“Do not fall under Prince Oak’s spell,” he warns as the knight climbs up the rocks to us. “He’s not what he seems.”
Several questions are on the tip of my tongue, but there is no time to ask them. As Tiernan draws close, I look out at the sea. Rags has disappeared. I can’t see so much as her head above the waves.
“We’re down to one steed,” Tiernan informs us.
We don’t have a place to rest, either. I study the shadowy space beneath the boardwalk. We could curl up there on the cool, soft sand without being bothered. Just the thought of it makes me freshly aware of how exhausted I am.
The knight points up toward the road. “There’s a motel that way. I saw the sign from the shoreline.”
He takes the reins of Oak’s horse and leads her up the hill. I follow, ahead of the winged soldier. I note how stiff they are with each other, how carefully they keep separate, as magnets must keep a safe distance or be slammed together by their very nature.
We walk, fading stars overhead, brine in the air. I wonder if the hum of traffic or the smell of iron bothers them. I am used to it. So long as we remain here, I am on solid ground. Once we get to the Court of Moths, we will be far enough into Faerie for things to grow slippery and uncertain.
At the thought, I kick a desiccated fast-food drink cup, sending it spinning along the gutter.
A few blocks and we come to a motel with scrubby weeds pushing through the cracks of the parking lot. A few run-down cars are parked near the one-level stucco building. A sign overhead promised vacancies, cable, and little else.
The prince attempts to sit up again.
“Just stay where you are,” says Tiernan. “We’ll be back with the keys.”
“I’m fine,” Oak says, sliding off the horse and immediately collapsing onto the asphalt.
“Fine?” the knight echoes, eyebrows raised.
“I couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,” says the prince, and manages to stagger to his feet. He leans heavily on a nearby car.
“Hyacinthe,” Tiernan says, pointing. “Do not let him fall again. Wren, you’re with me.”
“I could only dream of letting so important a personage drop,” Hyacinthe sneers. “Or I would never dream. Or something.”
“Flying is what you ought to dream of, falcon,” Oak says, with enough heat that I wonder if he overheard part of our conversation.
Hyacinthe flinches.
“Wren,” Tiernan says again, beckoning toward the motel.
“I’m bad at glamours,” I warn him.
“Then we won’t bother with one.”
The reception area stinks of stale cigarettes despite the no smoking sign over the door. Behind the desk is an exhausted-looking woman playing a game on her phone.
She glances up at us, and her eyes go wide. Her mouth opens to scream.
“You see totally normal people here for totally normal reasons,” Tiernan tells her, and as I watch, her features smooth out into a glassy-eyed calm. “We want two rooms, right next to each other.”
I think of how my unparents were glamoured and hate this, even though he’s not asking her to do anything awful. Yet.
“Sure,” says the woman. “Not too many tourists this time of year; you’ll have most places to yourselves.”
The knight nods vaguely as the woman shoves a blank motel key into the machine.
She says something about how she still needs a card for incidentals, but a few words later, she’s forgotten all about that. Tiernan pays with bills that don’t have the suspiciously crisp look of glamoured leaves. I cut him a strange glance and pocket a matchbook.
Outside, our remaining horse stands on a patch of scrubby grass, glowing softly, eating a dandelion. No one seems inclined to tie Damsel up.
Oak sits on the bumper of a car, looking a bit better. Hyacinthe leans against a dirty stucco wall.
“That money,” I ask. “Was it real?”
“Oh, yes,” the prince confirms. “My sister would be wroth with us otherwise.”
“Wroth.” I echo the archaic word, although I know what it means. Pissed off.
“Super wroth,” he says with a grin.
To faeries, mortals are usually either irrelevant or entertainment. But I suppose his sister can be relegated to neither. Many of the Folk must hate her for that.
Tiernan leads us to our rooms—131 and 132. He opens the first and ushers us all inside. There are two twin beds, with scratchy-looking coverlets. A television sits on the wall over a saggy desk that’s been bolted to the floor, causing the carpet to be stained with small circles of rust around the screws. The heater is on, and the air smells vaguely of burning dust.
Hyacinthe stands beside the door, wing closed tight to his back. His gaze follows me, possibly to avoid resting on the knight.
Oak crawls onto the nearest bed but doesn’t shut his eyes. He smiles up at the ceiling instead. “We learned something of her capabilities.”
“And you want me to tell you that was worth you being poisoned?” the knight demands.
“I’m always being poisoned. Alas, that it wasn’t blusher mushroom,” the prince says nonsensically.
Tiernan nods his chin at me. “That girl thinks you’re a fool for even being here.”
I scowl, because that’s not what I meant.
“Ah, Lady Wren,” Oak says, a lazy smile on his mouth. Marigold hair brushing his forehead, half-hiding his horns. “You wound me.”
I doubt I hurt his feelings. His cheeks are still slashed from my nails, though. Three lines of dried blood, pink around the edges. Nothing he says is a lie, but all his words are riddles.
Tiernan kneels and starts to unbuckle the sides of Oak’s armor. “Give me a hand, will you?”
I squat on the other side of the prince, worried I am going to do something wrong. Oak’s gaze slants to me as, with fumbling fingers, I try to work off the scale mail where it has stuck to his wound. He makes a soft huff of pain, and I can see the way his lips are white at the edges, from being pressed together as he bites back whatever other sounds he wants to make.
Underneath, his stained linen shirt is pushed up over the flat plane of his stomach, the dip of his hip bones. His sweat carries the scent of crushed grass, but mostly he smells like blood. He watches me, lashes low over his eyes.
Without his golden armor, he almost looks like the boy I remember.
Tiernan gets up, gathering towels.
“How did Lady Nore know you were coming for me?” I ask, trying to distance myself from the strange intimacy of the moment, from the heat and nearness of his body.
If she’d sent both Bogdana and stick creatures, she must suddenly want me very much, after ignoring me for eight years.
Oak tries to sit up higher on the pillows and winces, a hectic flush on his cheeks. “She’s likely to have realized that asking you to come with me would be the clever thing to do,” he says. “Or she could have had spies that saw the direction in which we were headed when we left Elfhame.”
Tiernan nods toward Hyacinthe from the bathroom, where he’s soaking cloth under steaming water from the tap. “Spies like him, I imagine.”
I frown at the bridled former falcon.
“There’s not a lot of work for birds out there,” Hyacinthe says, putting up his hand in defense. “And I didn’t spy on you.”