“There are lots of ways to hurt us Folk,” says Valen, ignoring the prince’s words as he draws on a brown leather glove. “But cold iron is the worst. Burns through faerie flesh like a hot knife through lard.”
“A grim topic to discuss, but if that’s what you’d like to talk about, you are the host of this little get-together ” Oak tries to sound light, unconcerned. He’s heard Cardan speak just this way on many occasions, and it disarms his audience. Oak can only hope it works that way now.
Valen’s hand comes down hard on the corner of his mouth. It’s more a slap than a blow, but it still stings. He tastes blood where a tooth cuts into his lip.
Straun gives a guffaw. Maybe he feels torture will be a proper vengeance for Oak’s making him look like a fool. But with Bran’s body lying by the guard’s feet, Straun is a fool if he thinks himself safe.
Still, the game that has always served Oak best is seeming feckless, and he needs to play that up. Be that spoiled boy Valen expects.
At least until he can come up with something better.
“Let’s talk about what your sister will do,” says Valen, surprising Oak by not bothering to ask a single question about his escape. “Where were you planning on meeting her forces once you escaped your cell and murdered the queen?”
Clever of him to assume guilt and only press for details. Clever, but wrong.
With the stick creatures scattered into pieces, the falcons are the entire force of Wren’s military. That gives Valen room to rise in the ranks, since those ranks are thin, but it puts him in danger, too. Whatever Elfhame sends at the Citadel, he and his falcons will have to meet it.
That’s what Valen wants above all else, Oak realizes. Power. He’s been simmering with that desire for as long as he’s been laboring under the curse. And being Wren’s military leader would have appeased him a little. But she passed him over, and now he is hungrier than ever.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I have no way to communicate with my sister,” Oak says. That was true enough since he smashed the snake.
“You can’t expect me to believe you were going to—what—murder the queen and then run off through the snow, hoping for the best?” Valen sneers.
“I’m glad you don’t think that, though Bran certainly did,” Oak says, keeping his gaze off the corpse on the floor. “I never wanted to hurt Wren, no less murder her.”
Straun frowns at the familiar form of address—Wren, rather than Queen Suren or the Winter Queen or whatever fanciful title he thinks best suits her.
Can Straun truly believe he has a chance with her? There does not seem to be much guile in him. She may like that, even if Oak thinks he’s dull as a toad.
Valen studies the prince’s face, perhaps seeing the jealousy in it. “And you didn’t intend to run, either?”
Oak isn’t certain how to answer that. He’s not sure he can explain his intentions, even to himself. “I was considering it. Prison isn’t very nice, and I like nice things.”
Valen’s mouth turns down in disgust. This is what he expects a prince of Elfhame to be—vain and fussy and unused to suffering of any kind. The more Oak leans into that role, the more he will be able to hide himself.
“Although,” Oak says, “freezing isn’t particularly nice, either.”
“So you drugged Straun and broke out of the prisons,” Valen says slowly, incredulously, “with no plan at all?”
Oak cannot shrug, as tied down as he is, but he makes a gesture to indicate his nonchalance. “Some of my best ideas come to me in the moment. And I did get a bath.”
“He must know something,” Straun says, worried that they are risking all this for nothing. Worried, no doubt, about the corpse that will be hard to dispose of without anyone noticing.
Valen turns toward Oak, pressing a finger into his cheek. “The prince knows his sister.”
Oak sighs dramatically. “Jude has an army. She has assassins. She has control of the Courts of other rulers who are sworn to her. She holds all the cards and could deploy any of them. You want me to tell you that in a duel, she turns her front foot inward while lunging, giving you an opening? I don’t think you’ll ever get close enough to find that information useful.”
Straun’s eyes narrow in calculation. “She turns her front foot?”
Oak smiles up at him. “Never.”
Valen lifts an iron knife from the cabinet and presses the point of it to the hollow of Oak’s throat. It sizzles against his skin.