Three days, they are supposed to spend at sea. Three days before they land on the isles and Oak must face his family again.
As the prince drowses in a hammock with the stars far above him on the first night, he hears Randalin boasting loudly that of course he was willing to give up his private cabin to Wren, as a queen needed privacy for travel, and that he hardly minded the hardship. Of course, she nearly persuaded him not to inconvenience himself, which was quite gracious of her. And she insisted on keeping him there for several hours to eat, drink, and speak with her of the Shifting Isles and his own loyalty to the prince, whereupon she praised him greatly, one might even say excessively.
Oak is certain that her evening was stultifyingly dull and yet he can’t help wishing he’d been there, to share a glance over the obsequious councilor’s head, to watch her smother her smiles at his puffery. He craves her smiles. The shine of her eyes when she is trying to hold back laughter.
He is no longer locked in a cell, no longer barred from seeing her. He may go to the door of the room where she is resting and bang on it until she opens up. But somehow knowing that he can and being afraid he wouldn’t be welcome make her seem even farther away.
And so he lies there, listening to Randalin going on and on about his own consequence. The councilor falls silent only after the Ghost throws a balled-up sock at him.
That reprieve lasts only the night.
Invigorated by the success of their mission and certain of his elevated status with Wren, Randalin spends much of the second day trying to talk everyone into a version of the story where he can take credit for brokering peace. Maybe even for arranging a marriage with Oak.
“Lady Suren just needed a little guidance. I really see the potential in her to be one of our great leaders, like a queen of old,” he is saying to the captain of the ship as Oak passes.
The prince’s gaze goes to Wren, standing at the prow. She wears a plain dress the color of bone, dotted with sea spray, its skirts fluttering around her. Her hair is blown back from her face, and she bites her lower lip as she contemplates the horizon, her eyes darker and more fathomless than the ocean.
Above them, the sky is a deep, bright blue, and the wind is good, filling the sails.
“I told Jude,” Randalin goes on. “She proposed violent solutions, but you know mortals, and her in particular—no patience. I never supported her elevation. Neither kith nor kin to us.”
Oak sets his jaw and reminds himself that nothing good will come of punching the councilor in his smug little horned face. Instead, the prince tries to concentrate on the feeling of the sun on his skin and the knowledge that things could have turned out much worse.
Later that afternoon, when Oak is summoned to Wren’s cabin, he is particularly glad he didn’t hit anyone.
The guard who leads him to her chambers isn’t one the prince knows, but he’s had enough experience of her falcons for just the uniform to put him on edge.
Wren sits on a chair of white wood, beside a marble-topped side table and a settee upholstered in scarlet. Small, round windows high on the walls illuminate the space. A bed was built in to a corner, wood frame keeping the cushions from shifting with the swells, a half-open curtain for privacy. When he enters, she makes a movement with her hand and her guard leaves. Fancy, he thinks. I should work out a signal like that with Tiernan. Of course, he doubts Tiernan would leave if there was a gesture he could just
ignore.
“May I sit?” Oak asks.
“Please,” she says, her fingers anxiously turning the ring he gave her. “I summoned you to talk about the dissolution of our engagement.”
His heart sinks, but he keeps his voice light. “So soon? Shall we turn the ship around?” He settles himself grimly on the settee.
She gives a little sigh. “Too soon, yes, I agree. But we will have to break it off eventually. I understand what you did at the Citadel. You managed to keep a battle from happening and bloodshed at bay with your lies, and you managed to remove yourself from my clutches. It was nicely done.”
“I can’t lie,” he objects.
“You lived in the mortal world,” Wren says. “But you never had a mortal mother. Mine would have called that a lie of omission. But name it a trick or a deception, name it whatever you will. What matters is that this betrothal cannot continue too long or we shall be wed and you, tied to me forever.”
“A terrible fate?” Oak inquires.
She nods briskly, as though he’s finally understanding the seriousness of the problem. “I suggest that you allow your family to persuade you to put off the ceremony for months. I will agree, of course. I can conclude my visit to Elfhame and return north. You will strongly suggest that your sister give me what was once the Court of Teeth to rule.”
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
She looks down at her hands. “Once, I thought I might return to my mortal home, but I cannot imagine it now. How could they see me as that child, when I would frighten them, even without knowing the nature of my magic?”
“They don’t have to see you as a child to care for you,” he says.
“They would never love me as much as I want to be loved,” she tells him with painful honesty. “I will do well in the north. I am well suited to it.”
“Do you—” he begins, not sure how to ask this question. “Do you remember much of being Mellith?”
She starts to shake her head and then hesitates. “Some things.” “Do you remember Bogdana being your mother?”
“I do,” she says, so softly he can barely hear it. “I remember believing she loved me. And I remember her giving me away.”
“And the murder?” he asks.
“I was so happy to see her,” she says, fingers going almost unconsciously to her throat. “I almost didn’t notice the knife.”
For a moment, the sadness of the story robs him of speech. His own mother, Oriana, is so fiercely protective of him that he cannot imagine being pushed out on his own, among people who hate him enough to arrange his death. And yet, he recalls sitting at the end of his bed and hearing Vivi explain how it was a miracle Jude was alive after the way their father carved her up. And from the time he learned that he had a first father, he knew that person tried to kill him.
Maybe he doesn’t understand how she feels exactly, but he understands that familial love isn’t guaranteed, and even when you have it, it doesn’t always keep you safe.
Wren watches him with her fathomless eyes. “It seems as though it should change me, to have those memories, but I do not feel much
changed.” She pauses. “Do I seem different?”
He notes the careful way she’s holding herself. Stiff, her back upright. She seems wary, yet underneath there’s a hunger in her. A spark of desire she cannot mask, although whether it is for him or power, he cannot say.
“You seem more like yourself than ever before,” he says.
He can see her considering that but not misliking his words. “So we are agreed. We delay the exchange of vows. Your sister will have a reason to send me back north with a kingdom of my own, and we will let her believe that her plan to separate us has worked. You can take up with any number of courtiers to drive the point home. Drown whatever lingering feelings you have for me in a new love, or ten.” She says the last bit with some asperity.
He puts a hand to his chest. “Have you no feelings to drown?”
Wren looks down. “No,” she says. “Nothing I have would I ever want to give away.”
 |
After a dinner of kelp and cockles, which the cook serves up in wooden bowls with no spoons, the captain invites them to sit on the deck and tell tales, as is his crew’s tradition. Wren arrives with Hyacinthe by her side, settling some distance from the prince. When her gaze meets his, she tucks a long strand of hair behind her ear and gives him a hesitant smile. Her green eyes shine as one of the crew begins to speak.
She loves a story. He remembers that, remembers their evenings around the fire as they traveled north. Remembers her talking about Bex, her mortal sister, and their games of pretend. Remembers how she laughed when he retold some of his own antics.
The prince listens as crew members speak of far-off shores they’ve visited. One tells of an island with a queen who has the head and torso of a woman and the appendages of an enormous spider. Another, of a land so thick with magic that even the animals speak. A third, of their adventures with merfolk and how the captain wed a selkie without stealing its skin.
“We avoid talking politics,” the captain qualifies with a puff on a long, thin pipe of carved bone.
In a lull, the storm hag clears her throat.
“I have a tale for you,” says Bogdana. “Once, there was a girl with an enchanted matchbook. Whenever she lit one—”
“Is this a true story?” the Ghost interrupts.
“Time will tell,” the storm hag answers, giving him a lethal look. “Now, as I was about to say—when this girl struck a match, a thing of her choosing was destroyed. This made all of those in power want her on their side, but she fought only for what she herself considered right.”
Wren looks down at her hands, strands of hair falling to shield her face.
Oak supposes there’s going to be a lesson in this, one that no one will like.
“The more terrible the destruction, the more matches needed to be struck. And yet, each time the girl looked in the matchbook, there were at least a few new matches within. To have such vast power was a great burden for the girl, but she was ferocious and brave in addition to being wise, and shouldered her burden with grace.”
Oak sees the way Hyacinthe is frowning at the storm hag, as though disagreeing with the idea that Wren’s “matches” are so easily replaced. When Oak thinks of the translucency of her skin, the hollowness beneath her cheekbones, he worries. But he believes that Bogdana very much wants to believe this is how Wren’s magic works.
“Then the girl met a boy with a shining brow and an easy laugh.” The storm hag’s eyes narrow, as though in warning of what is to come. “And she was struck low by love. Though she ought to fear nothing, she feared the boy would be parted from her. Not wisdom, nor ferocity, nor bravery saved her from her own tender heart.”
Ah, so this isn’t going to be about Wren’s magic. This is going to be about him. Great.
“Now, our girl had many enemies, but none of those enemies could stand against her. With a single match, she caused castles to crumble. With a handful of matches, she burned whole armies to the ground. But in time the boy tired of that and persuaded her to put away her match-book and fight no more. Instead, she would live with him in a cottage in the woods, where no one would know of her power. And though she ought to have known better, she was beguiled by him and did what he wished.”
The ship goes quiet, the only sounds the slap of water against wood and the luff of the sails.
“For some time they lived in what passed for happiness, and if the girl felt as though there was something missing, if she felt as though to be loved he must look through her and not at her, she pretended that away.”
Oak opens his mouth to object and at the last moment bites his tongue. He would only make himself seem like a fool, and a guilty one at that, to argue with a story.
“But in time, the girl was discovered by her enemies. They came for her together and caught her unawares, locked in an embrace with her beloved. Still, in her wisdom, she always kept her matchbook in a pocket of her dress. Under threat, she drew it out and struck the first match, and those who came for her fell back. The flames that consumed them consumed her cottage, too. Yet still more enemies came. Match after match was struck and fire raged all around her, but it was not enough. And so the girl struck all the remaining matches at once.”
Oak glares at the storm hag, but she seems too swept up in her tale to even notice. Wren is plucking at a thread of her dress.
“The armies were defeated and the land scorched black. The girl went up in flames with them. And the boy burned to cinders before he could pull free from her arms.”
A respectful silence follows her final words. Then the captain clears his throat and calls for one of his crewmen to take up a fiddle and play a merry tune.
As a few begin to clap along, Wren stands and moves toward her cabin.
Oak catches up at her door, before her guards seem to have realized his intention. “Wait,” he says. “Can we speak?”
She tilts her head and regards him for a long moment. “Come in.”
One of her guards—Oak realizes, abruptly, that it’s Straun—clears his throat. “I can accompany you and make sure he doesn’t—”
“There is no need,” she says, cutting him off.
Straun attempts to keep the sting of her words from showing on his face. Oak almost feels sorry for him. Almost, except for the memory of his being party to the prince’s torture.
Because of that, he gives Straun an enormous, irritating grin as he follows Wren across the threshold and into her room.
Inside, he finds the chamber much as it was before, except that a few dresses have been spread out on her bed and a tray with tea things rests on
the marble table.
“Is that what your power is like?” Oak asks. “A book of matches.”
Wren gives a soft laugh. “Is that truly why you’ve followed me? To ask that?”
He smiles. “It’s hardly a surprise that a young man would want to spend time with his betrothed.”
“Ah, so this is more playacting.” She moves across the floor gracefully, the pitch and roll of the ship not causing her a single stumble. Finding her way to the upholstered settee, she takes a seat, indicating with a gesture that he should take the chair across from her. A reversal of their positions the last time he visited this room.
“I do wish to spend time with my betrothed,” he says, going to sit.
She gives him a look of disdain, but her cheeks have a flush of pink on them. “My magic might be like the matches in the story, but I think it burns me, too. I just don’t know how much yet.”
He appreciates her admitting that to him. “She’s going to want you to keep using it. If there’s one thing I took away from her story, it’s that.”
“I do not plan on dancing to her tune,” Wren says. “Not ever again.”
His father has managed to manipulate him cannily, without Oak ever once agreeing to a single thing that Madoc proposed out loud. “And yet you haven’t ordered her to go home.”
“We’re far from shore,” Wren says with a sigh. “And she promised to be on her best behavior. Now, to be fair, since I told you about my magic, tell me about yours.”
Oak raises his brows in surprise. “What do you want to know?”
“Persuade me of something,” she says. “I want to understand how your power works. I want to know what it feels like.”
“You want me to charm you?” This seems like a terrible idea. “That suggests a great deal more trust on your part than you’ve indicated you’re willing to extend to me.”
She leans back on her cushions. “I want to see if I can break the spell.” He thinks of all the matches set ablaze. “Won’t it hurt you to do that?” “It should be a small thing,” she says. “And in return, you can obey an
order.”
“But I’m not wearing the bridle,” he protests, hoping that she isn’t going to ask him to put it on. He won’t, and if it’s a test, it’s one he’s going to fail.
“No,” she says. “You’re not.”
Willingly following a command seems interesting and not too dangerous. But he doesn’t know how to make his gancanagh magic tame. If he tells her what she most wants to hear and it is a distortion of the truth, what then? And if the words are ones he means, how will they ever seem true when they’ve first come from his mouth as persuasion?
“Are you doing it?” Her body is slightly hunched as though against some kind of attack.
“No, not yet,” he says with a surprised laugh. “I have to actually say
something.”
“You just did,” she protests, but she’s laughing a little, too. Her eyes glitter with mischief. She was right when she said they both loved games. “Just do it. I’m getting nervous.”
“I’m going to try to persuade you to pick up that teacup,” he says, waving toward a clay vessel with a wide base and a little bit of liquid still at the bottom. It’s resting on the marble-topped table, and with all the rocking the boat has done as it goes over swells, he’s surprised it hasn’t slid to the Boor already.
“You’re not supposed to tell me,” she says, smiling. “Now you’ll never manage it.”
He finds himself filled with a strange glee at the challenge. At the idea he could share this with her and it could be fun instead of awful.
When he opens his mouth again, he allows the honey-tongued words to spill out.
“When you came to Elfhame as a child,” he says, his voice going strange, “you never got to see the beauty of it. I will show you the silvery white trees of the Milkwood. We can splash in the Lake of Masks and see the reBections of those who have looked into it before us. I will take you to Mandrake Market, where you can buy eggs that will hatch pearls that shine like moonlight.”
He can see that she’s relaxed, sinking back onto the cushions, eyes half- closed as though in a daydream. And although he wouldn’t choose those words, he does plan to take her to all those places.
“I look forward to introducing you to each of my sisters and reminding them that you helped our father. I will tell the story of how you single- handedly defeated Lady Nore and bravely took an arrow in the side.” He’s
not sure what he expects from his magic, but it isn’t this rush of words. Not a single thing he said is anything other than true. “And I will tell them the story of Mellith, and how wronged she was by Mab, how wronged you were and how much I want—”
Wren’s eyes open, wet with unshed tears. She sits up. “How dare you say those things? How dare you throw everything I cannot have in my face?”
“I didn’t—” he starts, and for a moment, he isn’t sure if he’s speaking as himself. If he’s using his power or not.
“Get out,” she growls, standing.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Nothing I said was un—”
Wren hurls the teacup at him. It smashes against the floor, jagged bits of pottery flying. “Get out!”
He stares at the shards in horror, realizing what it means. She picked up the cup. I persuaded her to pick up the cup. This is the exact problem with being a love-talker. His power cares nothing for consequences.
“You told me you’d give me an order after I tried to persuade you.” Oak takes a step toward the door, his heart beating painfully hard. “I shall obey.”
When he passes Straun, the guard snorts, as though he believes Oak had his chance and blew it.
|
The prince stands on the deck for the better part of the night, staring numbly into the sea as dawn blushes on the horizon. He’s still there when he hears a scream behind him.
At the cry, he whirls, hand already going to the blade at his hip—finding not the needle-thin rapier he’s used to wielding but a borrowed cutlass. The curved blade rattles in its scabbard as he pulls it free—just as a thick black tentacle sprawls across the deck.
It wriggles toward the prince like some disembodied finger, dragging itself forward. Oak takes several steps back.
Another tentacle rises from the water to twine around the prow, ripping through one of the sails.
A troll sailor, interrupted from a game of Fidchell with an ogre, scrambles to his feet and up the rigging in horror. Shouts ring out.
“The Undersea! The Undersea is attacking!”
The ocean churns as seven sharks surface with merrows astride their backs. All the merrows are different shades of mottled green and wield jagged-looking spears. They are armored in pearlescent scales of shells and draped in woven ropes of seaweed. The expression in their cold, pale eyes makes it clear they have come to fight.
The captain blows on a crooked pipe. Sailors run to positions, beginning to haul out massive harpoons from hatches beneath the deck, each weapon heavy enough to take several of them to move.
The knights and falcons spread out, swords and bows to hand.
“Subjects of Elfhame,” a merrow shouts. Like the others, he is clad in shells cut into discs that overlap one another to make a sort of scale armor, but his bare arms are encircled in bracelets of gold, and his hair is knotted into thick braids, decorated with the teeth of sea creatures. “Know the power of Cirien-Cròin, far greater than the line of Orlagh.”
Oak steps toward the gunwale, but Tiernan grabs his shoulder and squeezes it hard. “Don’t be a fool and draw their eye. Perhaps they won’t recognize you.”
Before Oak can argue, Randalin raises his voice. “Is that your name? The name of your monster?” He sounds somewhere between stern lecturer and on the verge of panic.
The merrow laughs. “The name of our master, who has gone courting.
He sends us with a message.”
“Deliver it, and go on your way,” says Randalin, making a shooing motion toward the tentacle. “And get that thing off our deck.”
Oak spots Wren, not sure when she left her chambers. He catches her gaze, remembering the warning she was given by the merrow she freed from the Court of Moths—that a war was coming for control of the Undersea. And Loana mentioned that Nicasia was having a contest for her hand and, with it, her crown. Then Loana tried to drown him, which overshadowed the warning. But he recalls it vividly now.
Wren widens her eyes, as though trying to tell him something. Probably that they’re screwed. If she unmakes the tentacle, she might unmake the ship along with it.
At least this seems to have put their disastrous game out of her mind.
“You are the message,” the merrow says. “You, at the bottom of the sea with crabs picking out your eyes.”
Another tentacle rises from the waves, slithering up the side of the boat.
Well, this is very, very bad.
Seven merrows and one monster. The thing with the tentacles doesn’t seem to have any particular cleverness. As far as Oak can tell, it can’t even see what it is grabbing for. If they can get rid of the merrows, there is a chance that without anyone commanding it to strike, the thing will go away. Of course, there is also a chance it may decide to rip the ship to teeny, tiny pieces.
“Queen Suren,” the merrow says, spotting her. “You should have taken our offer and given us your prize. I see you lost your war. Here we find you in the hands of your enemy. Were you our ally, we would save you, but now you will die with the others. Unless . . .”
“Your Highness,” Tiernan hisses at Oak. His sword is drawn and his jaw set. “Get below.”
“And how will that help, exactly?” Oak demands. “Will waiting to drown make the experience better?”
“For once, just—” Tiernan begins.
But Oak has already come to a decision. “Hello there!” he says, striding toward the merrow. “Looking for a prize? What did you have in mind?”
From behind him, he thinks he hears Tiernan muttering about how strangling Oak himself may be a kindness. At least it would be a merciful death.
“Prince Oak of Elfhame,” the merrow says with a scowl. As though he is finding this much too easy. “We’re taking you to Cirien-Cròin.”
“Wonderful plan!” says Oak. “Did you know that she chained me up? And now I’m supposed to marry her unless someone takes me away. Come aboard. Let’s go.”
Wren’s expression has gone shuttered. She can’t possibly believe he’s serious, but that doesn’t mean his words don’t cut close to the bone.
“You can’t mean to go with them,” Randalin says, because Randalin is an idiot.
The merrow signals, and six of the sharks swim closer so that the merrows on their backs can climb onto the deck. One has a silver net in his
hands. It gleams in the morning light.
Six. That’s almost all of them.
“Take the queen, too,” commands the merrow leader. “Leave the rest to Sablecoil.”
Sablecoil. That must be the monster.
“You’re not taking anyone,” says one of the knights. “If you board the ship, we’ll—”
“Oh, let them come,” Oak interrupts with a speaking look. “Maybe they’ll take her and allow the rest of us to go.”
“Your Highness,” says another knight, his voice respectful but slow, as though Oak is a greater fool than the councilor. “I very much doubt that’s their plan. If it were, I would hand her over in a heartbeat.”
The prince glances toward Wren, hoping she didn’t hear. Randalin has caught hold of her hand and is attempting to drag her toward the stateroom near the helm of the ship, in what appears to be an act of actual valiance on his part.
“Perhaps we can come to some arrangement,” the merrow commander says. “After all, who can speak of Cirien-Cròin’s might if all who witness it are dead? We will take the prince and the queen, then Sablecoil will release you while we treat with one another.”
That’s a terrible deal. That’s such a bad deal even Sablecoil would know better than to take it.
“Yes, yes!” Oak says cheerily. “I look forward to discussing this Cirien- Cròin’s wooing of Nicasia. I might have some insights to share. My half- brother seduced her, you know.”
A nearby sailor makes a startled noise. None of them would speak of her that way while they crossed her waters.
The merrow commander, still on his shark, smiles, showing thin teeth, like those of some deepwater fish. The six merrows on the deck split up, four heading toward Wren and two toward the prince. They don’t expect Oak to be difficult to subdue, even if he resists.
As the merrows get closer, he feels a momentary spike of panic.
Most of the people on this boat don’t expect him to be hard to subdue, either, or anything other than a fool. That’s the reputation he’s painstakingly built. A reputation he’s about to throw away.
He tries to push that out of his mind, to concentrate on sinking into the moment. The merrows are perhaps five feet from him and seven feet from Wren when he attacks.
He slashes the throat of the first, spraying the deck with thin, greenish blood. Twisting around, he sinks the edge of the cutlass into the second merrow’s thigh, slicing open the vein. More blood. So much blood. The deck is slippery with it.
Arrows fly. The massive harpoons fire.
Oak runs across the deck toward the four bearing down on Wren. A pair of her falcons match blades with one merrow. A lone falcon flies up in bird form and lands behind another, transforming in time to stab a knife into his back. Wren herself has thrown a knife at one fleeing across the deck. Oak gets there in time to dispatch the last by cleaving his head clean from his shoulders.
There are a lot of screams.
From the top of the mast, Bogdana descends on black wings. Oak glances toward Wren.
In that moment of inattention, he is knocked off his hooves by a sinuous tentacle that wraps around his calf. He tries to pull free, but it yanks him across the deck fast enough that his head slams against the wooden boards.
He kicks out with a hoof at the same time he stabs the blade of his cutlass deep into Sablecoil’s rubbery flesh, pinning the tentacle to the deck. Writhing, it drops the prince. He stumbles to his hooves.
Tiernan hacks at the tentacle, trying to sever it from the body of the monster.
With a shudder, it rips free from the deck. The cutlass is still stuck in it when it wraps around Tiernan. Then it hauls him backward into the sea.
“Tiernan!” Oak runs to the gunwale of the ship, but Tiernan has disappeared beneath the waves.
“Where is he?” Hyacinthe shouts. There’s black blood smeared across his face and a bow in his hand.
Before Oak can get any words out, Hyacinthe has dropped the bow and jumped off the side. The ocean swallows him whole.
No, no, no. Oak is wild with panic. He can swim, but certainly not well enough to haul both of them out.
All around him, there’s fighting. The fleeing merrow is cut down. The Ghost slashes at another enormous tentacle, battling to save one of the fallen falcons. Three more tentacles curl around the prow. From everywhere, there are cries. From some places, screams.
Oak wants to scream, too. If Tiernan dies, it will be because of Oak.
This is why he never wanted a bodyguard. This is why he should never have been given one.
The prince loosens a rope from a cleat, wrapping one end around his waist and knotting it there. Once tied, the prince gives a hard tug to test whether it can bear his weight.
He looks into the waves. This close, he can see shapes moving in the deep.
He sucks in a breath and prepares to join them when a crack of lightning draws his attention back to the deck. Fog is rolling toward the ship, along with higher swells.
Bogdana has brought a storm.
Well, that seems completely unhelpful.
Taking another breath, Oak drops himself down, rappelling off the side of the boat. As his hoof hits the water, Hyacinthe surfaces, Tiernan limp in his arms. Oak reaches for him automatically, afraid it’s too late.
“Highness,” Hyacinthe says, relief in his voice. Tiernan’s head lolls against his shoulder.
Waves splash Oak’s face as he grabs hold of his bodyguard. The sky overhead has darkened. He hears a crack of thunder behind him and sees another bright streak of lightning reflecting in Hyacinthe’s eyes.
Tiernan’s body is heavy in his arms. He tries to find a way to hold him securely enough that he won’t slip, tries to find a way to haul them all back up onto the deck.
He lifts himself upward, one-handed. He gets a few inches higher, but it’s slow and he’s not sure his strength will hold.
And then Garrett is there, peering down. “Hold on,” he calls. “Hold him.”
Swells roll against the side of the ship. The Ghost is stronger than he seems, and yet Oak can see how hard it is to pull them up. As soon as he’s over the gunwale, the prince rolls himself and Tiernan onto the deck. A sailor is already tossing another rope over the side to Hyacinthe.
Tiernan coughs up water, then lies still again.
When Oak looks up, he sees one of the tentacles slide across the deck toward Wren. The wind steals his cry of warning. He tries to rise to his hooves in time, but he is too slow and has no sword anyway. Hyacinthe, just making it over the side, shouts in horror.
Wren lifts her hand. As she does, the skin of Sablecoil peels back from the muscle, the tentacle going limp and shriveled. A horrible shuddering goes through the ship as all the tentacles detach at once. The boards creak.
The last of the merrows disappears beneath the waves, whatever last taunt he may have spoken dying on his lips.
The storm hag, in vulture form, makes a guttural sound as she Bies. The wind rises higher, blowing all around them, as though she is conjuring a shield of rain and wind.
Wren stumbles, reaching for Oak’s arm. He puts it around her waist, holding her upright.
“I killed it.” Already, her skin has a waxy appearance.
He thinks about Bogdana’s story. About how if Wren’s power really works like matches, she keeps taking handfuls of them and setting them alight. “Killing is my thing,” he tells her. “You should get your own thing.”
Her lip quirks. Her gaze seems a little unfocused.
The wind lifts the sail, snapping ropes that were already frayed. The hull of the ship seems to rise above the slap of the waves.
Oak’s gaze goes to Tiernan, still as stone, with Hyacinthe bent over him. To the blood washing the deck. To the wounded falcons and knights and sailors. Then to the purpling cast, not unlike a bruise, creeping over Wren’s pale blue skin.
The ship rises higher. Abruptly, Oak realizes that it’s above the waves.
Bogdana has used her storm to make their ship fly.
If she devoured the remains of Mab’s bones, perhaps she really did have a large portion of her old power back. And perhaps she really was first among hags.
Wren leans more heavily against him, the only warning before she collapses. He catches her in time to swing her up into his arms, her head lying against his chest. Her eyes remain open, but they are fever bright, and though she blinks up at him, he’s not sure she sees him.
A few of her guards frown, but not even Straun tries to stop Oak from pushing the door of her room open with one hoof and carrying her inside.
Her sofa and the small table have been tipped over. The rug beneath them is wet, and shards of pottery are scattered over it—the remains of her teapot have joined her broken teacup.
Oak crosses the room and places Wren down gently on her coverlets, her long hair spreading over the pillow. Her deep green eyes are still glassy. He recalls what Hyacinthe said about her power. The more she unmakes, the more she is unmade.
A moment later, her hand comes up, running over his cheek. Her fingers push into his hair, then slip over his nape to his shoulder. He goes very still, afraid that if he moves, it will startle her into pulling back. She has never touched him this way, as though things could be easy between them.
“You must stop,” she says, her voice little more than a whisper. Her expression is fond.
He frowns in puzzlement. Her hand has dipped down to his chest, and even as she speaks, she opens her palm over his heart. He has barely moved. “Stop what?”
“Being kind to me. I can’t bear it.” He tenses.
She withdraws her hand, letting it fall to the coverlet. The blue stone in the ring he gave her glints up at him. “I’m not . . . I am not good at pretending. Not like you.”
If she is speaking of her coldness toward him, she is far better than she believes. “We can stop. We can call a truce.”
“For now,” she says.
“Then today, my lady, speak freely,” he tells her with what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “You can deny me tomorrow.”
She looks up at him, her lashes falling low. She seems to be half in a dream. “Is it exhausting to be charming all the time? Or is it just the way you’re made?”
His grin fades. He thinks of the magic leaching out of him. He can control his charm, sort of. More or less. And he can resist using it. He will.
“Have you ever wondered if anyone truly loved you?” she asks in that same fond, unfocused voice.
Her words are a kick to the stomach, the more because he can tell she doesn’t mean to be cruel. And because he hadn’t thought of it. He sometimes wondered if gancanagh blood meant Folk liked him a little better than they might have otherwise, but he was too vain to think of it affecting Oriana or his sisters.
Oriana, who loved his mother so well that she took Liriope’s son and raised him as her own, risking her life to do so. Jude and Vivi, who sacrificed their own safety for him. Jude, who was still making sacrifices to ensure he would someday be the High King. If magic is the cause of that loyalty, instead of love, then he is a curse on the people around him.
A part of him must have suspected, because why else keep himself so apart? He told himself that it was because he wanted to repay them for all the sacrifices they made, told himself that he wanted to become as great as they were, but maybe it had always been this.
He feels sick.
And sicker still when his mouth curves unconsciously into a smile. It has become such an automatic reaction to pain, for him to mask it with a grin. Oak, laughing all the time. Pretending nothing hurts. A false face hiding a false heart.
He can’t blame her for saying what she did. Probably someone should have said it to him much sooner. And how could he have ever supposed she would come to care for him? Who can love someone who is empty inside? Someone who steals love instead of earning it?
The prince recalls lying on the ground after drinking several cups of liquor laced with blusher mushroom, back in the troll village. That was the last time he felt Wren’s hand on his Rushed cheek, her skin cool enough to ground him in that moment, to keep him hanging on to consciousness.
I am poison, he told her then. And he didn’t even know the half of it.
|
Oak sits with Wren until she falls asleep. Then he spreads a blanket over her and stands. Inside, the horror he felt when she spoke those words— have you ever wondered if anyone truly loved you—hasn’t faded, but he can hide that. Easily. For the first time, he hates how easily. He hates that he can fold
himself up so tightly in his own skin that there’s nothing real about him on the outside.
He climbs the step. Standing on the deck, he looks at the ocean far below. It seems as though they’re sailing through a sea of clouds.
Soldiers are attempting to repair the gunwale, shattered by tentacles. Others are trying to smooth out the raw, splintered bits of wood where spearpoints gouged the deck, a faint spatter of blood marring the light color of it.
The ship Ries high enough for sailors and soldiers to trail their fingers through clouds and let the mist wet their skin. High enough for seabirds to soar beside them; a few even rest on the mast and rigging.
Bogdana stands at the helm. Her expression is strained, and when she sees him, her eyes narrow. Whatever she wishes to say to him, though, it seems she cannot move away from directing the storm that propels them in order to do it.
Scanning the ship, Oak spots Tiernan near the mast, beneath the netting running up to the base of the sail. His head is pillowed on a cloak, his blackberry hair still damp and stiff with salt. His eyes are shut, his skin gone very pale.
Hyacinthe sits beside him, long fall of dark hair over his face. When Oak squats nearby, Hyacinthe pushes it back to reveal his pained expression. He looks as though he is losing blood from some invisible wound.
“She woke up enough to speak with me,” Oak tells him so at least he doesn’t have Wren to worry about. “Told me some very unpleasant things about myself.”
“He’s breathing,” says Hyacinthe, nodding toward Tiernan.
For a long moment, they watch the rise and fall of Tiernan’s chest. Each inhalation comes with what seems like a lot of effort. As he watches, the prince doesn’t trust that one breath will follow the next.
“His loyalty to me might cost him his life,” Oak says.
To his surprise, Hyacinthe shakes his head. His hand goes to the other man’s chest, coming to rest over his heart. “It was my lack of loyalty to him that was the problem.” His voice is so soft that the prince isn’t sure he heard the words correctly.
“You couldn’t have—” Oak begins, but Hyacinthe cuts him off.
“I could have loved him better,” Hyacinthe says. “And I could have better believed in his love.”
“How could that have helped against a monster?” the prince asks. He’s in the mood for an argument and beginning to hope that Hyacinthe might give him one.
“You don’t think what I said is true?”
“Of course I do,” Oak says. “You should better believe in his love— you should beg him for another chance. But that wouldn’t have saved him from drowning. You jumping in after him did save him.”
“And you being there to pull us back onto deck saved us both.” Hyacinthe shoves his hair behind his ear and gives a shuddering sigh. His gaze snags on Tiernan as he shifts a little. “Perhaps I have had enough of vengeance. Perhaps I need not make things so hard.” As Oak begins to stand, though, the former falcon looks up at him. “That doesn’t mean I release you from your promise, prince.”
Right. He’d promised to cut off someone’s hand.
|
As afternoon moves toward night, Tiernan finally wakes. Once he understands what happened, he’s furious with Oak and Hyacinthe both.
“You shouldn’t have gone after me,” he tells Hyacinthe, then turns to the prince. “And you certainly shouldn’t have.”
“I barely did anything,” says Oak. “While it’s possible that Hyacinthe battled a shark for you.”
“I did not.” For all Hyacinthe’s talk of love, the evening finds him sullen.
Oak stands. “Well, I leave you two to that argument. Or some other argument.”
The prince heads to the helm, where he finds the Ghost sitting alone, watching the sails billow. He has a staff beside him. Like Vivi, the Ghost had a human parent, and it’s visible in the sandy brown of his hair, an unusual color in Faerie.
“There is a tale about hags to which you might hearken,” Garrett says. “Oh?” Oak is almost certain he’s not going to like this.
The Ghost gazes past the prince, at the horizon, the bright blaze of the sun fading to embers. “It is said that a hag’s power comes from the part of them that’s missing. Each one has a cold stone or wisp of cloud or ever- burning flame where their hearts ought to be.”
Oak thinks of Wren and her heart, the only part of her that was ever flesh, and doesn’t think that can be true. “And?”
“They are as different from the rest of the Folk as mortals are from faeries. And you’re bringing two of the most powerful of their kind to Elfhame.” The Ghost gives him a long look. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I,” Oak says, sighing.
“You remind me of your father sometimes, though I doubt you would like to hear it.”
“Madoc?” No one has ever said that to him before.
“You’re very like Dain in some ways,” says the Ghost.
Oak frowns. Being compared to Dain can be no good thing. “Ah yes, my father who tried to kill me.”
“He did terrible things, brutal things, but he had the potential in him to be a great leader. To be a great king. Like you.” Garrett’s gaze is steady.
Oak snorts. “I am not planning on leading anyone.”
The Ghost nods toward Wren. “If she’s a queen and you marry her, then you’d be a king.”
Oak stares at him in horror because he’s right. And Oak didn’t really consider that. Possibly because he still thinks it’s unlikely that Wren will go through with it. Possibly also because Oak is a fool.
Across the ship, Hyacinthe is leading Tiernan toward a cabin. Hyacinthe, who hasn’t really let Oak off the hook. “Since you knew Dain so well, can you tell me who really poisoned Liriope?”
The Ghost’s brows rise. “I thought you believed he did?”
“Possibly there was someone else who helped him,” Oak presses. “Someone who actually slipped the blusher mushroom into her cup.”
Garrett looks genuinely uncomfortable. “He was a prince of Elfhame, and his father’s heir. He had many servants. Plenty of help with whatever he attempted.”
Oak doesn’t like how many of those words also apply to him. “Have you heard there was someone else involved?”
Garrett is silent. Since he cannot lie, the prince assumes he has. “Tell me,” Oak says. “You owe me that.”
The line of the Ghost’s mouth is grim. “I owe many people many things. But I know this. Locke had the answer you seek. He knew the name of the poisoner, much good it did him.”
“I am cleverer than Locke.” But what Oak thinks of is his dream and the fox’s laughter.
The Ghost stands and dusts off his hands on his pants. “That doesn’t take much.”
Oak can’t tell if Garrett knows the name or only knows that Locke did. Taryn may have told him any secrets that Locke told her. “Does my sister know?”
“You should ask her,” says the Ghost. “She’s probably waiting for you on the shore.”
The prince lifts his eyes and sees the Shifting Isles of Elfhame in the distance, breaking through the mist shrouding them.
The Tower of Forgetting rises like a black and forbidding obelisk from the cliffs of Insweal, and beyond it he can make out the green hill of the palace on Insmire, the blaze of the sunset making it look as though it caught fire.
