He went on. “So I am going to run away from Faerie. Like you.”
That’s not how I’d thought of myself, as a runaway. I was someone with nowhere to go. Waiting until I was older. Or less afraid. Or more powerful. “The Prince of Elfhame can’t up and disappear.”
“They’d probably be happier if he did,” he told me. “I’m the reason my father is in exile. The reason my mother married him in the first place. My one sister and her girlfriend had to take care of me when I was little, even though they were barely more than kids themselves. My other sister almost got killed lots of times to keep me safe. Things will be easier without me around. They’ll see that.”
“They won’t,” I told him, trying to ignore the intense surge of envy that came with knowing he would be missed.
“Let me stay in your woods with you,” he said with a huff of breath.
I imagined it. Having him share tea with me and Mr. Fox. I could show him the places to pick the sweetest blackberries. We would eat burdock and red clover and parasol mushrooms. At night we would lie on our backs and whisper together. He would tell me about the constellations, about theories of magic, and the plots of television shows he’d seen while in the mortal world. I would tell him all the secret thoughts of my heart.
For a moment, it seemed possible.
But eventually they would come for him, the way that Lady Nore and Lord Jarel came for me. If he was lucky, it would be his sister’s guards dragging him back to Elfhame. If he wasn’t, it would be a knife in the dark from one of his enemies.
He did not belong here, sleeping in dirt. Scrabbling out an existence at the very edges of things.
“No,” I made myself tell him. “Go home.”
I could see the hurt in his face. The honest confusion that came with unexpected pain.
“Why?” he asked, sounding so lost that I wanted to snatch back my words.
“When you found me tied to that stake, I thought about hurting you,” I told him, hating myself. “You are not my friend.”
I do not want you here. Those are the words I ought to have said, but couldn’t, because they would be a lie.
“Ah,” he said. “Well.”
I let out a breath. “You can stay the night,” I blurted out, unable to resist that temptation. “Tomorrow, you go home. If you don’t, I’ll use the last favor you owe me from our game to force you.”
“What if I go and come back again?” he asked, trying to mask his hurt.
“You won’t.” When he got home, his sisters and his mother would be waiting. They would have worried when they couldn’t find him. They’d make him promise never to do anything like that again. “You have too much honor.”
He didn’t answer.
“Stay where you are a moment,” I told him, and crept off through the grass.
I had him there with me for one night, after all. And while I didn’t think he was my friend, it didn’t mean I couldn’t be his. I brought him a cup of tea, hot and fresh. Set it down on a nearby rock, with leaves beside it for a plate, piled with blackberries.
“Would you like a cup of tea, prince?” I asked him. “It’s over here.”
“Sure,” he said, walking toward my voice.
When he found it, he sat down on the stone, settling the tea on his leg and holding the blackberries in the palm of one hand. “Are you drinking with me?”
“I am,” I said.
He nodded, and this time he didn’t ask me to come out.
“Will you tell me about the constellations?” I asked him.
“I thought you didn’t like me,” he said.
“I can pretend,” I told him. “For one night.”
And so he described the constellations overhead, telling me a story about a child of the Gentry who believed he’d stumbled onto a prophecy that promised him great success, only to find that his star chart was upside down.
I told him the plot of a mortal movie I’d watched years ago, and he laughed at the funny parts. When he lay down in a pile of rushes and closed his eyes, I crept up to him and carefully covered him in dry leaves so that he would be warm.
When I woke up in the afternoon, he was already gone.
CHAPTER
9
I
am dragged through the halls and brought not to the prisons, as I supposed I would be, but to the bedroom where I readied myself for the revel. My bag is still on the hook where I left it, the comb Oak used still on the dresser. Revindra, the rose-haired knight, pushes me inside hard enough that I hit the floor with my shoulder. Then she kicks me in the stomach, twice.
I curl around the pain, gasping. I reach into the folds of my dress, hand closing over the scissors I stole from Habetrot’s rooms.
Here is what I learned in the Court of Teeth. It seemed, in the beginning, that fighting back would only bring me further pain. That’s the lesson they wanted me taught, but soon I realized I would be hurt anyway. Better to hurt someone else when I had a chance. Better to make them hesitate, to know it would cost them something.
Revindra is wearing armor, so when I go for her, I slash where she is most unprotected—her face.
The sharp edge slices her cheek, down over the corner of her lips. Her eyes go wide, and she pulls away from me with a wild shout. Her hand goes to her mouth, wiping and staring at her fingers as though it were impossible for the wetness she’s feeling to be her own blood. Another knight grabs my throat, holding me in place while a third slams my wrist on the ground until I let go of the scissors with a cry of pain.
It would be an insult to be stabbed by them, I recall Jack of the Lakes saying. I hope he’s right.
When Revindra kicks me in the back of the head, I don’t bother trying to muffle my anguished moan. In the Court of Teeth, they liked to hear me scream, cry out, and howl. Enjoyed seeing bruises, blood, bone. I’ve embarrassed Revindra, twice over. Of course she’s angry. There is no profit in giving her anything but what she wants.
At least until she gives me another opening.
“Whatever your punishment is, I will ask to be the one to administer it, little worm,” she tells me. “And I will do so with lingering thoroughness.”
I hiss from the floor, scuttling back when she comes toward me again.
“See you very soon.” Then she goes out, the other knights with her.
I crawl to the bed and curl up on it miserably.
I should have kept my temper, and I know it. If it gives me satisfaction to cause pain, that means only that I am more akin to Lady Nore and Lord Jarel than I like to suppose.
Seeking distraction from the agony in my wrist and my side, seeking a reason not to think about Oak’s expression when he took his old gaming piece or to gauge the likelihood I will be executed in one of the ways that so horrified Gwen, I reach into my pocket for her phone. The glass isn’t cracked. It lights up as my fingers travel over it, but there is no message from Hyacinthe. As I stare at the glowing screen, I think of my home number, the one my unparents made me repeat over and over back when Bex was Rebecca and I was their child.
We are far enough underground that the signal is very faint. A single little bar, occasionally two when I tilt it at an uncertain angle. I punch in the number. I do not expect it to ring.
“Hello.” My unmother’s voice is staticky, as though farther away than ever. I shouldn’t have done this. I have to try to be emotionless when they come to hurt me again, and my unmother’s voice makes me feel too much. It would be better to disconnect from everything, to float free from my body, to be nothing in an endless night of nothing.