Stolen Songbird: Malediction Trilogy Book One (The Malediction Trilogy) (31 page)

But the very idea of ending it here, interned in a pool of offal with an idiot like Luc, struck fury in my heart. I wasn’t injured or starving. There was hope yet. I began to move, feeling around in the pool in search of Luc’s pack. The trolls must have given him a lantern to replace the one I’d lost, and I was certain his pack would contain a flint for lighting it.

My fingers brushed against rough fabric, and I hauled it upwards, knowing from the weight that it was the sack containing the rest of his gold. I felt around inside, pulling out smooth coins one after another until I determined there was nothing of use inside. I started sorting through the gold on the floor, but found nothing but metal and rock belonging to the mountain. No flint.

“Where did you put it?” I muttered, forcing myself to concentrate and remember the moment I had seen Luc first light the lantern. I remembered the desperation I’d felt at being deprived of sight, the splatter of water against my face as he’d climbed out of the pool, and the sound of steel striking against flint. And sight. In my mind’s eye, I saw the glow of light, and the movement of him tucking the small rock into his coat pocket.

Grimly, I waded over towards the corpse, my fingers reaching reluctantly down to touch the bones and half-digested mush of fabric. Then I froze. From out in the blackness, I felt him. Like a silken cord strung between two points, one of them drawing ever closer. Tristan was coming.

CHAPTER 26

 

I was running out of time. I dug my fingers into the fabric, my heart hammering as the moments ticked by. Tristan was moving many times faster than I had, and I was all but certain he was leading his father’s soldiers towards me.

My skin brushed against a sharp edge, and I gleefully extracted the knife, sticking it between my teeth for safekeeping. “Flint, flint, where are you?” I hummed under my breath, trying to combat my panic. He was closer.

My fingernails grated across a stone stuck between two ribs, and I quickly pried it out, not allowing my mind to linger on how it became lodged there. Tristan wasn’t far now. If I didn’t get a source of light soon, he’d catch me.

I needed to find the lantern. Wary of the knife’s sharp edge, I tentatively struck the two together. Nothing. “Quit being a ninny,” I scolded myself, and smacked the two firmly together. A spark flew. I repeated the process, but the quick spark wasn’t enough to help me locate the lantern. I’d have to do it by feel.

Clutching my precious objects, I continued my search. When my hand closed over the slim metal handle of the lantern, I very nearly crowed with delight. But I was too late. I heard the sound of boots, and then light blossomed from overhead.

“Cécile?”

I froze, the sound of Tristan’s voice eliciting an unfortunate mix of emotion in my heart.

“Cécile? Where are you?”

My silence was only delaying the inevitable. “Here.” My tight throat restricted the word to a croak. Coughing, I cleared it and called again. “I’m here.”

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head and then realized he couldn’t see me. “No.”

“I’m coming down.”

With a recklessness I would never have dared, he scampered down the slick rocks and stopped on a ledge above me. He was alone. Brilliant light filled the chamber, and I looked around and saw in an instant that if my light hadn’t broken, my passage out of the slime would have been easy. I stared at the open passage that led to freedom and struggled with my emotions. I should feel disappointment, devastation even. I had been so close. If I’d been better prepared, or bolder, I might be breathing open air. But part of me – a part that made me cringe – was glad that he had come.

A soft snort of annoyance caught my attention and I looked up. Tristan had his arms crossed and was glaring at me.

“Is it because you’re a human or because you’re a girl?”

“Is what because?” I retorted, infected by his irritation.

“Your blasted kaleidoscope of emotion!” he snapped. “One minute you’re happy, the next you are sad. Then angry. Then ashamed. Every hour I’m forced to run the gamut of every emotion that ever existed and never know the cause of a single one of them.”

I crossed my arms and scowled.

Tristan threw up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t even know whether you want me to rescue you from this mess or to leave you here in the dark.”

“Please,” I snapped. “You aren’t here to rescue me – you’re here to stop my escape. And besides, I don’t need any help from you.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows rose along with his anger. “So I take it you are wallowing around in sluag shit because you enjoy the smell so much? And you thought it would be more entertaining to navigate the labyrinth in the dark? Perhaps,” he whispered angrily, “we should stuff your ears with wool and tie one arm behind your back to make it truly entertaining for you!”

I held up the products of my search triumphantly. “See?”

“Yes, I do see,” he snapped. “I see a broken lantern that has leaked oil everywhere and a fool of a girl about to set off sparks in the midst of it.”

I looked down, only now seeing the rainbow of oil slicking across the pool of offal. “Then I suppose we should both be glad you finally decided to stop me,” I said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in my voice.

Hurt stung through my mind, and I looked up at him in surprise.

“You think I’m here to save my own skin, don’t you?” he demanded in a loud whisper. He looked away from me and shook his head.

I let the broken lantern slip from my fingers. “Why else?” I asked. “Duty?” I flung the word at him.

His eyes snapped back to meet mine. “To hell with duty. I came for you – I came because I was afraid you weren’t going to make it. I came because I couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to you.”

A soft gasp filled my ears and I dimly realized it had come from my lips. This was not what I had expected. And even though I didn’t know entirely why, I knew his statement changed everything.

The ropes of power that wrapped around me were blissfully warm as they lifted me out of the slime and settled me on the ledge next to Tristan, holding me steady until I had regained my balance. I looked down at the place where I’d almost met my end. The pool was murky and faintly green, but beneath the floating skeleton and scraps of fabric, there lay a carpet of glittering gold. “It’s Luc.” I gestured below. “My purchase price.”

Tristan scowled. “Then he got what he deserved. The labyrinth always kills the greedy ones eventually.”

“No one deserves this,” I whispered, imagining what it would be like to be paralyzed and have the flesh stripped from your body. A shiver ran down my spine, and I wrapped my sodden cloak around me.

“He lied to you. He stole you from your family. He sold you with no more regard than a trader sells a side of beef.” Tristan’s hands balled up, and my own teeth clenched from the fury emanating from him. “If any man deserved to die, it was him.”

I regarded the bones that had once been Luc, finding it hard to hate a dead man, no matter what he had done. Besides, there was another side to the bargain. “And you purchased me, with as much regard as a nobleman buying a side of beef.”

“I did not!” His silver eyes locked with mine and I shivered at the intensity in them. “I fought this arrangement at every turn. I’ve told you that.”

“He gave you the choice. I was there.” My lip trembled. “I heard you agree to me with my own ears. But the whole time, you wanted it to be her, didn’t you?”

Tristan sighed and the heat left his eyes. He wiped a weary hand across his face and looked down at the glittering pool of gold. “Anaïs and I are only friends.”

“Oh,” I said, my voice weak.

“We have never been anything more and we never will be,” Tristan continued, “but we pretend we are in order to give me the time and privacy I need to meet with my followers.”

“Oh,” I repeated. “I thought that maybe before I came that you and her…” I trailed off as he shook his head. “Did you ever consider it?” I asked, my mind having a difficult time coming to terms with what he was telling me.

Tristan frowned. “Do you really want to go down that path?”

“No,” I said quickly, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead. “Anaïs is a sympathizer?”

“Not precisely,” Tristan said. “But I trust her implicitly, so that isn’t so much the issue. Her father, Angoulême, is head of those who wish to keep troll bloodlines pure. He wants to ban all human-troll interactions, ban any human from stepping foot within Trollus, and to conduct all trade at the mouth of the River Road. He also wants to purge the city of anyone with less than pure blood. He’s suspected my leanings for a long time, and this isn’t the first time he’s tried to use Anaïs against me.”

His lips clenched together in a bitter smile, and I could feel his hatred of the Duke sear through my mind. A hatred I was beginning to share.

“To make matters worse, he has my younger brother as his ward.” Tristan swallowed hard. “Roland is… insane. Violently so. And Angoulême has directed his violent predilections towards his cause.”

“Why did your father let Angoulême have him?” I asked, bewildered.

“Originally, it was part of a… a contract that he was negotiating. An alliance. But ultimately, I think it was because he didn’t want him to turn out like me,” Tristan said quietly. “So he placed him in a home where neither my aunt nor I are welcome.”

“Anaïs’ home,” I said.

Tristan nodded. “Which is why I know some of his plans. Angoulême thinks he can control Roland and that he can get rid of me and put my brother on the throne of Trollus. And if he were to succeed he, Angoulême, would be king in all but name.”

“So, why don’t you tell your father about Angoulême’s plot?” I demanded.

Tristan shook his head. “Because I don’t have proof. And neither does he, so we exist in a sort of stalemate. Or at least we did,” he added weakly.

I felt sick. “I played right into his hand, didn’t I? If I hated you, like I was supposed to, I wouldn’t have cared about Anaïs. I reacted just as he suspected I would. I’ve put everything at risk.”

Tristan grimaced. “Yes, but it isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I should have told you everything when I had the chance. I thought you’d be safer if I kept you in the dark. But I was wrong.”

But I hadn’t been in the dark. I had known that Angoulême wanted Tristan dead, and yet still I had let myself believe him.

Tristan interrupted my thoughts. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We are here now and very near the limits of the rock fall. I’ll take you the rest of the way out.” He hesitated and then added, “If that is what you want.”

I opened my mouth, planning to say that I would like that very much indeed, but the words wouldn’t come out. He was giving me the choice. Here he had the opportunity to be rid of me for good and he was letting me choose what I wanted to do.

“Won’t you be in a great deal of trouble if you don’t bring me back?”

“Very likely. But that’s my problem, not yours.”

The thought of anything happening to him terrified me, and knowing that it would be because of my actions made me ill. If only I’d thought things through, if only I’d trusted him and waited, in less than a year Tristan would have been king and I’d be free to go. Of course, he should have trusted me, too.

“You must decide, Cécile. My father’s soldiers will catch up to us soon enough, and your moment to flee will have passed. After this, another chance will not be forthcoming.”

Decide, decide. I closed my eyes and tried to muster up the courage to lay my cards on the table. I was afraid if I told him how I really felt that he would laugh at me; that maybe all these apparent confessions were part of a cruel game that I wasn’t clever enough to discern. But I couldn’t leave without knowing. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with his emotions hovering in the back of my mind without knowing why he was giving me this choice. Always wondering if maybe, just maybe, he had wanted me to stay.

I could feel his anticipation thick upon my mind, but that didn’t help me know what answer he wanted.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

He shook his head. “This is your decision.”

“I know.” I dug my fingernails into the rock. “But before I make it, I need to know how you feel. About me.”

His eyes met mine and I trembled at the intensity of his expression. “Don’t you know?”

I shook my head.

From his pocket, he pulled out a necklace and handed it to me. It was my mother’s pendant. “You didn’t do it.”

Tristan shook his head. “You asked what was better, closure or hope… And I think hope is better.” His eyes grew distant. “Forcing your family to believe you were dead felt like admitting defeat – like we were conceding before the battle any hope they might see you again. I just couldn’t do it.”

I blinked back tears. “Are they still looking for me… or do they think…”

“Not every day; but as often as they can, they still search the hills. They haven’t given up on you.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. Lifting the necklace, I watched the pendant turn, reflecting Tristan’s light in little sparks. “You kept it in your pocket the whole time, then?”

“My hoarding tendencies manifest themselves in strange ways. It was the only thing that was yours.” He smiled – not one of his false ones that didn’t reach his eyes, but one that lit up my heart. “I noticed you wearing it when you arrived, and again that first night you sang. I watched you standing in the glass gardens, and I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. A flame in the long dark night.”

“I’m not…” I started to argue, but stopped. Tristan couldn’t lie. Reaching up, he fastened the pendant around my neck. The gold was warm.

“Most people would have given up a long time ago – just curled up in a corner and waited to die, but you’ve lived every day. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so tenaciously optimistic.” Carefully, as if he feared I might still swat his hand away, he reached out and brushed a slimy lock of hair away from my face. “I want you to stay, Cécile, but I’m afraid staying will only bring you misery.”