A Sneak Peek of The Prisoner’s Throne

Chapter 1

The cold of the prisons eats at Oak’s bones, and the stink of iron scrapes his throat. The bridle presses against his cheeks, reminding him that he is shackled to an obedience that binds him more securely than any chains. But worst of all is the dread of what will happen next, a dread so great that he wishes it would just happen so he could stop dreading it.

On the morning after he was locked in his cell in the stone dungeons beneath the Ice Needle Citadel of the former Court of Teeth, a servant brought him a blanket lined in rabbit fur. A kindness he didn’t know how to interpret. No matter how tightly he wraps it around himself, though, he is seldom warm.

Twice each day he is brought food. Water, often with a rime of ice on the surface. Soup, hot enough to make him comfortable for a scant hour or so. As the days stretch on, he fears that, rather than putting his torment off, as one puts a particularly delicious morsel to the side of one’s plate to be saved for last, he has simply been forgotten.

Once, he thought he recognized Wren’s shadow, observing him from a distance. He called to her, but she didn’t answer. Maybe she’d never been there. The iron muddles his thoughts. Perhaps he only saw what he so desperately wanted to see.

She has not spoken with him since she sent him here. Not even to use the bridle to command him. Not even to gloat.

Sometimes he screams into the darkness, just to remind himself that he can.

These dungeons were built to swallow screams. No one comes.

Today, he screams himself hoarse and then slumps against a wall. He wishes he could tell himself a story, but he cannot convince himself that he is a brave prince suffering a setback on a daring quest, nor the tempestuous, star-​crossed lover he has played at so many times in the past. Not even the loyal brother and son he meant to be when he set out from Elfhame.

Whatever he is, he’s certainly no hero.

A guard stomps down the hall, driving Oak to his hooves. One of the falcons. Straun. The prince has overheard him at the gate before, complaining, not realizing his voice carries. He is ambitious, bored by the tediousness of guard duty, and eager to show off his skill in front of the new queen.

Wren, whose beauty Straun rhapsodizes over.

Oak hates Straun.

“You there,” the falcon says, drawing close. “Be quiet before I quiet you.”

Ah, Oak realizes. He’s so bored that he wants to make something happen.

“I am merely trying to give this dungeon an authentic atmosphere,” Oak says. “What’s a place like this without the cries of the tormented?”

“Traitor’s son, you think much of yourself, but you know nothing of torment,” Straun says, kicking the iron bars with the heel of his boot, making them ring. “Soon, though. Soon, you’ll learn. You should save your screams.”

Traitor’s son. Interesting. Not just bored, then, but resentful of Madoc.

Oak steps close enough to the bars that he can feel the heat of the iron. “Does Wren intend to punish me, then?”

Straun snorts. “Our queen has more important things to attend to than you. She’s gone to the Stone Forest to wake the troll kings.”

Oak stares at him, stunned.

The falcon grins. “Worry not, though. The storm hag is still here. Maybe she’ ll send for you. Her punishments are legendary.” With that, he walks back toward the gate.

Oak sags to the cold floor, furious and despairing.

You have to break out. The thought strikes him forcefully. You must find a way.

Not easy, that. The iron bars burn. The lock is hard to pick, thoughhe tried once with a fork. All he managed to do was snap off one of thetines and ensure that all subsequent food was sent only with spoons.

Not easy to escape. And besides, maybe, after everything, Wren stillmight visit him.

Oak wakes on the stone floor of his cell with his head ringing and his breath clouding in the air. He blinks in confusion, still half in dreams. He’s seldom able to sleep deeply with so much iron around him, but that’s not what woke him tonight.

A great cresting wave of magic washes over the Citadel, coursing from somewhere south, crashing down with unmistakable power. Then there is a tremble in the earth, as though something massive moved upon it.

It comes to him then that the Stone Forest is south of the Citadel. The trembling is not something moving upon the earth but something disgorged from it. Wren did it. She has released the troll kings from their bondage beneath the ground.

Broken an ancient curse, one so old that for Oak it seems woven into the fabric of the world, as implacable as the sea and sky.

He can almost hear the cracking sound of the rocks that imprisoned them. Fissures spider-webbing out from two directions at once, from both boulders. Waves of magical force flowing from those twinned centers, intense enough that nearby trees would split apart, sending the icecrusted blue fruit to scatter on the snow.

He can almost see the two ancient troll kings, rising up from the earth, stretching for the first time in centuries. Tall as giants, shaking off all that had grown over them in their slumber. Dirt and grass, small trees, and rocks would all rain down from their shoulders.

Wren had done it.

And since that is supposed to be impossible, the prince has no idea what she might do next.

Since he’s unlikely to be able to sleep again, Oak goes through the exercises the Ghost taught him long ago so that he could still practice while stuck in the mortal world.

Imagine you have a weapon. They had been in Vivi’s second apartment, standing on a small metal balcony. Inside, Taryn and Vivi had been fussing over Leander, who was learning to crawl. The Ghost had asked about Oak’s training and been uninterested in the excuse that he was eleven, had to go to school, and couldn’t be swinging around a longsword in the common space of the lawn without neighbors getting worried.

Oh, come on! Oak laughed, thinking the spy was being silly. The Ghost conjured the illusion of a blade out of thin air, its hilt decorated with ivy. His glamour was so good that Oak had to look closely to see that it wasn’t real. Your turn, prince.

Oak had actually liked making his own sword. It was huge andblack with a bright red hilt covered in demonish faces. It looked likethe sword of someone in an anime he’d been watching, and he felt like abadass, holding it in his hands.

The sight of Oak’s blade had made the Ghost smile, but he didn’tlaugh. Instead, he started moving through a series of exercises, urgingOak to follow. He told the prince he should call him by his nonspy name,Garrett, since they were friends.

You can do this, the Ghost—Garrett—told him. When you have nothing else.

Nothing else to practice with, he probably meant. Although right now, Oak has nothing else, full stop.

The exercises warm him just enough to be halfway comfortablewhen he wraps the blanket around his shoulders.

The prince has been imprisoned three weeks, according to the tallies he’s made in the dust beneath the lone bench. Long enough to dwell on every mistake he has made on his ill-​fated quest. Long enough to endlessly reconsider what he ought to have done in the swamp after the Thistlewitch turned to him and spoke in her raspy voice: Didn’t you know, prince of foxes, what you already had? What a fine jest, to look for Mellith’s heart when she walks beside you.

At the memory, Oak stands and paces the floor, his hooves clattering restlessly against the black stone. He should have told her the truth. Should have told her and accepted the consequences.

Instead, he convinced himself that keeping the secret of her origin protected her, but was that true? Or was it more true that he’d manipulated her, the way he manipulated everyone in his life? That was what he was good at, after all— tricks, games, insincerity.

His family must be in a panic right now. He trusts that Tiernan got Madoc to Elfhame safely, no matter what the redcap general wanted. But Jude would be furious with Tiernan for leaving Oak behind and even angrier with Madoc, if she guesses just how much of this is his fault.

Possibly Cardan would be relieved to be rid of Oak, but that wouldn’t stop Jude from making a plan to get him back. Jude has been ruthless on Oak’s behalf before, but this is the first time it’s scared him. Wren is dangerous. She is not someone to cross. Neither of them are.

He recalls the press of Wren’s sharp teeth against his shoulder. The nervous fumble of her kiss, the shine of her wet eyes, and how he repaid her reluctant trust with deception. Again and again in his mind, he sees the betrayal on her face when she realized what an enormous secret he’d kept.

It doesn’t matter if you deserve to be in her prisons, he tells himself. You still need to get out.

Sitting in the dark, he listens to the guards play dice games. They have opened a jug of a particularly strong juniper liquor in celebration of Wren’s accomplishment. Straun is the loudest and drunkest of the bunch, and the one losing the most coin.

Oak dozes off and wakes to the tread of soft footfalls. He surges to his hooves, moving as close to the iron bars as he dares.

A huldu woman comes into view, bearing a tray, her tail swishing behind her.

Disappointment is a pit in his stomach.

“Fernwaif,” he says, and her eyes go to his. He can see the wariness in them.

“You remember my name,” she says, as though it’s some kind of trick. As though princes have the attention spans of gnats.

“Most certainly I do.” He smiles, and after a moment, she visibly relaxes, her shoulders lowering.

He wouldn’t have noted that reaction before. After all, smiles were supposed to reassure people. Just maybe not quite so much as his smiles did.

Maybe you can’t help it. Maybe you do it without knowing. That’s what Wren had said when he claimed he didn’t use his honey-​mouthed charm, his gancanagh ability, anymore. He’d stuck to the rules Oriana had given him. Sure, he knew the right things to say to make someone like him, but he’d told himself that wasn’t the same as just giving himself over to the magic, not the same as enchanting them.

But sitting in the dark, he has reconsidered. What if the power leaches out of him like a miasma? Like a poison? Perhaps the seducing of conspirators he’d done wasn’t his being clever or companionable; instead, he was using a power they couldn’t fight against. What if he is a much worse person than he’s supposed?

And as though to prove it, he presses his advantage, magical or not. He smiles more broadly at Fernwaif. “You’re far superior company to the guard who brought my food yesterday,” he tells her with utter sincerity, thinking of a troll who wouldn’t so much as meet his gaze. Who spilled half his water on the ground and then grinned at him, showing a set of cracked teeth.

Fernwaif snorts. “I don’t know if that’s much of a compliment.”

It wasn’t. “Shall I tell you instead that your hair is like spun gold, your eyes like sapphires?”

She giggles, and he can see her cheeks are pink as she pulls out the empty bowls near the slot at the bottom of the cell and replaces them with the new tray. “You best not.”

“I can do better,” he says. “And perhaps you might bring me a little gossip to cheer the chilly monotony of my days.”

“You’re very silly, Your Highness,” she says after a moment, biting her bottom lip a little.

His gaze travels, evaluating the pockets of her dress for the weight of keys. Her blush deepens.

“I am,” he agrees. “Silly enough to have gotten myself into this predicament. I wonder if you could take a message to Wr— to your new queen?”

She looks away. “I dare not,” she says, and he knows he ought to leave it at that.

He remembers Oriana’s warning to him when he was a child. A power like the one you have is dangerous, she said. You can know what other people most want to hear. Say those things, and they will not only want to listen to you. They will come to want you above all other things. The love that a gancanagh inspires— some may pine away for desire of it. Others will carve the gancanagh to pieces to be sure no one else has it.

He made a mistake when he first went to school in the mortal world. He felt alone at the mortal school, and so when he made a friend, he wanted to keep him. And he knew just how. It was easy; all he had to do was say the right things. He remembers the taste of the power on his tongue, supplying words he didn’t even understand. Soccer and Minecraft, praise for the boy’s drawings. Not lies, but nowhere near the truth, either. They had fun together, running around the playground, drenched in sweat, or playing video games in the boy’s basement. They had fun together until he found that when they were apart, even for a few hours, the boy wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t eat. Would just wait until he saw Oak again.

With that memory in his mind, Oak stumbles on, forcing his mouthinto a smile he hopes looks real. “You see, I wish to let your queen knowthat I await her pleasure. I am hers to command, and I hope she willcome and do just that.”

“You don’t want to be saved?” Fernwaif smiles. She’s the one teasinghim now. “Shall I inform my mistress that you are so tame she can let you out?”

“Tell her . . . ,” Oak says, keeping his astonishment at the news she’sreturned to the Citadel off his face through sheer force of will. “Tell herthat I am wasted in all this gloom.”

Fernwaif laughs, her eyes shining as though Oak is a romantic figurein a tale. “She asked me to come today,” the huldu girl confides in awhisper.

That seems hopeful. The first hopeful thing he’s heard in a while.

“Then I greatly desire your report of me to be a favorable one,” hesays, and makes a bow.

Her cheeks are still pink with pleasure when she leaves, departing with light steps. He can see the swish of her tail beneath her skirts.

Oak watches her go before bending down and inspecting his tray— a mushroom pie, a ramekin of jam, an entire steaming teapot with a cup, a glass of melted snow water. Nicer food than usual. And yet he finds he has little appetite for it.

All he can think of is Wren, whom he has every reason to fear and desires anyway. Who may be his enemy and a danger to everyone else he loves.

Oak kicks his hoof against the stone wall of his cage. Then he goes to pour himself a cup of the pine needle tea before it cools. The warmth of the pot on his hands limbers his fingers enough that, had he another fork, he would try that lock again.

That night, he wakes to the sight of a snake crawling down the wall, its black metal body jeweled and glittering. A forked emerald tongue tastes the air at regular intervals, like a metronome.

It startles him badly enough for him to back up against the bars, the iron hot against his shoulders. He has seen creatures like it before, forged by the great smiths of Faerie. Valuable and dangerous.

The paranoid thought comes to him that poison would be one straightforward way to solve the problem of his being held by an enemy of Elfhame. If he were dead, there’d be no reason to pay a ransom.

He doesn’t think his sister would allow it, but there are those who might risk going around her. Grima Mog, the new grand general, would know exactly where to find the prince, having served the Court of Teeth herself. Grima Mog might look forward to the war it would start. And, of course, she answered to Cardan as much as Jude.

Not to mention there was always the possibility that Cardan convinced Jude that Oak was a danger to them both.

“Hello,” he whispers warily to the snake.

It yawns widely enough for him to see silver fangs. The links of its body move, and a ring comes up from its throat, clanging to the floor. He leans down and lifts it. A gold ring with a deep blue stone, scuffed with wear. His ring, a present from his mother on his thirteenth birthday and left behind on his dresser because it no longer fit his finger. Proof that this creature was sent from Elfhame. Proof that he was supposed to trust it.

“Prinss,” it says. “In three daysssss, you mussss be ready for resssss-​cue.”

“Rescue?” Not here to poison him, then.

The snake just stares with its cold, glittering eyes.

Many nights, he hoped someone would come for him. Even though he wanted it to be Wren, there were plenty of times he imagined the Bomb blowing a hole in the wall and getting him out.

But now that it’s a real possibility, he’s surprised by how he feels.

“Give me longer,” he says, no matter that it’s ridiculous to negotiate with a metal snake and even more ridiculous to negotiate for his own imprisonment, just in order to get a chance to speak with someone who refuses to see him. “Two more weeks perhaps. A month.”

If he could only talk to Wren, he could explain. Maybe she wouldn’t forgive him, but if she saw he wasn’t her enemy, that would be enough. Even convincing her that she didn’t have to be an enemy to Elfhame would be something.

“Three dayssssss,” it says again. Its enchantment is either too simple to decode his protests or it has been told to ignore them. “Be rehhhhdy.”

Oak slides the ring onto his pinkie finger, watching the snake as it coils its way up the wall. Halfway to the ceiling, he realizes that just because it wasn’t sent to poison him doesn’t mean it wasn’t sent to poison someone.

He jumps onto the bench and grabs for it, catching the end of its tail. With a tug, it comes off the wall, falling against his body and coiling around his forearm.

“Prinsssss,” it hisses. As it opens its mouth to speak, he notes the tiny holes in the points of its silvery fangs.

When it does not strike, Oak pries the snake carefully from around his arm. Then, gripping the end of its tail firmly, he slams it down against the stone bench. Hears the cracking of its delicate mechanical parts. A gem flies off. So does a piece of metal. He whips it against the bench again.

A sound like the whistle of a teakettle comes from it, and its coils writhe. He brings its body down hard twice more, until it is broken and utterly still.

Oak feels relieved and awful at the same time. Perhaps it was no more alive than one of the ragwort steeds, but it had spoken. It had seemed alive.

He sinks to the floor. Inside the metal creature, he finds a glass vial, now cracked. The liquid inside is bloodred and clotted. Blusher mushroom. The one poison unlikely to harm him. Welcome proof that his sister doesn’t want him dead. Maybe Cardan doesn’t, either.

The snake is limp in his hands, the magic gone from it. He trembles to think of what could have happened had the creature been sent to visit Wren before finding him in the prisons. Or if his iron-​addled mind had only realized the danger too late.

Three days.

He can no longer dawdle. No longer dread. No longer scheme. He has to act, and fast.

Oak listens for the changing of the guard. Once he hears Straun’s voice, he bangs on the bars until the guard comes. It takes a long time, but not as long as it might have if Straun wasn’t in a foul mood from a night of drinking and losing money at dice.

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” the falcon roars.

“You’re going to get me out of this cell,” Oak says. Straun pauses, then sneers, but there’s a little wariness in it. “Have you run mad, princeling?”

Oak holds out his hand. A collection of gemstones rests in his scratched palm. He spent the better part of the night prying them out of the body of the snake. Each is worth ten times what Straun gambled away.

The falcon snorts in disgust but cannot disguise his interest. “You intend to bribe me?”

“Will it work?” Oak asks, walking to the edge of his cell. He’s not sure if it’s his magic urging him on or not.

Almost against his will, Straun steps closer. Good. The prince can smell the sharpness of the juniper liquor on his breath. Perhaps he is still a little drunk. Even better.

Oak reaches his right hand halfway through the bars, lifting it so the gems catch the faint edge of torchlight. He slides his other hand through, too, lower.

Straun smacks Oak’s arm hard. His skin hits the iron bar on his cell, burning. The prince howls as the gems fall, most scattering across the corridor between the cells.

“Didn’t think I was half so clever as you, did you?” Straun laughs as he gathers up the stones, not having promised a single thing.

“I did not,” Oak admits.

Straun spits on the floor in front of the prince’s cage. “No amount of gold or gems will save you. If my winter queen wants you to rot here, you’re going to rot.”

“Your winter queen?” Oak repeats, unable to stop himself.

The falcon looks a little shamefaced and turns to go back to his post. He’s young, Oak realizes. Older than Oak, but not by so very much. Younger than Hyacinthe. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Wren made such an impression on him.

It shouldn’t bother Oak, shouldn’t fill him with a ferocious jealousy.

What the prince needs to concentrate on is the key in his left hand. The one he grabbed from the loop at Straun’s belt when the falcon smacked his right arm. Straun, who was, thankfully, exactly as clever as Oak had supposed him to be.

The key fits smoothly into the lock of Oak’s cell. It turns so soundlessly it might as well have been greased.

Not that Straun is likely to come back to check on him, no matter how loud he bangs on the bars. The guard will be feeling smug. Well, let him.

The prince lifts a piece of cloth he’s torn from his shirt and soaked in blusher mushroom liquid salvaged from the snake. Then he starts down the hall, his breath clouding in the cold air.

The Ghost taught him how to move stealthily, but he’s never been very good at it. He blames his hooves, heavy and hard. They clack at the worst possible times. But he makes an effort, sliding them against the floor to minimize noise.

Straun is grumbling to another guard about how the others are cheats, refusing to play any more dice games. Oak waits until one leaves to bring back more refreshments and listens hard to the retreating steps of boots.

After he’s sure there’s only one guard there, he tries the gate. It’s not even locked. He supposes there’s no reason for it to be when there’s only one prisoner, and he wears a bridle to keep him obedient.

Oak moves fast, jerking Straun backward and covering his nose and mouth with the cloth. The guard struggles, but inhaling blusher mushroom slows his movements. Oak presses him to the floor until he’s unconscious.

From there, it’s just a matter of arranging his body so that when the other guard returns, he might believe he’s dozed off. It’s hard for Oak to leave the guard’s sword at his hip, but its absence would almost certainly give him away. He does, however, snatch up the cloak he finds hanging on a hook beside the door.

Chapter 2

Oak takes the stairs, careful now. He has the surreal feeling of being in a video game. He played enough of them, sitting on Vivi’s couch. Creeping through pixelated rooms that had more of the appearance of Madoc’s stronghold where he grew up than anywhere they went in the mortal world. Leaning on Heather’s shoulder, controller in his hands. Killing people. Hiding the bodies.

This is a stupid, ugly, violent game, Vivi said. Life isn’t like that. And Jude, who was visiting, raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

He recalls following Wren through these icy halls. Killing people. Hiding the bodies.

There are more visitors to the Citadel now than there were then; ironically, that makes it easier to be overlooked. There are so many new faces, neighboring Folk arriving to discover the nature of the new lady and curry her favor. Well-​dressed nisse and hulduf.lk courtiers gather in knots, passing gossip. Trolls size one another up, and a few selkieshang around at the edges, no doubt gathering news of a rising power to take back to the Undersea.

Oak cannot blend in, not in his worn and filthy clothes, not with the straps of Grimsen’s bridle tight to his cheeks. He sticks to the shadows, putting up the hood of the cloak and moving with slow deliberation.

After growing up with servants in his father’s stronghold in Faerie and then without any when he was in the mortal world, the prince is very aware of what it takes to keep a castle like this one running. As a small child, he was used to his dirty clothing disappearing from his floor and returning to his armoire, cleaned and hung. But after he and Vivi and Heather had to carry bags of laundry to the basement of their apartment building and feed quarters into a machine, along with detergent and fabric softener, he realized that someone must have been performing a related service for him in Faerie.

And someone is performing that service here in the Citadel, washing linens and uniforms. Oak heads in the direction of the kitchens, figuring the flames of the ovens are likely the same ones used to heat the tubs of water necessary to clean fabric. Real fire would be easier to keep confined to the stone basements and first floor of the Citadel.

Oak keeps his head down, although the servants barely spare him a glance. They rush through the halls. He’s sure the household is vastly understaffed.

It takes him a tense twenty minutes of creeping about before a change in the humidity of the air and the scent of soap reveal the laundry area. He pushes open the door to the room gingerly and is relieved to find no servant currently doing the wash. Three steaming vats rest on the black rock floor. Dirty bedding, tablecloths, and uniforms soak inside them. Clean linens hang from ropes strung overhead.

Oak pulls off his own filthy garments, dropping them into the water before stepping in, too.

He feels a bit foolish as he wades into a vat, naked. Should he be discovered, he will doubtless have to play the silly, carefree prince, so vain that he escaped his prison for a bath. It would be a crowning achievement of embarrassment.

The soapy water is merely warm, but it feels deliciously hot after being so chilled for so long. He shudders with the pleasure of it, the muscles in his limbs relaxing. He dunks himself, submerging his head and scrubbing at his skin with his fingernails until he feels clean. He wants to stay there, to float in water as it grows ever more tepid. For a moment, he allows himself to do just that. To stare at the ceiling of the room, which is black stone, too, although above this level, the walls, floors, and ceilings are all of ice.

And Wren, somewhere inside them. If he could just speak to her, even for a moment . . .

Oak knows it’s ridiculous, and yet he can’t help feeling as though they have an understanding of each other, one that transcends this admittedly not-​great moment. She will be angry when he talks with her, of course. He deserves her anger.

He has to tell her that he regrets what he did. He’s not sure what happens after that.

Nor is he sure what it means about him that he finds hope in the fact that Wren has kept him. Fine, not everyone would see being thrown into a dungeon as a romantic gesture, but he’s choosing to at least consider the possibility that she put him there because she wants something more from him.

Something beyond, say, skinning him and leaving his rotting corpse for ravens to pick over.

On that thought, he splashes his way out of the tub.

Among the drying uniforms, he finds one that seems as though it will fit him—certainly fit better than the bloodstained one he used to get into the palace weeks ago. It’s damp, but not so much as to draw notice, and only slightly too tight across his chest. Still, dressed this way and with the hood of the cloak pulled forward to hide his face, he might be able to walk straight out the door of the Citadel, as though he were going on patrol.

It would serve her right for never coming to see him, not even to use the bridle and command him to stay put.

He’s not sure how far he could get in the snow, but he still has three of the stones from the snake. He might be able to bribe someone to take him in their carriage. And even if he didn’t want to risk that, he might well find his own horse in the stables, since Hyacinthe was the one who stole Damsel Fly and Hyacinthe is now Wren’s second-in-command.

Either way, he’d be free. Free to not need rescuing. Free to attempt to talk his sister out of whatever homicidal plan she might foment against the Citadel. Free to return home and go back to performing fecklessness, back to sharing the bed of anyone he thought might be planning a political coup, back to being an heir who never wants to inherit.

And never seeing Wren again.

Of course, he might not make it to Jude in time for her to know he was free, to stop whatever plans she set in motion. Whatever murders her people would commit in his name. And then, of course, there would be the question of what Wren did in retaliation.

Not that he knows how to stop either of them if he remains here. He’s not sure anyone knows how to stop Jude. And Wren has the power of annihilation. She can break curses and tear spells to pieces with barely any effort. She took apart Lady Nore as though she were a stick creature and spread her insides over the snow.

Really, that memory alone should send the prince out of the Citadel as quickly as his legs could carry him.

He pulls the hood of the cloak down over his face and heads toward the Great Hall. Getting a glimpse of her feels more like a compulsion than a decision.

He can feel the gaze of courtiers drift toward him— covering one’s face in a hood is unusual, at the very least. He keeps his own eyes unfocused and his shoulders back, though his every instinct screams to meet their looks. But he is dressed like a soldier, and a soldier would not turn.

It is harder to pass falcons and to know they might spot his hooves and wonder. But he is hardly the only one to have hooves in Faerie. And everyone who knows that the Prince of Elfhame is in the Citadel believes him to be locked up tight.

Which doesn’t make him any less of a fool for coming into the throne room. When everything goes wrong, he will have no one to blame but himself.

Then he sees Wren, and longing shoots through him like a kick to the gut. He forgets about risk. Forgets about schemes.

Somewhere in the crowd, a musician plucks at a lute. Oak barely hears it.

The Queen of the Ice Citadel sits upon her throne, wearing a severe black dress that shows her bare pale blue shoulders. Her hair is a tumble of azure, some strands pulled back, a few pieces braided through with black branches. On her head is a crown of ice.

In the Court of Moths, Wren flinched away from the gazes of courtiers as she entered the revel on his arm, as though their very notice stung. She curled her body so that, small as she was, she appeared even smaller.

Now her shoulders are back. Her demeanor is that of someone who does not consider anyone in this room— not even Bogdana— a threat. He flashes on a memory of her younger self. A little girl with a crown sewn to her skin, her wrists leashed by chains that threaded between bones and flesh. No fear in her face. That child was terrifying, but no matter how she seemed, she was also terrified.

“The delegation of hags has come,” snaps Bogdana. “Give me the remains of Mab’s bones and restore my power so that I can lead them again.”

The storm hag stands before the throne, in the place of the petitioner, although nothing about her suggests submission. She wears a long black shroud, tattered in places. Her fingers move expressively as she speaks, sweeping through the air like knives.

Behind her are two Folk. An old woman with the talons of some bird of prey instead of feet (or hooves) and a man shrouded in a cloak. Only his hand is visible, and that is covered in what seems to be a scaled, golden glove. Or perhaps his hand itself is scaled and golden.

Oak blinks. He knows the woman with the feet like a bird of prey. That’s Mother Marrow, who operates out of Mandrake Market on the isle of Insmire. Mother Marrow, whom the prince went to at the very start of his quest, asking for guidance. She sent him to the Thistlewitch for answers about Mellith’s heart. He tries to recall now, all these weeks later, whether she’d said anything that might have put him in Bogdana’s path.

            Knots of courtiers are scattered around the room, gossiping, making it hard to hear Wren’s soft reply. Oak steps closer, his arm brushing against a nisse. She makes an expression of annoyance, and he shifts away.

“Have I not suffered long enough?” asks Bogdana.

“You would speak to me of suffering?” Nothing in Wren’s expression is soft or yielding or shy. She is every bit the pitiless winter queen.

Bogdana frowns, perhaps a little unnerved. Oak feels somewhat unnerved himself. “Once I have them, my might will be restored— me, who was once first among hags. That’s what I gave up to secure your future.”

“Not my future.” There is a hollowness to Wren’s cheeks, Oak notices. She’s thinner than she was, and her eyes shine with a feverish brightness.

Has she been ill? Is this because of the wound in her side when she was struck by an arrow?

“Do you not have Mellith’s heart?” demands the storm hag. “Are you not her, reborn into the world through my magic?”

Wren does not reply immediately, letting the moment stretch out. Oak wonders if Bogdana has ever realized that the trade she made must have ruined her daughter’s life, long before it led to her horrible death. From the Thistlewitch’s tale, Mellith must have been miserable as Mab’s heir. And since Wren has at least some of Mellith’s memories in addition to her own, she has plenty of reasons to hate the storm hag.

Bogdana is playing a dangerous game.

“I have her heart, yes,” says Wren slowly. “Along with part of a curse. But I am not a child, no less your child. Do not think you can so easily manipulate me.”

The storm hag snorts. “You are a child still.”

A muscle jumps in Wren’s jaw. “I am your queen.”

Bogdana does not contradict her this time. “You have need of my strength. And you have need of my companions if you hope to continue as you are.”

Oak stiffens at those words, wondering at their meaning.

Wren stands, and courtiers turn their attention to her, their conversations growing hushed. Despite her youth and her small stature, she has vast power.

And yet, Oak notices that she sways a little before gripping the arm of her throne. Forcing herself upright.

Something is very wrong.

Bogdana made this request in front of a crowd rather than in private and named herself as Wren’s maker. Called Wren a child. Threatened her sovereignty. Brought in two of her hag friends. These were desperate, aggressive moves. Wren must have been putting her off for some time. But also, the storm hag may have thought she was attacking in a moment of weakness.

First among the hags. He doesn’t like the thought of Bogdana being more powerful than she already is.

“Queen Suren,” says Mother Marrow, stepping forward with a bow. “I have traveled a long way to meet you— and to give you this.” She opens her palm. A white walnut sits at the center of it.

Wren hesitates, no longer quite as remote as she seemed a moment before. Oak recalls the surprise and delight in her face when he bought her a mere hair ornament. She hasn’t been given many presents since she was stolen from her mortal home. Mother Marrow was clever to bring her something.

“What does it do?” A smile twitches at the corners of Wren’s mouth, despite everything.

Mother Marrow’s smile goes a little crooked. “I have heard you’ve been traveling much of late and spending time in forest and fen. Crack the nut and say my little poem, and a cottage will appear. Bring the two halves together again with another verse, and it will return to its shell. Shall I demonstrate?”

“I think we need not conjure a whole building in the throne room,” Wren says.

A few courtiers titter.

Mother Marrow does not seem discomfited in the least. She walks to Wren and deposits the white walnut in her hand. “Remember these words, then. To conjure it, say: We are weary and wish to rest our bones. Broken shell, bring me a cottage of stones.”

The nut in Wren’s hand gives a little jump at the words but then isquiescent once more.

Mother Marrow continues speaking. “And to send it away: As halves are made whole and these words resound, back into the walnut shell shall my cottage be bound.”

“It is a kind gift. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Wren’s hands curl around it possessively, belying the lightness of her tone. He thinks of the shelter she made from willow branches back in her woods and imagines how well she would have liked to have something solid and safe to sleep in. A well-considered gift, indeed.

The man steps forward. “Though I do not like to be outdone, I have nothing so fine to give you. But Bogdana summoned me here to see if I can undo what—”

“That is enough,” Wren says, her voice as harsh as Oak has ever heard it.

He frowns, wishing she’d have let the man finish. But it was interesting that for all the damning things she allowed Bogdana to say, whatever he wanted to undo was the one thing she didn’t want her Court to hear.

“Child,” Bogdana cautions her. “If my mistakes can be unmade, then let me unmake them.”

“You spoke of power,” Wren snaps. “And yet you suppose I will let you strip me of mine.”

Bogdana begins to speak again, but as Wren descends from the throne, guards gather around her. She heads toward the double doors of the Great Hall, leaving the storm hag behind.

Wren sweeps past Oak without a look.

The prince follows her into the hall. Watches the guards accompany her to her tower and begin to ascend.

He follows, staying to the back, blending in with a knot of soldiers.

When they are almost to her rooms, he lets himself fall behind farther. Then he opens a random door and steps inside.

For a moment, he braces for a scream, but the room is— thankfully— empty. Clothing hangs in an open armoire. Pins and ribbons are scattered across a low table. One of the courtiers must be staying here, and Oak is very lucky not to be caught.

Of course, the longer he waits, the luckier he will have to be.

Still, he can hardly barge into Wren’s rooms now. The guards would not have left yet. And there would certainly be servants— even with so few in the castle— attending her.

Oak paces back and forth, willing himself to be calm. His heart is racing. He is thinking of the Wren he saw, a Wren as distant as the coldest, farthest star in the sky. He cannot even focus on the room itself, which he should almost certainly hunt through to find a weapon or mask or something useful.

But instead he counts the minutes until he believes he can safely— well, as safely as possible, given the inherent danger of this impulsive plan— go to Wren’s rooms. He finds no guard waiting in the hall—unsurprising, given the narrowness of the tower, but excellent. No voices come from inside.

What is surprising is that when he turns the knob, the door opens.

He steps into her rooms, expecting Wren’s anger. But only silence greets him.

A low couch sits along one wall, a tray with a teapot and cups on the table in front of it. In a corner beside it, the ice crown rests on a pillow atop a pillar. And across the room, a bed hung with curtains depicting thorned vines and blue flowers.

He walks to it and sweeps the fabric aside.

Wren is sleeping, her pale cerulean hair spread out over the pillows. He recalls brushing it out when they were in the Court of Moths. Recalls the wild tangle of it and the way she held herself very still while his hands touched her.

Her eyes move restlessly under their lids, as though she doesn’t even feel safe in dreams. Her skin has a glassy quality, as though from sweat or possibly ice.

What has she been doing to herself ?

He takes a step closer, knowing he shouldn’t. His hand reaches out, as though he might graze his fingers over her cheek. As though to prove to himself that she’s real, and there, and alive.

He doesn’t touch her, of course. He’s not that much of a fool.

But as though she can sense him, Wren opens her eyes.

Chapter 3

Wren blinks up at Oak, and he gives her what he hopes is an apologetic grin. Her startled expression smooths out into puzzlement and some emotion he is less able to name. She reaches up, and he bends lower, going to one knee, so that she can brush her fingers over the nape of his neck. He shivers at her touch. Looking down into her dark green eyes, he tries to read her feelings in the minute shifts of her countenance. He thinks he sees a longing there to match his own.

Wren’s lips part on a sigh.

“I want—” he begins.

“No,” she tells him. “By the power of Grimsen’s bridle, get on your knees and be silent.”

Surprise makes him try to pull away, to stand, but he cannot. His teeth close on the words he now cannot say.

It’s an awful feeling, his body turning against him. He was on one knee already, but his other leg bends without his deciding to move. As his calves strike the frozen floor, he understands, in a way that he never has before, Wren’s horror of the bridle. Jude’s need for control. He has never known this kind of helplessness.

Her mouth curves into a smile, but it isn’t a nice one. “By Grimsen, I command you to do exactly as I say from here forward. You will stay on your knees until I say otherwise.”

Oak should have left when he had the chance.

She rises from the bed and draws on a dressing gown. Walks over to where he kneels.

He looks at her slippered foot. Glances up at the rest of her. A strand of light blue hair has fallen across one scarred cheek. Her lips have a little pink at the inner edges, like the inside of a shell.

It is hard to imagine her as she was when they began their quest, a feral girl who seemed like the living embodiment of the woods. Wild and brave and kind. There is no shyness in her gaze now. No kindness, either.

He finds her fascinating. He’s always found her fascinating, but he is not foolish enough to tell her that. Especially not in this moment, when he is afraid of her.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to see me again, prince,” Wren says. “I understand that you called for me in your cell.”

He screamed for her. Screamed until his throat was hoarse. But even if he was allowed to speak, clarifying that would only compound his many, many mistakes.

She goes on. “How frustrating it must be not to have everyone eager to comply with your desires. How impatient you must have become.”

Oak tries to push himself to his hooves.

She must note the impotent flex of his muscles. “How impatient you are even yet. Speak, if you wish.”

“I came here to repent,” he says, taking what he hopes will be a steadying breath. “I should never have kept what I knew from you. Certainly not something like that. No matter how I thought I was protecting you, no matter how desperate I was to help my father, it wasn’t my place. I did you a grievous wrong, and I am sorry.”

A long moment passes. Oak stares at her slipper, not sure he can bear to look into her face. “I am not your enemy, Wren. And if you throw me back into your dungeons, I won’t have a chance to show you how remorseful I am, so please don’t.”

“A pretty speech.” Wren walks to the head of her bed, where a long pull dangles from a hole bored into the ice wall. She gives it a hard tug. Somewhere far below, he can hear the faint ringing of a bell. Then the sound of boots on the stairs.

“I am already bridled,” he says, feeling a little frantic. “You don’t need to lock me away. I can’t harm you unless you let me. I am entirely in your power. And when I did escape, I came directly to your side. Let me kneel at your feet in the throne room and gaze up adoringly at you.”

Her green eyes are hard as jade. “And have you spending all your waking hours trying to think of some clever way to slither around my commands?”

“I have to occupy myself somehow,” he says. “When I am between moments of gazing adoringly, of course.”

The outer corner of her lip twitches, and he wonders if he almost made her smile.

The door opens, and Fernwaif comes in, a single guard behind her. Oak recognizes him as Bran, who occasionally sat at Madoc’s dinner table when Oak was a child. He looks horrified at the sight of the prince on his knees, wearing the livery of a guard beneath a stolen cloak.

“How—” Bran begins, but Wren ignores him.

“Fernwaif,” she says. “Go and have the guards responsible for the prisons brought here.”

The huldu girl gives a small bob of her head and, with a wary glance at Oak, leaves the room. So much for her being on his side.

Wren’s gaze goes to Bran. “How is it that no one saw him strolling through the Citadel? How is it that he was allowed to walk into my chambers with no one the wiser?”

The falcon steps up to Oak. The fury in his gaze is half humiliation.

“What traitor helped you escape?” Bran demands. “How long have you been planning to assassinate Queen Suren?”

The prince snorts. “Is that what I was trying to do? Then why, given everything I stole from that fool Straun and the laundry, didn’t I bother to steal a weapon?”

Bran gives him a swift kick in the side.

Oak sucks in the sound of pain. “That’s your clever riposte?”

Wren lifts a hand, and both of them look at her, falling silent.

“What shall I do with you, Prince of Elfhame?” Wren asks.

“If you mean for me to be your pet,” he says, “there’s no reason to return me to my pen. My leash is very secure, as you have shown. You have only to pull it taut.”

“You think you know what it is to be under someone’s control because I have given you a single command you were forced to obey,” she says, heat in her voice. “I could give you a demonstration of what it feels like to own nothing of yourself. You are owed a punishment, after all. You’ve broken out of my prisons and come to my rooms without my permission. You’ve made a mockery of my guards.”

A cold feeling settles in Oak’s gut. The bridle is uncomfortable, its straps pulling tight against his cheeks, but not painful. At least not yet. He knows that it will continue to tighten and that if he wears it long enough, it will cut into his cheeks as it cut Wren’s. If he wears it longer than that, longer than she did, it will eventually grow to be a part of him. Invisible to the world and impossible to remove.

That is why it was made. To make Wren eternally obedient to Lord Jarel and Lady Nore.

Wren hated that bridle.

“I grant you that I don’t know what it feels like to be compelled to follow someone else’s orders again and again,” Oak says. “But I don’t think you want to do that, not to anyone. Not even to me.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think, Greenbriar heir,” she says. “I remember your stories, like the one about how you used a glamour against your mortal sister and made her strike herself. How would you like to feel as she felt?”

He confessed that when Wren won a secret from him in a game they played with three silver foxes, tossed in the dirt outside the war camp of the Court of Teeth. Another thing he maybe ought not to have done.

“I’ll slap myself silly willingly, if you like,” he offers. “No need for a command.”

“What if, instead, I force you onto your hands and knees to make a bench for me to sit upon?” Wren inquires lightly, but her eyes are alight with fury and something else, something darker. She pads around his body, a prowling animal. “Or eat filth from the floor?”

Oak does not doubt that she saw Lord Jarel demand those things from people. He hopes that she was never asked to do those things herself.

“Beg to kiss the hem of my dress?”

He says nothing. Nothing he says could possibly help him.

“Crawl to me.” Her eyes shine, fever bright.

Again, Oak’s body moves without his permission. He finds himself writhing across the floor, his stomach against the carpet. He flushes with shame.

When he reaches her, he stares upward, rage in his eyes. He’s humiliated, and she’s barely begun. She was right when she said he didn’t understand what it would feel like. He hadn’t counted on the embarrassment, the fury at himself for not being able to resist the magic. He hadn’t counted on the fear of what she would do next.

Oak cuts his gaze toward Bran, who has remained stiff and still, as though afraid to draw Wren’s attention. The prince wonders how far she would go if he were not present.

How far she will go anyway.

Then the door opens.

Straun enters, along with a guard wearing battle-​scraped armor and bearing a scar across the broadest part of his nose. He seems familiar, but Oak can’t quite place him— he must have served with Madoc but not come to the house much. Straun looks as though he’s fighting to move, and the scarred guard is looking as though he wants to murder Straun.

Straun steps forward, going to one knee. “Queen of winter, know that I only ever wished to serve—”

She holds up a hand, forestalling the groveling he seems to be working up to. “I have been tricked by the prince often enough to know how clever he can be. Now you will not be deceived again.”

“I shall make a new oath to you,” he declares. “That I will never—”

“Make no oaths you are not certain you can keep,” she tells Straun, which is better advice than he deserves. Still, he looks chastened by it.

Oak pushes to his hooves, since she hadn’t told him to stay there.

Wren barely spares him a glance.

“Bind my prisoner’s wrists,” she tells the scarred guard.

“As you command, Queen.” His voice is gruff.

He walks to Oak, pulling his arms behind him sharply. Tying his bonds uncomfortably tight. The prince’s wrists are going to be sore by the time he makes it back to his cell.

“We were discussing how best to discipline Prince Oak,” she says. Straun and the other guard look a lot happier at that thought. Oak is certain that, after they were punished by the High Court for their treason, it would be at least a little satisfying to see a prince of Elfhame brought low. And that was before he gave them a reason to have a personal grudge.

Wren turns to him. “Perhaps I ought to have you sent to the Great Hall tomorrow and command that you endure ten strikes of an ice whip. Most barely get through five.”

Bran looks worried. He might want Oak humiliated but perhaps didn’t expect to see Madoc’s son’s blood spilled. Or maybe he is concerned that if they have to give back the prince, Elfhame will want him in one piece. Straun seems thrilled by the prospect of some suffering, however.

Dread and humiliation coil in Oak’s stomach. He has been such a fool.

“Why not whip me now?” he asks, a challenge in his voice.

“Spending a night dreading what will come in the morning is its own punishment.” She pauses. “Especially as you now know your own hand can be turned against you.”

Oak looks directly into her eyes. “Why are you keeping me at all, Wren? Am I a hostage to be ransomed? A lover to be punished? A possession to be locked away?”

“That,” she says, bitterness in her voice, “is what I am trying to figure out myself.” She turns to the guards. “Take him back to his cell.”

Bran reaches for him, and the prince struggles, pulling out of the guard’s grasp.

“Oak,” Wren says, pressing her fingers to his cheek. He goes still beneath her touch. “Go with Straun. Do not resist him. Do not trick him. Until you are confined again, you will follow these commands. And then you will stay in my prisons until you are sent for.” She gives the prince a stern look and withdraws her hand. Turns to the soldiers. “Once Oak is in his cell, the three of you can go to Hyacinthe and explain how you allowed the prince to slip past you.”

Hyacinthe. A reminder that the person in charge of the guards hates Oak more than the rest of them combined. As though he needed more miserable news.

“Will you send for me?” the prince asks, as though there’s any room for bargaining. As though he has a choice. As though his body will not obey its own accord. “You said only perhaps you’d have me whipped.”

Straun shoves him toward the door.

“Good night, Prince of Elfhame,” Wren says as he is led from the room. He manages a single glance back. Her gaze locks with his, and he can feel the frisson of something between them. Something that might well be terrible, but that he wants more of all the same.