Page 105 of Stolen Songbird

“Will it do anything if you get too close?” I asked, suddenly uneasy.

Tristan jumped at my voice. “No,” he said. “No, it isn’t that.” Suddenly, he stopped and held up his hand, knuckles rapping against something that sounded like glass but which I suspected was infinitely stronger. “No. It isn’t that,” he repeated. Then he staggered back away from the barrier with a groan, and slumped against the wall.

“Tristan!” I dropped to my knees in front of him, terrified the curse had hurt him somehow. He grabbed hold of me and pulled me close. Tugging off the black wig, he buried his face in my hair, his whole body shaking. “I can’t lose you,” he whispered, and I felt him brush away Anaïs’s magic so that I was myself again.

“Then why are you doing this?” I demanded. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Because I can’t live this way, Cécile. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I live every moment on edge, thinking that I’ll turn around and you’ll be gone. I never know whether you’re telling me what you feel or what you think I want to hear. I need to know that you’re here by choice, not because you were never given one.” He pulled away so that he could look at me, and I saw his eyes and cheeks were streaked with tears.

I brushed one of them away, staring at the gleaming droplet sitting on my fingertip. “I didn’t think trolls could cry.”

He blinked. “Another myth?”

I shook my head. “No, I… When I first came, I thought trolls didn’t feel sorrow like we do. Pain like we do. Loss like we do.” I pressed the tear to my lips, tasting its sweet saltiness and thinking of all the many times the trolls had proven that notion false. “I was wrong.”

We sat on the road for a time, my head resting against his chest, both of us watching waves crash against the shore, pushing the river in and then drawing the flow out. A warm breeze blew into the tunnel, smelling of salt and seaweed, carrying with it the sound of gulls. This was the closest Tristan would ever get to the world outside of Trollus. This one small and unchanging view of the ocean.

“Tristan?”

“Yes?” He was voice was raspy, thick with emotion.

“Are you really giving me a choice? You won’t argue with what I decide?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I won’t stop you.”

“And if I want to stay, you’ll let me? You won’t make me leave?”

His eyelids twitched against his cheeks, but he didn’t open them. “It is your choice to make.”

I kissed him hard, drinking in the taste of him. I felt punch-drunk and reckless, willing to say whatever it took to keep him from making me leave. “Then I’m staying. I want to be with you—forever.” In the back of my mind, I knew I wasn’t considering the full extent of my words, but I had faith Tristan would succeed in everything he set out to accomplish. That perhaps it would take a year or two, but my isolation from the world would not be a permanent thing. It couldn’t be.

He held me against him, hand stroking my back, but I didn’t feel the sense of relief from him that I had hoped for. “You are impetuous, love,” he said softly. “You think with your heart, not with your mind.”

“So?” My voice was muffled against his chest.

“You can’t make the decision here. Troll magic is too thick. Half of what you feel is what I feel. You don’t know what you want.”

“Yes, I do!” I shouted against him, my voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “I want you.” I dug my nails into his shoulder, inhaling the clean scent of him. “I want you.”

With me clinging to his shoulders, Tristan got to his feet. Then he took hold of my wrists, gently tugging them free, and pushed me through the barrier. I stepped through the sticky thickness, and the roar of emotion in my mind subsided into a faint murmur. I gasped aloud, hating the loss, and I tried to go forward again, back to him. But Tristan held up one hand. “Go out into the sun and remember all the things you would give up for a life with me. If you decide not to come back, then…” He swallowed hard and tossed me a heavy purse that clinked when I caught it. “This should keep you for a time.”

“And if I decide to come back?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

I turned and looked out towards the ocean. The river poured into a small cove that had once been the harbor of Trollus before time and breaking mountains changed the coastline. Where I stood was still partially in shadow from the overhanging rocks. The trolls were cursed to darkness even here.

I started walking to the beach, picking my way carefully over the rocky cove until the summer sun hit me like a wall of heat. I turned my face to the sky and stared at the yellow orb, my eyes burning from the pain of so much light. Then, I started to run. Faster and faster, my feet sinking into the wet sand until I reached the water’s edge. Catching my skirts up high, I waded in, relishing the feel of wide open space as the salty water slammed against my shins. I spun in a circle, my burning eyes taking everything in. The seagulls flying high above me. The mountains a virulent green, with the exception of the broken one, its veins of quartz and gold glittering. I ran down the beach to the edge of the rock fall and up a path until I reached grass. I flopped down, gasping for breath. Everything was lush with the peak of summer and I basked in the warmth, letting it soak into my bones. Everything around me was bright and alive, and I realized Tristan was right: I had missed it.

But would I miss him more?

Curling around onto my side, I rested my head on my arms and plucked blades of grass. “Think, Cécile!” I ordered myself. But it was hard, because Tristan’s sorrow was a hard knot of pain in my mind. “You think I’ve left,” I whispered to a little wildflower growing just out of arm’s reach. A big part of me wanted to leap up and run back to him, but would I regret my impulsiveness later?

Think about what you’d be giving up to be with me. Tristan’s voice echoed in my head.

My freedom, for one. If I turned my back on Trollus, the possibilities were endless. I could go back to the farm to live with my father. I could travel to Trianon to live with my mother at court. I could sing on the great stages, or travel across the strait to see the continent. If there was one thing my time in Trollus had helped me do, it was to conquer my fear of the unknown. Up here, I could do anything. I would do anything.

Alone? I grimaced. I had my family and friends in the Hollow, but it wasn’t the same. Gran was getting on in years, and my father was busy with the farm. My brother was busy with his soldiering, and it would not be long before he married a girl and started a family of his own. Fred would inherit the farm and all the land when father passed, and there would be no place for me anymore. A new wife wouldn’t want her husband’s younger sister living with her.

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