“Tortured is how she was as a child. Besides, how can he call anyone an animal when he turns into a literal horse?”
Oriana presses her lips together. “She is not for you,” she says finally. “Feel as sorry for her as you like. Desire her if you must. But do not marry her. I will not have you stolen from us again.”
Oak sighs. He owes his mother so much. But he does not owe her this. “You want to rule over me as though I were a child. But you also want me to be a ruler. You will have to trust me when I say that I know what I want.”
“You have grown tired of far more fascinating girls,” Oriana says with a wave of her hand. “A few boys, too, if Court rumors are true. Your Suren is dull, without grace or manners, and furthermore—”
“Enough!” Oak says, surprising both of them. “No, she is not going to become the Mistress of Revels and have all of Court eating out of her hand. She’s quiet. She doesn’t love crowds or people staring at her or having to find things to say to them. But I don’t see what that has to do with my loving her.”
For a moment, they just stare at each other. Then Oriana goes to his wardrobe and riffies through the clothes.
“You ought to change into the bronze. Here, this.” She holds up a doublet shining with metallic thread. It is the brown of dried blood, and velvet leaves have been sewn on it as though they were blown in a great gust across its surface. Most of them are various shades of brown and gold, but a few green ones catch the eye with their brightness. “And perhaps the golden horn and hoof covers. Those are lovely in candlelight.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asks. “I am going out for the rest of the afternoon, and tonight it’s only dinner with the family and a girl you don’t want me to impress.”
Oriana gives him an incredulous look. “Dinner? Oh no, my darling. It’s a feast.”
CHAPTER
16
O
f course, when Cardan invited Wren to dinner, he didn’t mean dining together at a table. He meant attending a feast held in her honor. Of course he did.
Oak forgot how things worked, how people behaved. After being away from Elfhame for so long, he is being crammed back into a role he no longer remembers how to fit into.
Once he’s dressed, scolded, and kissed by his mother, he manages to make it out the door. On his way to the kitchens, he runs into his nephew, who demands a game of hide-and-seek and chases after a palace cat when he’s put off. Then, as the prince packs a basket, he endures being good-naturedly fussed over by several of the servants, including the cook who sent up little iced cakes. Finally, having obtained a pie, several cheeses, and a stoppered bottle of cider, he slips away, his cheeks stinging only a little from the pinching.
Still, the sky over Insmire is the blue of Wren’s hair, and as he makes his way to her cottage, he cannot help feeling hopeful.
He is most of the way there when a girl darts from the trees.
“Oak,” Wren says, sounding out of breath. She’s clad in a simple brown dress with none of the grandeur of the clothes he’s seen her in since she took over the Court of Teeth. It looks like something she threw on in haste.
“I love you,” Oak says, because he needs to say it simply, so she can’t find a way to see a lie in it. He’s smiling because she came through the woods in a rush, looking for him. Because he feels ridiculously happy. “Come have a picnic with me.”
For a moment, Wren looks utterly horrified. The prince’s thoughts stagger to a stop. He feels a sharp pain in his chest and fights to keep the smile on his lips.
It’s not as though he expected her to return the sentiment. He expected her to laugh and perhaps be a little flattered. Enjoy the thought of having a little power over him. He thought she liked him, even if she found him hard to forgive. He thought she had to like him some to want him.
“Well,” he manages, hefting the basket with false lightness. “Luckily, there’s still the picnic.”
“You fall in love with the ease of someone slipping into a bath,” she tells him. “And I imagine you extricate yourself with somewhat more drama, but no less ease.”
Now that was more the sort of thing he was prepared to hear. “Then I urge you to ignore my outburst.”
“I want you to call off the marriage,” she says.
He sucks in a breath, stung. Truly, he didn’t expect her to rub salt in so fresh a wound, although he supposes she gave him no reason to think she wouldn’t. “That seems like an excessive response to a declaration of love.”