Oak was a child when Madoc was exiled to the mortal world, and yet, no matter what anyone said, he still knew it was his fault.
Without Oak, there would have been no war. No plan to steal the crown. No family at one another’s throats.
At least your father wasn’t executed for treason, Oriana told Oak when he complained about not being able to see him. Oak laughed, thinking she made a joke. When he realized that really could have happened, the idea of Madoc’s dying while he watched, powerless to stop it, haunted his nightmares. Beheadings. Drownings. Burnings. Being buried alive. His sisters, grim-faced. Oriana, weeping.
Those bad dreams made not seeing Madoc even harder.
It’s not a good idea right now, Oriana told him. We don’t want to seem as though we’re not loyal to the crown.
And so he lived with Vivi and Heather in the mortal world, went to the mortal school, and during library time, compulsively looked up new, horrible details of executions. Sometimes Jude or Taryn would visit him at the apartment. His mother came often. Occasionally, someone like Garrett or Van would show up and instruct him in bladework.
No one thought he had any real talent for it.
Oak’s problem was that he thought of sword fighting as a game and didn’t want to hurt anyone. Games were supposed to be fun. Then, after a lot of scolding, he understood sword fighting as a deadly game and still didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Not everyone needs to be good at killing things, Taryn told him with a pointed look at Jude, who was dangling a toy over baby Leander’s head as though he were a cat ready to swat at it.
Sometimes after his nightmares, Oak would sneak out and stand on the lawn of the apartment complex and look up at the stars. Missing his mother and father. Missing his old house and his old life. Then he would walk into the woods and practice with his sword, even though he didn’t know what he was practicing for.
A few months in, Oriana finally took him to see Madoc. There was no objection or interference from Jude. Either she didn’t know—which was unlikely—or she looked the other way, reluctant to forbid the visits but unable to officially allow them.
Be nice to your father, Oriana warned. As though Madoc was ill, rather than exiled and bored and angry. But if Oriana taught Oak one thing, it was how to pretend everything was fine without actually lying about it.
Oak felt shy as he stood in front of his father after all this time. Madoc had a ground-floor apartment in an old brick building by the waterfront. It wasn’t quite like Vivi’s, since it was furnished with ancient pieces from their home in Elfhame, but it was clearly a mortal space. There was a refrigerator and an electric stove. Oak wondered if his father resented him.
Madoc seemed mostly concerned about Oak becoming soft.
“Those girls were always fussing over you,” his father said. “Your mother, too.”
Because he was born poisoned and was sickly as a baby, Oriana was constantly worried that Oak would overextend himself or that one of his sisters would be too rough with him. He hated her fretting. He was forever running off and swinging from trees or riding his pony in defiance of her edicts.
After months apart from his father, though, he felt ashamed of all the times he went along with her wishes.
“I’m not very good with a sword,” he blurted out.
Madoc raised his brows. “How’s that?”
Oak shrugged. He knew that Madoc never trained him the way he trained Jude and Taryn, certainly not the way he trained Jude. If he’d come inside with bruises the way she used to, Oriana would have been furious.
“Show me,” Madoc said.
Which is how he found himself on the lawn of a cemetery, blade raised, as his father walked around him. Oak went through the exercises, one after the other. Madoc poked him with a mop handle when he was in the wrong position, but it wasn’t often.
The redcap nodded. “Good, fine. You know what you’re doing.”
That part was true. Everyone had seen to that. “I have a hard time hitting people.”
Madoc laughed in surprise. “Well, that is a problem.”
Oak made a sour face. Back then, he didn’t like being laughed at.
His father saw the expression and shook his head. “There’s a trick to it,” he said. “One that your sisters never quite learned.”
“My sisters?” Oak asked, incredulous.
“You need to let go of the part of your mind that’s holding you back,” Madoc said moments before he attacked. The redcap’s mop handle caught Oak in the side, knocking him into the grass. By the conditions of his exile, Madoc wasn’t allowed to hold a weapon, so he improvised.
Oak looked up, the breath knocked out of him. But when Madoc swept the wooden stick toward him, he rolled to one side, blocking the blow.
“Good,” his father said, and waited for him to get up before striking again.
They sparred like that, back and forth. Oak was used to fighting, although not with this great intensity.
Still, his father wore him down, hit by hit.
“All the skill in the world doesn’t matter if you won’t strike me,” Madoc shouted finally. “Enough. Halt!”
Oak let his blade sag, relieved. Tired. “I told you.”
But his father didn’t look as though he was going to let things go. “You’re blocking my blows instead of looking for openings.”
Barely blocking, Oak thought, but nodded.
The redcap looked like he was going to gnash his teeth. “You need to get some fire in your belly.”
Oak didn’t reply. He’d heard Jude tell him something similar many times. If he didn’t fight back, he could die. Elfhame wasn’t a safe place. Maybe there were no safe places.
“You need to turn off the part of you that’s thinking,” Madoc said. “Guilt. Shame. The desire to make people like you. Whatever is getting in your way, you need to excise it. Cut it out of your heart. From the time your sword leaves your sheath, put all that aside and strike!”
Oak bit his lip, not sure if that was possible. He liked being liked.
“Once your sword is out of your sheath, you aren’t Oak anymore. And you stay that way until the fight is over.” Madoc frowned. “And do you know how to tell the fight is over? All your enemies are dead. Understand?”
Oak nodded and tried. He willed himself to forget everything but the steps of the fight. Block, parry, strike.
He was quicker than Madoc. Sloppier, but faster. For a moment, he felt as though he was doing okay.
Then the redcap came at him hard. Oak responded with a flurry of parries. For a moment, he thought he saw an opportunity to get under his father’s guard but flinched from it. His nightmares flashed in front of him. He parried instead, harder this time.
“Halt, child,” said Madoc, stopping, frustration clear on his face. “You let two obvious openings pass.”
Oak, who had seen only one, said nothing.
Madoc sighed. “Imagine splitting your mind into two parts: the general and the foot soldier. Once the general gives an order, the foot soldier doesn’t need to think for himself. He just has to do what he’s told.”
“It’s not that I’m thinking I don’t want to hit you,” Oak said. “I just don’t.”
His father nodded, frowning. Then his arm shot out, the flat of the mop handle knocking Oak into the dirt. For a moment, he couldn’t get his breath.
“Get up,” Madoc said.
As soon as he did, his father was on him again.
This time Madoc was serious, and for the first time, Oak was scared of what might happen. The hits came hard enough to bruise and too fast to be stopped.
He didn’t want to hurt his father. He wasn’t even sure that he could.
His father wasn’t supposed to really hurt him.
As the blows came relentlessly, he could feel tears sting his eyes. “I want to stop,” he said, the words coming out in a whine.
“Then fight back!” Madoc shouted.
“No!” Oak threw his sword to the ground. “I give up.”
The mop handle caught him in the stomach. He went down hard, scuttled back, out of his father’s range. Only barely, though.
“I don’t want to do this!” he shouted. He could feel that his cheeks were wet.
Madoc came forward, closing the distance. “You want to die?”
“You’re going to kill me?” Oak was incredulous. This was his father.
“Why not?” Madoc said. “If you don’t defend yourself, someone is going to kill you. Better it be me.”
That made no sense. But when the mop handle hit him in the side of the head, he started to believe it.
Oak looked at his sword, across the grass. Pushed himself to his hooves. Ran toward it. His cheek was throbbing. His stomach hurt.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever been scared like this, not even when he was in the Great Hall with the serpent coming toward his mother.
When he turned back to Madoc, his vision was blurry with tears. Somehow that made things easier. To not have to really see what was happening. He could feel himself slipping into that state of not quite awareness. Like times that he was daydreaming on the walk to school and got there without remembering being on the route. Like when he gave over to his gancanagh magic and let it turn his words to honey.
Like those things, except he was angry enough to give himself a single order: win.
Like those things, except when he blinked, it was to find the point of his blade nearly at his father’s throat, held back only by the half-splintered end of the mop handle. Madoc was bleeding from a slash on his arm, one Oak didn’t recall causing.
“Good,” said Madoc, breathing hard. “Again.”
