At every moment, I expect him to flinch or pull back as I put one hand on his shoulder, then go up on my toes, and kiss him.
This is ridiculous. Kissing him is profane. It gives me all the horrible satisfaction of smashing a crystal goblet.
It’s quick. Just the press of my dry mouth against his lips. A brief sense of softness, the warmth of breath, and then I pull away, my heart thrumming with fear, with the expectation that he will be disgusted.
With the certainty that I have well and truly punished him for trying to flirt with me.
The angry, feral part of me feels so close to the surface that I can almost scent its blood-clotted fur. I want to lick the scratches I made.
He doesn’t look alarmed, though. He’s studying my face, as though he’s trying to work something out.
After a moment, his eyes close, pale lashes against his cheek, and he dips forward to press his mouth to mine again. He goes slower, one of his hands cupping my head. A shivery feeling courses down my spine, a flush coming up on my skin.
When he draws back, he is not wearing his usual complicated smile. Instead, he looks as though someone just slapped him. I wonder if a kiss from me is like being clawed on the cheek.
Did he force himself to go through with it? For the sake of keeping me on this quest? For the sake of his father and his plans?
I thought to punish him, but all I have succeeded in doing is punishing myself.
I take a breath and let it out slowly. My gaze slides from his, and I spot Tiernan, coming toward us. I am not certain how much he saw, but I do not want to hear anything he might have to say just now. “Your pardon,” I tell Oak. “But I’ve had enough dancing. I think I will take my leave.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
I hate the way those words make my skin flush.
I head into the crowd, hoping he will lose sight of me. Cursing myself for being foolish. Cursing him for addling my thoughts.
As my eyes slide across the dancers, I know I must talk to Hyacinthe.
As long as everyone is well behaved, I will return him anon. That was what Queen Annet said, but it was possible we had already failed at being well behaved. That coming here against the wishes of the High Queen might be excuse enough to keep him locked away.
Imprisoned as he is, though, I can go and speak with him right now with no one the wiser. He can give me his warning in full, can tell me everything he knows.
I scoop up a handful of roasted chestnuts and eat them slowly, dropping peels onto the floor as I move toward an exit. A cat-faced faerie tears at a piece of raw meat on a silver platter. A two-headed ogre drinks from a goblet that looks, pinched between his fingers, small enough to belong to a doll.
I aim a look in Oak’s direction. He’s being pulled into one of the dances by a laughing girl with golden hair and deer antlers. I imagine he will swiftly forget our kiss in her arms. And if the thought makes my stomach hurt, that only makes me think of getting to Hyacinthe again.
A mortal man leaps up onto a table near me, hair in thin locs. He has an expressive face and a rangy vulnerability that draws the eye.
Pushing his glasses up higher onto his nose, he begins to play a fiddle.
The song he sings is of lost places and homes so far away that they are no longer home. He sings of love so intense it is indistinguishable from hate, and chains that are like riddles of old, no longer holding him, and yet unbroken.
Automatically, I look for ensorcellment, but there is none. He seems here of his own volition, although I dread to think how mistaken he may be in his audience. Still, Queen Annet says she is a fair host. So long as he keeps to the baroque rules of Faerie, he might find himself back in his bed in the morning, his pockets full of gold.
Of course, no one will tell him the rules, so he won’t know if he breaks one.
Turning away at that thought, I move the rest of the way through the crowd as fast as I can.
CHAPTER
7
I
pass bored guards, who throw hungry looks in my direction. They do not follow me, though, either because they are forbidden from leaving their post or because I look too stringy to make much of a meal.
Once they are out of sight, I begin to run. I veer through the three turns to where Lupine spoke of the gem-encrusted rooms near the prisons so fast that I nearly trip.
My thoughts are racing as fast as my feet. I kissed two people before Oak. There was the boy who liked fires and, later, one of the treefolk. Neither of those kisses felt quite as doomed as the one I shared with the prince, and they had been doomed enough.
This is the problem with living by instinct. I don’t think.
The lower level has a damp, mineral smell. I hear guards ahead, so I creep carefully to the bend in the corridor and peer around it. The enormous, copper-banded door they guard is almost certainly to the prisons, as it is carved with the words Let Suffering Ennoble. One is a knight with hair the color of red roses. She seems to be losing a game of dice to a snickering, large-eared bauchan. Both wear armor. She has a long sword at her hip, while his is curved and strapped to his back.
I am used to sliding into and out of a forest without being observed, but I have little experience in the sort of fast-talking trickery that might get me past guards. I draw myself up, though, and hope that my tongue does not betray me.
Then I feel a tap on the shoulder. Spinning, swallowing a scream, I come face-to-face with Jack of the Lakes.
“I can guess what you’re about,” he says, looking maliciously pleased, like someone who has ferreted out a delicious bit of gossip. “You intend to free Hyacinthe.”
“I just want to ask him some questions,” I say.
“So you don’t want to break him out of the prisons?” His green eyes are sly.
I’d like to deny that, but I cannot. Like all the Folk, my tongue seizes up when I start to lie, and unlike Oak, no clever deception comes easily to my lips. Just because I want to, though, it doesn’t mean I will.
“Oooooooh,” says Jack, correctly interpreting my silence for a confession. “Is he your lover? Is this a ballad we’re in?”
“A murder ballad maybe,” I growl.
“No doubt, by the end,” he says. “I wonder who will survive to compose it.”
“Have you come to gloat?” I ask, frustrated. “To stop me?” I am not sure how powerful a kelpie is out of the water and in the shape of a man.
“To surprise you,” he says. “Aren’t surprises wonderful?”
I grind my teeth but say nothing for a long moment. I may not be able to charm him with honey-mouthed words, but I understand resentment. “It must gall you, the way Tiernan talked to you.”
Jack might be a merry wight, but I bet he’s also a petty one.
“Maybe it wouldn’t bother you so much to see him looking foolish in front of the prince? And if their prisoner was gone, the one noble knight who checked on him last would look very foolish indeed.”
I don’t plan on freeing Hyacinthe. I don’t even think I can. Still, Jack doesn’t need to know that. I am only playing into what he thinks about me.
He considers my words, a smile growing on his mouth. “What if I were to make a loud noise? Perhaps the guards would abandon their posts to follow. What would you give me to make the attempt?”
“What do you want?” I ask, digging in my pockets. I take out the swan-shaped scissors I stole from Habetrot. “These are pretty.”