Tiernan hesitated. But he would want to visit Hyacinthe, bored and angry and fomenting escape, as he’d been every night since being bridled. Tiernan didn’t like leaving him too long alone for lots of reasons. “If you’re sure . . .”
The ogress stood up straighter. “The High Queen is not in residence.”
Oak shrugged. “That’s okay.” It was probably better for him to get the stuff when Jude wasn’t there to laugh at the state of him. And while the ogress appeared not to like it, she didn’t stop him from walking past her, pushing open one of the double doors, and going inside.
The chambers of the High King and Queen were hung with tapestries and brocades depicting magical forests hiding even more magical beasts, with most surfaces covered in unlit, fat pillar candles. Those would be for his sister, who couldn’t see in the dark the way the Folk could.
Oak found the Walgreens bag tossed onto a painted table to one side of the bed. He dumped the contents onto the elaborately embroidered blanket thrown across a low couch.
There were, in fact, three bottles of store-brand ibuprofen. He opened one, stuck his thumb through the plastic seal, and fished out three gelcaps.
There was a castle alchemist he could go to who would give him a terrible-tasting potion if he was really hurting, but Oak didn’t want to be prodded, nor make conversation while the cure was prepared. He tossed the pills back and dry-swallowed them.
Now what he needed was a lot of water and his bed.
Swaying a little, he started shoving the contents back into the bag. As he did, he noticed a packet of pills in a paper sleeve. Curious, he turned it over and then blinked down in surprise that it was a prescription. Birth control.
Jude was only twenty-six. Lots of twenty-six-year-olds didn’t want kids yet. Or at all.
Of course, most of them didn’t have to secure a dynasty.
Most weren’t worried about cutting their little brother out of the line of succession, either. He hoped he wasn’t the reason she was taking these. But even if he wasn’t the only reason, he couldn’t help thinking he was in the mix.
And on that dismal thought, he heard steps in the hall. Cardan’s familiar drawling voice carried, although he couldn’t make out the words.
Panicking, Oak shoved the rest of the drugstore stuff back into the bag, flung it onto the table, and then scrambled beneath. The door opened a moment later. Cardan’s pointy boots clacked on the tiles, followed by Jude’s soft tread.
As soon as Oak’s belly hit the dusty floor, he realized how foolish he was being. Why hide, when neither Jude nor Cardan would have been angry to find him there? It was his own shame at invading his sister’s privacy. Guilt and wine had combined to make him absurd. Yet he would be even more absurd if he emerged now, so he rested next to an abandoned slipper and hoped they left again before he sneezed.
His sister sat on one of the couches with a vast sigh.
“We cannot ransom him,” Cardan said softly.
“I know that,” Jude snapped. “I am the one who sent him into exile. I know that.”
Were they speaking of his father? And ransom? Oak had been with them most of the night, and no mention had been made of this. But who else had she exiled that she would care enough to want to ransom? Then he remembered Jude’s question at dinner. Perhaps she hadn’t been asking after Madoc at all. Perhaps she’d been trying to determine whether any of them knew something.
Cardan sighed. “Let it be some comfort that we don’t have what Lady Nore wants, even should we allow ourselves to be blackmailed.”
Jude opened something out of the line of Oak’s sight. He crawled a little to get a better angle and see the box of woven branches she had in her hand. Tangled in her fingers was a chain, strung with a glass orb. Inside it, something rolled restlessly. “The message speaks of Mellith’s heart. Some ancient artifact? I think she looks for an excuse to hold him.”
“If I didn’t know better, I might think this is your brother’s fault,” Cardan said in a teasing tone, and Oak almost banged his head against the wood frame of the table in surprise at hearing himself referenced. “First, he wanted you to be nice to that little queen with the sharp teeth and the crazy eyes. Then he wanted you to forgive that former falcon his bodyguard likes for trying to murder me. It seems too great a coincidence that Hyacinthe came from Lady Nore, spent time with Madoc, and had no hand in his abduction.”
Those words were laced with suspicion, although Cardan was smiling. His mistrust hardly mattered beside the danger their father was in, though.