Closing the windows to my room, I pulled off my cloak and shoved it in my closet, along with my little knife. My dress I left on the floor to be laundered, undergarments following suit as I drifted toward the bath, smoothing my hands over my hips as I eyed myself in the mirror. I felt well. Strong. My skin, unmarred by injury, possessed an almost ethereal glow that hadn’t graced me since childhood, not since womanhood had subjected me to a monthly drain on my magic, leaving me exhausted for days and barely recovered by the time the moon cycled around again.

I frowned, my hand hesitating on the tap as I counted back the days. Too many. Too long.

The realization struck me like icy water to the face, and I slowly sank to the tiled floor of the bathing chamber. I stared at my stomach – focusing in on myself in a way I never had before – and faintly, I felt the press of another troll’s magic. “No,” I whispered, even as my heart swelled with unexpected happiness, logic and emotion painfully, horribly, at odds with each other.

I was pregnant.

---

My father must not find out. If I knew nothing else, I knew that. So for the following five days, I kept to my rooms, feigning illness from my cycle. With magic, I inflicted a small cut on my arm and used the blood to stain my undergarments and the sheets, the bleeding from the injury doing much to make me wan and tired. It terrified me to do it, for I feared the impact on the child. But the fact of the matter was, I feared discovery more.

By necessity, I had to keep the news from Marc for the duration of my internment, my stomach twisted into painful knots as I hid beneath the covers wondering how he would react. How he would feel. What he would say. And above all else, what we would do.

Part of me was deeply afraid, for no troll afflicted with my condition had ever survived pregnancy: miscarriage or childbirth had caused every last one of them to bleed to death, magic incapable of healing the damage. Another part of me was deliriously happy at the idea of having Marc’s child, it fulfilling one of the many secret wishes I’d daydreamed about for longer than I cared to admit. But dreams were not reality, and I knew that I couldn’t keep my pregnancy a secret forever. The truth always outs…

“Get dressed.”

I jumped, half in the process of removing my nightclothes, turning to find Lessa standing behind me. Her face was coated with a bemused expression that put me immediately on edge. Tonight was a full moon and there was a bonding ceremony to which I was invited. I’d intended to use the pretense of needing something from the markets in order to visit Marc and tell him the news, but it appeared that would have to wait.

“Why?” It was a struggle to keep from wrapping my arms around my body. Not to protect myself from the other girl, but to protect that which lay within from her venom.

“Your father wishes to speak with you.”

As always, my skin prickled with trepidation at an impending conversation with my father, and I half wondered if it ever would not. If I’d ever grow comfortable enough with deception to approach his interrogation without my heart pitter-pattering like that of a mouse who’s scented a cat. Or whether now that I had more to lose and more to protect, it would only grow worse.

But there was no avoiding it.

Pulling the gown on, I followed Lessa into the hallway and down to the parlor. The house was eerily quiet. Not as though it were empty, but as though everyone hid behind closed doors, holding their breath while they waited for disaster to strike.

Get control of yourself, I silently berated my overactive imagination. He has no more reason than he did yesterday to suspect. Yet all the logic and reason in the world did nothing to quell my growing urge to run. To hide.

To fight.

The air in the parlor was thick with unspent magic, and I jumped at the click as Lessa shut the door behind us, going to stand next to the wall, her arms crossed. My father stood with his back to me, elbows resting on the mantel over a fireplace that hadn’t seen flame in nearly five hundred years. Despite it being yet early, a full tumbler of amber liquid sat in easy reach.

“You wished to see me, Father?” I asked, needing to break the silence.

He snorted, the noise full of contempt. “Is there something you wished to tell me, Pénélope?”

Wished to, no. I opened my lips to spill useless information, but before I could say a word, he turned. “Let me rephrase: do you possess knowledge that I might wish to be made aware of?”

My hands and feet turned to ice, and I took an involuntary step back. No. Please no. Too late I realized that the knife I always carried with me to these meetings was still hidden in my room. Not that it mattered. There was no way I could stomach the idea of using it on myself now.

“Something,” he continued, “that might have resulted from your little trysts?”

Run.

I flung myself at the door, but I barely made it a step before magic snared me. I rotated in the air, helpless to do anything as my father approached, a knife – my knife – appearing in his gloved hand. He stopped, eyes on my stomach, then his lip curled back with disgust. “On anyone with power, it wouldn’t be noticeable. Yet despite this… child existing only a matter of weeks, its magic shines through yours.”

He dropped me, and I landed awkwardly, barely keeping my balance. “How did you know?” I asked.

From behind me, Lessa laughed, the sound grating and toxic. “You didn’t think I’d lowered myself to emptying your chamber pots because I was bored, did you? It takes more than bloodstained sheets to fool me.” She sauntered forward to stand at my father’s elbow. “You really are stupid, Pénélope. It isn’t that hard a thing to avoid. I would’ve told you how, if you’d bothered to ask. Or were you so desperate to try to keep him that you got with child on purpose?”

Though it was a stupid thing, a reckless thing, to do, I spat in her face. But she only wiped it off her cheek and gave me a malicious smile.

“Have you not done enough damage to this family’s reputation?” my father demanded of me. “We can’t hide this scandal, and what good will you be once it’s discovered? The Comte will know his son has been traipsing around with you and put an end to the relationship and to your purpose. And we cannot even hope to benefit from the child, because with your affliction, neither of you will survive long.”

Panic sliced through me and I struggled against my bonds, feeling bruises rise on my flesh where they pressed into my skin. “You told Anaïs you wouldn’t hurt me. She’ll kill you for this!”

My father chuckled softly. “I’ve no intention of hurting you, dearest Pénélope.” Reaching up with one hand, he stroked Lessa’s cheek as though she were a prized possession. Or a pet. “Make whatever you do look like an accident, darling.” Then he turned and walked into the adjoining room.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Lessa stepped closer, and I turned my face away from the warmth of her breath. From the look in her eye. Because I realized now why she reminded me so much more of Roland than of Tristan – there was a darkness in her. A strange, perverse desire to cause harm solely for the pleasure of it. I would find no mercy in her.

Which meant my only salvation was escape.

“An accident, hmmm?” Her fingers caught hold of a lock of my hair, twisting slowly, gently, around the curl. “That’s more of a challenge given what a coward you are, never taking the slightest risk.”

She stepped around me, walking out into the empty foyer, me drifting behind in the net of her magic. “It will have to be the stairs, don’t you think?”

The marble gleamed ominously, squared edges suddenly taking on the appearance of a dozen knife blades ready to dash and slice my flesh. Even if I could survive a fall like that, she’d only toss me down again and again until something irreparable in me broke. A scream tore from my lips, echoing through the empty house.

Lessa mimicked me, adding her own screams to the cacophony, then burst into laughter. “No one can hear you, Pénélope. At least no one who cares.”

Reaching down, she released the magic binding my feet so my shoes could be removed, leaving my legs dangling loose. Tapping one pointed heel against my chin, she said, “Treacherous things. Such a shame that your vanity will be your undoing.”

Discarding one shoe halfway up the steps, she punched the heel of the other through the hem of my skirt. Then she made her way to the top, towing me along behind. “We’ll want to get this right,” she said. “So we’ll practice a few times.”

A shriek tore from my throat as she whipped me down the stairs, end over end, the steps brushing against my cheeks until I came to rest on the floor, magic splaying my legs apart, my skirts up around my waist. Then I was flying up them again.

“Dramatic, but not quite right. Let’s try something else.”

She threw me down again, my hair slapping the staircase as I flipped. Then my body jerked to a stop, the line of my neck pressed against the icy marble of a step.

“We’ll break your neck first,” she said. “Then smash your skull.” My body turned, my forehead resting on the stone. “Then break a few ribs.” I flipped and rotated down the rest of the steps, my skirts now sodden with urine as I came to a crumpled rest at the bottom, my face soaked with tears.

“Just like that. Enough practice. I think we’re ready.”

Last chance. Only chance.

I sobbed as she lifted me up to the top, cringing as she turned me to face her, brushing the hair from my face. “Last words, my lady?”

I slammed my knee into her stomach.

She doubled over, and I kicked her in the face, feeling her control over my own magic loosen. Lessa shrieked and pressed a hand to her broken nose, eyes streaming tears, and I took advantage, slicing through the power binding me. I landed hard on my feet, barely keeping my balance on the edge of the stairs.

“Bitch,” she howled, and I shoved her hard before turning to run.

I sprinted down the hall toward my father’s rooms. Heat roiled after me, and I dived onto my stomach, pressing my face against the carpet as silvery fire filled the air above me, igniting the wallpaper and artwork. Smoke billowed in all directions, and I held my breath, crawling on hands and knees until I was in the room, kicking the heavy door shut behind me.

The lock clicked into place, but it would only buy me seconds, the heavy wood no match for a troll of Lessa’s strength. I could feel her coming down the hall, feel the weight of her magic surging ahead of her.

And I was trapped.

I knocked a bookcase in front of the door, using my magic to shove a heavy table next to it, for all the good it would do.

“Quit making a mess, Pénélope.” Lessa’s voice drifted through the walls, lilting and singsong. “You know I’ll have to clean it up.”

“I hope you clean quickly,” I shouted, pushing more furniture between us. “It no longer looks like much of an accident.”

The door shuddered.

My breath caught, and I took a step back, then another, knowing she was playing with me. Knowing she could tear the whole manor apart if she wanted. My back pressed against the wall, and I gripped the soft velvet of the curtains as I watched the mess of door and furniture slowly shift inward.

Curtains. Window. A way out.

I whipped the fabric aside, flipping open the lock so that the pane swung out. Below was the atrium, the glass foggy with condensation. It would never hold my weight.

Which might just work in my favor.

Picking up a heavy chair, I lobbed it out the window, not bothering to watch as it crashed through the glass and into the atrium below. Instead I ran to a closet on silent feet, easing the door shut behind me and then taking a deep breath and forcing myself to relax.

Breathe.

My magic softened and diminished, only that which always burned, that which kept me alive, still present and tangible. And, I prayed, negligible enough that Lessa wouldn’t notice it.

Door and furniture were flung aside, and the other girl stormed into the room. Her eyes latched on the open window, and in a blur of motion she was leaning out over the edge, expression panicked. “Pénélope?” she shouted, mockery vanished in the face of my potential escape. “Bloody stones and sky, you better not be dead!”

Then she jumped out the window.

Go.

I flew from the closet, leaping across broken furniture and out into the smoldering hallway. The smoking walls were a blur as I ran, faster than I ever had before, because I had to beat her. Had to make it out the front and into the streets before she realized I wasn’t bleeding and broken in the atrium.

Run.

I leapt down the stairs, relying on momentum over balance, my magic throwing open the doors so I didn’t lose my pace. The soles of my feet slapped against the paving stones, and I coated them in magic to protect them as I raced toward the gate, the guards watching me with astonishment. “The upstairs is on fire,” I gasped. “Go help.”

Then I was running in the street.

But where would I go? Who would help me? Who cared enough about my life to risk my father’s wrath? The answer was, and always would be, the same.

Marc.

Ignoring the startled expressions of those I passed, I zigzagged my way through the city, down carved white steps, over the river, and into the Dregs.

The tavern where I knew he was meeting the half-bloods appeared ahead, and I drove toward it, certain that despite my circuitous route, Lessa was behind me. Certain that she’d catch me and drag me home to my father.

The flimsy door swung on its hinges, and I shouldered past the proprietor, seeking the sense of power that only a full-blooded troll would possess.

Down.

My hands hit the door to the cellar, my feet catching on the frame. Then I was falling. I had a heartbeat to contemplate what a strange twist of fate it was that I should die from the very same accident I had just fled when magic enveloped me.

I landed softly on the ground, and all around were startled half-bloods who were even now fleeing in all directions.

Then Marc’s face was above my own. “Stones and sky, Pénélope,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

I burst into tears, and said, “I’m pregnant.”