missed me, but quite another to know my brother blamed himself for my disappearance.

“Fred was talking about resigning his post with the Regent to go looking for you. Now he was drunk as a skunk when he told me this, mind you,” Chris added, “but I know for a fact that your mother has offered a reward for any news about where you are. I think it’s she who’s pushing him to it.”

I buried my face in my hands. “He can’t do that. All he ever wanted was to be a soldier!” From between my fingers I mumbled, “My mother, she… she was upset that I left?”

“Aye. Tore up her apartments in the palace and then had the Regent send soldiers out to scour the countryside for you.”

“She did?” I looked up, stunned. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought my mother would be so grieved by my loss.

Chris nodded and to my surprise, he knelt down in front of me. I inhaled, and I could smell the tang of ocean spray, the sweetness of hay, and the hint of sweat from exertion under the sun. He smelled human. He smelled like home.

“She’s offered fifty gold pieces for word of you, Cécile. And she’s a wealthy woman – she could pay more. Enough to buy you from them.”

I felt suddenly cold and the peach fell from my stiff fingers, rolling next to the wagon wheel. “No.”

“Just think it through, Cécile. The trolls love their gold. Your mother could pay them whatever it is they wanted, you could swear magic oaths to keep your mouth shut about Trollus, and you’d be free.”

“No.” It was the only word I could manage.

“It could happen, Cécile,” Chris insisted, mistaking the meaning of my refusal. “For trolls, there is always a price. We just have to figure out what yours is.”

I shook my head rapidly. “No, Chris. I don’t want to leave.”

His eyes widened. “Why?”

“I won’t leave Tristan. Not for anything.” I met Chris’s stunned gaze. “I love him.”

Shock turned to disgust and he recoiled back on his heels away from me. “You can’t be serious.”

“I love him,” I repeated. “I won’t leave. Ever.”

“How can you love one of them?” he asked, his face twisting like he had bitten into something bitter. “They’re monsters, Cécile. Wicked, nasty, selfish, greedy monsters. I’ve seen them slit a man’s throat for whistling at one of their women. I saw another man smothered with their magic because they thought he’d lied to them. Oh, some of them might be pretty enough to look at, I’ll give you that, but inside they’re as cold as steel.” He glanced at my troll guards who, although they were too distant to hear our words, looked none too pleased with the exchange. “Cécile, they aren’t even human. He isn’t human. You might as well be in love with a pit viper.”

I jerked back, furious. “You don’t even know him – Tristan isn’t like that.”

“I’ve been coming to Trollus almost all my life, Cécile. My father has been coming here for nearly all of his, and his father before him, and his father before that. You think you know them, but you don’t. They are pure evil.”

“You are wrong to think they are any worse than we are,” I argued. “And wrong to say we rule ourselves anymore benevolently than the troll kings have ruled their subjects.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Chris hissed. “They enslave their own. Murder their own. They are incapable of any sort of decency.”

I closed my eyes. “Tristan is different. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. He loves me.” My voice sounded plaintive and pathetic. I had no ground to stand on – I knew the trolls’ dark history. It had been Tristan who’d told me of it. But in my heart, I knew he was different. He wasn’t like the kings of past.

Chris closed his hand over mine. It was warm, but not in the feverish way of the trolls. He turned my hand over and our fingers linked: his tanned and calloused from years of labor in the fields; mine, pale as marble and buffed smooth by my maids. “Cécile, you must leave this place. Already you’ve changed, faded.” His dark thumb brushed over my skin. “Trollus is killing you.”

White-hot fury lanced through my mind with a force that sent me reeling.

“Get your hands off of her,” said a voice behind me.

Chris raised my hand, kissed my knuckles gently and then got to his feet. Very brave, but also very stupid. Which he probably realized when a fist of magic hammered into his stomach, tossing him against the wagon. The mule brayed unhappily, pinning its ears against its head.

I was on my feet and between them in a flash. “Stop it!” I pressed my hands against Tristan’s chest, trying to keep some distance between the two. “He’s telling me news about my family.”

Tristan didn’t even look at me – his eyes remained fixed on Chris. “She doesn’t need to speak to the likes of you to have news about her family.”