“After everything I’d done for you, you left me to die. If not for your father, I would be rotting in a tomb. He only stabbed me out of desperation – he never had any intention of harming me.”
The moment replayed through my mind. She was right – I hadn’t even stopped to consider that her life could be saved. My one and only concern had been getting Cécile safely away from Trollus.
“I didn’t know where he was keeping the witch,” I said. “If I had known…”
“If you had known, you still would have chosen Cécile over me.”
Denying it was impossible.
“I’m sorry,” I said, searching her face for some sign that this was an act. A strategy she’d employed while I was in prison to protect herself from punishment. But there was nothing. “I have no right to even ask for your forgiveness.”
“Then spare me and don’t,” she hissed, wiping her hands on her dress. I fixed on those hands, her usually perfectly manicured nails bitten down to the quick. “If you want to make it up to me, stay far away.”
Words were incapable of undoing what I had done to her. What I hadn’t done for her. But part of me couldn’t reconcile the Anaïs standing before me with the girl who had calmly ordered me to take Cécile and go. Anaïstromeria, no more tears. My last command to her echoed through my mind, and I fixed on the damp streaks marring her face.
“If that’s what you want.” My voice sounded strange and distant.
“It is.” She spun around, lavender skirts lifting enough for me to see her matching flat shoes. A sense of wrongness shot through me, slicing through the fog of guilt. Something was amiss, something about her wasn’t right. I watched her stride away, the ghostly echo in my memory of clicking high heels drowned out by the slapping of flat soles.
“Anaïstromeria,” I said under my breath. “Stop.”
She kept walking.
“Anaïstromeria, turn around.” My fingers dug into the stones of the wall I leaned against, mortar crumbling. “Anaïstromeria, come back to me.” If she’d been half a world away, she would have heard. Such was the power of a true name.
It was only the dead who could not hear.
SEVEN
TRISTAN
“What are you doing?”
I did not let my attention waver from the five white shapes bobbing about in the basin full of bubbling water. “Making lunch.”
“Boiled eggs?”
I slowly lifted my gaze to meet Marc’s, all but daring him to make a comment, but he wisely refrained.
“Did you see Anaïs? Would she speak to you?”
I snorted softly, and the water in the basin went nearly all to steam in an instant. “She isn’t Anaïs.” I poured cold water over my eggs to cool them, then set the basin aside.
“I know she seems different,” Marc started to say, but I interrupted him.
“Someone is posing as her, but Anaïs is dead.”
My cousin sat down heavily on a chair. With one hand, he pushed back his hood, his light extinguishing as he did. “How is that… Are you certain?”
“She was wearing flat shoes,” I said, as though that would explain everything.
Marc lifted his head. “Tristan…”
There was concern in his voice, so I quickly added, “Her nails were bitten, and her laugh was off key. She isn’t our Anaïs.” I picked up an egg and stared at it. “Whoever she is, she’s my father’s accomplice, and the plot was planned well. She claimed he saved her life, which means that he must have arranged to somehow do so. With a witch.” I set the egg down. “He had a witch in Trollus the entire time.” He had planned everything.
I looked up at his sharp intake of breath, certain he was about to accuse me of having lost my mind to be making such accusations. “I called her by name, and she did not answer, so I know it isn’t her. Anaïs is dead.”
Marc slumped forward, burying his face in one hand. His shoulders twitched once, then again.
You inconsiderate bastard. I directed a few more choice words at myself for realizing too late that while I had months to come to terms with my grief, Marc had not. His relationship with Anaïs had been tense since Pénélope had died, but they were still close, in their own way. Family too, if by marriage and not by blood.
“Victoria will be devastated.”
His words were thick with emotion, and they sparked multiple realizations within me. No one, with the exception of Cécile, my father, me, and now Marc, knew