I nodded, watching as she passed her fingers through one of them in an attempt to catch it. While she was distracted, I wrapped a delicate web around her, then gently lifted her up in the air. She shrieked, then laughed. “Higher!”

“I thought it was rude to tell a troll what to do with his magic?” Cécile whispered in my ear, her breath against my skin making me feel things that were not appropriate under the circumstances.

Catching her hand, I kissed her fingers. “I’ve been known to make exceptions.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of her grandmother standing by the stairs, arms crossed. In a flash, I had Josette back on the ground, my lights extinguished, all the fires relit, and my feet underneath me.

Cécile took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “Gran, this is Tristan.”

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Madame de Troyes,” I said, more than a little worried what the matriarch of the family would have to say to me.

“Well, at least he knows his manners,” her grandmother said. “Have a seat, young man. Girls, get dinner on the table. I can hear your father coming up the steps.”

“She won’t abide smoking in the house,” Louie said, leading me outside after dinner. I sat next to him, drink in my hand, and looked up at the massive moon overhead. It was ominous in its fullness, and I distinctly remembered the last time I had paid it this much attention: the night before Cécile had been brought to Trollus, which I’d spent racking my brain trying to think of a way around being bonded to a human. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Can’t help but think I might have kept Genevieve safe if only I’d tried harder to get her to come to the Hollow.”

I thought about the letters he’d written her, and knew that short of dragging her forcibly, there had been nothing more he could have done. “I’m sure Anushka has her ways of keeping track of her family,” I said. “You would have needed to take her far further than the Hollow to be out of her reach. And quite frankly, I’ve met her – I don’t think she does anything she doesn’t want to.”

“Might be you’re right.” He puffed on the pipe. “She weren’t always this way – her mother’s disappearance changed her.”

“They were close?”

He laughed. “Furthest thing from it. Genny hated her mother. The woman was a dominating old shrew. Was one of the reasons why Genny was so excited to move to the Hollow. She wanted to get as far away from that woman as she could.”

I frowned. Something about what he was telling me didn’t seem right. “She wanted to leave Trianon?”

“It was her idea. She was tired of performing night after night and being away from the children, but after each pregnancy, her mother always convinced her to come back. When my father died, we had to make the decision of whether to take up the reins of the farm or sell it, and she was adamant we go. Sent me ahead with the children while she finished the run of the show she was starring in. I still have the note she sent a couple days before she was meant to arrive, telling me how excited she was for a fresh start. But she never showed.”

“I rode to Trianon straight away, certain that something had happened to her. I found her at the Opera – she told me that her mother had gone missing, and that she could not in good conscience leave until she’d been found. I wanted to stay to help her look, but she insisted that I go back to be with the children. Told me that she’d come to join us.” Louie rested his pipe against his knee. “She never came.”

“Did she give you an explanation?”

Louie sighed. “I went to see her several times, hoping I’d convince her to come home with me, but she always had a reason why she couldn’t leave. The law eventually declared her mother dead, but by then, I knew there was no hope. I confronted her directly, and she told me that she’d changed her mind. That her place was on the stage in Trianon, and if I truly loved her, I wouldn’t interfere.” He rested his head on his hands. “If only I’d gotten her away sooner, then maybe…”

Would it have mattered? It was no coincidence that Genevieve had changed so markedly following her mother’s death – a death that was perpetrated by Anushka. I had no doubt that the witch had done something to alter Genevieve’s desire to leave Trianon – what other explanation could there be? Another question rose in my mind; one that had been nagging at me since our encounter with Aiden and Fred at the opera. “During an argument your son had with Cécile, he said that Genevieve forced him to choose between you and her, and that when he would not, she took some sort of revenge on him. Do you know anything about that?”

Louie spat into a mud puddle, one hand balling into a fist. “No. I knew something had happened to turn him against her after he went to Trianon, but he refused to talk about it.” He sighed heavily. “She was keen to have him – arranged for a position in the city guard, a carriage to collect him from the farm, and a fancy room done up for him in her home. Didn’t last – he moved into the barracks in a matter of months.” He turned his head to me. “Why do you ask? Cécile is the apple of her brother’s eye, if that’s what concerns you. Not much he wouldn’t do to keep her safe.”

I shook my head and made a noncommittal noise, uncertain why Fred’s words wouldn’t leave me alone. Something about the way each fact I learned about Genevieve painted a clearer, but darker picture of the woman. And it wasn’t the portrait of a victim.