feet, the lace of my gloves catching on the brick wall as I grasped it for support. “Who are you?”
“A messenger.”
“From who?” I asked, though I already knew.
“From his Majesty, King Thibault.” The man inclined his head. “He sends his warmest and most heartfelt greetings to his absent daughter-in-law. Trollus hasn’t been the same since your hasty departure.”
“Are you here to kill me?” Was this the moment of reckoning?
The messenger laughed. “Kill you? Certainly not. If I’d been here to kill you, you would already be dead. I’m not one to delay the inevitable.”
“Then why?” I asked, feeling not at all reassured. “And how is it that you can speak of them at all?”
“His Majesty would like…” he started to say, then Chris burst out the front door of the bar. “Cécile” he called, looking around wildly. His eyes fixed on me and the messenger. “Hey!” he shouted. “Leave her alone!”
He started to run toward us, but I held up a warning hand. “He’s a messenger from the King.”
Chris’s eyes widened. “What does he want?”
The messenger eyed Chris like he’d expected him, his acceptance of Chris’s presence making me uneasy, because it meant he knew who my friend was. “His Majesty would like to meet with Cécile.”
“No!” Chris burst out, almost drowning out my question, “When?”
He smiled. “Tonight.”
“Absolutely not,” Chris said. “There is no bloody way I’m letting you go back to Trollus.”
“Only to the mouth of the River Road,” the messenger clarified. “The gates to Trollus remain closed to humans.”
We’d known that. Although Chris’s father, Jérôme, was still bound by his oaths and unable to speak about Trollus, he’d enough practice working around his oaths to explain that trade was now conducted at the mouth of the river, and only by the King’s agents. The change effectively cut off our one source of news about what was going on inside the city.
Chris shook his head. “Still too close.”
“It isn’t your decision,” I said, my mind racing. What did the King want? Would Tristan be there? Would I get to see him? Even the chance was enough to make up my mind. “I’ll go.”
“You can’t,” Chris hissed. “Tristan warned you never to come back. They’ll kill you!”
I slowly shook my head. “No. If the King wanted me dead, I would be. He wants something else.” And I was willing to bet I knew exactly what it was.
* * *
The messenger escorted us out of the city and into the countryside where horses waited tethered in the trees. Despite the hour, the guards at the gates opened them for us without question, no doubt motivated by gold mined in the depths of Trollus.
We moved at a steady pace, our path lit by the moon as it drifted out from behind dark patches of cloud. It was a good night for casting spells, the round silver disk in the sky magnifying the amount of power a witch could tap. Not that it would do me any good against the trolls.
It was the darkest hour of the night by the time we cleared the trees and came into sight of the bridge spanning the rock fall. Our escort did not follow us as we dismounted and slowly picked our way down to the water.
“What do you think they want?” Chris asked under his breath, holding my arm as I scrambled over some rocks. The tide was retreating, but it was still high enough that there was only a dozen feet of sand between the fallen boulders and the gentle waves. The stench of sewers was strong, the city releasing refuse only when the tide was high enough to wash away the evidence.
“I think they want out.” Ahead, water poured out from under an overhang, the river carving a path through the sand down to where it met the ocean. Beneath that overhang was the entrance to Trollus, and further in, a single ball of light hovered, waiting. A reminder that here lay the gateway between worlds, the divide between reality and fantasy. A dream or, depending on who waited, a nightmare. Shoving my torch into the sand, I motioned for Chris to do the same, and then we cautiously made our way closer.
A small troll child sat cross-legged in the middle of the road. He looked up at our approach, revealing a younger version of Tristan. Except for the curve of his lips… those reminded me of his half-sister, Lessa. The face of angel, but the mind of a monster.