Shortly after that, Wren rises and makes her excuses.
On her way out, she stops by Oak whispers in his ear. “Meet me in the gardens at midnight.”
He nods with a slight shiver. She’s already moving away from the table, fingers resting briefly on his shoulder as she goes. The storm hag spots her leaving, rises, and follows, menace in her movement.
That’s two assignations for Oak. The moon’s zenith tonight is about an hour past midnight, so they’re a little too close together for him to feel easy about moving between them. And yet, he’s helpless to do anything but agree to see Wren. When they were alone on the floor of the brugh, he felt as though they were friends again. And something was obviously wrong. Wren said she made mistakes— could that have to do with allowing Bogdana to accompany her? The storm hag wants them to marry—and soon—but he isn’t sure why Wren doesn’t tell her that isn’t going to happen. Is it because Wren’s power is at such a low ebb that she’s afraid she will lose if she has to fight?
He can postpone the betrothal easily enough. Pose her a question to which she doesn’t know the answer—or pose it in such a way that it’s possible for her to pretend to guess wrong.
Who is my favorite sister?
What’s my favorite color?
Can you ever forgive me?
Okay, maybe not that last one.
Out of the corner of his eye, he notices that Tiernan has walked up to Hyacinthe. Both of them stood near the High Table throughout dinner; Hyacinthe didn’t follow Wren out. Instead, he had remained behind, looking uncertain.
“I want you,” the prince hears Tiernan say. Oak feels some chagrin at overhearing that, but he is also surprised at the starkness of the admission. It sounds almost like an accusation.
“And what are you going to do about it?” Hyacinthe asks.
Tiernan snorts. “Pine, I suppose.”
“Aren’t you tired of that?” Hyacinthe could have said the words like a tease, but instead he sounds exhausted. A man offering a truce after a long battle.
“What else is there?” Tiernan’s voice is harsh.
“What if I said you could have me? Have me and keep me.”
“I could never compete with your rage toward Elfhame,” Tiernan says.
“Eavesdropping, prince?” asks the Ghost, taking the seat on the other side of Leander.
Oak turns toward him guiltily. He would really like to have heard what Hyacinthe said next.
“I am behaving just as you wished,” Oak says. “No going off on my own. No heroics. Even a little spy work.”
Garrett rolls his eyes. “It’s been a mere handful of hours—barely that. Manage to last the night, and I will actually be impressed.”
Since Oak didn’t plan on lasting the night without sneaking out, he says nothing.
“Show me the trick,” Leander says to the Ghost, interrupting them.
“Which trick?” Garrett’s smile is indulgent. It’s surprising to see the shift in his behavior. But then he’s known Leander since the child was born. Garrett and Taryn became close before the Battle of the Serpent, possibly even before Locke’s death. Vivi and Heather—and Oak himself—have long believed they’re lovers, but after Taryn’s disastrous first marriage, Taryn hadn’t admitted it out loud.
“The one with the coins.”
Oak grins. He knows a few of those. The Roach taught them to him when he was only a little older than Leander.
Garrett reaches into his pocket and comes out with a silver coin. Before he can demonstrate, though, Madoc walks up, leaning heavily on his twisted black cane.
“My lads,” the redcap says, putting a hand on Leander’s head. The boy turns to smile up at him.
The Ghost sets the coin before Leander. “Why don’t you practice and show me what you learned,” he instructs, then rises.
“But . . . ,” the boy protests, a whine coming into his voice.
“I will show you the trick again tomorrow.” With a sharp look at Madoc, he leaves the table.
Oak frowns. He had no idea how uncomfortable the Ghost was around Madoc, but of course the redcap was in exile for years. Oak never saw them together before. Leander picks up the coin but does nothing more with it.
“So you’re really going through with this marriage?” Madoc asks the prince.
“We’ll all find out the answer to that tomorrow.” And Oak will look more like the fickle and flighty courtier than ever when he asks Wren a question she can’t answer and postpones their engagement.
The redcap raises his eyebrows. “And have you asked yourself why the storm hag is in favor of your union?”
Truly, his father takes him for a fool. “If you know, perhaps you ought to tell me.”
Madoc looks in the direction where the Ghost went. “Hopefully, your sister’s spies will turn up something. There are worse things, though, than to learn how to rule in the harsh north.”
Oak doesn’t argue with him. He’s tired of arguing with his father.
When Madoc wanders off, though, he shows Leander all the coin tricks he knows. He runs the silver disc over his knuckles, makes it disappear behind the child’s ear, makes it reappear in his glass of nectar.
“Did it seem to you that Garrett doesn’t like your grandfather?” Oak says, handing back the coin.
Leander tries to roll the disc over his knuckles, but it slides off and onto the floor. He jumps down to scrounge for it. “He knows his name,” the boy says.
For a moment, Oak isn’t sure he heard right. “His name?”
“Garrett’s secret name,” Leander says.
“How do you know that?” Oak must have spoken too harshly, because Leander looks startled. The prince gentles his voice. “No, no one’s in trouble. I was just surprised.”
“I heard Mom and him talking,” Leander says.
“Is the Ghost his secret name?” Oak asks, just to be sure.
Leander shakes his head. “That’s just his code name.”
Oak nods and shows Leander the trick again, his mind running in circles. There was absolutely no reason for Garrett to give his true name to Madoc.
But then the Ghost’s words from the ship come back to the prince: Locke had the answer you seek. He knew the name of the poisoner, much good it did him.
Had Locke told Taryn during their disastrous marriage? Had she told Madoc? But no—surely the Ghost wouldn’t have forgiven that. Maybe Locke gave Madoc the name directly—but why?
Oak looks across the table at Taryn, deep in conversation with Jude. How it happened didn’t matter. What mattered was what it meant.
They knew Garrett was the one who murdered his mother. Who fed her blusher mushroom. He feels hot and cold all over, rage making him tremble.
Did they think he didn’t deserve this answer? That he was too much a child?
Or did they not tell him because they didn’t think there was anything wrong with what Garrett had done?
At midnight, the gardens are full of night-blooming plants, limned in moonlight. Wren’s blue skin is the same color as the petals of a flower, and as she enters the clearing, she seems as remote as a star in the sky.
He is still reeling from what he has learned. From the idea that someone he knows—someone he likes—tried to kill him. From the betrayal of his family.
“You wanted to see me?” he asks Wren, and wonders if, in the state he’s in, he should have come at all.
“I did,” she says with a sly smile. “I do.”
He remembers what it was like to be a child with her. He is half-tempted to propose a game. He wonders if he can get her to run wild through the grass with him.
“It was wrong to lock you away in my prisons,” she says.
That’s so unexpected that he laughs.
She makes a face. “Very well, I concede that’s obvious.”
“I am not sitting in judgment of you,” he says. Not with all the blood on his hands. “Does this mean you forgive me?”
She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t deny it.
“Shall I say instead that there’s peace between us at last?”
At that, he does get a smile. “Peace?”
“Not even that?” Oak puts a hand to his chest, as if wounded. Under his fingers, he can feel the thrum of his heart.
“I am not a peaceful person,” she says. “And neither are you.”
He loves that she knows he’s not peaceful. Loves that she doesn’t think him kind. He doesn’t know how, but from the first she seemed to recognize something in him that no one else does—that inner kernel of hardness, of coldness.
He never convinced her that he was a hero. He perhaps half-convinced her he was a fool, but never for long. She saw through his playacting and his smiles. Heard the riddles and schemes his charmed tongue tried to obscure.
And so, when she kissed him, it felt as though he was being kissed. Perhaps for the first time.
And he loves the way she’s watching him now, as though he fascinates her. As though she’s drawn to him. As though he’s got a chance.
Even if she doesn’t want to marry him. Even if she doesn’t love him.
Wren draws in a deep breath. “It’s beautiful here.”
Oak looks around the gardens, full of flowers. Golden evening primrose, carpets of night phlox with tiny white buds, pale moonflowers, the purple night-scented stock, and the large silvery flowers of the cereus. He cups one. “Did you know this is called Queen of the Night?”
Wren shakes her head, smiling. “I dreamed about this place sometimes.”
He thinks about her comment that she would make new nightmares and is silent. When she looks at him, there is something vulnerable in her face, though her voice is sharp with sudden anger.
“You could have kept me here, in Elfhame, but you let your sister send me away.” Wren turns her gaze to the flower, speaking to it instead of him. “You gave me the first safe place—the only safe place I had after I was stolen from my unfamily—and then you took it from me.”
He wants to object and insist that he helped her. He interceded with his sister. He hid her from the Court of Teeth. But though he did those things, he didn’t keep doing them. He helped a little, and then having done so, assumed he did enough.
“It never occurred to me that you didn’t have a home to go back to.” He didn’t understand. He didn’t ask.
“You were bored with me,” she accuses, but there isn’t much heat in her voice. He can tell that she believes it and that she has believed it for a long time. Maybe she doesn’t even condemn him for it.
“I would have hidden you in my rooms forever if I thought that’s what you wanted,” he vows. “I thought about you a lot ever since. Which you must know, since I showed up in your forest a few years later.”
She clearly wants to object.
“Whereupon you sent me away,” he concludes, and watches her expression change to one of exasperation.
“You think I did that because I didn’t like you?”
He gives her a steady look.
“I did it to help you! If you stayed in the forest with me, the best thing that could ever have happened was that your family came and dragged you back to Elfhame. I’d lose you again, and you’d gain nothing.”
“So you thought—” he starts, but she cuts him off.
“And the worst thing, the more likely thing, was that one of the enemies you were telling me about would find you. And then you’d be dead.”
Her logic is alarmingly sound, although he doesn’t like to admit it. He must have seemed very dramatic, showing up in her woods like that. Very dramatic and very, very, very foolish. The typical spoiled, naive royal. “And you couldn’t tell me that?”
“What if you didn’t listen?” she shouts. There’s a desperation in her voice that’s out of step with the conversation they’re having.
“I’m listening,” he says, puzzled.
“It’s not safe,” she says. “Not then and not now.”
“I know that,” he tells her.
“I’m not safe,” she says. “You can’t trust me. I—”
“I don’t need safe,” he says, and leans down, putting his hands in her hair. She doesn’t move, looking up at him with lips that are slightly parted, as though she can’t quite believe what he’s doing.
Then he kisses her. Kisses her like he’s wanted to for days and weeks and what feels like forever.
It isn’t a careful kiss. He can feel her teeth against his tongue, her dry lips. He can feel the sharp edges of her nails as they dig into his neck. He shivers with sensation. He doesn’t want careful any more than he wants safe.
He wants her.
Wren pulls him down, lower, until they are kneeling in the gardens. Oak feels dizzy with desire. All around them, the petals of night-blooming flowers have opened, and their thick perfume scents the air.
“Do you want—?” he starts, but she is already pushing up her dress.
“I want,” she says. “That’s my problem. I want and I want and I want.”
“What do you want?” he asks, voice soft.
“Everything. Charm me. Rip me open. Ruin me. Go too far.”
He shudders at her words, shaking his head against them.
She goes on, whispering against his skin. “You cannot understand. I am a chasm that will never be full. I am hunger. I am need. I cannot be sated. If you try, I will swallow you up. I will take all of you and want more. I will use you. I will drain you until you are nothing more than a husk.”
“Use me, then,” he whispers, mouth on her throat.
Then her lips are against his, and there is no more talking for a long time.
Wren is lying against him, her head pillowed against his shoulder, when the shifting branches alert him.
“Someone’s coming,” Oak says, grabbing for his trousers and also his knife.
Wren springs to her feet, pulling on her gown, trying to make herself look less like she’s been rolling around in the dirt.
For a moment, their gazes meet, and they both grin helplessly. There’s something so silly about this moment, scrambling to get dressed before they’re caught. Neither of them can pretend to anything but merriment.
“Your Highness,” says Lady Elaine, taking in the situation with a frown as she steps into the clearing. “I see you had a surfeit of trysts planned for this evening.”
Her words wipe the smile from Oak’s face. He was supposed to meet her, and he didn’t pay attention to the zenith of the moon. Didn’t pay attention to anything but Wren. Didn’t care about conspirators or schemes or even his family’s lies.
After years of bending his whole self to be a lure for the worst of Elfhame, he simply forgot to be that person.
“Moonrise, sunrise, dawn, dusk, zeniths,” he says as flippantly as he can manage. If anything can make this moment worse, it would be his acting as though he feels caught. “Regrettably, I can be imprecise about imprecise times. My apologies. I hope you didn’t wait long.”
Wren looks between Lady Elaine and Oak, no doubt coming to her own conclusions.
“You’re the girl from the Court of Teeth,” Lady Elaine says, the gossamer of her wings apparent in the moonlight.
“I am the queen of what was once the Court of Teeth.” Wren’s expression is stony, and despite her dress gaping open in the back and the leaves tangled in her hair, she looks quite fearsome. “Betrothed to the Prince of Elfhame. And you are?”
Lady Elaine looks as astonished as if she bit into a pear and found it full of ants. She walks to Oak and puts her arm around his. “I am Elaine. Lady Elaine, a courtier from the Court of Moss in the west and an old friend of the prince’s. Isn’t that right?”
“Despite my being a trial to her,” agrees Oak, avoiding giving any real confirmation.
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.”
