Élise’s mission had been to discover who or what had provoked my father into such a fury that my mother had nearly torn the palace down and cost me my life. And she’d done it.

Anaïs.

Twenty-Three

Cécile

“Under no circumstances is she to leave the house today, do you understand? She has no rehearsals or performances or appointments, so don’t believe any lies she might spin.”

“Yes, Madame.”

My mother repeated her instructions to the cook and maid, albeit with different phrasing. But the message was the same: short of the house burning down – and perhaps not even then – I was not to cross the threshold. Scowling, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the canopy of my bed.

It wasn’t as though I couldn’t sneak out. It would be easy enough to compel both women not to interfere, but both of them would lose their jobs if my mother discovered they’d let me go without a fight. Better to use a non-magical route. I was an experienced tree climber, and the sturdy trellis running down the house would not trouble me in the least.

But not getting caught was quite another matter. I’d ignored my mother’s orders and today’s internment was my punishment. But if I did it again, I knew she would and could do much worse to me. Chain my feet together, or hire guards to stand outside my door, or drug me to sleep every night. Her creativity knew no bounds.

The maid had been in a quarter-hour past to bring me a tray of breakfast, and sunlight beamed in between the drapes she had tossed open. The food was slowly growing cold, but the smell of it made my stomach roil, and the thought of eating was more than I could bear. My head throbbed unbearably and my whole body ached from riding around in the freezing cold. I felt like I was falling sick, but I knew better. Even without the message left on my mirror, I would have felt the urgency. Something had happened. Something had changed. The troll king was no longer content to wait. If he ever had been.

Tick, tock, Princess.

Rolling over, I buried my face in the pillow. When I’d first seen the red writing, I’d thought it was blood. It had turned out to be only my own lip stain. But while the medium of the message was more innocuous than I’d originally thought, its meaning was no less nefarious. Not only was I running out of time, the placement of the message and the casual use of my own cosmetics slapped me in the face with the knowledge that the King could reach me anytime and anywhere. I might be free of Trollus, but I was not free from danger. I wondered if anywhere was safe.

My thoughts swiftly returned to the results of my spell the prior night. And the spell itself. It had been so easy – no worrying about whether the nature and balance of the ingredients was correct, or if I was using the elements best suited to the task. No fear the power that manifested would be insufficient.

And it had felt good.

I shivered, worming my way deeper under the covers. Certainly, it had been hard to kill the chicken, but more than that, I remembered the euphoric influx of power. Power that had lingered in me long enough to shout my mother into submission when I’d returned home, hours after casting the spell. It had been a revolting act. But it had also been intoxicating. Addicting. Digging my bitten fingernails ineffectually into my palms, I mumbled, “Don’t think about it.”

Better to think of the results.

All but two of the burn marks on the map we’d proven to be deceased women. The one mark within Trianon we couldn’t find had been located in the Regent’s castle, and I knew for certain that Marie had been there last night, and I was certain Anushka had been in her company. My own blasted mother had performed for her. Chris would argue that it was still no proof. That we needed to investigate the mark outside the city. Yet even before I’d heard his argument, I was already dismissing it. It would only be another grave out in the middle of a field or a forest.

She could have left Trianon, Chris’s phantom voice echoed in my head. If she knows you’re after her, perhaps she has fled. I brushed the voice of my friend aside – my gut told me that Anushka would not flee from me.

But what about the trolls?

“Bloody stones, shut up!” I swore.

“Mademoiselle?”

Tipping my head, I peered out of the depths of my covers with one eye. The maid stood in the doorway, one eyebrow arched. “Not you,” I said. “The… the neighbors are being loud.”

“It is quite late in the morning,” she said pointedly, her gaze flicking to my untouched tray.

“I’m sorry,” I said, eyeing its contents again. My stomach did flip-flops. “I’m feeling under the weather. I don’t think I can eat a thing.”

A soft little sniff told me exactly what she thought of my malaise. “Will you be wanting lunch?”

“I’ll let you know,” I said, still eyeing the wasted food. “For now, I’ll rest.”

I waited for her to leave, then I dragged a chair under the door’s handle so she wouldn’t be able to sneak up on me again. Retrieving a pencil and a piece of stationery from my desk, I went back to my bed and got under the covers again. From under my pillow, I extracted the blood-smeared map with its hastily scrawled list of names and dates, and I carefully began to copy them out in order.

They spanned the past five centuries; the oldest tomb had been so weatherworn that we’d barely been able to make out the names and dates. Chewing on my fingernail, I carefully calculated the age of each woman at her death. No pattern. I calculated the years between their births. No pattern. I began calculating the years between their deaths. Eleven years. Nineteen years. Thirty-eight years. I flung my pencil down with annoyance, not bothering with the rest.