The King abruptly rose to his feet. “We are of a mind to let Tristan have a look at her first. Perhaps she won’t be to his taste.”
“How could she be?” a dry voice chimed in from behind me. “She’s human.”
I craned my neck around to look at the troll who had spoken. He was older, black hair streaked with grey. My eyes searched for whatever defect marked him like the other trolls, but there was none. He was shaped as well as any human, but there was no mistaking what he was. Otherness radiated from him, and the malice in his metallic gaze made me look away.
“The human part isn’t negotiable,” the King snapped. “And if I wanted your opinion, Angoulême, I would have asked.” He turned back to the little troll woman. “You are certain this will work?”
“If we’ve interpreted the foretelling correctly, then yes,” she said.
“Ironic, don’t you think, that Tristan was the only one to bear witness to this foretelling,” the troll called Angoulême said. “Unless you can remember the details, Sylvie?”
The Duchesse shook her head.
“I was there,” the Queen chimed in. “Of course my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
No one paid her any attention except me. I desperately wanted to know more about the circumstances that had brought me here. What did the foretelling say and what did it have to do with me? Was it just because I was a convenient human girl, or was there something more? Why, if they loathed humans so much, could they possibly want to wed me to a prince? Only that wasn’t the word she’d used – she’d said I’d be bonded to him. What did that even mean?
“I questioned Tristan myself,” the King snapped. “For all his faults, the boy has excellent attention to detail. He made no mistakes.”
“I didn’t say he had,” Angoulême said. “My concern is rather for what he might have done on purpose.”
“Enough!” The King gestured to the doors. “Let him see her. If he is content, we will proceed.”
“He will be.” The Duchesse’s voice was so quiet, only I heard. “She will shake the foundations of Trollus to the core. Mark my words.”
We walked in a procession through the corridors. Or rather, they walked and I floated along behind them. While I might normally have been keen to experience the weightlessness of flying, the knowledge that I flew towards an unwanted fate ruined the effect. The Queen marched in front of me, leaving me to face her tiny sister for the journey. My mind spun with the possibilities awaiting me, each more horrible than the next. Would he be dimwitted like the Queen? Deformed like Marc? Enormously fat as his father, the King? He could be all of them together, or more terrible than my wildest imagination.
I made little note of the palace corridors as we passed through them. I couldn’t make out anything clearly, anyway. A tiny ball of light floated in front of every member of our small entourage, though the gloom troubled the trolls not in the slightest. Their metallic eyes pierced the darkness, and I marked how they watched me, finding it impossible to decipher what they were thinking. Did their cold hearts pity me? Were the women glad it was I, and not they, floating towards this forced match? A fresh crop of tears stung the cuts on my cheeks. I tried to wipe them away, but of course, I could not. My body was bound in place as surely as if I’d been tied head to foot with rope.
Ahead of the procession, I heard the tinkling laugh of a girl and the sound of a door slamming against a wall.
“His Majesty, the King!” the two-headed troll guard announced.
Afraid, I squeezed my eyes shut. When I finally found the nerve to open them, I hovered in a room richly decorated with tapestries and thick carpets. At its center stood a table and two high-backed chairs. Above the table floated half a dozen boards littered with tiny figurines. A young woman stood next to a chair, her face lowered and knees bent into a deep curtsy. Little of who sat in the other seat was visible to me, for his back was to us: only the bend of a black-clad elbow, the curve of a pale-skinned hand resting on the arm of the chair.
My head swam and I gasped for air, having unconsciously been holding my breath. The girl rose, and her eyes latched onto me. She was beautiful, for an instant, and then her expression twisted with rage. The game boards fell to the table with a clatter. I jerked my gaze away from hers, fixing it instead on the tiny figures spilled across the carpet.
“You can’t be serious?” she hissed. “Her? This, this thing?”
The Duchesse spoke. “Leave us, Anaïs.”
She didn’t move.
“Now, Anaïs. This is no business of yours.”
The girl remained fixed on the spot, jaw clenched in obvious anger.
“Anaïs.” The King spoke softly, but the girl reacted to the sound of her name as though she’d been slapped, recoiling backward. I watched in amazement as a red, hand-shaped mark rose briefly on her cheek, then faded away. Eyes filled with real terror, the troll girl cowered in front of us.
“Get. Out.”
“Your Majesties. Your Grace,” the girl whispered as she bolted out of the rooms. If the thick carpets managed to muffle the hurried thump of her heeled shoes, they did nothing to hide the slam of the door shutting behind us.
The King cleared his throat. “Tristan, we have the human.”
The Prince said nothing at first, but the boards rose once again into the air, invisible fingers plucking the pieces off the carpet, pausing in consideration, and then returning them to their places on the board. “We’d been at this round for nigh on three months now.”