“Madoc is not the father of my blood,” he says. “He’s the person who raised me. He’s my dad. And yes, fine, he’s complicated. He always craved conquest. Not even power, really, but the fight itself. Maybe because he was a redcap, or maybe it’s just how he was, but it’s like a compulsion.”
I am not sure it makes it better, to think of it as a compulsion.
“Strategy was dinner-table conversation. It was game play. It was everything. From the minute he met my mother and learned who sired me, learned that I could be the heir to Elfhame, he couldn’t help scheming.
“After he got exiled to the mortal world, stuck with that geas that kept him from picking up a weapon, he was completely at a loss. Started working shifts at a slaughterhouse just for the smell of blood. Trained me in the combat he was barred from. Got involved in playing politics with the neighbors in his apartment building. Had them all at each other’s throats inside of a month. Last I heard, one of the old ladies stabbed a young guy in the neck with a pen.”
Oak shakes his head, but it’s clear he loves Madoc, even knowing he’s a monster. “It’s his nature. I can’t deny that he brought an army to Elfhame’s shores. He’s the reason Folk were killed. He made himself an enemy of the High Court. He would have murdered Cardan if he’d had a chance. And so, no matter how much my sister loves our dad, she can’t ask her sworn subjects to help him. It would look terrible, to ask Folk to risk their lives for his when he put them in danger. But someone has to do it or he’s going to die.”
Now I am paying attention to what he doesn’t say. “Did she tell you she wanted to help him?”
“No,” he admits slowly.
“And does she want you to help him?”
He’s caught and knows it. “Jude didn’t know what I was planning, but if I were to guess how she’s feeling right now—I’d go with enraged. But Madoc would have come for us if we were the ones that were trapped.”
I’ve seen the High Queen angry, and no matter how she loves him, I am not sure she will forgive choosing their father over her. When she punishes the prince, though Oak believes otherwise, she will very probably punish those who helped him, too.
But when he reaches for my hand, I take it and feel the nervous, awful pleasure of his fingers threading through mine. “Trust me, Wren,” he says. “Help me.”
Love-talker.
Schemer.
My gaze goes to the scratches on his cheek, still raw-looking. My doing, for which he has not rebuked me. However secretive his nature, however foolish his reasons for loving his father, I like that he does. “I’ll come with you,” I say. “For now.”
“I’m glad.” The prince looks out at the hall, at the Gentry of the Court of Moths, at the dances and the revelry. Then he gives me his quicksilver smile, the kind that makes me feel as though we are friends conspiring together. “Since you’re in a benevolent mood, perhaps you’ll also dance with me.”
My surprise must be evident. “Why?”
He grins. “To celebrate you continuing with this quest. Because we’re at a party. So that Queen Annet believes we’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Do we have something to hide?” I ask.
He smiles wider, giving me a tug toward the revelers. “Always.”
I hesitate, but there is a part of me that wants to be convinced. “I don’t know how.”
“I have been trained in all the arts of the courtier,” he says. “Let me show you.”
I allow him to lead me into the crowd. Instead of going into one of the circle dances, though, he steers me to one side of them, so that we have room to practice. Turns me in his arms and shows me a movement, waiting for me to mirror it.
“Do you ever think about what it would be like to be a queen again?” he whispers against my cheek as we practice the steps.
I pull away to glare at him.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “It wasn’t meant to be a trick question.”
“You’re the one that’s going to rule,” I remind him.
“No,” he says, watching the other dancers. “I don’t think I will.”
I suppose he’s been avoiding the throne for most of his life. I think of cowering beneath the bed in his room during the Battle of the Serpent and shove the memory from my mind. I don’t want to think about back then. Just as I do not want to think about how, despite Hyacinthe’s warnings, I am ready to eat out of the prince’s hand as tamely as a dove.
It’s too easy. I’m hungry for kindness. Hungry for attention. I want and want and want.
“We ought to eat something,” I say. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”
Although he must know it is an excuse, he releases me from his arms.
We wend through the crowd to a banquet table laden with delicacies. Oak takes a tart filled with golden faerie fruit and cuts it in half, giving a portion to me. Though I was the one who suggested food, I realize how hungry I am only after taking the first bite. Self-consciously, I pour a glass of water from the pitcher set out to mix with the wine and gulp that down.
Oak pours himself wine, undiluted.
“Will you tell me how you came to be living . . .” He stops, as if trying to find the words. “As you were.”
I remember the care I’d given that he not know. How could I explain the way time seemed to slip from my fingers, the way I became incrementally more detached, more unable to reach out a hand to take anything I wanted? I will not allow him to pity me any more than he does.
“You could have come to see me,” he says. “If you needed something.”
I laugh at that. “You?”
He frowns down at me with his amber eyes. “Why not?”
The enormity of the reasons catches in my mouth. He’s a prince of Elfhame, and I am the disgraced child of traitors. He befriends everyone, from the troll guard at the entrance to all those Tiernan mentioned back in the High Court, while I have spent years alone in the woods. But most of all, because he could have asked his sister to allow me to stay on the Shifting Isles and didn’t.
“Perhaps I wanted to save that favor you still owe me,” I say.
He laughs at that. Oak liking me is as silly as the sun liking a storm, but that doesn’t stop my desire for it.
Me, with my sharp teeth and chilly skin. It’s absurd. It’s grotesque.
And yet, the way he looks at me, it almost seems possible. I imagine that’s his plan. He wants me to be charmed by him so that I will stay by his side and do what he asks of me. No doubt he believes that a little attention and a few smiles will be all it requires of him. He expects me to be as malleable as one of the ladies of the Court.
So much of me wants to give in and pretend with him that it makes me hot with rage.
If he wants to charm me, the least I can do is make it cost him. I won’t settle for smiles and a dance. I am going to call his bluff. I am going to prove to myself—prove to us both—that his flirtation isn’t sincere. I lean toward him, expecting him to unconsciously move away. To be repulsed. But he only watches me curiously.
As I draw closer, his eyes widen a little.
“Wren,” he whispers. I am not sure if it’s a warning or not. I hate that I don’t know.