“Boiled eggs?”
I slowly lifted my gaze to meet Marc’s, all but daring him to make a comment, but he wisely refrained.
“Did you see Anaïs? Would she speak to you?”
I snorted softly, and the water in the basin went nearly all to steam in an instant. “She isn’t Anaïs.” I poured cold water over my eggs to cool them, then set the basin aside.
“I know she seems different,” Marc started to say, but I interrupted him.
“Someone is posing as her, but Anaïs is dead.”
My cousin sat down heavily on a chair. With one hand, he pushed back his hood, his light extinguishing as he did. “How is that… Are you certain?”
“She was wearing flat shoes,” I said, as though that would explain everything.
Marc lifted his head. “Tristan…”
There was concern in his voice, so I quickly added, “Her nails were bitten, and her laugh was off key. She isn’t our Anaïs.” I picked up an egg and stared at it. “Whoever she is, she’s my father’s accomplice, and the plot was planned well. She claimed he saved her life, which means that he must have arranged to somehow do so. With a witch.” I set the egg down. “He had a witch in Trollus the entire time.” He had planned everything.
I looked up at his sharp intake of breath, certain he was about to accuse me of having lost my mind to be making such accusations. “I called her by name, and she did not answer, so I know it isn’t her. Anaïs is dead.”
Marc slumped forward, burying his face in one hand. His shoulders twitched once, then again.
You inconsiderate bastard. I directed a few more choice words at myself for realizing too late that while I had months to come to terms with my grief, Marc had not. His relationship with Anaïs had been tense since Pénélope had died, but they were still close, in their own way. Family too, if by marriage and not by blood.
“Victoria will be devastated.”
His words were thick with emotion, and they sparked multiple realizations within me. No one, with the exception of Cécile, my father, me, and now Marc, knew that Anaïs was dead. No one grieved for her. None of the death rituals of our people had been given to her, none of the words spoken, none of the songs sung. Much had been done to our friend, and much was still being done to her memory, and my father was the cause of all of it.
But the sight of Marc’s stifled grief kept me silent. Anaïs’s death was as much my fault as my father’s. I might not have put the spear through her chest, but the impostor hadn’t been wrong when she said I’d done nothing to save her. She might still be alive if only I’d tried harder, if only I’d tried bringing a witch to Trollus, if only…
“I’m sorry.” The words were clipped.
“You had to make a choice,” he finally replied. “You chose. Now you have to live with the consequences” – he squared his shoulders – “and not squander what was paid for in blood.”
The consequences: not only Anaïs’s life, but those of dozens of others. The punishment my friends endured for helping me. The sacrifice of years of planning. The destruction of the half-bloods’ hope for freedom. All to save one life.
A life that was once again in jeopardy.
“And there is always vengeance.”
A charge of eagerness surged through me, ideas and plans swirling about in my head. “There is that.”
“Do you know who the impostor is?”
“No,” I said, picking up one of my eggs, carefully cracking it and peeling away the shell. “But I intend to find out.”
We spent the rest of that day in mourning, first delivering the news to Vincent, who took it badly, and then later, when the mining shifts changed, to Victoria, who took it worse.
In quiet voices, Marc and I debated who could be impersonating Anaïs. The list was short. For one, Anaïs had been one of the most powerful trolls living, and there were only a few women with enough raw power to fool those close to her. Two, the troll would need to have known Anaïs well enough to imitate her voice and mannerisms. And three, it had to be someone who could go absent for days at a time without it being noticed.
“Her grandmother?” Marc suggested. “Damia’s always been something of a recluse.”
I frowned, bending my mind around the idea of the Dowager Duchesse posing as her granddaughter. “If anyone could manage it, it would be her. But…” It didn’t feel right. Whoever it was, she was in collusion with my father, and those two hated each other. “I don’t see how she or Angoulême could profit from this sort of deception.” I shook my head once. “I don’t think it’s her.”
“Then who? Who could it possibly be?”
I tilted my head from side to side, listening to my neck crack. “I have no idea.” Not only that, I had no idea how she was doing it. Creating the illusion was easy enough, but keeping it in place day and night, never letting it slip. That was no mean feat. It wasn’t only a matter of walking around and looking like Anaïs, it was a matter of becoming her. A fragile act that could be destroyed with one direct question: are you really Anaïs? Because no troll could say yes.
The door swung open, and our voices cut off as Vincent stepped inside, his face drawn and exhausted, his hair coated with grey dust so that he looked twenty years older than he was.
Vincent coughed once. “Took some convincing, but he agreed.”