“A fair point.” And an obvious one. What was she getting at? Even though it was tasteless to do so, I lifted the glass to my lips using my magic and took a long swallow. My wrists hurt like the fire of the damned after my scuffle with Marc, and even the weight of a wine glass was enough strain to make me feel sick. I did not care to admit it, but the manacles were starting to have a marked impact on me. The tips of my fingers had turned slightly blue and my hands grew stiffer by the day. If they remained on much longer, the damage might be permanent.

Taking another mouthful, I lowered the glass.

My aunt’s lip curled and she clucked loudly. “The next thing will be elbows on the table at dinner. Your father would have a fit if he knew you were behaving so.”

As if my father cared about my manners. What was she implying? That he’d be upset that the torture devices I wore under his orders were harming me? Surely not. If anything, he would be glad that they were finally having their desired effect. “I think it might please him.”

“Do you now?” Her eyes flicked to the board, where all the answers lay. I walked in a circle around the four boards, examining my father’s pieces instead of my own. Familiar and expected faces graced the players; expected at least, until I encountered my own. In onyx, I was still a prince, but the piece sat on a square rimmed with steel, which meant that it was not lost, but unplayable. There were several other pieces set up in a strategy to free it, but they were still many moves away from their goal. Leaning closer, I saw tiny grooves on the black prince’s brow where a crown had once sat.

And might sit again.

If I was interpreting the game correctly, my father still considered me one of his players. He had strategies in place to return me to my rank as crown prince and heir, but only on his terms. The piece was onyx – it was his. To regain my position, I would have to be his puppet.

I stepped back to my place across from her. “That piece will not come back into play. I still maintain that the only strategy the white has left is to regain those players” – I gestured at the half-bloods – “with politics, and then maneuver to assassinate the black king.”

“And it might work,” she said, “if it did not play in so well to the third player’s strategy.”

Third player?

Two more boards lifted from the racks off to the side and came over to join our four. With them came another case of players, of which she selected several pieces to set on the boards, none of which were half-blood or human. The pieces were made of garnet, the red jewel glittering in the light.

Angoulême.

“Your new Guerre set is well made,” I said, stalling. It was perfectly made for the purposes of this conversation, but it would have taken months for an artist to craft. How had she known it would be needed?

Setting my wine glass down on the table, I lifted the onyx spy representing Lessa-as-Anaïs, and set it down next to the garnet duke. My aunt nodded slightly, and Roland’s onyx piece floated over to join them, garnet warriors lining up around him to show the piece as captured.

“Correct?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, but the memory of Roland walking with Lessa and Angoulême troubled me. He had certainly not been under guard, and he had not looked discontented with his position. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“Then if the white follows through with your suggested strategy…” Marble half-bloods replaced onyx and the black king toppled off the boards, his crown detaching to float over and replace the simple circlet on Roland’s head. “The red now controls the black players, and they are all now aligned against the white.”

Which put me in a worse position. I inhaled, then let the air out slowly. “The white could rescue the new black king.”

“Are you sure?” Her face sagged, crinkling in a way I’d never seen before. The black crown lifted off the onyx Roland’s head, and he floated away. His garnet twin lifted out of its case, coming to rest on the board, the black crown settling on his head.

“No,” I whispered. “That cannot be. It cannot…”

The shattering of glass interrupted me, and what I’d been about to say ceased to matter as every mirror in the room exploded, the air filling with a million shards of razor-sharp glass and the sound of my mother’s piercing scream.

Seventeen

Cécile

The chaotic noise of the musicians warming up filtered through the door of my dressing room, adding to the air of tension found backstage before any performance. I was on tenterhooks too, but for different reasons: I was convinced Marie du Chastelier had some sort of association with Anushka, and that she knew who I was. That I was working for the troll king. That I was hunting her.

The idea had tickled at my mind that despite the lack of resemblance to the portrait I’d seen, that maybe she was Anushka. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew that couldn’t be the case. Marie was too visible – she was the daughter of a minor but exceptionally wealthy noble family. Her birth and childhood were a matter of record, witnessed by many.

Anushka likely altered her appearance with hair dye, cosmetics, and magic, but she couldn’t disguise herself as an infant or a child. She’d been in her twenties when she’d cursed the trolls, and though she’d found a way to stop herself from aging, she still remained a woman grown. It would have been necessary to disappear and start new lives continually, or those around her would notice that she never aged. Taking on roles where her face would be well known would have been impossible – the risk of being discovered by the trolls or persecuted for witchcraft would be too great.