The rain is still battering the tent. Taryn walks to the flap and looks outside. She shakes her head. “I am not sure we can get through the storm. The councilor was right about that, if nothing else.”
Jude turns to Hyacinthe. “And what was your role in all this?”
“As though I would give any confidences to you,” Hyacinthe says.
“Kill him,” orders Cardan.
“Hyacinthe fought on your side,” protests Oak.
Cardan gives an exhausted sigh and waves one lace-cuffed hand. “Very well, truss up Hyacinthe. Find the girl and the hag and kill them, at least. And I want the prince locked up until we sort this out. Lock up Tiernan, too, if he ever comes back.”
I’m sorry, Wren said before she left him in the Milkwood.
She warned him not to trust her, and then she betrayed him. She conspired with Randalin and Bogdana. She allowed Oak to delude himself into believing that someone was controlling her, when she had all the power.
It was clever, to keep him chasing shadows.
That had been the part of the puzzle he wasn’t able to solve—what any of them could have over her, who could unmake them all. The answer should have been obvious, only he didn’t want to believe it. They had nothing over her.
A mystery with a void at its center.
“Shoot her on sight,” Jude says, as though it’s going to be that simple.
“Shoot her? She’ll unmake the arrows,” Oak says.
Jude raises her brows. “All the arrows?”
“Poison?” his sister asks.
The prince sighs. “Maybe.” If he wasn’t so busy drinking all the poison in sight, he might know.
“We’ll find her weakness,” his sister assures him. “And we will bring her down.”
“No,” says Oak.
“Another protestation of her innocence? Or yours?” asks Cardan in a silky voice, sounding like the boy Taryn and Jude used to hate, the one who Hyacinthe wouldn’t believe was any different from Dain. The one who ripped the wings off pixies’ backs and made his sister cry.
“I make no defense of myself,” Oak says, leaning down to pick up his sword from the floor. “This is my fault. And my responsibility.”
“What are you doing?” Jude asks.
“I am going to be the one to end this,” Oak says. “And you will have to kill me to stop me.”
“I’m going with you,” Hyacinthe tells him. “For Tiernan.”
The prince nods. Hyacinthe crosses the floor to stand against the prince’s back. As one, they move toward the door, blades bared.
Jude doesn’t order anyone to block their way. Doesn’t confront Oak herself. But in her eyes, he can tell she believes that her little brother— the one she loves and would do anything to protect—is already dead.
CHAPTER
21
O
ak and Hyacinthe plunge into a storm of terrifying ferocity. The fog is so thick the prince can’t even see the shore of Insmire, and the waves have become towering things, beating against the shoreline, biting off rocks and sand.
Bogdana has sealed off Insear from aid, keeping Elfhame’s military and all else who would help them at bay. And now the storm hag waits with Wren for some signal that the royal family is dead.
There’s a problem with their plan, though. Oak hasn’t married Wren. Perhaps Randalin thought no one would find the Ghost’s or Elaine’s body—or that no one would care. Must have believed the evening’s festivities wouldn’t turn into an inquest. But since things didn’t happen that way, the murder of the High King and Queen wouldn’t automatically give Wren the throne. She still needed him.
As he walks along the beach, soaking wet, Oak is shaking so hard it’s difficult for him to tell what’s from the chill and what is from rage.
He’s become the fool he’s spent so long pretending to be. If he hadn’t fallen in love, then no one would be in danger. If he didn’t believe in Wren, promise to be on her side, make every excuse for her, then Randalin’s schemes would have come to nothing.
He loves her still, more’s the pity.
No matter, though. He owes his family his loyalty, no matter their secrets. Owes Elfhame itself. Whether or not he likes being the prince, he accepted the role with all its benefits and obligations. He cannot be the one to put his people in danger. And whatever Wren once felt for him, he cannot believe she could do all this unless that was gone. He ruined it, and he wasn’t able to fix it. Some broken things stay broken.
The prince runs through the storm, the cold cutting through his thin courtier’s clothes. “Come on,” he calls to Hyacinthe over the rumble of thunder, making a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate a tent he wants them to duck into.