“Get up,” Madoc said.
As soon as he did, his father was on him again.
This time Madoc was serious, and for the first time, Oak was scared of what might happen. The hits came hard enough to bruise and too fast to be stopped.
He didn’t want to hurt his father. He wasn’t even sure that he could.
His father wasn’t supposed to really hurt him.
As the blows came relentlessly, he could feel tears sting his eyes. “I want to stop,” he said, the words coming out in a whine.
“Then fight back!” Madoc shouted.
“No!” Oak threw his sword to the ground. “I give up.”
The mop handle caught him in the stomach. He went down hard, scuttled back, out of his father’s range. Only barely, though.
“I don’t want to do this!” he shouted. He could feel that his cheeks were wet.
Madoc came forward, closing the distance. “You want to die?”
“You’re going to kill me?” Oak was incredulous. This was his father.
“Why not?” Madoc said. “If you don’t defend yourself, someone is going to kill you. Better it be me.”
That made no sense. But when the mop handle hit him in the side of the head, he started to believe it.
Oak looked at his sword, across the grass. Pushed himself to his hooves. Ran toward it. His cheek was throbbing. His stomach hurt.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever been scared like this, not even when he was in the Great Hall with the serpent coming toward his mother.
When he turned back to Madoc, his vision was blurry with tears. Somehow that made things easier. To not have to really see what was happening. He could feel himself slipping into that state of not quite awareness. Like times that he was daydreaming on the walk to school and got there without remembering being on the route. Like when he gave over to his gancanagh magic and let it turn his words to honey.
Like those things, except he was angry enough to give himself a single order: win.
Like those things, except when he blinked, it was to find the point of his blade nearly at his father’s throat, held back only by the half-splintered end of the mop handle. Madoc was bleeding from a slash on his arm, one Oak didn’t recall causing.
“Good,” said Madoc, breathing hard. “Again.”
CHAPTER
9
W
hen Oak returns to the bedroom in the tower, two servants are waiting for him. One has the head of an owl and long, gangly arms. The other has skin the color of moss and small moth wings.
“We are to ready you for bed,” says one, indicating the dressing gown.
After weeks wearing the same rags, this is a lot. “Great. I can take it from here,” he says.
“It is our duty to make sure you’re properly cared for,” says the other, ignoring Oak’s objections and shoving his arms into the positions necessary for the removal of his doublet.
The prince submits, allowing them to strip him down and put him in the robe. It’s a thick blue satin, lined in gold and warm enough that he doesn’t entirely begrudge the change. It is strange to have spent weeks being treated as a prisoner, to now be treated as a prince. To be pampered and bullied just as he would be in Elfhame, not trusted to do basic tasks for himself.
He wonders if they do this to Wren. If she lets them.
He thinks of the rough silk of her hair slipping through his fingers.
All that matters is that I do want you.
As he sat for those long weeks in the prisons, he dreamed of her speaking words like those. But if she truly desired him only to be a handsome object with no will of his own, sprawled at her feet like a lazy hound, he would come to hate it. Eventually, he would hate her, too.
He goes to the mantel and takes the key. The metal is cold in the palm of his hand.
If she wants more from him, if she wants him, then she has to trust that if he leaves, he’ll return.
Taking a deep breath, he walks to the bed. The dressing gown is warm but won’t be once he hits the wind. He takes the thickest of the blankets and wraps it over his shoulders like a cloak. Then, ragwort stalk in one hand, he opens the door and peers out into the corridor.
No guard waits for him. He supposes Hyacinthe made sure of that.
As lightly as he can with his hooves, he goes to the stairs and begins to ascend. Up the spiraling structure, avoiding the landings until at last he comes to the top of the parapet. He steps out into the cold and looks out on the white landscape below.
As high up as he is, he can see beyond the trolls’ massive—and as yet unfinished—wall. He squints as he spots what appears to be a flickering flame. And then another. A sound comes to him with the wind. Metallic and rhythmic, at first it sounds like sheeting rain. Then like the early rumblings of thunder.