I nod, calculating. “If Elfhame wants to stop us . . .”
If the High Court makes a captive out of the prince, from love or anger, then who will stop Lady Nore? Will I be held as well? And if not, then how long before Bogdana finds me?
“I don’t know,” he says in answer to one or all the questions I do not ask.
I lower my voice even further. “Tell me about the prince’s powers as a gancanagh? And what Lady Nore sent in her message? You’re not constrained by the bridle.”
“Free me,” he says, eyes intent. “Free me, and I will tell you all I know.”
Of course. Why else try to interest me in the information he had? Not for my benefit. He wanted to escape.
I ought to focus on my own survival. This isn’t what I came to the prisons for. Helping Hyacinthe will only make it certain that I wear the bridle myself.
And yet, I do not know how I can turn and walk away from him, leaving him in a cage. Neither Oak nor Tiernan were cruel to him when he was their prisoner, and still I was horrified. The Court of Moths could be so much worse.
Oak would never forgive me, though.
Unless . . . he never found out that I was the one who helped Hyacinthe escape. No one saw me come in here, save for Jack of the Lakes. And Jack can hardly tell anyone, since he had a part in it.
Perhaps I could keep this secret, as Oak kept secrets from me.
“Promise you will tell no one—especially not Lady Nore—anything of Oak, or me, or Tiernan that would put us in danger or expose our plans.” I try to convince myself that this plan might be to the prince’s advantage and that he would benefit if Queen Annet’s schemes were at least partially thwarted. After all, if Hyacinthe goes missing from her prisons after she insisted on keeping him, she can hardly call herself a good host.
If Oak finds out, he will not see my actions in that light. He’ll believe that I kissed him to divert his attention from the way I was stabbing him in the back. He’ll believe that everything Tiernan ever said about me was true.
But if I do nothing, then Queen Annet is likely to keep Hyacinthe, in the hopes she can detain Oak or lure him to return to her Court. I cannot stand the idea of anyone being kept as I was, locked away and helpless.
“Help me escape and I will tell no one—especially not Lady Nore— anything of you, or Oak, or Tiernan that would put you in any danger or expose your plans,” Hyacinthe vows prettily and in full.
The gravity of this moment settles heavily on my shoulders.
“So how do I get you out?” I ask, trying to focus on that and not the dread I suddenly feel at taking fate in my own hand, mine and Hyacinthe’s. I study the stalagmites instead, looking for a seam. “These jaws must open somehow, but I can’t see the way.”
Hyacinthe puts his fingers through the gap in the teethlike bars and gestures toward the ceiling. “There’s something up there, written in the stone. One of the guards looked up when he spoke, like he was reading. He shuffled his feet, too, as though there’s a particular place to stand.”
“You didn’t hear what he said?” I ask, incredulous.
He shakes his head. “That must be part of the enchantment. I saw his mouth move, but there was no sound.”
I squint up and spot a few scratchy, thin lines of writing. I take two steps back, and am able to make it out. It is no password to open the teethlike bars, however. It’s a riddle. And as I look, I note a different one above each of the cells.
I suppose that if each chamber requires a different word or phrase to open or close, it’d be useful to have a reminder, especially with new guards coming in all the time. Not everyone’s memory is keen, and there’s a risk that should a word be forgotten, the cell would cease to work forevermore.
“Daughter of the sun,” I read. “Yet made for night, fire causes her to weep, and if she dies before her time, cut off her head and she may be reborn.”
“A riddle,” Hyacinthe groans.
I nod, thinking of the Folk’s love of games. Of how Habetrot had called Oak the Prince of Sunlight. Of the word puzzles my unfamily would play—Scrabble, Bananagrams. Of the poems I memorized from Bex’s schoolbooks and recited to squirrels.
I try to clear my head. “The moon?” Nothing happens. As I look down, I notice there’s a circle etched into the floor, just a little beyond where I stand. I step into it and speak again. “Moon.”
This time, the jaws creak, but instead of opening, the cell shrinks, as though biting down on its prisoner.
Hyacinthe bangs on the toothlike stone bars, panicked. “How is the moon beheaded?”
“It thins to a sliver,” I say, horrified at what I’d nearly done. “But it comes back. And it could be seen as the daughter of the sun—I mean, reflected light and all that.”
No number of explanations for why I thought my answer was right can change that it almost got him crushed. Even now that the movement ceased, I am still left afraid that it will snap closed, grinding him to pieces.
“Be careful!” he hisses.
“Give me your answer, then,” I growl.
He is silent at that.
I think more. Perhaps a rose? I have a vague recollection of being with my unmother at one of her friends’ houses, playing in the backyard while the friend trimmed her rosebushes. There had been something about cutting off the flower heads so there would be more blooms the following year. And daughter of the sun—well, plants liked sun, right? And they didn’t like fire. And, well, people thought of roses as romantic, so maybe they were made for night because people romance one another mostly at night?
That last seems like a stretch, but I can think of nothing better.
“I have something,” I say, my lack of confidence clear in my voice.
He gives me a wary look, then heaves a sigh. “Go ahead,” he tells me.
I move to the spot and take a deep breath. “A rose.”
The teeth grind lower, the ceiling dropping so fast that Hyacinthe sprawls on the floor to avoid getting hit. I hear a sound that might be laughter from the merrow’s cell, but the winged soldier is deathly silent.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
“Not yet,” he says carefully. “But I don’t think there’s room for the cell to close farther without cracking me like a nut.”
It was different to lie in wait for the glaistig and rip apart her spells, knowing I was the one in danger. To sneak through mortal houses or even run from hags. But to think that because of a mistake of mine, a life could be snuffed out like a—
Daughter of the sun. Made for night. Cut off her head and she’s reborn.
“Candle,” I blurt out.
The stone cavern shifts with a groaning sound, and the bars spring apart like a mouth, like some enormous carnivorous flower. We stare at each other, Hyacinthe moving from terror to laughter. He springs to his feet and spins me around in one arm, then presses a kiss to the top of my head. “You delightful, amazing girl! You did it.”
“We still have to get past the guards,” I remind him, uncomfortable with the praise.
“You freed me from the prison. I will free us from the hill,” he says with an intensity that I think might be pride.
“But first,” I say, “tell what you know about Oak. All of it, this time.”