I flinch away from her hand.
My greatest wish, the deepest desire of my heart. It infuriates me how well she knows me, and yet how she holds back every last mote of the comfort I so desperately crave.
Her yellow eyes study my face, trying to determine if I am hers yet. “Are you thinking about the prince? Oh, do not suppose I don’t know where you were when your own people died in the Battle of the Serpent. Hiding under that boy’s bed.”
My gaze is flat. I was a child, and I got away from her. I refuse to feel anything but glad about that. He wanted me there, I would say if I could speak. We were friends. We are friends.
But I can’t help thinking about Mellith’s heart, about what he told me in the boat.
. . . whatever I say or do or have done . . .
“Do you think he will protect you now? You’re useless. The heir to Elfhame has no reason to spend any further time with an untutored savage of a girl. But think, you wouldn’t have to remember him. You wouldn’t even have to remember yourself.”
“I’m not half as practical as you suppose,” Oak says. “I like many useless things. I’ve been called useless myself from time to time.”
Lady Nore doesn’t turn her eyes from me, even when I give a little, unexpected laugh that almost makes me release my teeth’s grip on my tongue. Lord Jarel’s hands tighten on her shoulders as though in response to her mood. “His kindness will evaporate as soon as you need it. Now, child, will you take the bargain and trouble me no more? Or will you force me to deal with you more harshly?”
I imagine giving up. No more peering through windows, mourning the loss of a life that could never again be mine. No more hopeless desire. No more uncertain future. No more terror. Let her have Mellith’s heart and Mab’s bones. Let Elfhame rot and the Prince of Elfhame rot with it. Let her raze whatever parts of the mortal world she chooses. What would I care when I couldn’t remember any of it?
I think of the Thistlewitch’s words. Nix Naught Nothing. That’s what you are. That’s what I would be. I would be consigning everything I’ve been, all I’ve learned and done to meaninglessness. I would be accepting that I don’t matter.
I spit in Lady Nore’s face. The spatter is bright with my blood against her gray skin.
She curls her lip and raises her hand, but does not strike me. She stands there, shaking with fury. “You bite your tongue to spite me? Well, I will lesson you. Guard, cut it out of her mouth.”
One of the huldufólk comes forward, taking hold of my arms. I kick and claw, fighting as I never have before.
“No!” Oak struggles, but two ex-falcons grab him. “If you hurt her, you can’t expect me to just turn over—”
Lady Nore whirls toward him, pointing a finger. “Tell me where Mellith’s heart is this moment, and I won’t cut out her tongue.”
Three more guards help subdue me. I twist against their grip.
Oak lunges for the troll nearest to him and grabs her sword, drawing it from the sheath. The prince is still surrounded, but now he is armed. A few huldufólk and nisser draw bows.
Hurclaw waves his hand. “Show the boy it is no use,” he says.
“Come forward, my creations,” says Lady Nore, and the soldiers of sticks and mud and flesh stride across the floor of the great hall. The guards step back, letting the creatures take their places.
“Seize him,” says Lady Nore.
The stick soldiers rush at Oak without hesitation. He slashes one, cutting it in half, and then whirls to stab another. His sword sinks in deep to the branches of the thing’s body. It continues to come forward, then twists aside, trying to wrench the sword out of Oak’s hand with the force of its own movement, even as doing so is tearing it apart.
Oak pulls the blade free, but three more throw themselves on it so a fourth can grab him around the throat.
This time the guards bind his hands behind his back with a silver cord.
When he meets my eyes, his expression is anguished. He cannot help me.
I fight as they press me down to the floor. Bite when they try to pry open my mouth.
But it’s all for nothing. Two soldiers hold my wrists, and a third hooks a barbed instrument through the end of my tongue. He pulls it taut.
Then a fourth begins slicing through it with a curved dagger.
The sharp, searing pain makes me want to cry out, but I cannot with my tongue nailed in place. My mouth goes from dry from being held open to full of blood. Flooded with it. Gagging. Drowning. I choke as they release me, the scream dying in my throat.
Scarlet flows over my chin. When I move, flecks of red fly.
The pain swallows me whole so that I barely can concentrate, but I know I am losing too much blood. It spills from between my lips, slicks my neck, stains the collar of my dress. This is going to kill me. I am going to die, here on the ice floor of the Citadel.
Lady Nore takes a slow walk around my crumpled body. She takes another small piece of bone from her bag and presses it against my lips, then past my teeth. I can feel the wound closing. “You might not think so, but this is for the best. As your mother and your sworn vassal, I must trust my own wisdom in the absence of direct orders.”
Blood loss and shock have made me dizzy. I feel light-headed. I stagger to my feet and think very seriously about sitting back down. Think very seriously about collapsing.
Since she cannot lie, in some twisted way, Lady Nore must truly believe that what she wants is what I ought to want.
Still, I do not need a tongue for her to read the rage in my eyes.
Her lips turn up at the edges, and I see that she isn’t so different from before. She doesn’t want me dead, because once dead I can no longer suffer.
“The prince doesn’t even know what you are,” she says with a glance toward Oak. “Barely one of the Folk. Nothing but a manikin, little more than the stock left behind when a changeling is taken, a thing meant to wither and die.”
Despite myself, my gaze goes to Oak. To see if he understands. But I cannot read anything but pity on his face.
I might be only sticks and snow and hag magic, but at least I did not come from her.
I am no one’s child.
That makes me smile, showing red teeth.
“My lady,” says King Hurclaw. “The sooner Prince Oak sees his father released, the sooner we will have what we want.”
Lady Nore gives him a narrow-eyed look. I wonder if the troll king realizes how awful she can be, and if he isn’t careful, how awful she will be to him.
But for now, she obediently waves at the guards. “One of you, lock her in the dungeon, wicked child that she is, that she may think on her choices. Prince Oak and I have much to discuss. Perhaps he will join us at the table.”
One of the ex-falcons comes to stand behind me. “Move.”
I begin to walk unsteadily toward the doors. The throb of my tongue in my mouth is horrible, but the bleeding has ebbed. I am still drinking saliva that tastes like pennies but no longer feeling as though I am drowning in it.
“I would say that you lost yourself along the way, but you lost yourself far before that,” the storm hag tells me as I pass her. “Wake up, little bird.”
I open my mouth, to remind her that what I’ve lost is my tongue and perhaps my hope.
She grimaces, and for a moment, a fresh wave of fear and dizziness passes over me. It must be very bad to make Bogdana wince.