He caught hold of my hand, pressing one of the silver foxes into my palm. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said. “I promise.”
I sucked in my breath at that casually given vow. Faeries couldn’t break their promises, so I had no choice but to believe him.
The next night the entire Court of Teeth was preparing for what Lord Jarel had announced with great smugness was to be a celebratory feast. The mortal High Queen had agreed to accept the bridle, along with their offer of a truce. I had been given a dress and told not to get it dirty, so I stood rather than sat on the ground.
I worried that Oak wouldn’t get there in time to keep me from being carted off to the feast. I was dreaming up ways to beseech him at the castle when he emerged from the woods. He dragged a sword behind him, too long to wear at his side. It made me recall that he’d jumped in front of his mother when the serpent king darted toward her, a prince from a fairy tale facing down a dragon. He might have been soft and cherished, but he could be brave.
Oak winked at me, and I wondered if he was brave because he didn’t understand the danger he was in.
I glanced at the camp, then at him, widening my eyes in warning. But he came to my side anyway, drew the sword, and started to saw away at my bindings.
“The sword’s name is Nightfell,” he whispered. “It belongs to Jude.”
His sister. The High Queen. It was such a different way to be royal, to have a family that you would consider by their relationship to you before their title. Whose weapon you wouldn’t be afraid to steal.
The blade was sharp and must have been well made, since it sliced through the enchanted rope much faster than the little knife.
“Her human father was a blacksmith,” he went on. “He forged the sword before she was born.”
“Where is he now?” I wondered if she had her own unfamily somewhere.
“Madoc killed him.” Oak’s tone made it sound as though he was aware that was bad, but not so bad that his sister would bear a grudge. I don’t know what I ought to have expected; Oak might make an exception for his sisters, might have enjoyed the pizza, but that didn’t mean he thought much of mortal lives.
My gaze went in the direction of the main camp, where Madoc’s tent would be. Inside, he’d be preparing for the banquet. Preparing to trick Jude, his foster daughter, whose sword this was and whose father he’d slain. Oak seemed to be laboring under the illusion that Madoc cared about him enough that Oak would be safe if he got caught, but I doubted that was the case.
The last strand of rope parted, and I was free, although it still braceleted my leg.
“They’ll be traveling to the banquet,” I whispered. “They might spot us.”
He took my hand and pulled me toward the woods. “Then we better go fast. Come on, we can hide in my room.”
Together, we ran through the mossy forest, past white trees with red leaves and streams holding pale-eyed nixies that watched us as we went by.
This felt a little bit like one of Lady Nore and Lord Jarel’s games. Sometimes they would act in a way that suggested affection, then behave as though they had never felt anything but disgust. Leave out something I desperately desired—food, a key to a room in the Citadel where I might hide, a storybook to hide with—and then punish me for taking it.
But I ran anyway. And clutched his fingers as though he could drag me into a world where other kinds of games were possible. Hope lit my heart.
We slowed at certain points when we spotted another one of the Folk. This far from the camp of the Court of Teeth, the soldiers we were avoiding belonged to Elfhame. That did little to reassure me, though. No harm would come to Oak at their hands, but they might well lock me up in their dungeons or take me to their Tower of Forgetting.
At the palace, we passed our first set of guards. They bowed to Oak, and if they were surprised to see him with another child trailing a piece of dirty rope, they kept it to themselves. The palace of Elfhame was a grassy hill, set with windows. Inside, there were stone walls, occasionally covered in plaster or packed earth. Nothing like the cold, carved ice chambers of the Citadel. We climbed one flight of stairs, and then another, when a knight stepped out in front of us.
She was dressed all in green, with armor cleverly shaped into leaves. Celery-colored hair was pulled back from an angular, insect-like face.
“Prince,” said the knight. “Your lady mother seeks you. She wanted to be sure you were safe.”
Oak nodded stiffly. “You may tell her I’ve returned.”
“And where ought I say you were . . . ?” The knight eyed me and then the stolen sword. I feared I saw a flash of recognition in her eyes.
“Tell her that I’m well,” the prince said, seeming to deliberately misunderstand her.
“But by what name ought I call—” the knight began, attempting to interrogate him and be deferential to his position all at once.
Oak seemed to have come to the end of his patience.
“Call us whatever you like!” he interrupted her to say. Then he grabbed my hand again, and we hurried up the stairs and into his room, where we slammed the door. We collapsed against it.
He was grinning, and looking at him, I had the strangest urge to laugh.
The room was large and painted a bright white. A round window let in light from the lamps outside. I heard strains of music, probably from the banquet, which was sure to start soon. A bed sat along one wall, topped with a velvet coverlet. A painting hung above it, of deer eating apples in a forest.
“This is your room?” I asked. Nothing about it spoke of him, except for a few paperback books on a small table and playing cards scattered beside an armchair.
He nodded but seemed a bit cautious about it. “I’ve only just gotten back to the isles. I was staying in the mortal world with one of my sisters. Like I told you last night.”
That wasn’t exactly what he’d said. I had thought he’d visited the place, not that he’d lived there and definitely not so recently.
I looked out the window. He had a view over the woods and to the sea beyond, the dark water rippling in the moonlight. “Are you going back?” I asked.
“I guess.” He knelt and opened a dresser drawer to reveal a few games and some toy bricks. “We couldn’t bring much with us.”
I supposed he wouldn’t be sure of anything, what with the unlikelihood of his sister keeping her crown, with so many forces conspiring against her.
“You have Uno,” I said, picking up the card game and staring at it as though it was the relic of some fallen city.
He grinned, delighted at my recognizing it. “And Nine Men’s Morris, Sorry!, and Monopoly, but that takes forever.”
“I’ve played some of those.” I felt shy now that we were in the palace, his territory. I wondered how long he would let me stay.
“You pick one,” he said. “I am going to see what I can swipe from the kitchens. The cooks ought to have plenty to spare, considering how much food they made for tonight.”
After he left, I reverently took the Sorry! game out of its box, sliding my fingers over the plastic pieces. I thought about playing with my unfamily one night when Rebecca sent me to Start three times in a row and teased me about it, back before I learned how much there really was to lose. I’d cried, and my unfather had told Rebecca that it was as important to be a good winner as a good loser.