Oak kills two trolls and a nisse before another of the trolls gets a knife to my throat.
“Halt,” he calls, pressing the blade down hard enough to sting. “Or the girl dies.”
For a moment, the prince’s eyes are so blank that I don’t know if he can hear the words. But then he falters, letting his blade sag. He looks as though it was a fight to come back to himself.
None of them get too close, even then. Blood still drips from that needle-thin blade of his. They’d have to step over the bodies of their comrades.
“Throw down your sword,” one of the other soldiers calls to him.
“Vow she won’t be harmed,” Oak says, breathing hard. “Also me. I would like not to be harmed as well.”
“If you don’t drop that blade, I’ll cut her throat and then yours,” the troll threatens. “How’s that for a promise?” He’s so close to me that I can smell the leather of his armor, the oil on his knife, and the stink of dried blood. I can feel the heat of his breath. The arm across my neck is as solid as stone.
I try to think past my panic. My own knife is still in my hand, but the troll has gripped the wrist holding it.
I could bite his arm, though. My sharp teeth could rend even a troll’s flesh. The shock of pain would either cause him to cut my throat or loosen his grip. But even if I was lucky, even if I could use that moment to slip out of his hands and run to Oak, what then? We’d never make it out of the Citadel. We would most likely never make it out of this hall.
The prince’s sword dangles from his fingers, but he doesn’t let it drop. “I was invited here and instructed to bring Mellith’s living heart to your lady. I think she would be extremely disappointed to find you’d robbed her of her prize. Dead, I can hardly give it to her.”
A shudder goes through me at the thought of Lady Nore getting what she wants, even though I know this is a game, a con, a hustle. Oak doesn’t really have Mellith’s heart. The danger lies in her seeing through his deception.
And it doesn’t matter if it gets me into the room. All I need is to be able to talk.
Oak goes on. “You’ve almost caught us. You have to make only one small concession, and I will go with you, docile as a lamb.”
“Throw down your blade, prince,” says one of the ex-falcons. “And no harm will come to either of you by our hands while we escort you to the throne room. You can beg for Lady Nore’s mercy and explain why, were you invited to the Citadel, we found you running from her bedchamber.”
Oak lets the sword fall. It clatters to the floor.
One guard wrenches the knife out of my hand, while another takes a skein of rope and winds it between my lips, knotting it at the back of my head. As they push me along, I try to chew it apart, but though my teeth are sharp, I am bound well enough that we reach the throne room with the rope still in my mouth.
They have not bound the prince, but he walks surrounded by drawn blades. I cannot tell if that is meant as a sign of respect for his person or if they don’t want to take their chances by getting too close.
All I know is that I must find a way to speak. Just a few words and I will have her.
The troll pushes me before Lady Nore so that I fall on my hands and knees.
She rises from her seat at a long, food-laden table. We have interrupted her banquet.
Lady Nore’s white hair has been tied up on her head in a complicated arrangement of plaits, although a few have come down. Her gown is an opulent confection of black feathers and silver fabric that deepens to black at the floor. Ex-falcons crowd around her, formerly loyal soldiers to the Grand General of Elfhame, now hers to command.
When I look at her, I am filled with the same hate and fear that paralyzed me throughout my childhood.
And yet, there is fresh madness in her yellow eyes. She is not the same as she was when I saw her last. And disturbingly, I see myself in her. Resentful, and trapped, and full of thwarted desire. The worst parts of me, and all my worst potential.
New also are the two gray hands that she wears as a necklace. Horrifyingly, I see the fingers move as though alive, caressing the hollow of her throat. More horrifyingly, I suspect them to have once belonged to Lord Jarel.
Behind her, on a pillar of ice, is the cracked reliquary that must contain the bones and other remains of Mab. Strangely, tendrils, like roots, grow from the case, one with a bud on it, as though flowering.
On Lady Nore’s left side sits a troll with a crown of beaten gold and a mantle of blue velvet stitched with silver scales. His clothing is leather, richly worked, with a pattern that reminds me of those we saw in the Stone Forest.
Hurclaw, who has somehow evaded the curse of the Stone Forest. Who has brought his people to help guard the Citadel. But why throw in his lot with Lady Nore? If what Oak got from Gorga was correct, Hurclaw is here to court her. If so, perhaps her power makes for a compelling dowry.
He and his trolls make up the majority of those seated, along with two huldufólk ladies, and Bogdana. She is in her usual ragged black robes, her hair as wild as ever. When she sees me, a strange gleam enters her eyes.
On the table before all of them are silver plates and goblets of ice filled with black wine from the night-blooming fruit of the duergar. Black radishes, soaked in vinegar and cut into thin slivers to show off their pale insides. Trays of snow drizzled with honey so that the honey freezes and can be lifted and eaten like a cracker. Jellied meat, with an uncomfortable resemblance to the walls of the Citadel with things frozen inside.
A single musician plucks at the strings of a harp.
Despite the feast, and the guards, and stick soldiers standing at attention along one wall, the room seems empty by comparison with what it was once like, when Lord Jarel was alive. There ought to have been tables filling the hall, with guests to make toasts. Cupbearers. Entertainers. A court shaped entirely to Lady Nore’s whims. Have they all fled?
She looks past me, to Oak. “Heir to Elfhame, let’s skip through the unpleasantness. Have you brought me Mellith’s heart?”
Her guards are still tensed for the possibility of violence.
“I would hardly come here empty-handed with my father’s life in the balance,” Oak says. His gaze moves from the severed hands at her throat to the troll king.
I gnaw at the rope in my mouth, my desperation mounting. In a moment, she will ask him a question he cannot answer. I must speak. If I can speak, then I can still get us out of this.
But with Hurclaw’s soldiers all around us, there is a new danger. If he guesses I can control her, he will order me shot.
“So you do have it?” says Lady Nore. “Unless you failed your quest, little prince.”
My heart speeds. My sharp teeth are working through the rope, but I won’t sever it in time to stop him from having to answer. This plan seemed risky, but now it seems doomed.
“Let me say it in full so you will not worry over being deceived,” Oak says. “I have brought Mellith’s heart.”
I am stunned enough to stop chewing. The prince can’t say that. His mouth shouldn’t be able to form those words. He’s one of the Folk. He cannot lie any more than the rest of us.
And yet, I saw the deer carcass cut open, watched him buy a reliquary from the smiths. I know it is no ancient heart he brought to the Citadel.
Try to believe, whatever happens, whatever I say or do or have done, that my intention is for us to all survive this. That’s what he said to me on the boat. Was this what he meant? Was he willing to give away Mellith’s heart if it meant we all lived?
If he did, and the deer heart was for the purpose of deceiving me, then he is about to hand over immense, terrible power to Lady Nore. The kind of power with which she could threaten Elfhame. With which she could carve up the mortal world that she despises.
And I have no way to stop him.
“Where is it, then?” Lady Nore asks, a snarl in her voice.
Oak does not flinch. “I may have it, but I am not so foolish as to have it on me.”
Lady Nore scowls at him. “Hidden? To what purpose when you must hand it over to get your father?”
He shakes his head. “I would watch him leave, along with Wren, before I gave you anything.”
She frowns, studying him. Her gaze flicks to me. Then she laughs. “I could quibble, but I can be magnanimous in my victory. How about I turn Madoc out of the prisons and into the snow right now? I hope he does well with cold, since I fear the clothing he is wearing is quite thin. And unfortunately, some of my creatures hunt the lands around the Citadel.”
“That would be unfortunate, for all of us,” Oak says. However firm he manages to keep his voice, he looks young, standing in front of her and Hurclaw. I worry that this is a game he cannot possibly win. “But I have an alternate proposal. Tomorrow night, my representative will meet us three leagues from here, near the rock formation. You will bring Madoc, me, and Wren. There, we can make the exchange.”
“So long as you understand you won’t be part of it, Greenbriar child. You are to remain here, in the Citadel, until I am done with you.”
“And you’re planning on doing what exactly? Making me a hostage to get some concession from my sister?”
“And not from the High King?” Lady Nore asks. She walks around the table, toward us.
Oak scowls, clearly confused. “If you like. Either one.”
“They say that sister of yours has trapped him in some bargain.” Lady Nore’s words are light, but I can see that underneath it, nothing must have galled her as much as being outmaneuvered by a mortal. If anything other than the death of Lord Jarel has driven her mad, it’s that. “Why else marry her? Why else do whatever she wants?”
“She’s going to want to wear your skull for a hat,” Oak warns. There is an uncomfortable shifting among the ex-falcons. Perhaps they are recalling their own choice to denounce her, their own punishment. “And Cardan is going to laugh and laugh when she does.”
Lady Nore curls her lip. “Three things I need. Mab’s bones, Mellith’s heart, and Greenbriar blood. And here I am with two, and the third so close that I am able to taste it. Do not fail me, Prince of Elfhame, for if you do, your father will die and I will still get what I want.”
Oak raises both eyebrows. However he actually feels, his ability to make himself seem unimpressed is immensely satisfying.
Lady Nore goes on, as though thrilled to have someone to whom she can deliver this speech. “Were it not for your father’s weakness, we might have won the war against Elfhame. But I have a truer ally now and vast power. I am ready for revenge.”
“King Hurclaw,” Oak says, his gaze going toward the troll king. “I hope that Lady Nore hasn’t promised you more than she can give.”
A small smile quirks a corner of his mouth. “I do as well,” he says in a deep voice.
Lady Nore scowls, then stands and walks to me. Oak’s jaw tightens. His hand fists at his side.
“I suppose the prince thought that you could stop me.” A terrible smile curls on her lips as she touches the frayed rope pressed between my teeth like a bit. “Little did he know what a sniveling creature you are.”
I hiss, low in my throat.
To my surprise, she begins to loosen the cords I’ve been chewing. I part my lips the moment they fall away, desperate to speak. I am about to blurt out the stupidly unspecific I command you to surrender. But before I can get words out, she presses a petal into my mouth. I feel a twisting, worming sensation on my tongue. Whatever it is seems to move on its own, and I grit my jaw. The thing snakes around for another moment, then settles.
She lets go of the rope, smiling maliciously.
I shudder but finally can speak. I try to get the words out, but my tongue moves without my volition. “I renounce—” I begin to say before I slam my teeth down, trapping it painfully between them.
Lady Nore’s awful smile grows. “Yes, my dear?”
Somehow she’s woven a spell of control into the petal, no doubt plucked from the vine of the reliquary, where it grew impossibly from dry bones. If I try to speak, I will give up dominion over her.
I bite down harder on my tongue, to still it. It wriggles in my mouth like an animal.
“Bogdana told me how you lived,” she says. “In your wretched little hut, at the edge of the mortal world, scavenging for scraps as though you were a rat.”
I cannot reply, and so I do not.
There is a flicker of unease in Lady Nore’s eyes. She glances toward Bogdana, but the storm hag is watching me from her place at the table, her expression unreadable.
“You dull little thing, open your mouth. I can give you what you most desire,” Lady Nore snaps.
And what is that? I would ask were it safe for me to loosen my tongue. Instead, I keep it clamped between my teeth.
“I cannot make you human,” she goes on. “But I can come very close.”
I can’t say part of me doesn’t wish that were true. I think of the phone call, of how much easier it would be to slip into that old life if it didn’t mean hiding or lying, if I didn’t have to worry over them screaming at the sight of me.
She is still smiling as she walks to me and puts a finger against my chin. “I can put a glamour on you strong enough that not even the King of Elfhame is likely to see through it. I have the means to do that now, the power. I can make you forget the last nine years. You will return to the mortal world an empty vessel, free for them to project humanity on. They will decide that you were kidnapped, and whatever was done to you was so terrible that you blocked all memory of it. They won’t press. And even if they do, what does it matter? You will believe every word you tell them.”
I flinch away from her hand.
My greatest wish, the deepest desire of my heart. It infuriates me how well she knows me, and yet how she holds back every last mote of the comfort I so desperately crave.
Her yellow eyes study my face, trying to determine if I am hers yet. “Are you thinking about the prince? Oh, do not suppose I don’t know where you were when your own people died in the Battle of the Serpent. Hiding under that boy’s bed.”
My gaze is flat. I was a child, and I got away from her. I refuse to feel anything but glad about that. He wanted me there, I would say if I could speak. We were friends. We are friends.
But I can’t help thinking about Mellith’s heart, about what he told me in the boat.
. . . whatever I say or do or have done . . .
“Do you think he will protect you now? You’re useless. The heir to Elfhame has no reason to spend any further time with an untutored savage of a girl. But think, you wouldn’t have to remember him. You wouldn’t even have to remember yourself.”
“I’m not half as practical as you suppose,” Oak says. “I like many useless things. I’ve been called useless myself from time to time.”
Lady Nore doesn’t turn her eyes from me, even when I give a little, unexpected laugh that almost makes me release my teeth’s grip on my tongue. Lord Jarel’s hands tighten on her shoulders as though in response to her mood. “His kindness will evaporate as soon as you need it. Now, child, will you take the bargain and trouble me no more? Or will you force me to deal with you more harshly?”
I imagine giving up. No more peering through windows, mourning the loss of a life that could never again be mine. No more hopeless desire. No more uncertain future. No more terror. Let her have Mellith’s heart and Mab’s bones. Let Elfhame rot and the Prince of Elfhame rot with it. Let her raze whatever parts of the mortal world she chooses. What would I care when I couldn’t remember any of it?
I think of the Thistlewitch’s words. Nix Naught Nothing. That’s what you are. That’s what I would be. I would be consigning everything I’ve been, all I’ve learned and done to meaninglessness. I would be accepting that I don’t matter.
I spit in Lady Nore’s face. The spatter is bright with my blood against her gray skin.
She curls her lip and raises her hand, but does not strike me. She stands there, shaking with fury. “You bite your tongue to spite me? Well, I will lesson you. Guard, cut it out of her mouth.”
One of the huldufólk comes forward, taking hold of my arms. I kick and claw, fighting as I never have before.
“No!” Oak struggles, but two ex-falcons grab him. “If you hurt her, you can’t expect me to just turn over—”
Lady Nore whirls toward him, pointing a finger. “Tell me where Mellith’s heart is this moment, and I won’t cut out her tongue.”
Three more guards help subdue me. I twist against their grip.
Oak lunges for the troll nearest to him and grabs her sword, drawing it from the sheath. The prince is still surrounded, but now he is armed. A few huldufólk and nisser draw bows.
Hurclaw waves his hand. “Show the boy it is no use,” he says.
“Come forward, my creations,” says Lady Nore, and the soldiers of sticks and mud and flesh stride across the floor of the great hall. The guards step back, letting the creatures take their places.
“Seize him,” says Lady Nore.
The stick soldiers rush at Oak without hesitation. He slashes one, cutting it in half, and then whirls to stab another. His sword sinks in deep to the branches of the thing’s body. It continues to come forward, then twists aside, trying to wrench the sword out of Oak’s hand with the force of its own movement, even as doing so is tearing it apart.
Oak pulls the blade free, but three more throw themselves on it so a fourth can grab him around the throat.
This time the guards bind his hands behind his back with a silver cord.
When he meets my eyes, his expression is anguished. He cannot help me.
I fight as they press me down to the floor. Bite when they try to pry open my mouth.
But it’s all for nothing. Two soldiers hold my wrists, and a third hooks a barbed instrument through the end of my tongue. He pulls it taut.
Then a fourth begins slicing through it with a curved dagger.
The sharp, searing pain makes me want to cry out, but I cannot with my tongue nailed in place. My mouth goes from dry from being held open to full of blood. Flooded with it. Gagging. Drowning. I choke as they release me, the scream dying in my throat.
Scarlet flows over my chin. When I move, flecks of red fly.
The pain swallows me whole so that I barely can concentrate, but I know I am losing too much blood. It spills from between my lips, slicks my neck, stains the collar of my dress. This is going to kill me. I am going to die, here on the ice floor of the Citadel.
Lady Nore takes a slow walk around my crumpled body. She takes another small piece of bone from her bag and presses it against my lips, then past my teeth. I can feel the wound closing. “You might not think so, but this is for the best. As your mother and your sworn vassal, I must trust my own wisdom in the absence of direct orders.”
Blood loss and shock have made me dizzy. I feel light-headed. I stagger to my feet and think very seriously about sitting back down. Think very seriously about collapsing.
Since she cannot lie, in some twisted way, Lady Nore must truly believe that what she wants is what I ought to want.
Still, I do not need a tongue for her to read the rage in my eyes.
Her lips turn up at the edges, and I see that she isn’t so different from before. She doesn’t want me dead, because once dead I can no longer suffer.
“The prince doesn’t even know what you are,” she says with a glance toward Oak. “Barely one of the Folk. Nothing but a manikin, little more than the stock left behind when a changeling is taken, a thing meant to wither and die.”
Despite myself, my gaze goes to Oak. To see if he understands. But I cannot read anything but pity on his face.
I might be only sticks and snow and hag magic, but at least I did not come from her.
I am no one’s child.
That makes me smile, showing red teeth.
“My lady,” says King Hurclaw. “The sooner Prince Oak sees his father released, the sooner we will have what we want.”
Lady Nore gives him a narrow-eyed look. I wonder if the troll king realizes how awful she can be, and if he isn’t careful, how awful she will be to him.
But for now, she obediently waves at the guards. “One of you, lock her in the dungeon, wicked child that she is, that she may think on her choices. Prince Oak and I have much to discuss. Perhaps he will join us at the table.”
One of the ex-falcons comes to stand behind me. “Move.”
I begin to walk unsteadily toward the doors. The throb of my tongue in my mouth is horrible, but the bleeding has ebbed. I am still drinking saliva that tastes like pennies but no longer feeling as though I am drowning in it.
“I would say that you lost yourself along the way, but you lost yourself far before that,” the storm hag tells me as I pass her. “Wake up, little bird.”
I open my mouth, to remind her that what I’ve lost is my tongue and perhaps my hope.
She grimaces, and for a moment, a fresh wave of fear and dizziness passes over me. It must be very bad to make Bogdana wince.
“Move,” the guard repeats, shoving between my shoulder blades.
It’s not until we make it to the hall that I glance behind me. Up into the purple eyes of Hyacinthe.
