“Are you doing it?” Her body is slightly hunched as though against some kind of attack.
“No, not yet,” he says with a surprised laugh. “I have to actually say something.”
“You just did,” she protests, but she’s laughing a little, too. Her eyes glitter with mischief. She was right when she said they both loved games. “Just do it. I’m getting nervous.”
“I’m going to try to persuade you to pick up that teacup,” he says, waving toward a clay vessel with a wide base and a little bit of liquid still at the bottom. It’s resting on the marble-topped table, and with all the rocking the boat has done as it goes over swells, he’s surprised it hasn’t slid to the Boor already.
“You’re not supposed to tell me,” she says, smiling. “Now you’ll never manage it.”
He finds himself filled with a strange glee at the challenge. At the idea he could share this with her and it could be fun instead of awful.
When he opens his mouth again, he allows the honey-tongued words to spill out.
“When you came to Elfhame as a child,” he says, his voice going strange, “you never got to see the beauty of it. I will show you the silvery white trees of the Milkwood. We can splash in the Lake of Masks and see the reBections of those who have looked into it before us. I will take you to Mandrake Market, where you can buy eggs that will hatch pearls that shine like moonlight.”
He can see that she’s relaxed, sinking back onto the cushions, eyes half-closed as though in a daydream. And although he wouldn’t choose those words, he does plan to take her to all those places.
“I look forward to introducing you to each of my sisters and reminding them that you helped our father. I will tell the story of how you single-handedly defeated Lady Nore and bravely took an arrow in the side.” He’s not sure what he expects from his magic, but it isn’t this rush of words. Not a single thing he said is anything other than true. “And I will tell them the story of Mellith, and how wronged she was by Mab, how wronged you were and how much I want—”
Wren’s eyes open, wet with unshed tears. She sits up. “How dare you say those things? How dare you throw everything I cannot have in my face?”
“I didn’t—” he starts, and for a moment, he isn’t sure if he’s speaking as himself. If he’s using his power or not.
“Get out,” she growls, standing.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Nothing I said was un—”
Wren hurls the teacup at him. It smashes against the floor, jagged bits of pottery flying. “Get out!”
He stares at the shards in horror, realizing what it means. She picked up the cup. I persuaded her to pick up the cup. This is the exact problem with being a love-talker. His power cares nothing for consequences.
“You told me you’d give me an order after I tried to persuade you.” Oak takes a step toward the door, his heart beating painfully hard. “I shall obey.”
When he passes Straun, the guard snorts, as though he believes Oak had his chance and blew it.
The prince stands on the deck for the better part of the night, staring numbly into the sea as dawn blushes on the horizon. He’s still there when he hears a scream behind him.
At the cry, he whirls, hand already going to the blade at his hip—finding not the needle-thin rapier he’s used to wielding but a borrowed cutlass. The curved blade rattles in its scabbard as he pulls it free—just as a thick black tentacle sprawls across the deck.
It wriggles toward the prince like some disembodied finger, dragging itself forward. Oak takes several steps back.
Another tentacle rises from the water to twine around the prow, ripping through one of the sails.
A troll sailor, interrupted from a game of Fidchell with an ogre, scrambles to his feet and up the rigging in horror. Shouts ring out.
“The Undersea! The Undersea is attacking!”
The ocean churns as seven sharks surface with merrows astride their backs. All the merrows are different shades of mottled green and wield jagged-looking spears. They are armored in pearlescent scales of shells and draped in woven ropes of seaweed. The expression in their cold, pale eyes makes it clear they have come to fight.
The captain blows on a crooked pipe. Sailors run to positions, beginning to haul out massive harpoons from hatches beneath the deck, each weapon heavy enough to take several of them to move.
The knights and falcons spread out, swords and bows to hand.
“Subjects of Elfhame,” a merrow shouts. Like the others, he is clad in shells cut into discs that overlap one another to make a sort of scale armor, but his bare arms are encircled in bracelets of gold, and his hair is knotted into thick braids, decorated with the teeth of sea creatures. “Know the power of Cirien-Cròin, far greater than the line of Orlagh.”