Tatterfell is quiet for a moment. “Another good reason for your sister to marry you to her. Besides, I hear she threw over the High King for Locke. You look something like him.”
Oak scowls as she urges him out of his nightshirt. “Jude doesn’t usually expect much from me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tatterfell says. “I hear you’re widely considered to be a rake.”
Oak wants to object, but he has to consider that maybe Jude does think a marriage of Oak to Nicasia would be possible and useful. Maybe it did seem like a good solution to Cardan, who’s heard rumors of Oak’s treachery.
And if Jude wanted him to compete to be King of the Undersea, would that lead Jude to move against Wren? Would Jude push her to break off the betrothal while pretending to allow it? Push Wren to hide her interference from Oak—and have enough power to back up any threat.
Well, given the secrets she’s already kept, if that is what she’s doing, he’d never know about it?
Dressed in mouse gray, with Tatterfell taking his evening clothes on to Insear, Oak heads to the stables. From there, he will ride out to the Milkwood, where he intends to determine the actual reason Wren wants Oak in particular to break off their betrothal.
As he heads toward Damsel Fly, he finds Jack of the Lakes waiting for him. The kelpie is in his person form, dressed all in brown and black, bits of seaweed hanging out of his breast pockets. A rough-beaten gold hoop hangs from one ear.
“Hullo,” Jack says, brushing the hair back from his eyes.
“My apologies,” Oak says, resting one hand on the needle of a sword he insisted on strapping to his belt. “I haven’t yet managed to speak with my sister on your behalf.”
He shrugs. “My obligation to you is greater than yours to me, prince. I’ve come to dismiss some of it, if I can.”
“Observe another clandestine meeting?” Oak asks.
“I am a steed. Get on my back, and we’ll ride to the hunt together.”
Oak frowns, considering. Jack is capricious and a gossip. But the vow he once gave Oak was sincere, and at the moment, Oak is feeling short on allies. Someone he can even mostly trust seems a boon. “Concerned about something?”
“I mislike this place,” Jack says.
“Viper nest,” Oak agrees.
“It seems quite the trick to tell the friendly snakes from the other ones.”
“Ah,” Oak says. “They’re all friendly snakes until they bite you.”
“Perhaps you’ll have no need of me today,” the kelpie tells him. “But if you do, I will be there.”
Oak nods. Jack’s concern makes his own worries all the more real. He reaches for a saddle. “You really don’t mind?”
“So long as there’s no bit between my teeth,” Jack says, transforming shape on the last word. Where once there was a boy, there is a sharptoothed black horse. The sheen on his coat is murky green, and his mane ripples like water.
Oak swings up on his back and rides out. Tiernan is waiting for him outside the palace stables on a white steed of his own. He takes one look at Jack and raises both his brows. “Have you run mad, trusting him again?”
Oak thinks of what he promised Hyacinthe in the Citadel—the hand of the person responsible for Liriope’s death. And the prince considers Tiernan, whose happiness he will rob if he gives that to Hyacinthe—even supposing he could. He considers how awful it would be and all the consequences that would follow.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Oak says. “I’m not sure I trust anyone anymore. Not even myself.”
They arrive at the Milkwood, riding beneath pale, silvery boughs covered with bleached leaves. There, the gentry of the Court are assembling in their riding garb. Cardan sits atop a black steed with flowers braided into its mane. He himself is wearing a doublet with a high collar and a crisscrossing pattern sewn into the dark fabric. Aside from shining buttons in the shape of beetles, he looks positively staid.
Taryn is all in lilac—a jacket with long tulip sleeves, breeches, and boots—and astride a dappled pony. The Ghost is beside her in dark gray, and somehow seems more knight, clad in her livery, than partner.
Oak feels a spike of rage at the sight of him. Rage that he swallows. For now.
Beside the High King, Jude is mounted on a riding toad, wearing a dress the color of unskimmed cream with billowing sleeves. Over that, a thin vest, embroidered with gold, laces over her chest. Calf-high brown boots dig into the stirrups. No crown sits on her head, and her hair is pulled simply back.