He looks at her slippered foot. Glances up at the rest of her. A strand of light blue hair has fallen across one scarred cheek. Her lips have a little pink at the inner edges, like the inside of a shell.
It is hard to imagine her as she was when they began their quest, a feral girl who seemed like the living embodiment of the woods. Wild and brave and kind. There is no shyness in her gaze now. No kindness, either.
He finds her fascinating. He’s always found her fascinating, but he is not foolish enough to tell her that. Especially not in this moment, when he is afraid of her.
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to see me again, prince,” Wren says. “I understand that you called for me in your cell.”
He screamed for her. Screamed until his throat was hoarse. But even if he was allowed to speak, clarifying that would only compound his many, many mistakes.
She goes on. “How frustrating it must be not to have everyone eager to comply with your desires. How impatient you must have become.”
Oak tries to push himself to his hooves.
She must note the impotent flex of his muscles. “How impatient you are even yet. Speak, if you wish.”
“I came here to repent,” he says, taking what he hopes will be a steadying breath. “I should never have kept what I knew from you. Certainly not something like that. No matter how I thought I was protecting you, no matter how desperate I was to help my father, it wasn’t my place. I did you a grievous wrong, and I am sorry.”
A long moment passes. Oak stares at her slipper, not sure he can bear to look into her face. “I am not your enemy, Wren. And if you throw me back into your dungeons, I won’t have a chance to show you how remorseful I am, so please don’t.”
“A pretty speech.” Wren walks to the head of her bed, where a long pull dangles from a hole bored into the ice wall. She gives it a hard tug. Somewhere far below, he can hear the faint ringing of a bell. Then the sound of boots on the stairs.
“I am already bridled,” he says, feeling a little frantic. “You don’t need to lock me away. I can’t harm you unless you let me. I am entirely in your power. And when I did escape, I came directly to your side. Let me kneel at your feet in the throne room and gaze up adoringly at you.”
Her green eyes are hard as jade. “And have you spending all your waking hours trying to think of some clever way to slither around my commands?”
“I have to occupy myself somehow,” he says. “When I am between moments of gazing adoringly, of course.”
The outer corner of her lip twitches, and he wonders if he almost made her smile.
The door opens, and Fernwaif comes in, a single guard behind her. Oak recognizes him as Bran, who occasionally sat at Madoc’s dinner table when Oak was a child. He looks horrified at the sight of the prince on his knees, wearing the livery of a guard beneath a stolen cloak.
“How—” Bran begins, but Wren ignores him.
“Fernwaif,” she says. “Go and have the guards responsible for the prisons brought here.”
The huldu girl gives a small bob of her head and, with a wary glance at Oak, leaves the room. So much for her being on his side.
Wren’s gaze goes to Bran. “How is it that no one saw him strolling through the Citadel? How is it that he was allowed to walk into my chambers with no one the wiser?”
The falcon steps up to Oak. The fury in his gaze is half humiliation.
“What traitor helped you escape?” Bran demands. “How long have you been planning to assassinate Queen Suren?”
The prince snorts. “Is that what I was trying to do? Then why, given everything I stole from that fool Straun and the laundry, didn’t I bother to steal a weapon?”
Bran gives him a swift kick in the side.
Oak sucks in the sound of pain. “That’s your clever riposte?”
Wren lifts a hand, and both of them look at her, falling silent.
“What shall I do with you, Prince of Elfhame?” Wren asks.
“If you mean for me to be your pet,” he says, “there’s no reason to return me to my pen. My leash is very secure, as you have shown. You have only to pull it taut.”
“You think you know what it is to be under someone’s control because I have given you a single command you were forced to obey,” she says, heat in her voice. “I could give you a demonstration of what it feels like to own nothing of yourself. You are owed a punishment, after all. You’ve broken out of my prisons and come to my rooms without my permission. You’ve made a mockery of my guards.”