I wrap myself in the coverlet from the bed.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked.” Oak proceeds to take out a mango, three green apples, a handful of dried figs, a bag of crackers in the shapes of goldfish, frozen pizza bites, and four foil-wrapped hot dogs. He does all this without looking at me. “They seem like meat, but they’re not.”
I am hungry enough to accept one of his weird vegan hot dogs. “You don’t eat meat? Your father must hate that.”
He shrugs, but there’s something in his face that tells me it’s been discussed before. “More for him.”
Then I am distracted by eating. I gobble three out of the four hot dogs so quickly that when I stop, I see Oak has his hand curved protectively over the remaining one. I pick up a fig and try to take smaller bites.
Leaving the remainder of the food on the mattress, he goes to the door. “Tiernan told me I should be grateful for your unwillingness to drop me on my head, however tempted you were,” he says. “They’ll sing ballads to your restraint.”
“And why would you think I was tempted?” There’s a growl in my voice I can’t seem to get out.
“Many are. It must be something about my face.” He smiles, and I think of the jealous lover with the knife.
“Maybe you keep dragging them on quests,” I say.
He laughs. “This isn’t how I thought to see you again.”
“I imagine you thought you’d never see me again,” I say, to remind myself of the many, many differences between our positions in life.
His grin slides off his mouth. “That did seem to be what you wanted.”
I wish it didn’t bother me that he isn’t smiling anymore, but it does.
The door opens. Tiernan is on the other side, glowering at us. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Outside, I see that we have acquired a new horse, black as ink and smelling of seawater. Oak’s faerie steed shies away from it, blowing panicked breaths from flared nostrils.
The new mount catches my eye hungrily, and I realize what I’m looking at. The creature is one of the solitary Folk, a devourer of flesh. A kelpie.
CHAPTER
5
G
et on up,” Tiernan says impatiently, nodding toward the kelpie.
The thing doesn’t even have a saddle, no less reins. I look longingly at Damsel and wonder if the knight is forcing me onto a carnivorous monster out of sheer dislike.
But Oak goes to it willingly enough, patting its flank absently. Then he swings onto the kelpie’s back and reaches down a hand to me. He is wearing his golden armor again, the boy who’d been my friend disappearing into a man I don’t know.
The knight heaves me up behind the prince. As my hands go to Oak’s waist, I am aware of the warmth of his skin even through the scale armor, of his body pressed against my thighs, and while the cloak he loaned me covers the thinness of my gown, it cannot protect me from that.
“Hope you’re feeling rested after all that deathsweet,” Tiernan tells Oak. “Because you’re mutilating our timetable.”
Oak gives him a look that makes me suspect the prince will finally call him to account for his familiarity. But if so, this is not the moment.
I wonder how hard it is for the kelpie not to run directly into a pond and drown us both. But, as one of the solitary fey, he has very likely made vows of obedience to Elfhame, and I can only hope those hold. I barely have time to wrap my arms around the prince’s waist and try not to fall. Then we’re off, thundering through the late afternoon without cease.
Through the sap-smeared woods of the Pine Barrens, crossing highways filled with the bright headlights of cars, we ride. My hair whips behind me, and when Oak glances back, I have to look away. Circlet at his brow, sword at his belt, in his shining mail, he looks like a knight from a child’s imaginings, out of a storybook.
Break of day comes in pinks and golds, and the sun is high above us when we come to a stop. My thighs are sorer than before from rubbing against the kelpie’s flanks, and even my bones feel tired. My hair is knotted worse than ever.
We make camp in a forest, quiet and deep. The distant hiss of traffic tells me that mortal roads are near, but if I don’t listen too closely, I could mistake that for the sounds of a stream. Oak unpacks and unrolls blankets while Tiernan starts a fire. Hyacinthe watches, as if daring to be asked to help.
I slip away and return with handfuls of persimmons, two dryad’s saddle mushrooms as large as helmets, wild garlic, and spicebush twigs. Even Tiernan pronounces himself impressed by my finds, although I think he’s annoyed that Oak allowed me to wander off.
The prince ignores him and rigs up a way to cook the mushrooms. They’ve brought cheese and good black bread, and while we eat, Oak tells us stories of the Court. Ridiculous parties held by the High King. Pranks Oak has personally played and been punished for. No mention of his lovers, but he recounts a tragicomic romance involving a phooka, a pixie, and one of the king’s counselors that was still playing out when he left.
Even Tiernan seemed different in the firelight. When he poured tea for Hyacinthe, he added honey without being asked, as though he’d made it that way many times before. And when he handed it over and their fingers met, I recognized in his face the sharp pain of longing, the unwillingness to ask for what you knew you would be denied. He hid it quickly, but not quickly enough.
“Will you tell me what this hag in the Court of Moths is supposed to find for us?” I ask when the stories come to an end.
I want the answer, but more than that, I want to know if they trust me enough to give me one.
Tiernan looks in Oak’s direction, but the prince is looking directly at me, clear-eyed. “The limits of Lady Nore’s power, I hope. The Thistlewitch lived during the time of Mab, and there was a curse on Mab’s bones, if I understand right.”
“So not an object?” I ask, thinking of their conversation in the woods.
Oak shrugs. “That depends on what she tells us.”
I mull over his answer as I bed down in some of the prince’s blankets. They are perfumed with the scents of Elfhame, and I pull my own muddy covering close to my nose to blot out the smell.
That afternoon there is another long, exhausting ride, with only a brief break for food. By the time we stop, I feel ready to fall off the kelpie’s back and not care if it starts nibbling on me.
Nearby a wide, brackish river froths, bubbling around rock. Tall, slender saw palmettos make lonely islands of rubble and root. On a steep slope, a single wall of a five-story concrete building stands. It looks like a castle cut out of construction paper, flat instead of three-dimensional.
“The entrance to the Court of Moths is supposed to be here somewhere,” Tiernan says.
I slide off the kelpie and lie down in the weeds while Oak and Tiernan debate where to find the entrance to the brugh. I breathe in the fine mist from the water, the scents of loam and clotted river grass.
When I open my eyes, a young man is standing where the kelpie was. Brown hair the color of mud in a riverbed and eyes the murky green of stagnant water. I startle, scuttling away, and reach into my pack for a knife.
“Greetings,” he says expansively, bowing. “You must wish to know the name of the one who carried you on his back, who so stalwartly aided a young prince in his time of need, before the beginning of his true reign—”