Perhaps they are only annoyed at the reminder of how many traitors to Elfhame serve in the Court of Teeth. If so, they must be doubly annoyed when a falcon swoops into the room, becoming a man as he lands. Straun.
Oak’s former prison guard gives him a smug look as he holds out the bridle to Wren.
The prince can still conjure the feeling of the straps against his skin. Can still remember the helplessness he felt when she commanded him to crawl. How Straun watched him, how he laughed.
Wren takes it from the soldier, letting it lie across her palm. “It’s a cursed thing.”
“Like all Grimsen’s creations,” Jude says.
“I don’t want it,” Wren says. “But I won’t give it to you, either.”
Cardan raises his brows. “A bold statement to make to your rulers in the heart of their Court. So what do you propose?”
In her hands, the leather shreds and shrivels. The magic departs from it like a thunderclap. The buckles fall to the dirt floor.
Jude takes a step toward her. Everyone in the brugh is looking at them now. The sound the destruction made drew their attention as surely as a shout.
“You unmade it,” says Jude, staring at the remains.
“Since I have cheated you out of one gift, I will give you another. There’s a geas on the High Queen, one that would be easy enough for me to remove.” Wren’s smile is sharp-toothed. Oak isn’t sure what the nature of the geas is, but he is sure from the spark of panic in Jude’s face that she doesn’t want it gone.
The offer hangs in the air for a long moment.
“So many secrets, wife,” Cardan says mildly.
The look Jude gives him in return could have peeled paint.
“Not only the geas, but half a curse,” Wren tells his sister. “It winds around you but cannot quite tighten its grip. Gnaws at you.”
The shock on Jude’s face is obvious. “But he never finished speaking—”
Cardan holds up a hand to stop her. All teasing is gone from his voice. “What curse?”
Oak supposes the High King may well take a curse seriously, since he was once cursed into a giant, poisonous serpent.
“It happened a long time ago. When we went to the palace school,” Oak’s sister says.
“Who cursed you?” asks Cardan.
“Valerian,” Jude spits out. “Right before he died.”
“Right before you killed him, you mean,” Cardan says, his dark eyes glittering with something that looks a lot like fury. Although whether it is toward Jude or this long-dead person, Oak isn’t certain.
“No,” Jude says, not seeming in the least afraid. “I’d already killed him. He just didn’t know it yet.”
“I can remove that and leave the geas alone,” Wren says. “You see, I can be quite helpful.”
“One supposes so,” says the High King, his thoughts clearly on the curse and this Valerian. “A useful alliance.”
Oak supposes that means Wren is still pretending she’s willing to marry him.
Wren reaches her hand into the air, extending her fingers toward Jude and making a motion as though gripping something tightly. Then her hand fists.
His sister gasps. She touches her breastbone, and her head tips forward so that her face is hidden.
The High Queen’s knight, Fand, unsheathes her blade, the glint of the steel reflecting candlelight. All around, guards’ hands go to their hilts.
“Jude?” Oak whispers, taking a step toward her. “Wren, what did you—”
“If you’ve hurt her—” Cardan begins, his gaze on his wife.
“I removed the curse,” Wren says, her voice even.
“I’m fine,” Jude grates out, hand still pressing against her chest. She moves to a chair—not the one at the head of the table, not her own— and sits. “Wren has given me quite a gift. I will have to think long and hard about what to give her in return.”
There’s a threat in those words. And looking around, Oak realizes the reason for it.
It isn’t just that Wren took apart the bridle without permission and the curse without warning, nor that she exposed something that Jude may have wanted to stay hidden, but she made the High King and Queen look weak before their Court. It’s true they weren’t up on the dais for all to see, but enough courtiers were listening and watching for rumors to spread.
The High King and Queen were helpless in the face of Wren’s magic.
That Wren did them a service and put them in her debt.
She did to Jude what Bogdana had done to her in the Citadel—and did it more successfully.