Oak wakes in his familiar bedroom, among a familiar mess. Papers cover his dresser and desk. Books are piled in untidy stacks, shoved back into their shelves at odd angles. On his bedside table, a volume is open facedown, its spine cracked.
The prince has very poor book etiquette. It has been remarked on before by his tutors.
Tacked up on the wall is a collage of drawings and photographs and other artifacts from both worlds that Oak occupies. A bright orange ticket from a fair hangs beside a riddle on a piece of vellum found in the gullet of a fish. A napkin with the number of a boy he met at a movie theater written in ballpoint pen. A sticky note with three books he means to pick up from a library. A golden necklace in the shape of an acorn, given by his first mother to his second and then to him, attached with gum to the wall. A silver fox figurine with twine around its middle, twin to the one Wren has. A manga-style portrait of Oak done by Heather in markers. A pencil sketch for a formal portrait of the family that hangs in one of the halls.
It all is just as it was when he left. Looking around makes him feel as though time telescoped, as though he stepped out for only a few hours. As though he couldn’t have come back so changed.
Oak hears a sound from the sitting room outside his bedroom— part of the chambers that ought to be his alone. He comes fully awake, sliding out of bed, his hand going automatically to the dagger beneath his mattress.
That’s right where he left it as well.
He creeps along the wall, careful with his hooves against the stone floor. He peers through the gap between door and frame.
Madoc is picking over the remainder of the food on the table.
With a sigh of disgust—at himself, his father, and his apparent paranoia—he stabs the dagger into the wall and grabs a robe. By the time he comes out, Madoc is sitting on a couch and drinking cold, leftover coffee from the night before. An eye patch covers a quarter of his face, and a twisted black cane rests against a side table. The reminders of his father’s suffering in the Citadel temper Oak’s rage toward him but don’t rid him of it.
“You’re alive,” Madoc says with a grin.
“I might say much the same of you,” Oak points out, sitting across from his father. He’s in a dressing gown embroidered with a pattern of deer, half of them shot with arrows and bleeding red thread on the golden cloth. Everything in Elfhame feels surreal and sinister at the moment, and the dying deer on his robe aren’t helping. “And before you make any point about anything I’ve done that you believe was risky, I suggest you recall you did something riskier and far more foolish.”
“I am chastened,” Madoc says, and then his mouth lifts in a grin. “But I did get what I wanted.”
“She pardoned you?” Oak isn’t entirely surprised. His father is here in the palace, after all.
The redcap shakes his head. “Your sister rescinded the exile. For now.” He snorts, and Oak understands that’s all Jude could do without looking as though he was getting some kind of special favor out of her. But it was enough.
“And you’re done with scheming?” Oak asks him.
Madoc waves a hand in the air. “What would I need to scheme for when my children control everything I ever wanted for them?”
In other words, no, he’s not done.
Oak sighs.
“So let’s discuss your wedding. You know several factions here are enthusiastic about it.”
Oak’s eyebrows go up. People who want him out of the way?
“If you had a powerful queen, it would be more possible to support you against the current occupants of the thrones.”
Oak should have known better. “Since I haven’t made myself look as though I would make a competent ruler.”
“Some Folk prefer incompetence. Their desire is for their rulers to have enough power to hold the throne and enough naivete to listen to those who put them there. And your queen exudes both.”
“Oh?” Madoc holding forth about politics is comforting in its familiarity, but it bothers him that Madoc so quickly identified the factions at Court that were up for treachery. It worries Oak how Madoc might respond if Oak ever indicated he was interested in becoming High King. He’s concerned that the redcap might prize naivete in Oak as much as any conspirator.
“They will sidle up to your little queen tonight,” his father goes on. “They will introduce themselves and curry her favor. They will attempt to ingratiate themselves with her people and compliment her person. And they will gauge just how much she hates the High King and Queen. I hope her vows were ironclad.”
Oak can’t help recalling the way she told Randalin she might be able to break her vows like she broke a curse. Pull it apart like a cobweb. He doesn’t like thinking how intrigued his father would be by that information. “I better get dressed.”
“I’ll ring the servants,” Madoc says, reaching for his cane and pushing himself to his feet.
“I can manage,” Oak tells his father firmly.
“They ought to clear these platters and bring you some breakfast.” His father is already moving toward the pull beside the door. As with so many things, it is not as though Oak couldn’t stop him, but it would take so much effort that it doesn’t seem worth doing.
Oak’s family is used to thinking of him as someone who needs to be taken care of. And for all that Madoc knew that Oak was dangerous enough to spring him from the Ice Needle Citadel, he suspects Madoc would be surprised about the prince’s machinations at Court.
Before a servant can be called in to give him help he neither wants nor needs, Oak goes back to his bedroom and hunts through his armoire for something to wear. As soon as he finishes with his father, he will steal a basket of food from the kitchens and go to Wren’s claw-footed cottage, so there’s no need for anything fussy. He chooses a plain woolen green jacket and dark pants that stop at the knee. He’s going to tempt Wren to run wild in Elfhame. Leave their guards behind and politics behind, too. He’s determined to make her laugh. A lot.
A fierce knock on the door brings him out of his bedroom. Despite having gorged the night before, and despite telling his father not to bother summoning more food, his stomach growls. Probably he has some meals to catch up on. Possibly he can take this food and not bother robbing the kitchens.
“Ah,” Madoc says. “That would be your mother.”
Oak gives the redcap a look of betrayal. There would have been no avoiding Oriana for long, but he could have managed a little longer. And his father could have warned him. “What about breakfast?”
“She’ll have brought you something.” He supposes they had some kind of prearranged signal when Madoc was done with Oak—the bell pull, a servant to run and alert her.
With a sigh, the prince opens the door, then moves to one side as his mother sweeps into the room. She has a tray in her hands. On it rests a teapot and some sandwiches.
“You’re not going to marry that girl,” Oriana says, fixing him with a glare. She sets down the tray sharply, ignoring the loud sound of it hitting the table.
“Careful,” Oak warns.
Madoc rises, leaning heavily on his black cane. “Well, I will leave you two to catching up.” His expression is mild, fond. He is not fleeing conflict. He loves conflict. But perhaps he doesn’t want to be in the position of openly telling Oriana that her priorities do not match his own.
“Mom,” Oak says.
She makes a face. She is dressed in a gown of white and rose, a frothy ruff at her throat and the ends of her sleeves. With her pink eyes and pale skin and petallike wings on her back, she sometimes looked like a flower to him—a snapdragon. “You sound like a mortal. Is it so hard to say in full?”
He sighs. “Mother.”
She presents her cheek to be kissed, then presses the backs of his hands to her lips. “My beauty. My precious child.”
He smiles automatically, but her words hurt. He never before doubted her love for him—she turned her life upside down, even marrying Madoc, for the sake of Oak’s protection. But if that love was something forced on her, some enchantment, then it wasn’t real and he would have to find a way to free her from the burden of it.
“You worried me when you left,” she says. “I know you adore your father, but he wouldn’t want you to risk your life for him.”
Oak bites his tongue to keep from answering that. Not only was Madoc willing to let Oak risk his life, but he was counting on it. Perhaps Oak should be grateful, though. At least he was certain Madoc’s feelings were real—he was far too manipulative to have been manipulated by magic. “Father looks well.”
“Better than he was. Not resting enough, of course.” She looks up at Oak, impatience in her face. Normally, she is rigid about etiquette, but he can tell she’s not interested in small talk now. He’s only surprised that she allowed Madoc and Jude to get at him first. Of course, by buttonholing him after they left, she had the advantage of being able to lecture him as long as she liked without the worry of being interrupted. “Questing I understand, even if I didn’t like the thought of you in danger, but not this. Not offering this girl marriage when she has none of the qualities anyone might look for in a bride.”
“So let me get this straight,” Oak says. “You understand the part where I might have had to kill a lot of people, but you think I chose the wrong girl to kiss?”
Oriana gives him a sharp look, then pours him some tea.
He drinks. The tea is dark and fragrant and almost washes the taste of bitterness from his mouth.
“You were in her prisons. I have spoken with Tiernan many times since he returned. I asked him dozens of questions. I know you sent him away with Madoc to save them both. So tell me, are you marrying her because you care for her or because you want to save the world from her?”
Oak grimaces. “You didn’t include saving her from the world as a possibility.”
“Is that your reason?” Oriana inquires.
“I care for her,” Oak says.
“As the Crown Prince, you have a responsibility to the throne. When you—”
“No.” A thin tendril of worry uncurls inside him at the thought she, like Madoc, might grow too ambitious on his behalf. “There’s no reason to believe I will outlive either Jude or Cardan. No reason for me ever to wear the crown.”
“I admit that once I dreaded the possibility,” Oriana says. “But you’re older now. And you have a kind heart. That would be a great boon to Elfhame.”
“Jude is doing just fine. And it’s not like she doesn’t have a kind heart.”
Oriana gives him an incredulous look.
“Besides, Wren is a queen in her own right. If you want me to wear a crown, there you go. If I marry her, I get one by default.” He takes one of the sandwiches and bites into it.
Oriana is not appeased. “This is nothing to take lightly. Your sister certainly doesn’t. She sent her people to bring you back the moment she found that you’d gone after your father. And though she failed to get hold of you, her people brought back one of your traveling companions—a kelpie.”
“Jack of the Lakes,” Oak says, delighted until the rest of what Oriana is saying catches up with him. “Where is he? What did she do to him?”
Oriana gives a minute shrug. “What is it you were saying about your sister having a kind heart?”
He sighs. “Your point is made.”
“Jack was hauled before us and made to tell us all he knew of your journey and its intention. He’s still in the palace—a guest of the Court, not exactly a prisoner—but he described Suren as more animal than girl, rolling in mud. And I remember how she was as a child.”
“Tortured is how she was as a child. Besides, how can he call anyone an animal when he turns into a literal horse?”
Oriana presses her lips together. “She is not for you,” she says finally. “Feel as sorry for her as you like. Desire her if you must. But do not marry her. I will not have you stolen from us again.”
Oak sighs. He owes his mother so much. But he does not owe her this. “You want to rule over me as though I were a child. But you also want me to be a ruler. You will have to trust me when I say that I know what I want.”
“You have grown tired of far more fascinating girls,” Oriana says with a wave of her hand. “A few boys, too, if Court rumors are true. Your Suren is dull, without grace or manners, and furthermore—”
“Enough!” Oak says, surprising both of them. “No, she is not going to become the Mistress of Revels and have all of Court eating out of her hand. She’s quiet. She doesn’t love crowds or people staring at her or having to find things to say to them. But I don’t see what that has to do with my loving her.”
For a moment, they just stare at each other. Then Oriana goes to his wardrobe and riffies through the clothes.
“You ought to change into the bronze. Here, this.” She holds up a doublet shining with metallic thread. It is the brown of dried blood, and velvet leaves have been sewn on it as though they were blown in a great gust across its surface. Most of them are various shades of brown and gold, but a few green ones catch the eye with their brightness. “And perhaps the golden horn and hoof covers. Those are lovely in candlelight.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asks. “I am going out for the rest of the afternoon, and tonight it’s only dinner with the family and a girl you don’t want me to impress.”
Oriana gives him an incredulous look. “Dinner? Oh no, my darling. It’s a feast.”
