Tiernan begins to rise as well, but she motions for him to sit.
“Prince Oak is the seeker,” she says. “He will receive the knowledge, but he must also pay my price.”
“I will pay it in his stead,” Tiernan declares. “Whatever it is.”
Oak shakes his head. “You will not. You’ve done enough.”
“What is the point of bringing me along to protect you if you won’t let me risk myself in your place?” Tiernan asks, some of his frustration over the fight in the Court of Moths obviously bleeding into his feelings now. “And do not give me some silly answer about companionship.”
“If I get lost in the swamp and never return, I give you leave to be very cross with me,” Oak says.
Tiernan’s jaw twitches with the force of holding back a response.
“So, what will you have?” Oak asks the Thistlewitch.
She grins, her black eyes shining. “Ahhhhh, so many things I could ask for. A bit of your luck, perhaps? Or the dream you hold most dear? But I have read your future in the eggshells, and what I will have is this—your agreement that when you become king, you will give me the very first thing I request.”
I think of the story the Thistlewitch told and the perils of bargaining with hags.
“Done,” Oak says. “It hardly matters, since I will never be king.”
The Thistlewitch smiles her private smile, and the hair stands up all along my arms. Then she beckons to Oak.
I watch them go, his hooves sinking into the mud, his hand out to support her, should she need it. She does not, scampering over the terrain with great spryness.
I take another doughnut and do not look in Tiernan’s direction. I know he’s still furious over Hyacinthe, and as mad as probably he is with Oak right now, I don’t want to tempt him to snarl at me.
We sit in silence. I watch the crocodile creature rise in the water again and realize it must have followed us. It is larger than I supposed earlier and watches me with a single algae-green eye. I wonder if it was waiting for us to get turned around in the swamp and what might have happened if we had.
After long minutes, they return. The Thistlewitch carries a gnarled dowsing rod in her hand, swinging at her side. Oak’s expression is haunted.
“Mellith’s heart is not in a place Lady Nore is likely to find it,” Oak says when he draws close enough for us to hear him. “Nor should we waste our time looking for something we can’t get. Let’s depart.”
“You weren’t really going to give it to her, were you?” I ask.
He does not meet my eyes. “My plans require keeping it out of her reach. Nothing more.”
“But—” Tiernan begins.
Oak cuts off whatever he was about to say with a look.
Mellith’s heart must have been what Lady Nore demanded in exchange for Madoc in the correspondence Hyacinthe was talking about. And if Oak was even considering turning it over, then I have every reason to be glad it’s impossible to get. But I also have to remember that, as much as he wants to take Lady Nore down, she has something over him. In a moment of crisis, he might choose her side over mine.
At the edge of the swamp, the hob-faced owl is waiting for us, perched on the stringy roots of a mangrove tree. Nearby is a patch of ragwort, its flowers blooming caution-tape yellow.
Oak turns toward me, a grim set to his mouth. “You’re not going to continue on with us, Wren.”
He can’t mean it. The prince fought and killed an ogre to keep me with them.
Tiernan turns to him, evidently surprised as well.
“But you need me,” I say, ashamed of how plaintive I sound.
The prince shakes his head. “Not enough for the risk of bringing you. I don’t plan on dueling my way up the coast.”
“She’s the only one who can control Lady Nore,” says Tiernan grudgingly. “Without her, this is a fool’s errand.”
“We don’t need her! ” Oak shouts, the first time I have really seen his emotions out of his control. “And I don’t want her.”
The words hurt, the more because he cannot lie.
“Please.” My arms wrap around myself. “I didn’t try to run away with Hyacinthe. This is my quest, too.”
Oak lets out a long breath, and I realize he looks even more exhausted than I am. The bruise under his eye from the punches he took has darkened, the purple yellowing at the edges, spreading over the lid. He pushes a stray lock of hair back from his face. “I hope you don’t intend to continue to help us the way you did in the Court of Moths.”
“I helped the prisoners,” I tell him. “Even if it inconvenienced you.”
For a long moment, we just stare at each other. I feel as though I’ve been running, my heart is beating so hard.
“We head straight north from here,” he says, turning away. “There’s a faerie market near the human city of Portland, in Maine. I’ve visited it before; it’s not far from the Shifting Isles. Tiernan will buy a boat, and we’ll gather other supplies to make the crossing into Lady Nore’s lands.”
Tiernan nods. “A good place to set off from. Especially if we need to lose anyone following us in the crowds.”
“Good,” says the prince. “At Undry Market, we can decide Wren’s fate.”
“But—” I start.
“It’s four days of travel up the coast to get there,” he says. “We pass through the territory of the Court of Termites, the Court of Cicadas, and half a dozen other Courts. Plenty of time for you to convince me of the mistake I am making.”
He strides off to the patch of ragwort, taking a stalk of the plant and enchanting it into a fringed skeletal beast. When he has two, he gestures for us to mount. “We can cover a lot more distance in the sky.”
“I hate these things,” Tiernan complains, throwing a leg over the back of one.
The owl-faced hob alights on the prince’s arm, and he whispers to it for a moment before it takes to wing again. Off on some secret mission.
I climb onto the ragwort steed behind Oak, putting my hands around his waist, feeling shame at being dismissed, along with anger. No matter how fast Oak’s swordplay or how loyal Tiernan or how clever they might be, there are still only two of them. The prince will realize it makes more sense to bring me along.
As we rise into the air, I find myself as unnerved by ragwort horses as Tiernan is. They seem alive now, and though they are not an illusion, they are not quite what they seem, either. They will become ragwort stalks again and fall to earth, with no more awareness of what they were than any other plucked weed. Half-living things, like the creatures Lady Nore enchanted.
I try not to grip Oak too tightly as we fly. Despite the strangeness of the creature whose back I am on, my heart thrills in the air. The dark sky, dotted with stars, mirrors the lights of the human world below.
We glide through the night, a few of my braids coming loose and undone. Tiernan may distrust the ragwort steeds, but he and Oak sit astride them with immense ease. In the moonlight the prince’s features are more fey, his cheekbones sharper, his ears more pointed.
We make camp beside a stream in a wood redolent of pine resin, on a carpet of needles. Oak coaxes the taciturn Tiernan into telling stories of jousts. I am surprised to find that some of them are funny and that Tiernan himself, when all attention is on him, seems almost shy.