Hyacinthe huffs out a breath, his gaze going to the troll kings beyond the icy pane. “Loyalty? I think not, but I am going to tell you because you might be the one person who can help. Wren’s power takes something terrible out of her.”
“What do you mean?” Oak demands.
“It’s eating away at her,” Hyacinthe says. “And she’s going to keep having to use it, again and again, so long as you’re here.”
Oak opens his mouth to demand further explanation, but at that moment, a knot of courtiers passes, all of them pale and cold-looking, their gazes sliding over Oak as though the very sight of him is an offense.
“You’re going to the leftmost tower,” Hyacinthe says.
Oak nods, trying not to be rattled by the hate in their eyes. The tower he’s heading toward is, ironically, the same one he was caught in the day before. “Explain,” he says.
“What she does—it’s not just unbinding, it’s unmaking. She became sick after what she did to Lady Nore and her stick army. Harrowed. And Bogdana was so insistent that Wren use it again to break the curse of the Stone Forest because she’s going to need the trolls if Elfhame moves against us. But she’s formed of magic herself, and the more she unmakes, the more she is unmade.”
Oak recalls the strain in Wren’s face as she looked down from the dais in the Great Hall, the hollows beneath her cheekbones as she slept.
He assumed that Wren didn’t visit the prisons because she didn’t want to see him out of uninterest or anger. But she might not have come if she was sick. As much as she knows that looking weak in front of her newly formed Court is dangerous, it’s possible she feels it is similarly risky to look weak in front of him.
And if she doesn’t keep using her power . . .
No matter how dangerous the magic, Oak can too easily imagine Wren believing that if she doesn’t use it, she won’t be able to keep her throne. This was a land of huldufólk, nisser, and trolls, used to bowing only to strength and ferocity. They followed Lady Nore, but they were willing to hail Wren, her murderer, as their new queen.
She may be inclined to push herself past her limits to keep that support. To prove herself worthy. Has he not witnessed his sister doing just that?
You know what would really impress them? his mind supplies unhelpfully. Daring to skewer the heir to Elfhame.
“Tonight, at dinner,” Hyacinthe says, “persuade her to let you go. And if you can’t, then leave. Go. Actually escape this time, and take your political conflict with you.”
Oak rolls his eyes at the assumption that getting out of the prisons was easy and he could have done it at any time. “You could advise her to let me go. Unless she doesn’t trust you, either.”
Hyacinthe hesitates, not taking the bait. “She would trust me less if she knew we were having this conversation. Perhaps wisely, I am not sure she trusts anyone. All the Folk in the Citadel have their own agendas.”
“I am last on the list of those whose advice she’d heed,” Oak says. “As you well know.”
“You have a way of persuading people.”
It’s a barbed comment, but the prince grits his teeth and refuses to be offended. No matter how barbed, it’s also the truth. “It would be far easier if I wasn’t wearing this bridle.”
Hyacinthe gives him a sideways look. “You’ll manage.” He must have heard the specifics of her command. You will stay in my prisons until you are sent for.
Oak sighs.
“And in the interim, stop picking fights,” Hyacinthe says, making Oak want to pick a fight with him. “Is there no situation you’re not compelled to make worse?”
Oak climbs the steps of the tower, thinking of the dinner ahead of him with Wren. The idea of sitting across from her at a table seems surreal, part of his hectic, fox-filled dreams.
They come to a wooden door with two locks on the outside. Hyacinthe moves past the prince to fit a key inside the first one and then the other.
One key. Two locks. Oak notes that. And none of it iron.
The room it opens onto is well appointed. Low couches are arranged on a rug looking so much softer than anything he’s seen in weeks that he could sink down onto that and be happy. Blue flames burn in the grate of a fireplace. They seem hot, and yet when he puts a hand to the ice wall above the fire, there is none of the slickness that would indicate melting. Where the rug doesn’t cover, the floor is inset with stone. If you didn’t look carefully, you could suppose that you weren’t in an ice palace at all.