I can imagine a prince might do a lot for an unwavering path to the throne. One that by some accounts should have been his in the first place.
And yet, I cannot help thinking of the sprite saying he would be unsuitable as a ruler. Too spoiled. Too wild.
Of course, since she’s a companion of the glaistig and the glaistig is awful, perhaps what she thinks shouldn’t matter.
Tiernan takes out a wooden scroll case carved with a pattern of vines. It contains a map, which he unfurls on the table. Oak weighs down the edges with teacups, spoons, and a brick that might have been thrown through one of the windows. “First we must go a ways south,” the prince says. “To a hag who will give us a piece of information that I hope will help us trick Lady Nore. Then we head north and east, over water, into the Howling Pass, through the Forest of Stone, to her stronghold.”
“A small group is nimble,” Tiernan says. “Easier to hide. Even if I think crossing through the Stone Forest is a fool’s notion.”
Oak traces the route up the coast with a finger and gives us a roguish grin. “I am the fool with that notion.”
Neither seems inclined to tell me more about the hag, or the trickery she is supposed to inspire.
I stare at the path, and at its destination. The Ice Needle Citadel. I suppose it is still there, gleaming in the sun as though made of spun sugar. Hot glass.
The Stone Forest is dangerous. The trolls living there belong to no Court, recognize no authority but their own, and the trees seem to move of their own accord. But everything is dangerous now.
My gaze goes to Hyacinthe, noting his bird wing and the bridle sinking into his cheeks. If Oak leaves it on him long enough, it will become part of him, invisible and unable to be removed. He will forever be in the prince’s thrall.
The last time I wore it, Lady Nore and Lord Jarel’s plan to move against the High Court was the only reason they cut the bridle’s straps from my skin, leaving the scars that still run along my cheekbones. Leaving me with the knowledge of what they would do to me if I disobeyed them.
Then they marched me before the High Queen and suggested that I be united in marriage with her brother and heir, Prince Oak.
It is hard to explain the savagery of hope.
I thought she might agree. At least two of Oak’s sisters were mortal, and while I knew it was foolish, I couldn’t help thinking that being mortal meant they would be kind. Maybe an alliance would suit everyone, and then I would have escaped the Court of Teeth. I kept my face as blank as possible. If Lady Nore and Lord Jarel thought the idea pleased me, they would have found a way to turn it to torment.
Oak was lounging on a cushion beside his sister’s feet. No one seemed to expect him to act with any kind of formal decorum. At the mention of marriage, he looked up at me and flinched.
His eldest sister’s lip curled slightly, as though she found the thought of me even coming near him repulsive. Oak shouldn’t have anything to do with these people or their creepy daughter, she said.
In that moment, I hated him for being so precious to them, for being cosseted and treated as though he was deserving of protection when I had none.
Maybe I still hate him a little. But he was kind when we were children. It’s possible there’s a part of him that’s still kind.
Oak could always remove the bridle from Hyacinthe. As he might, if he decides he wants to put it on me. If I am Lady Nore’s greatest vulnerability, then he might well consider me a weapon too valuable to chance letting slip away.
It is too great a risk to think of a prince as so kind that he wouldn’t.
But even if he wouldn’t use the bridle to control me, or invoke his sister’s authority, I still have to go north and face Lady Nore. If I don’t, she will send the storm hag again or some other monster, and they will end me. Oak and Tiernan are my best chance at surviving for long enough to stop her, and they are my only chance at getting close enough to command her.
“Yes,” I say, as though there was ever a choice. My voice doesn’t break this time. “I’ll go with you.”
After all, Lady Nore ripped away everything I cared about. It will give me no small pleasure to do the same to her.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know that, no matter how courteously they behave, I am as much a prisoner as the winged soldier. I can command Lady Nore, but the Prince of Elfhame has the authority to command me.
CHAPTER
3
T
he night after Madoc, Lady Nore, and Lord Jarel failed to arrange our marriage, Oak snuck to the edge of where Madoc’s traitorous army and the Court of Teeth had made camp. There, he found me staked to a post like a goat.
He was perhaps nine, and I, ten. I snarled at him. I remember that.
I thought he was looking for his father and that he was a fool. Madoc seemed the sort to roast him over a fire, consume his flesh, and call it love. By then, I had become familiar with love of that kind.
He looked upset at the sight of me. He ought to have been taught better than to let his emotions show on his face. Instead, he assumed that others would care about his feelings, so he didn’t bother to hide them.
I wondered what would happen if, when he got close enough, I pinned him to the ground. If I beat him to death with a rock, I might be rewarded by Lord Jarel and Lady Nore, but it seemed equally likely that I would be punished.
And I didn’t want to hurt him. He was the first child I’d met since coming to Faerie. I was curious.
“I have food with me,” he said, coming closer and taking a bundle out of a pack he wore over one shoulder. “In case you’re hungry.”
I was always hungry. Here in the camp, I mostly filled my belly by eating moss and sometimes dirt.
He unwrapped an embroidered napkin on the ground—one made of spider silk finer than anything I wore—to reveal roasted chicken and plums. Then he moved away. Allowing me space to feed, as though he were the frightening one.
I glanced at the nearby tents and the woods, at the banked fire a few feet away, embers still glowing. There were voices, but distant ones, and I knew from long experience that while Lord Jarel and Lady Nore were out, no one would check on me, even if I screamed.
My stomach growled. I wanted to snatch the food, though his kindness was jarring and made me wonder what he’d want in return for it. I was used to tricks, to games.
I stared at him, noting the sturdiness of his body, solid in a way that spoke of having enough to eat and running outside. At the alienness of the little goat horns cutting through his soft bronze-and-gold curls and the strange amber of his eyes. At the ease with which he sat, faun legs crossed, hooved feet tipped in covers of beaten gold.
A woolen cloak of deep green was clasped at his throat, long enough to sit on. Underneath, he wore a brown tunic with golden buttons and knee-length trousers, stopping just above where his goat legs curved. I could not think of a single thing I had that he could want.
“It’s not poisoned,” he said, as though that was my worry.
Temptation won out. I grabbed a wing, tearing at the flesh. I ate it down to the bone, which I cracked so I could get at the marrow. He watched in fascination.
“My sisters were telling fairy tales,” Oak said. “They fell asleep, but I didn’t.”
That explained nothing about his reasons for coming here, but his words gave me a strange, sharp pain in my chest. After a moment, I recognized it as envy. For having sisters. For having stories.