Page 100 of Stolen Songbird

I shook my head rapidly. “No, Chris. I don’t want to leave.”

His eyes widened. “Why?”

“I won’t leave Tristan. Not for anything.” I met Chris’s stunned gaze. “I love him.”

Shock turned to disgust and he recoiled back on his heels away from me. “You can’t be serious.”

“I love him,” I repeated. “I won’t leave. Ever.”

“How can you love one of them?” he asked, his face twisting like he had bitten into something bitter. “They’re monsters, Cécile. Wicked, nasty, selfish, greedy monsters. I’ve seen them slit a man’s throat for whistling at one of their women. I saw another man smothered with their magic because they thought he’d lied to them. Oh, some of them might be pretty enough to look at, I’ll give you that, but inside they’re as cold as steel.” He glanced at my troll guards who, although they were too distant to hear our words, looked none too pleased with the exchange. “Cécile, they aren’t even human. He isn’t human. You might as well be in love with a pit viper.”

I jerked back, furious. “You don’t even know him—Tristan isn’t like that.”

“I’ve been coming to Trollus almost all my life, Cécile. My father has been coming here for nearly all of his, and his father before him, and his father before that. You think you know them, but you don’t. They are pure evil.”

“You are wrong to think they are any worse than we are,” I argued. “And wrong to say we rule ourselves anymore benevolently than the troll kings have ruled their subjects.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Chris hissed. “They enslave their own. Murder their own. They are incapable of any sort of decency.”

I closed my eyes. “Tristan is different. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. He loves me.” My voice sounded plaintive and pathetic. I had no ground to stand on—I knew the trolls’ dark history. It had been Tristan who’d told me of it. But in my heart, I knew he was different. He wasn’t like the kings of past.

Chris closed his hand over mine. It was warm, but not in the feverish way of the trolls. He turned my hand over and our fingers linked: his tanned and calloused from years of labor in the fields; mine, pale as marble and buffed smooth by my maids. “Cécile, you must leave this place. Already you’ve changed, faded.” His dark thumb brushed over my skin. “Trollus is killing you.”

White-hot fury lanced through my mind with a force that sent me reeling.

“Get your hands off of her,” said a voice behind me.

Chris raised my hand, kissed my knuckles gently and then got to his feet. Very brave, but also very stupid. Which he probably realized when a fist of magic hammered into his stomach, tossing him against the wagon. The mule brayed unhappily, pinning its ears against its head.

I was on my feet and between them in a flash. “Stop it!” I pressed my hands against Tristan’s chest, trying to keep some distance between the two. “He’s telling me news about my family.”

Tristan didn’t even look at me—his eyes remained fixed on Chris. “She doesn’t need to speak to the likes of you to have news about her family.”

“The likes of me?” I heard Chris come up behind me, and I turned, slamming a hand against his chest to keep him from coming any closer. “Let it go, Chris,” I warned, but he paid no more attention to me than Tristan had.

“The likes of me is the same as the likes of your wife,” Chris snapped. “I’ve known her all her life. I know her father and her grandmother. I’m friends with her brother. I’ve danced with her at festivals and walked her home from her lessons in town. We’re the same people.”

“She is nothing like you,” Tristan sneered, his tone making me flinch. It made him sound like his father. “She is my wife. She is Princess of Trollus, and you are not fit company for her.”

“She’s your prisoner.”

Tristan showed no visible reaction, but I felt Chris’s words strike him to the core.

I turned, pressing my back against Tristan and pulling his arm around me. “That isn’t true Chris. I told you—I’m here because I want to be.”

“That true, my lord? Does she have the choice to leave if she wanted to? Has she ever had the choice?”

Tristan was silent. I could hear his heart beating furiously where my head rested against his chest.

“Just as I thought.” Chris’s face was dark with anger. “You stole her from her kin and now she’s your prisoner. She might say she loves you, but I don’t believe it for a minute. You’ve either put some magic on her mind or she’s just saying it because it’s what you want to hear!”

“That isn’t true!” I shouted. “You shut your mouth, Christophe!” I looked up at Tristan. “It isn’t true. You know I love you.” He refused to meet my eyes, but his grip around my waist increased, drawing me tight against him.

“We have no such magic.” His sword slithered as he pulled it out of its scabbard. “I could have your head for this, boy. Or perhaps cut you open and leave you on the street to die, slowly. I could kill your father for bringing such an insolent brat into my presence.” His grip on my side was becoming painful, his fingers grinding the bones of my corset against my ribs.

I closed my eyes, fear building in my gut. This wasn’t Tristan I was hearing. It was his father’s voice, and the voices of all those horrible selfish kings before him. The voice of a troll.

“No,” I whispered. “Please, don’t.”

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