Guards and courtiers thunder up all around Oak. Did he cry out? Did Jack? The kelpie is standing beside the prince now, but he doesn’t remember when Jack stopped being a horse. The noise and confusion mirror Oak’s thoughts. People are shouting at one another, making Oak dizzy.
Or maybe that’s the blusher mushroom still slowing his blood.
Jack is insisting they found the Ghost like this and someone is saying how horrifying and a lot of other meaningless words that blend together in Oak’s mind.
Taryn is screaming, a high keening sound. She’s on her knees beside the spy, shaking him. When she looks up at Oak, her gaze is so full of grief and accusation that he has to look away.
I hated him, Oak thinks. But he’s not even sure that’s true. He never knew Liriope, and he knew Garrett. I should have hated him. I wanted to hate him.
He didn’t kill him, though.
He didn’t kill him, but he might have. He could have. Could he have?
Jude moves to Taryn’s side, one hand going to her twin’s shoulders. Fingers pressing reassuringly.
The Roach leans down to check the body, and when one of the guards tries to stop him, it’s Cardan who tells them to let him be. Oak didn’t even realize the Roach was at the hunt.
Taryn lies down beside Garrett’s corpse, her hair shrouding his face. One of her tears has pooled in the corner of his eye, wetting his lash.
Cardan kneels beside her, his hand going to Garrett’s chest. Taryn looks up at him.
“What are you doing?” She doesn’t sound happy, but they’ve never really gotten along.
“Blusher mushroom slows the body,” he says, his gaze Bickering to the Roach, who almost certainly taught him that. “But it slows it slowly.”
“Do you mean he’s not dead?” she asks.
“Is there something to be done?” Jude asks at almost the same time.
“Not in the way you mean,” says Cardan, answering his wife’s question and not Taryn’s. He turns to Randalin and the crowd, then waves his beringed hand exaggeratedly. “Disperse. Go on.”
Courtiers step away, heading to their horses, a buzz of rumors in the air. The Minister of Keys remains, glowering, standing beside Oriana. A few more Folk seem to believe this order doesn’t apply to them. The Roach stays, too, but he’s practically family.
Oak forces himself to scoot back, bracing against the trunk of a tree. For him, it was not much blusher mushroom, but he still feels the numbness tingling through his fingers and toes. Right now, he isn’t certain whether he would fall back down if he tried to stand.
Wren crosses to his side. Bogdana stands at the edge of the clearing, half hidden by shadows.
“You’re going to have to move as well,” Cardan tells Taryn.
“What are you going to do to him?” she asks, shielding his body as though to protect it from the High King.
Cardan raises his eyebrows. “Let’s just see if it works.”
“Taryn,” Jude says, reaching for her sister’s hand and pulling her to her feet. “There isn’t time.”
Cardan closes his gold-rimmed eyes and, for all his extravagance, right then he looks like one of the paintings of the High Kings of old, somehow moved into the realm of myth.
All around them, wildflowers sprout, uncurling from buds. Trees shiver, sending down pale leaves. Brambles coil into unlikely shapes. There is a buzz of bees in the air, and then from the earth, roots rise, turning into the sturdy trunk of a tree around Garrett’s body.
Taryn makes a sharp sound. The Roach lets out a breath, awe in his eyes. Oak feels it, too.
Bark wraps around Garrett and branches unfold, budding with leaves and fragrant blossoms the lilac of Taryn’s clothing. A tree, unlike all that grow in the Milkwood, rises from the ground, shrouding the Ghost’s body. Its limbs reach toward the sky, petals raining down around them.
Where Garrett stood, there is only the tree.
The High King opens his eyes, letting out a ragged breath. The courtiers that remained have taken several steps back. They are slackjawed in surprise, perhaps having forgotten his command of the land beneath their feet.
“Will that—” Jude begins, her eyes shining.
“I thought that if the poison makes every part of him slow, then I could turn him into something that could live like that,” says Cardan with a shudder. “But I don’t know that it will save him.”
“Will he be like this forever?” Taryn asks, her voice cracking a little. “Alive but imprisoned? Dying but not dead?”
“I don’t know,” Cardan says again, in a raw way that makes Oak think of being trapped in the royal bedchamber and overhearing him and Jude together. It’s Cardan’s real voice, the one he uses when he’s not performing.
Taryn runs her hand over the rough bark, her tears coming on a sob. “He is still lost to me. He is still gone. And who knows if he’s suffering?”
Oak feels Wren’s hand in his, her fingers cool. “Come,” she says, and at her tug, he finally rises. He’s a little unsteady on his hooves, and she narrows her eyes at him. She’s seen him poisoned before.
“We will discover who did this,” Jude is telling her twin, voice firm. “We will punish them, I promise you that.”
“Don’t we know already?” Taryn says through tears, her voice breaking on the words. Her gaze goes to Wren. “I saw her by his horse.”
“Wren had nothing to do with this,” Oak snaps, squeezing Wren’s fingers. “What possible motive could she have?”
“Queen Suren wants to destroy Elfhame,” one of the remaining courtiers interjects. “Just as her mother did.”
Jude does not speak, but Oak can tell she isn’t unmoved by the argument that Wren may have had a hand in this. And to make it worse, Wren denies none of it. She says nothing. She just listens to their accusations.
Deny it, he wants to tell her. But what if she can’t?
Just then, a cry fills the air. A vulture circles once to land heavily on Wren’s shoulder. The storm hag.
“Prince?” Tiernan asks Oak, eyeing the vulture with misgiving.
“We should quit this place,” says Randalin. “Our milling about cannot do anything in the way of helping.”
The Bomb glares at everyone. “What did he eat or drink? We should isolate the poison.”
“It was in the mead,” Oak says.
The Bomb turns toward him, white hair a nimbus around her heart-shaped face. “How do you know that?”
The prince doesn’t want to say this part out loud, not in front of even a small crowd, but he can’t see a way out, either. “I drank some.”
There is a ripple of shock through the remaining courtiers.
“Your Highness!” Randalin protests.
“And yet you’re standing,” says a pixie. “How is it that you’re standing?”
“He must only have had the barest sip,” Jude lies. “Brother, perhaps it’s time to come away and rest.”
Perhaps it would be better if they got out of the Milkwood. He’s feeling somewhat unsteady on his feet. He’s feeling somewhat unsteady, period.
“Do you think I’m responsible?” Wren whispers, her hand still in his.
No, of course not, Oak wants to say, but he isn’t sure he can make his mouth spit out those words.
Did she poison the Ghost? Would she have done it for Hyacinthe’s sake, if he asked her to help? Had he found out a secret so great she would protect it, even if it cost a life?
“I will believe whatever you tell me,” Oak says. “Nor will I look for deceit in your words.”
She watches the shifts of his expression, almost certainly looking for deceit in his words.
The vulture shifts, watching him with bead-black eyes. Bogdana’s eyes, filled with rage.
“I’m sorry,” Wren says. He sees the hag’s talons sink into her shoulder hard enough to pierce flesh. A trickle of blood runs down her dress. But Wren’s expression doesn’t change.
He’s sure she feels the pain. This is what she must have been like back in the Court of Teeth. This is how she endures all that she does. But he doesn’t understand why she allows Bogdana to hurt her this way. She has the authority and power now.
Something is very, very wrong.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” he says, keeping his voice low. “I can fix it. I can help.”
“I’m not the one who needs saving.” Wren lets go of his hand.
“It was her,” insists Taryn. “Her or that witch she has with her or the traitorous knight who tried to kill Cardan. I want the knight arrested. I want the girl arrested. I want the witch in a cage.”
Randalin blinks several times in surprise. “Well,” he says to Wren. “Aren’t you going to say anything? Tell them you didn’t do it.”
But again, she is silent.
The Minister of Keys sputters a bit as he tries to digest this. “My dear girl, you must speak.”
Cardan turns toward Wren. “I’d appreciate it if you went with my knights,” he says. “We have questions for you. Tiernan, show us your loyalty and accompany her. I am personally charging you with not letting her out of your sight.”
Tiernan looks in Oak’s direction in alarm.
Wren closes her eyes, as though her doom has come upon her. “As you command.”
“Your Majesty,” Tiernan begins, frowning. “I can’t leave my charge—”
“Go,” Oak says. “Don’t let her out of your sight, as the High King said.” He understands why Tiernan is concerned, however. Sending him away may mean that Cardan doesn’t want Oak to have anyone to fight at his side when the High King questions him.
Randalin clears his throat. “If I may, I suggest we move to Insear. The tents are already set up and guards sent ahead. We will not be so out in the open.”
“Why not?” says Cardan. “A perfect place for a party or an execution. Tiernan, take Queen Suren to her tent and wait with her there until I call on her. Keep everyone else out.”
The vulture on her shoulder jumps into the sky, beating black wings, but Wren makes no protest.
Oak wonders if he could stop them. He doesn’t think so. Not without a lot of death.
“Let me go with her,” Oak says.
Jude turns toward him, raising her brows. “She didn’t deny it. She isn’t denying it now. You’re staying with us.”
“Furthermore,” proclaims Cardan to the rest of his knights, “I want the rest of you to find Hyacinthe and bring him to my tent on Insear.”
“Why not suspect me?” Oak demands, voice rising.
Taryn gives a little laugh, at odds with the tears staining her cheeks. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I found his body,” the prince insists. “And I have a motive, after all.”
“Explain,” Cardan says, mouth a grim line.
Jude seems to sense what’s coming. There are too many people around, guards, courtiers, Randalin, and Baphen. “Whatever Oak has to tell us, he can tell us in private.”
“Then by all means,” says Cardan, “let’s depart.”
But Oak doesn’t want to be quiet. Maybe it’s the blusher mushroom in his blood, maybe it’s the sheer frustration of the moment. “He murdered my first mother. He’s the reason she died, and you both—you all—hid it from me.”
A hush goes through the courtiers like a gust of wind.
Oak feels the delirious abandon of breaking the rules. In a family of deceivers, telling the truth—out loud, where anyone could hear it—was a massive transgression. “You allowed me to treat him like a friend, and all the while you knew we were spitting on my mother’s memory.”
A drawn-out silence follows his last word. Oriana has a white-fingered hand pressing against her mouth. She didn’t know, either.
Finally, Cardan speaks. “You make a very good point. You had an excellent reason to try to kill him. But did you?”
“I urge you all,” interrupts Randalin, “if for no other reason than discretion, let us repair to the tents at Insear. We will have some nettle tea and calm ourselves. As the High Queen says, this is not a conversation to be had in public.”
Jude nods. This may be the first time Randalin and Jude ever agreed on anything.
“If my family had their way,” says Oak, “this isn’t a conversation we’d have at all.”
Then, from across the Milkwood, there’s a scream.
Moments later, a knight steps into the clearing, looking as though she’s run all the way there. “We found another body.”
Most of the remaining knot of courtiers begin to move in the direction of the scream, and Oak goes along, though he still feels unsteady. They know he’s poisoned, at least. If he falls down, no one will have many questions.
“Whose?” Jude demands.
They don’t have to go far, though, and he sees the body before she gets her answer.
Lady Elaine, lying in a heap, one of her small wings half crushed when she fell from the horse that is nuzzling the end of her skirts. Lady Elaine, her cheek stained with mud. Her eyes open. Her lips purple.
Oak shakes his head, taking a step back. Hand coming up to cover his mouth. Two people poisoned—three people, counting himself. Because of the conspiracy?
Cardan is watching him with an unreadable expression. “Your friend?”
The Roach moves to Oak, puts one green clawed hand against the middle of his back. “Let’s go ahead to Insear, as the Minister of Keys said. You’re upset. Death’s upsetting.”
Oak gives him a wary look, and the goblin holds up his hands in surrender, his black eyes sympathetic. “I had no part in Liriope’s murder nor these,” the Roach says. “But I can’t claim I’ve never done anything wrong.”
Oak nods slowly. He can’t claim that, either.
He mounts up again on Jack, who has obligingly become a horse again. The goblin rides a fat, spotted pony, low to the ground. Behind him, someone is saying that the festivities can’t possibly go on as planned.
Oak thinks of Elaine, lying in the dirt. Elaine, who was dangerously ambitious and foolish. Had she told the rest of the conspirators that she was quitting and received this in answer?
His mind turns to Wren, with the vulture’s talons digging into her skin. Her blank expression. He keeps trying to understand why Wren endures it without crying out or striking back.
Does it have something to do with Garrett and Elaine being poisoned?
Oak was a fool to bring Wren here. When he gets to the tents on Insear, he’s going to find hers. Then he is going to get them both off the isles and out of this vipers’ nest. Away from Bogdana. Away from his family. Maybe they could live in the woods outside her mortal family’s home. She’d said, back when they were questing, that she’d like to visit her sister. What was her name? Bex. They could eat scavenged berries and look up at the stars.
Or maybe Wren wants to go back north, to the Citadel. That’s fine, too.
“How long have you known?” the goblin asks.
For a moment, Oak isn’t sure what he means. “About what Garrett did? Not long.” Above them, the black bees of the Milkwood buzz, carrying nectar to their queen. Late afternoon sunlight turns the pale trees gold. He sets his jaw. “Someone should have told me.”
“Someone clearly did,” says the Roach.
Leander, he supposes, which hardly counts. And Hyacinthe, although he didn’t know the whole of it. Oak doesn’t want to blame either of them out loud, not to someone who will carry the tale to his sister. He understands what the Roach is doing, getting him alone like this, understands it well enough to avoid the trap. He shrugs.
“Did you poison him?” the Roach asks.
“I thought Garrett poisoned me,” the prince says, shaking his head.
“Never,” says the goblin. “He regretted what he did to Liriope. Tried to make it up to Locke by giving him his true name. But Locke’s not the person to trust with that sort of thing.”
Oak wonders if Garrett tried to make it up to him, too, in ways he never saw. Teaching him the sword, volunteering to go north when the prince was in trouble, going to Oak with information before taking it to Jude. He didn’t like having a reason to be anything but angry, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“There was something he needed to tell me,” Oak says. “Not about any of that. Something else.”
“Once you’re delivered to Insear, I’ll check out his part of the lair. If he had any sense, he wrote it down.”
At the edge of the Milkwood, they pass the Lake of Masks. Oak’s gaze goes to the water. You never see your own face, always the face of someone else, someone from the past or future. Today he sees a blond pixie laughing as she splashes someone else—a man in black with saltwhite hair. Recognizing neither of them, he turns away.
At the coastline, several boats await them, pale, narrow boats with high prows and sterns curving upward so that they look like crescent moons floating on their backs—all crewed by armored guards. As the sun dips beneath the ocean on the horizon, Oak looks across to Insear, outfitted with tents for the festivities to come, then to the sparkling lights of Mandrake Market, and beyond, to the Tower of Forgetting, stark black against the red-and-gold sky.
He and the Roach get into one of the boats, and Jack, having shifted into his bipedal form, gets in after them. A guard Oak doesn’t recognize nods to them and then puts up the sail. A few moments later, they are speeding across the short stretch of sea.
“Your Majesty,” says the guard. “There are tents for your refreshment. Yours is marked with your father’s sign.”
The prince nods, distracted.
The Roach stays in the boat. “I’ll find out what the Ghost knew, if I can,” he says gruffly. “You stay out of trouble.”
Oak couldn’t count how many times someone said that to him. He isn’t sure he ever listened.
On Insear, there is a small forest of pavilions and other elaborate tents. He looks among them for Wren’s, listening in vain for the sound of her voice or Tiernan’s. He doesn’t hear either of them, and he doesn’t see Madoc’s moon-and-dagger crest marking a tent for him, either.
Everything feels wrong. He can see individual threads but not make out the larger web, and there isn’t much time.
It may already be too late. Wasn’t that what Wren said?
Surely, she couldn’t have been referring to the poison.
I’m not the one who needs saving.
He pushes the thought from his mind. No, she couldn’t have been speaking about that. She couldn’t have a hand in murdering Lady Elaine and probably killing Garrett, too, for all that turning him into a tree might help.
As Oak and Jack walk on, the prince spots a tent with the flap open and Tatterfell within. But it isn’t Madoc’s crest that’s stamped on the outside. The prince frowns at the mark until he understands what he’s looking at. Dain’s crest. But people don’t generally refer to Oak as Dain’s son, even though at this point it’s well known where his Greenbriar blood comes from. If she sees this, Oriana is going to have a fit.
Oak puzzles over who arranged things this way. Not his sister. Nor Cardan, unless this is some kind of backhanded way of reminding Oak of his place. But it seems a little too backhanded. Cardan is subtle but not confusingly subtle.
He steps inside. The tent is furnished with rugs covering the rock and patches of grass. He spots a table is crowded with bottles of water and wine and the pressings of fruit. Candles burn to chase away shadows. Tatterfell looks up from spreading his change of clothes out on a low couch.
“You’re early,” the imp says. “And who’s this?”
Jack comes forward to take Tatterfell’s hand and bow deeply over it. “His steed and sometimes companion, Jack of the Lakes. It is my honor, lovely lady. Perhaps we shall dance together this evening.”
The little faerie blushes, looking very unlike her usual grouchy self.
Oak looks at the burgundy doublet, chosen hours earlier. He can still feel the disorientation of the blusher mushroom coursing through his system, but his movements are less stiff and more sure.
“You must dress for the festivities,” she says.
He opens his mouth to tell her that they’re probably not going to happen, then remembers her calling tonight a farce. Did she know something? Did she have a part in this?
He needs to think straight, but it’s so hard with blusher mushroom still addling his mind. Almost certainly, Tatterfell was not planning any assassinations. But he wonders if the poisonings had to do with stopping the ceremony.
That theory didn’t withstand much scrutiny, though. If they wanted it stopped, and had some power over Wren, couldn’t they pressure her to end it? Whoever they were.
As his mind runs in circles, he strips off his hunting clothes and puts on the new, more formal ones. In moments, Tatterfell is dusting him off and polishing away any mud on his hooves. As though he really is going to his wedding.
The flap of the tent opens, and two knights step inside.
“The High King and Queen request your presence in their tent before the revel begins,” one says.
“Is Wren there?” he asks.
The knight who spoke shakes his head. He looks to be at least part redcap. The other knight has more elven features and dark eyes. He seems twitchy.
“Tell them I will be along presently,” Oak says.
“I’m afraid we’re to escort you—now.”
That explains the twitchiness, then. “And if I don’t comply?”
“We must yet bring you to them,” the elven knight says, looking unhappy about it.
“Well, then,” Oak says, walking to them. He could, perhaps, use his charm to talk the knights out of it, but that seems hardly worth it. Jude would only send more soldiers, and these two would get in undeniable trouble.
The prince carefully does not look in the direction of Jack. Since the kelpie wasn’t mentioned, he doesn’t have to go and will be the safer for it.
Lightning slices across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. No rain has started yet, though the air is thick with it. The wind is picking up, too, whipping the skirts of the tents. Oak wonders if Bogdana has something to do with this. Certainly, she is in a bad enough mood.
He thinks of Wren again, of the talons biting into her skin. Of her words in the gardens. I’m not safe. You can’t trust me.
There is little for him to do but walk across Insear behind the knights, past where garlands of ferns and wisteria and toadstools have been slung from trees, and musicians are tuning their fiddles, while a few courtiers, arriving unfashionably early, are selecting drinks from a large table, loaded with bottles of all shapes and sizes and colors.
One of the knights pushes aside the Rap of a heavy cream-and-gold tent.
Inside, two thrones sit, although neither is occupied. Jude and Cardan stand with Taryn and Madoc. Cardan has changed into clothes of white and gold while Madoc is in deep red, as though they were opposing suits in a deck of cards. Taryn still wears her hunting clothes, her eyes red and swollen, as though she hasn’t stopped crying until just before this moment. Oriana sits in a corner, entertaining Leander. Oak thinks of his own childhood and how she pulled him away from so many dangerous conversations, hiding them in the back, distracting him with a toy or a sweet.
It was a kindness, he knew. But it made him vulnerable as well.
Three members of the Living Council are in attendance. Fala, the fool; Randalin; and Nihuar, representative of the Seelie Courts. All three of them look grim. Hyacinthe is there, too, sitting on a chair, stony-faced and defiant. Oak can sense the panic he is trying to hide.
Ringed around the tent are guards, none of whom Oak knows. All of whom wear the expressions of people expecting an execution.
“Oak,” Jude says. “Good. Are you ready to talk?”
“Where’s Wren?” he asks.
“What an excellent question,” she says. “I thought perhaps you knew.”
They stare at each other.
“She’s gone?” he asks.
“And Tiernan with her.” Jude nods. “You can see why we have a lot to discuss. Did you arrange her freedom?”
Oak takes a deep breath. There are so many things he should have told her over the years. To tell her now is going to feel like peeling off his own skin. “You may have heard some things about me and the company I was keeping before I went north with Wren. Lady Elaine, for example. My reasons were not what you might suppose. I’m not—”
Outside, there’s a crash and a howl of wind.
“What’s that?” Taryn demands.
Cardan narrows his eyes. “A storm,” he says.
“Brother,” Jude says. “Why did you bring her here? What did she promise you?”
Oak remembers being caught in the rain and thunder of Bogdana’s power, remembers his ragwort steed being torn out from beneath him. This portends disaster.
“When we were on our quest, I tricked Wren,” Oak says. “I kept back information that wasn’t mine to keep.” He cannot help hearing the echo of his own complaint in those words. His family hid things from him the same way he hid things from her.
“And?” Jude frowns.
Oak tries to find the right words. “And she was angry, so she threw me in prison. Which seems extreme, but I was handling it. And then you . . . overreacted.”
“Overreacted?” Jude echoes, clearly incensed.
“I was handling it!” Oak repeats, louder.
There’s movement out of the corner of his eye, and then two bolts fly across the tent toward Jude. Oak hits the floor, pulling his sword from its sheath.
Cardan whips up his cloak in front of Jude—the cloak made by Mother Marrow, the one that was enchanted to turn the blades of weapons. The arrows fall to the ground as though they’ve struck a wall instead of cloth.
A moment later, the High King staggers back, bleeding. A knife juts out from his chest. Falling to his knees, he covers the wound with his hands, as though the blood seeping through his fingers is an embarrassment.
Randalin steps back, smug and satisfied. It’s his dagger in the High King’s chest.
“Put down your weapons,” a soldier shouts unsteadily, taking a step forward. For a moment, Oak isn’t sure whose side they’re on. Then he sees the way they’re standing. Seven soldiers moving closer to the Minister of Keys, two of them the knights who came to Oak’s tent.
Finally, the unfamiliarity of them makes horrible sense. This is a trap.
This is the conspiracy he hoped Lady Elaine would reveal. Had Oak not missed their meeting in the gardens, had he not been so willing to believe that it was over when Lady Elaine herself gave it up, had he not departed on the quest to save his father in the first place, perhaps he could have discovered this. Discovered it and foiled it.
Oak recalls the councilor extolling the wisdom of his betrothal to Wren, recalls his pushing the royal family to come immediately to Insear after the hunt. Remembers how Randalin maneuvered a conference alone with Bogdana and Wren.
The Minister of Keys was laying the groundwork while acting so pompous and irritating that he couldn’t be taken seriously. And Oak fell for it. Oak underestimated Randalin in the most foolish way possible— by falling for the same trick he played on others.
Jude eases Cardan to the ground and kneels beside him, sword in her hand. “I will cut your throat,” she promises Randalin.
“Stabbity stab, knife wife,” says Fala, with feeling. “Traitor’s blood is hot, but it still spills.”
Taryn has a dagger out. Madoc, dangerous enough with just his claw-tipped hands, has moved into a fighting stance. Oak rises and moves to his side.
“You should have listened to me,” Randalin tells Jude from the safe distance he has put between them, behind one of his soldiers. “Mortals are not meant to sit on our thrones. And Cardan, the least of the Green-briar princes, pathetic. But all that will be remedied. We will have a new king and queen in your place. You see, none of your own knights are here to save you. Nor can they cross to this isle while the storm rages. And it will rage until you’re dead.”
Oak blinks. “You made a deal with Bogdana. That’s what the Ghost was getting proof of, that’s the thing he thought I wouldn’t like.”
Because of Wren. That’s why the Ghost thought Oak wouldn’t like it.
“You should be grateful,” Randalin tells the prince. “I persuaded Bogdana to spare you, though you are of the Greenbriar line and her enemy. Because of me, you will sit on the throne with a powerful faerie queen by your side.”
“Wren would never . . . ,” Oak begins, but he’s not sure how to finish. Would she agree to the murder of his family? Did she want to be the High Queen?
You can’t trust me.
I’m not the one who needs saving.
Randalin laughs. “She didn’t object. And neither did you, as I recall. Didn’t you tell Lady Elaine of your resentment of the High King? Didn’t you encourage her plot to get you on the throne?”
Oak’s stomach hurts, hearing those words. Knowing a storm is raging outside because of someone he brought here. Seeing Cardan’s body lying in a pool of red, no longer conscious and maybe no longer alive. Thinking of the Ghost’s open, staring eyes. Seeing the way Oak’s sisters are looking at him now and how his mother is looking away.
“You poisoned Garrett,” Oak says.
Randalin laughs. “I gave him the wine. He didn’t have to drink it. But he got too close to uncovering our plans.”
“And Elaine?” he asks.
“What could I do?” Randalin says. “She wanted out.” And pouring her wine from the same urn as the spy’s convinced him it was safe to drink.
Expressing the desire to get out was how Oak planned on getting Elaine and her friends to turn on him. The same way he’d defeated other conspiracies—courting an attempted murder and exposing them for that instead of as traitors. But she hadn’t known it would doom her. He should have given her a warning.
And now his family thinks he was part of this. He can see it in their faces. And worse, in bringing Wren here, maybe he was.
Maybe this is what Wren wanted when she agreed to come to Elfhame. Revenge on him. Revenge on the High King and Queen, who stripped her of her kingdom and sent her away with no help and no hope. The crown that Mellith was promised.
Wren, whom he believed he loved. Whom he believed he knew.
He sees now that she learned the lessons of betrayal, learned them down to the marrow of her bones.
There is no apology Oak can give that could be believed, no way to explain. Not anymore.
Oak feels something snap inside him. He draws his sword.
“Don’t be foolish,” Randalin says with a frown. “This is all for you.”
There is a familiar roaring in Oak’s ears, and this time he gives in to it eagerly. His limbs move, but he feels as if he’s watching himself from far away.
He stabs into the stomach of the guard nearest to him, cutting up under his breastplate. The man screams. The thought that these soldiers believed he was on their side, believed he would be their High King, makes him even angrier. He turns, stabbing out. Someone else is screaming, someone he knows, urging him to stop. He doesn’t even slow. Instead, he knocks a bolt aside as two more guards crowd around him. He pulls a dagger from one of their sheaths and uses it to stab the other while he parries a blow.
Oak can feel his consciousness slipping away, falling deeper into the trance of the fight. And it is such a relief to let go, the way he does when he allows the right words to fall from his tongue in the right order.
The last thing the prince feels before his awareness slides entirely away is a knife in his back. The last thing he sees is his sword biting through the throat of an enemy.
He finds himself with his blade pressed against Jude’s. “Stop it,” she shouts.
He staggers back, letting the sword fall from his hands. There’s blood on her face, a fine spatter. Did he strike her?
“Oak,” she says, not yelling anymore, which is when he realizes she’s scared. He never wanted her to be scared of him.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. Which is true. Or at least he believes it’s probably true. His hands have started shaking, but that’s normal. That happens a lot, after.
Does she still think he’s a traitor?
Jude whirls toward Madoc. “What did you do to him?”
The redcap looks baffied, his gaze on Oak speculative. “Me?”
Oak scans the room, the adrenaline of battle still running through his veins. The guards are dead. All of them, and messily. Randalin too. Oak isn’t the only one holding a bloody sword, either. Hyacinthe has one as well, standing near Nihuar as though they had very recently been back-to-back. Fala is bleeding. The Roach and the Bomb are beside each other, having appeared from the shadows, the Bomb’s fingers curled around a curved, nasty-looking knife. Even Cardan, using the throne to prop himself upright, has a dagger in his hand with red on the blade, although his other hand, holding his chest, is stained scarlet, too.
Cardan’s not dead. The relief almost makes Oak sag to his knees, except that Cardan is still bleeding and pale.
“What did you turn Oak into?” Jude demands of Madoc. “What did you do to my brother?”
“He’s good with a sword,” the redcap tells her. “What can I say?”
“I am losing patience almost as fast as I am losing blood,” says Cardan. “Just because your brother killed Randalin, it doesn’t mean we should forget he was at the center of this conspiracy—and that he is at the center of whatever Bogdana and Wren are planning. I suggest that we lock Oak up where he won’t be so tempting to traitors.”
The prince spots Oriana, her arms still protectively around Leander, holding him turned toward her skirts so he can’t see the slaughtered bodies. She’s wearing an anguished expression. The prince feels the overwhelming urge to go to her, to bury his face in her neck as he might have done as a child. To see if she would push him away.
You wanted them to know you, his mind supplies unhelpfully.
Wren once described what she was afraid of, if she revealed herself to her family. How she imagined their rejecting her once they saw her true face. Oak sympathized, but until this moment he didn’t understand the horror of having all the people who loved you best in the world look at you as though you were a stranger.
Charm them. The thought is not just unhelpful but wrong. And yet the temptation yawns in front of him. Make them look at you as they once did. Fix this before it is broken forever.
A shudder goes through him. “It’s not Dad’s fault or anyone else’s that I’m good at killing,” he makes himself say, meeting Jude’s gaze. “I chose this. And don’t you dare tell me that I shouldn’t have. Not after what you’ve done to yourself.”
Clearly, Jude was about to say something very much like that, because she chokes off the words. “You were supposed to—”
“What? Not make the same choices the rest of you did?”
“To have a childhood,” she shouts at him. “To let us protect you.”
“Ah,” says Cardan. “But he had loftier ambitions.”
Madoc’s gaze is impassive. Does he believe Oak to be a traitor? And if so, does he applaud the ambition or scorn the failure?
“I think it’s time to get off this isle.” Cardan’s trying to sound casual, but he’s unable to hide that he’s in pain.
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.
