Wren offers up a chilly smile. “I will go back to the feast, I think. Might you do up the back of my dress?”
Lady Elaine gives her a scathing look.
“Of course.” Oak has to hide his smile at that as he walks behind Wren and does up the laces of her gown.
As she makes ready to go, she looks back at Lady Elaine. “I hope he will give you half the delight he’s given me.”
Oak has to swallow a laugh.
As Wren leaves, Lady Elaine turns to Oak, hands on her hips. “Prince,” she says, sterner than any instructor in the palace school.
He is so tired of being treated as though he is a fool, as though he is in need of—what did Randalin say about Wren—a little guidance. Maybe he is a fool, but he is a fool of a different sort.
“There was little I could do,” he protests with a shrug, choosing his words carefully. “She is my betrothed, after all. It’s not the easiest thing to get rid of someone.”
Lady Elaine’s mouth relaxes a little, although she’s not going to let him out of this that easily. “You expect me to believe you wanted to be rid of her?”
Well, it would be convenient if she thought that. “I mean her no insult,” Oak says, deliberately misunderstanding. “But you were going to introduce me to your friends—and, well, I haven’t seen you in a long while.”
“Perhaps it’s time you explained this betrothal,” she says.
“Not here.” It’s too strange to stand in the place he was with Wren and attempt to deceive Lady Elaine about her. “Where was it you were going to take me?”
“We were to meet at the edge of the Crooked Forest,” she tells him, walking with him as he makes his way down one of the paths. “But they will be long gone. This is dangerous, Oak. They are putting themselves at great risk for your benefit.”
He notes that she didn’t say for your sake, although he’s sure that’s how she wants him to take her words. “Wren is powerful,” Oak says, hating himself. “And would be useful.”
“That point has been made to me before,” Lady Elaine says bitterly, and to his surprise. “That you were clever to make this alliance, and having the storm hag with her puts us all in a better position.”
For a moment, he is tempted to explain that Bogdana is never going to be on the side of anyone with his bloodline, but what would be the point? Let her believe anything that will have her accepting Wren and taking him to the rest of the conspirators.
“She will make you unhappy,” Lady Elaine tells him.
“Not all alliances are happy ones,” he says, and takes one of her hands in his.
“But you,” she says, putting her hand to his cheek. “You, who have little experience of sacrifice. Who have always seemed filled with such joy. How will you bear it when that joy is dimmed?”
He laughs outright at her words and then has to think fast to cover up the reason. “See? I can yet be merry. And I shall be merry still, even if wed.”
“Perhaps this plan asks too much of all of us,” Lady Elaine says, and he understands. Her plan, to be by his side, at the very least a sort of ruling consort, would be in shambles were he to marry Wren. If she cannot have that role, then she doesn’t want to risk her neck.
He turns toward her, and a kind of desperation rises in him. If she gives this up, then the conspirators scurry away—rats back into their holes—and he learns nothing.
Oak can fix this. He can use his honey-tongued words on her. He can feel them, sitting on his lips, ready to fall. If he says the right things, if he draws her into his arms, then she will believe in their plan once more. He will be able to convince her that Wren means nothing, that it will be her counsel he heeds once he is on the throne. He can even persuade her to take him to the conspirators, if perhaps not tonight.
But if he does nothing, then she gives up treason. Maybe the plan falls apart, becomes idle discontented conversation and nothing more. Then she will not be shut up in a tower, or cursed into a dove, or executed in a bloody spectacle.
He gives her hand a squeeze. Gives her one last sad smile. Maybe this can be over and everyone can live. “Perhaps you’re right,” he says. “Sadness just doesn’t suit me.”
CHAPTER
19
O
ak wakes with dread in his heart. As he lingers over a coffee-like substance that is made from roasted dandelions and picks at a plate of acorn cakes, his mind spins. His thoughts fly between Wren in his arms, her eyes bright and teeth sharp, kissing him as though they could crawl into each other’s skin—then Lady Elaine and the capsizing of his plans—then circling back to what he learned about the Ghost.