“Fetch His Highness something to eat. I’ll have some of whatever you bring, so mind you only spit in his portion.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Élise curtseyed deeply. “I’ll ensure you have separate plates.”

Apparently I had a few more apologies to make.

Élise hesitated before leaving. “Would Her Majesty…”

My aunt silently shook her head, waving her off. Strange...

I circled the chaise my mother sat upon so that I might see her better. Part of me wished that I had not. Mother’s normally serene face was lined with tension, the muscles in her jaw clenched so tightly that they bulged. Her eyes fixed on some unseen thing, her pupils dilated wide and her brow furrowed. Her hands sat in her lap, kneading each other so hard that red marks rose and faded on her flesh. “Mother?” I asked hesitantly. I had never seen her like this, not ever.

If she heard me, she showed no sign of it.

“Mother?” I started to reach for her, but a coil of my aunt’s magic caught my arm.

“Have a care, Tristan. She is of an ill temper.”

Was this my doing? Was she upset with me? Of all those I’d worried about angering with my actions, my mother hadn’t been one of them. Never mind that her mind was not entirely in this world, she had never been cross with me in all my life. And there had certainly been times I’d deserved it.

You attacked your own father, a voice whispered inside my head. You almost killed him. She might have died, and your aunt along with her. What did you expect?

Not this.

Cautiously, I moved into her line of sight, keeping my magic ready to defend myself if need be. She’d never tried to harm me, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. It certainly didn’t mean she couldn’t – weak women did not become queens of Trollus. “Mother?” Every inch of me singing with tension, I tentatively touched her shoulder.

She flinched, and I jerked my hand back, hardly noticing the jolt of pain in my wrist. Please don’t let it come to this, I silently prayed. Please don’t let her have turned on me.

“Tristan?” Her eyes focused on my face, all the tension and fury washing away in a flood. “You’re here!”

“I am.” I tried to smile, but my face felt incapable of it. “Are you angry with me?” The question came out before I even knew I was thinking it.

“Why should I be angry with you?” Her face managed to be guileless and unreadable at the same time.

My mouth went dry, and I struggled with what to say to her. “Because I have not been a good son.”

Her eyes drifted, and not for the first time, I wondered what it was she saw. What she heard. What she thought. There was a rumor that my mother’s mind was half through the door to Arcadia, and that it walked through the lands of endless summer, which lent her serenity. It was a pretty thought – far better than to believe she was just another victim of the inbreeding and iron slowly poisoning us all.

It also provided a potential explanation for how the fey were able to communicate with my aunt. It was they who provided the foretellings: though they could not come to this world, it did not mean they could not watch. I wondered what they had seen that made them believe my and Cécile’s union could end the curse. I wished I could ask them, but even if I could, I knew they’d give me naught but riddles in response.

A shudder abruptly ran through my mother, and her face twisted back into the unfamiliar mask. “Leave me be.”

“But…”

“Leave me be!” I recoiled from her shrill shriek, stumbling over my own boots as I backed away.

“Let her be, Tristan.” My aunt’s voice sounded weary. “Come and sit with me.”

On numb feet, I made my way back around and sat down. The dozen mirrors in the room reflected an image that betrayed nothing of how I felt. “What has happened to her?” I demanded. “Who has done this to her? Was it me? Is this my fault?”

Aunt Sylvie regarded me for a long moment. “How is Cécile feeling?”

“Never mind Cécile,” I snapped. “Tell me what is wrong with my mother!”

Her head tilted slightly, her eyes boring into mine. “I always liked her, you know. Little spitfire of a thing. Not one easily led, so I imagine she’s not pleased about the yoke your father managed to place around her neck.”

I opened my mouth to demand she answer my questions and to quit changing the subject, but realization dawned, and I clamped my teeth shut. “Physically, she is well,” I finally said. “But these last days she has rarely been herself.”

“Her will is at odds with his compulsion.”

I nodded slightly. “A ceaseless tension.”

“Do you feel it?” She asked the question as though it were the idle curiosity of one who had never been bonded.

“At its worst, it seems it is not her mind that suffers, but my own.”

She sniffed. “How taxing.”

And there it was – I had answered my own question. The emotions my mother was feeling were not her own – they were my father’s. My mind skittered and tripped over the implications – not only was something angering him terribly, it was bad enough to affect my mother. For the first time since my imprisonment, I started to wonder if perhaps my father wasn’t as in control of Trollus as I had thought.

“It is better than not knowing,” I said, settling back more comfortably in the chair, pushing aside my concerns so that my mind was wholly on our double conversation. It was always this way with her – she would not tell me outright anything that would betray my father’s confidence. I didn’t know – and would never ask – if she did this out of courtesy to my mother or because he had forced a promise from her at some point in the past. Ultimately, it didn’t really matter. The information I needed would be hidden in everything she did or said; it was up to me to extract it and put it together.