The Prisoner's Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2)(14)

He walks to it and sweeps the fabric aside.

Wren is sleeping, her pale cerulean hair spread out over the pillows. He recalls brushing it out when they were in the Court of Moths. Recalls the wild tangle of it and the way she held herself very still while his hands touched her.

Her eyes move restlessly under their lids, as though she doesn’t even feel safe in dreams. Her skin has a glassy quality, as though from sweat or possibly ice.

What has she been doing to herself?

He takes a step closer, knowing he shouldn’t. His hand reaches out, as though he might graze his fingers over her cheek. As though to prove to himself that she’s real, and there, and alive.

He doesn’t touch her, of course. He’s not that much of a fool.

But as though she can sense him, Wren opens her eyes.





CHAPTER



3

W

ren blinks up at Oak, and he gives her what he hopes is an apologetic grin. Her startled expression smooths out into puzzlement and some emotion he is less able to name. She reaches up, and he bends lower, going to one knee, so that she can brush her fingers over the nape of his neck. He shivers at her touch. Looking down into her dark green eyes, he tries to read her feelings in the minute shifts of her countenance. He thinks he sees a longing there to match his own.

Wren’s lips part on a sigh.

“I want—” he begins.

“No,” she tells him. “By the power of Grimsen’s bridle, get on your knees and be silent.”

Surprise makes him try to pull away, to stand, but he cannot. His teeth close on the words he now cannot say.

It’s an awful feeling, his body turning against him. He was on one knee already, but his other leg bends without his deciding to move. As his calves strike the frozen floor, he understands, in a way that he never has before, Wren’s horror of the bridle. Jude’s need for control. He has never known this kind of helplessness.

Her mouth curves into a smile, but it isn’t a nice one. “By Grimsen, I command you to do exactly as I say from here forward. You will stay on your knees until I say otherwise.”

Oak should have left when he had the chance.

She rises from the bed and draws on a dressing gown. Walks over to where he kneels.

He looks at her slippered foot. Glances up at the rest of her. A strand of light blue hair has fallen across one scarred cheek. Her lips have a little pink at the inner edges, like the inside of a shell.

It is hard to imagine her as she was when they began their quest, a feral girl who seemed like the living embodiment of the woods. Wild and brave and kind. There is no shyness in her gaze now. No kindness, either.

He finds her fascinating. He’s always found her fascinating, but he is not foolish enough to tell her that. Especially not in this moment, when he is afraid of her.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to see me again, prince,” Wren says. “I understand that you called for me in your cell.”

He screamed for her. Screamed until his throat was hoarse. But even if he was allowed to speak, clarifying that would only compound his many, many mistakes.

She goes on. “How frustrating it must be not to have everyone eager to comply with your desires. How impatient you must have become.”

Oak tries to push himself to his hooves.

She must note the impotent flex of his muscles. “How impatient you are even yet. Speak, if you wish.”

“I came here to repent,” he says, taking what he hopes will be a steadying breath. “I should never have kept what I knew from you. Certainly not something like that. No matter how I thought I was protecting you, no matter how desperate I was to help my father, it wasn’t my place. I did you a grievous wrong, and I am sorry.”

A long moment passes. Oak stares at her slipper, not sure he can bear to look into her face. “I am not your enemy, Wren. And if you throw me back into your dungeons, I won’t have a chance to show you how remorseful I am, so please don’t.”

“A pretty speech.” Wren walks to the head of her bed, where a long pull dangles from a hole bored into the ice wall. She gives it a hard tug. Somewhere far below, he can hear the faint ringing of a bell. Then the sound of boots on the stairs.

“I am already bridled,” he says, feeling a little frantic. “You don’t need to lock me away. I can’t harm you unless you let me. I am entirely in your power. And when I did escape, I came directly to your side. Let me kneel at your feet in the throne room and gaze up adoringly at you.”

Her green eyes are hard as jade. “And have you spending all your waking hours trying to think of some clever way to slither around my commands?”

“I have to occupy myself somehow,” he says. “When I am between moments of gazing adoringly, of course.”

The outer corner of her lip twitches, and he wonders if he almost made her smile.

The door opens, and Fernwaif comes in, a single guard behind her. Oak recognizes him as Bran, who occasionally sat at Madoc’s dinner table when Oak was a child. He looks horrified at the sight of the prince on his knees, wearing the livery of a guard beneath a stolen cloak.

“How—” Bran begins, but Wren ignores him.

“Fernwaif,” she says. “Go and have the guards responsible for the prisons brought here.”

The huldu girl gives a small bob of her head and, with a wary glance at Oak, leaves the room. So much for her being on his side.