Time—never particularly well calculated by the Folk—has blurred at the edges. He’s not sure how long he’s been in that room. “Awake. Alive.”
“Come sit,” Madoc says. “You can finish Val Moren’s game.”
Oak slips into the chair and frowns at the table. “What happened?”
In front of Madoc are several captured pawns, a bishop, and a knight. On Oak’s side, only a single pawn.
“He wandered off when he realized he was going to lose,” says the redcap.
Oak blinks at the game, too exhausted to have any move in mind, no less a good move.
“Your mother isn’t particularly happy with me right now,” Madoc says. “Your sisters, either.”
“Because of me?” It was perhaps inevitable, but he felt guilty to hasten it along.
Madoc shakes his head. “Maybe they’re right.”
That’s alarming. “Everything okay, Dad?”
Unlike Oriana, Madoc smiles at his use of the human term. Dad. Perhaps he likes it better because when Jude and Taryn used it, it meant they cared about him in a way he might not have thought they ever would.
“That mortal girl being around made me think.”
It has to be strange for him to be back in Elfhame, and yet no longer the grand general. To be back in his old house, without his kids there. And to be away from Insear when the rest of them were in danger. “About my sisters?”
“About their mother,” Madoc says.
Oak is surprised. Madoc doesn’t usually speak of his mortal wife, Eva. Possibly because he murdered her.
“Oh?”
“It’s not easy for mortals to live in this place. It’s not easy for us to live in their world, either, but it’s easier. I shouldn’t have left her so much alone. I shouldn’t have forgotten that she could lie, or that she thought of her life as brief, and would risk much for happiness.”
Oak nods, sensing there’s more, and advances his pawn out of the range of being taken by another.
“And I shouldn’t have told myself that cultivating a killing instinct I couldn’t control had no chance of bringing me tragedy. I shouldn’t have been so eager to teach the same to you.”
Oak thinks of the fear he’d felt when his father struck him to the ground all those years ago, of the hard kernel of shame he carried at that terror and his own softness, at how his sisters and mother protected him. “No,” Oak says. “Probably not.”
Madoc grins. “And yet, there are few things I would change. For without all my mistakes, I would not have the family I do.” He moves his queen, sweeping across the board to rest in a place that doesn’t seem imminently threatening.
Since Madoc would almost certainly have the crown if not for one of Eva’s mortal daughters, that was quite an admission.
Oak moves his knight to take one of his father’s undefended bishops. “I’m glad you’re home. Try not to get banished again.”
Madoc shifts his castle. “Checkmate,” he says with a grin, leaning back in his chair.
On his way back to his rooms, Oak stops at Tiernan’s. He taps lightly enough that if Tiernan is really asleep, the sound won’t rouse him.
“Yes?” comes a voice. Hyacinthe.
Oak opens the door.
Tiernan and Hyacinthe are in bed together. Tiernan’s hair is rumpled, and Hyacinthe is looking quite pleased with himself.
Oak smirks and comes to sit at the foot. “This won’t take long.”
Hyacinthe shifts so he’s leaning against the headboard. His chest is bare. Tiernan shifts up, too, keeping a blanket over himself.
“Tiernan, I am formally dismissing you from my service,” Oak says.
“Why? What did I do?” Tiernan leans forward, not worrying about the blanket anymore.
“Protected me,” Oak says with great sincerity. “Including from myself. For many years.”
Hyacinthe’s looks outraged. “Is this because of me?”
“Not entirely,” says Oak.
“That’s not fair,” Hyacinthe says. “I fought back-to-back with you. I got you out of Mother Marrow’s. I practically got you out of the Citadel. I even let you persuade me to be half-drowned by Jack of the Lakes. You can’t still think I would betray you.”
“I don’t,” Oak says.
Tiernan frowns in confusion. “Why are you sending me away?”
“Guarding a member of the royal family isn’t a position one is supposed to quit,” Oak says. “But you should. I have been throwing myself at things and not caring what happens. I didn’t see how destructive it was until Wren did it.”