The Prisoner's Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2)(75)

CHAPTER



20

G

uards and courtiers thunder up all around Oak. Did he cry out? Did Jack? The kelpie is standing beside the prince now, but he doesn’t remember when Jack stopped being a horse. The noise and confusion mirror Oak’s thoughts. People are shouting at one another, making Oak dizzy.

Or maybe that’s the blusher mushroom still slowing his blood.

Jack is insisting they found the Ghost like this and someone is saying how horrifying and a lot of other meaningless words that blend together in Oak’s mind.

Taryn is screaming, a high keening sound. She’s on her knees beside the spy, shaking him. When she looks up at Oak, her gaze is so full of grief and accusation that he has to look away.

I hated him, Oak thinks. But he’s not even sure that’s true. He never knew Liriope, and he knew Garrett. I should have hated him. I wanted to hate him.

He didn’t kill him, though.

He didn’t kill him, but he might have. He could have. Could he have?

Jude moves to Taryn’s side, one hand going to her twin’s shoulders. Fingers pressing reassuringly.

The Roach leans down to check the body, and when one of the guards tries to stop him, it’s Cardan who tells them to let him be. Oak didn’t even realize the Roach was at the hunt.

Taryn lies down beside Garrett’s corpse, her hair shrouding his face. One of her tears has pooled in the corner of his eye, wetting his lash.

Cardan kneels beside her, his hand going to Garrett’s chest. Taryn looks up at him.

“What are you doing?” She doesn’t sound happy, but they’ve never really gotten along.

“Blusher mushroom slows the body,” he says, his gaze Bickering to the Roach, who almost certainly taught him that. “But it slows it slowly.”

“Do you mean he’s not dead?” she asks.

“Is there something to be done?” Jude asks at almost the same time.

“Not in the way you mean,” says Cardan, answering his wife’s question and not Taryn’s. He turns to Randalin and the crowd, then waves his beringed hand exaggeratedly. “Disperse. Go on.”

Courtiers step away, heading to their horses, a buzz of rumors in the air. The Minister of Keys remains, glowering, standing beside Oriana. A few more Folk seem to believe this order doesn’t apply to them. The Roach stays, too, but he’s practically family.

Oak forces himself to scoot back, bracing against the trunk of a tree. For him, it was not much blusher mushroom, but he still feels the numbness tingling through his fingers and toes. Right now, he isn’t certain whether he would fall back down if he tried to stand.

Wren crosses to his side. Bogdana stands at the edge of the clearing, half hidden by shadows.

“You’re going to have to move as well,” Cardan tells Taryn.

“What are you going to do to him?” she asks, shielding his body as though to protect it from the High King.

Cardan raises his eyebrows. “Let’s just see if it works.”

“Taryn,” Jude says, reaching for her sister’s hand and pulling her to her feet. “There isn’t time.”

Cardan closes his gold-rimmed eyes and, for all his extravagance, right then he looks like one of the paintings of the High Kings of old, somehow moved into the realm of myth.

All around them, wildflowers sprout, uncurling from buds. Trees shiver, sending down pale leaves. Brambles coil into unlikely shapes. There is a buzz of bees in the air, and then from the earth, roots rise, turning into the sturdy trunk of a tree around Garrett’s body.

Taryn makes a sharp sound. The Roach lets out a breath, awe in his eyes. Oak feels it, too.

Bark wraps around Garrett and branches unfold, budding with leaves and fragrant blossoms the lilac of Taryn’s clothing. A tree, unlike all that grow in the Milkwood, rises from the ground, shrouding the Ghost’s body. Its limbs reach toward the sky, petals raining down around them.

Where Garrett stood, there is only the tree.

The High King opens his eyes, letting out a ragged breath. The courtiers that remained have taken several steps back. They are slackjawed in surprise, perhaps having forgotten his command of the land beneath their feet.

“Will that—” Jude begins, her eyes shining.

“I thought that if the poison makes every part of him slow, then I could turn him into something that could live like that,” says Cardan with a shudder. “But I don’t know that it will save him.”

“Will he be like this forever?” Taryn asks, her voice cracking a little. “Alive but imprisoned? Dying but not dead?”

“I don’t know,” Cardan says again, in a raw way that makes Oak think of being trapped in the royal bedchamber and overhearing him and Jude together. It’s Cardan’s real voice, the one he uses when he’s not performing.

Taryn runs her hand over the rough bark, her tears coming on a sob. “He is still lost to me. He is still gone. And who knows if he’s suffering?”

Oak feels Wren’s hand in his, her fingers cool. “Come,” she says, and at her tug, he finally rises. He’s a little unsteady on his hooves, and she narrows her eyes at him. She’s seen him poisoned before.

“We will discover who did this,” Jude is telling her twin, voice firm. “We will punish them, I promise you that.”