“Why take so much risk?” Sabine asked. “There will be countless people there to witness what she does. People who will remember her face and who she was. There are better places to kill you.”
“Agreed,” Tristan said. “But both Cécile and Genevieve will be there, and I cannot help but think that means something.”
Longest Night… I exhaled a ragged breath. “It’s the solstice.”
Chris, who had learned more about magic in the previous months than he probably ever wanted, nodded. “Witches can draw on more power during moments of transitions like the solstices and…” He broke off, turning toward the window and then back to me. “The full moon. Cécile, tomorrow night is a full moon.”
“How often do they occur together?” Sabine asked.
“I don’t know.” I glanced at Tristan, but he shook his head. “I never spent much time studying astronomy—there wasn’t much point. Pierre would without a doubt know, but asking him is obviously out of the question. But what difference does it make? Her magic won’t work against me.”
An idea began to tickle my mind and with it came fear. “Do you have my map? The list of dead women that was tucked into Catherine’s grimoire?”
He silently retrieved the paper from a locked chest and handed it to me. My eyes roved over the names, and the years that they had died. Nearly always nineteen or thirty-eight years apart, with a few exceptions. A weak and baseless pattern. Unless it wasn’t. I set the paper on the table and pressed a hand to my mouth. I’d left my mother alone, thinking that we had years before she was in any danger. But what if we’d been wrong?
I dropped my hand to my lap. “We need to know when the last time the full moon and winter solstice were in conjunction. We need to know all the times it has been. And we need a reliable source.”
“I know what you’re suggesting,” Tristan said flatly, “and the answer is no.”
“We need to find out if there is a pattern,” I said. “This might be the only way we can predict her actions. And frankly, we need to know what is really happening in Trollus.”
“How?” He grimaced. “It isn’t as if we can waltz into the city and ask. My father’s control over Trollus is uncertain, and we can be sure that Angoulême will do everything in his power to thwart us.”
“We wouldn’t waltz in,” I said. “We’d sneak.”
Tristan shook his head. “Even if we managed to get into the city, there isn’t a chance of me making it all the way to Pierre unnoticed. My magic is too strong—they’ll know it’s me.”
“Which is why I’ll go alone.”
He leveled me with a chilling glare. “Even if it were worth the risk, it would be impossible. There are two ways into the city, and both are gated and guarded.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Chris said, then winced as Tristan redirected his glare.
I stood up and leaned forward until my face blocked their line of sight. “What are you talking about?”
Chris mumbled something shockingly foul to do with goats and then sighed. “Well, they do have a hole in their roof.”
44
Cécile
We left the horses tied up, in the trees, and started toward the sea of rock concealing Trollus from the rest of the world. I was wearing a grey dress and hooded cloak, my hair expertly tucked under a black wig that Sabine had retrieved from the opera house’s collection of costumes. It wasn’t a perfect disguise, but I was banking on no one taking much notice of a half-blood girl running an errand for her owner.
Tristan had said little since we’d left Trianon, his attention seemingly focused on guiding his black gelding on the road slick with ice and mud, but I knew better. As much as he disliked the risk we were taking to get this information, he wanted, no, needed to know what was happening in Trollus, and that made him much more reckless than he normally was. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
“I thought it would be easier to see,” I muttered once we had clambered up. “Do you know which way? It’s going to take us hours to climb to the middle.” Holding my skirts with one hand, I leapt over onto the next rock, then turned back to Tristan. “It’s all right to walk out here, isn’t it? It won’t, you know…” I moved in an exaggerated wobble from side to side.
“You’re standing on a great deal of rock, love,” Tristan said, the first bit of humor I’d seen in hours rising onto his face. “You’re going to need to eat more chocolate truffles if you intend to finish the mountain’s work.”
A faintly shimmering platform of magic bridged the gap between the two boulders, and he strolled across, then offered me his arm. “Do you remember the last time we disguised you as a troll?”
“How could I forget,” I said, holding tight to his arm and trying not to think about all the rock crashing out from underneath us and how far we’d fall if it did. “Only that time you were trying to sneak me out, not in.” My eyes drifted over the grey stones as I remembered when I’d decided to stay in Trollus, the way he’d kissed me, and the feeling that I finally had nearly everything I wanted. How long had it lasted? Five minutes before everything had quite literally crashed down around us.
“Your choosing to stay was the most purely happy moment of my life.”
I rested my head against his shoulder. “I’ve never once regretted that choice.” But we both knew what was unsaid—that our moments of happiness were so few and far between, hemmed in on all sides by disaster and tragedy. Then and now. Trying to live and love while the blood of a friend and comrade was on our hands and knowing that worse was yet to come. Did that make us appreciate those precious moments more, or did it tarnish them? I didn’t know.
“Here it is.”
The moon hole was much larger than I’d thought—perhaps ten feet across, and while from the streets of Trollus it had appeared to me as hope and freedom, from this perspective it seemed like the gate to hell itself. Black, menacing, and deadly. A wave of vertigo hit me, and I swayed unsteadily on my feet.
“How high up did you say we were?”
“I didn’t.” He pulled me tight against his chest, and I inhaled the clean smell of his linen shirt as I tried to find my balance. “I’m not worried about dropping you; it’s what happens when I put you down in the middle of a city full of disgruntled trolls that concerns me.”
My plan seemed like a worse and worse idea with each passing moment, and I knew if I delayed any longer that I’d lose my nerve entirely. Standing on my tiptoes, I kissed him hard. “For good luck.”
He rested his forehead against mine. “Luck is what poor planners rely upon. As long as you stick to what we agreed, you should be fine. Go straight to Pierre, find out what we need to know, and then go back to the place where I set you down. Don’t go looking for Marc or the twins or trouble, or any of the usual sorts of disasters you always seem to find.”
I nodded, my heart beating so hard and fast I was sure he could hear it. “Right. In and out.”