The Prisoner's Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2)(95)

“I’m cold,” Wren whispers, and alarm rings through him like the sounding of a bell. She could walk barefoot through the snow and not have it hurt her. He never heard her complain of even the most frigid temperatures.

Oak stands, lifting Wren in his arms. She feels too light, but he is reassured by her breath ghosting across his skin, the rise and fall of her chest.

He still cannot, however, hear the beat of her heart.

With the storm stopped, it seems that all of Elfhame has forded the distance between Insear and Insmire. There are boats aplenty, and soldiers. Grima Mog’s second-in-command is barking orders.

Bex scavenges a blanket from one of the tents, and Oak manages to bundle Wren in it. Then he carries her to a boat and commandeers it to take him back across so he can bring her to the palace. The journey is a blur of panic, of frantic questions, plodding steps. Finally, he carries her into his rooms. By then, her body is shivering, and he tries not to let terror leak into his voice as he speaks to her softly, explaining where they are and how she will be safe.

He puts Wren in his bed, then pushes it close by the fire and piles blankets on top of her. It seems to make no difference to her shuddering.

Herbalists and bonesetters come and go. Like a banshee, one of them says. Like a sluagh, says another. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before, says a third.

Wren’s skin has become dry and oddly dull. Even her hair looks faded. It seems as though she is sinking so deeply into herself that he cannot follow.

Oak sits with her throughout that night and all through the next day, refusing to budge as people come in and out. Oriana tries to prize him from Wren’s side to eat something, but he won’t leave.

Bex comes and goes. That afternoon, she sits for a while, holding her sister’s hand and crying as though she were already gone.

Tiernan brings them both hard cheese, fennel tea, and some bread. He also brings news of Bogdana, who is being held in the prisons of Hollow Hall, soon to be moved into the Tower of Forgetting.

Bex makes up a bed for herself on the floor out of scavenged cushions. Oak gives her one of his robes, all of gold and spider silk, to wear.

As night comes on, Wren seems like a husk of herself. When he touches her arm, it feels papery under his fingers. A wasp’s nest instead of flesh. He draws his hand back and tries to convince himself of something other than the worst.

“She’s not getting better, is she?” the mortal girl says.

“I don’t know,” Oak says, the words hard to get out, so close to being a lie.

Bex frowns. “I think I met your, uh, father. He was telling me about the Court of Teeth.”

Well, he should know all about that place, Oak thinks but doesn’t say.

“I guess I can see why Wren thought she couldn’t come back to my family, and it wasn’t because—I don’t know, not because she didn’t want to see us.”

“She was willing to do a lot for your sake,” Oak says, thinking of all the ways Wren must have struggled to free them from Bogdana’s trap, how despair must have closed in around her when she realized she was going to have to choose between an agonizing death for her sister and the deaths of many others.

“I just wish—” Bex says. “I wish I’d talked to her when I first saw her sneaking into the house. I wish I’d followed her. I wish I’d done more, done something.”

Over the past few days, Oak has been making a comprehensive and damning list of all the better choices he could have made. He’s wondering whether he ought to admit them out loud when Bex screams.

He rockets to his feet, not sure what she’s seeing.

And then he does. Inside of the husk of Wren, something is moving. Shifting beneath her skin.

“What is that?” Bex says, scuttling back until she hits the wall.

Oak shakes his head. The dullness of Wren’s skin suddenly makes him think of the shed casings that spiders leave behind. He reaches out an unsteady hand—

Wren moves again, and this time, the papery flesh tears. Skin emerges, vibrant blue. Her body cracks open like a chrysalis.

Bex makes an alarmed sound from the floor.

From within, a new Wren emerges. Her skin the same cerulean blue, her eyes the same soft green. Even her teeth are the same, sharp as ever when she parts her lips to take a breath of air. But on her back are two feathered wings, light blue gray at the tips, with darker feathers closer to her body, and when they unfurl, they are large enough to canopy him, Bex, and Wren.

She stands, naked and reborn, looking around the room with the sharp gaze of a goddess, deciding whom to bless and whom to smite.

Her eyes settle on the prince.

“You have wings,” he says, awestruck and foolish. He sounds as though he took a hard blow to the head. That isn’t far from how he feels.

Astonished joy has robbed him of all cleverness.

“Wren?” Bex whispers.

Wren’s attention swings to her, and he can see the mortal girl flinch a little under the weight of it.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Wren says, although she looks positively terrifying right then. Even Oak is a little frightened of her.

Bex draws in a breath and pushes herself off the floor. Picking up a fallen blanket, she hands it to her sister, then gives Oak a pointed look. “You should probably stop staring at her like you never saw a naked girl with wings before.”