The night after Madoc, Lady Nore, and Lord Jarel failed to arrange our marriage, Oak snuck to the edge of where Madoc’s traitorous army and the Court of Teeth had made camp. There, he found me staked to a post like a goat.
He was perhaps nine, and I, ten. I snarled at him. I remember that.
I thought he was looking for his father and that he was a fool. Madoc seemed the sort to roast him over a fire, consume his flesh, and call it love. By then, I had become familiar with love of that kind.
He looked upset at the sight of me. He ought to have been taught better than to let his emotions show on his face. Instead, he assumed that others would care about his feelings, so he didn’t bother to hide them.
I wondered what would happen if, when he got close enough, I pinned him to the ground. If I beat him to death with a rock, I might be rewarded by Lord Jarel and Lady Nore, but it seemed equally likely that I would be punished.
And I didn’t want to hurt him. He was the first child I’d met since coming to Faerie. I was curious.
“I have food with me,” he said, coming closer and taking a bundle out of a pack he wore over one shoulder. “In case you’re hungry.”
I was always hungry. Here in the camp, I mostly filled my belly by eating moss and sometimes dirt.
He unwrapped an embroidered napkin on the ground—one made of spider silk finer than anything I wore—to reveal roasted chicken and plums. Then he moved away. Allowing me space to feed, as though he were the frightening one.
I glanced at the nearby tents and the woods, at the banked fire a few feet away, embers still glowing. There were voices, but distant ones, and I knew from long experience that while Lord Jarel and Lady Nore were out, no one would check on me, even if I screamed.
My stomach growled. I wanted to snatch the food, though his kindness was jarring and made me wonder what he’d want in return for it. I was used to tricks, to games.
I stared at him, noting the sturdiness of his body, solid in a way that spoke of having enough to eat and running outside. At the alienness of the little goat horns cutting through his soft bronze-and-gold curls and the strange amber of his eyes. At the ease with which he sat, faun legs crossed, hooved feet tipped in covers of beaten gold.
A woolen cloak of deep green was clasped at his throat, long enough to sit on. Underneath, he wore a brown tunic with golden buttons and knee-length trousers, stopping just above where his goat legs curved. I could not think of a single thing I had that he could want.
“It’s not poisoned,” he said, as though that was my worry.
Temptation won out. I grabbed a wing, tearing at the flesh. I ate it down to the bone, which I cracked so I could get at the marrow. He watched in fascination.
“My sisters were telling fairy tales,” Oak said. “They fell asleep, but I didn’t.”
That explained nothing about his reasons for coming here, but his words gave me a strange, sharp pain in my chest. After a moment, I recognized it as envy. For having sisters. For having stories.
“Do you talk?” he asked, and I realized how long I’d been silent. I had been a shy child in the mortal world, and in Faerie nothing good had ever come from my speaking.
“Not much,” I admitted, and when he smiled, I smiled back.
“Do you want to play a game?” He shuffled closer, eyes bright. Reaching into his pocket, he produced some little metal figures. Three silver foxes resting in the middle of his callused palm. Inset chips of peridot sparkled in their eyes.
I stared at him in confusion. Had he really come all this way to sit in the dirt and show me his toys? Maybe he hadn’t seen another kid in a while, either.
I picked up one of the foxes to examine it. The detail work was very fine. “How do we play?”
“You throw them.” He formed a cage of his hands with the foxes inside, shook it up, and then tossed them into the grass. “If they land standing, you get ten points. If they land on their backs, you get five points. If they land on their side, no points.”
His landed: two lying on their sides, and one on its back.
I reached out eagerly. I wanted to hold those foxes, feel them fall from my fingers.
When they did and two landed on their backs, I gasped in delight.
Over and over, we played the game. We made tally marks in the dirt.
For a while, there was only the joy of escaping from where I was and who I was. But then I remembered that as little as he might want from me, there was plenty I needed.
“Let’s play for stakes,” I proposed.
He looked intrigued. “What will you bet?”
I was not so foolish as to ask for anything much that first time. “If you lose, you tell me a secret. Any secret. And I will do the same for you.”
We played, and I lost.
He leaned in, close enough for me to smell the sage and rosemary his clothes had been wrapped with before he wore them, close enough to bite out a chunk of flesh from his throat.
“I grew up in the mortal lands,” I said.
“I’ve been there.” He seemed amused to discover we had something in common. “And eaten pizza.”
It was hard to imagine a prince of Faerie journeying to the human world for anything but a sinister reason, but eating pizza didn’t seem that sinister.
We played again, and this time he lost. His smile dimmed, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “This is a real secret. You can’t tell anyone. When I was little, I glamoured my mortal sister. I made her hit herself, a lot of times, over and over, and I laughed while she did. It was awful of me, and I never told her that I regretted it. I am afraid of making her remember. She might get really mad.”
I wondered which sister he’d glamoured. I hoped not the one who sat on a throne now, his life in her hands.
His words stood as a reminder, though, that no matter how soft he seemed or how young, he was as capable of cruelty as the rest. But cruel or not, his help could still be won. My gaze went to the stake to which I was bound. “This time, if my score is better, you cut the rope and free me. If your score is better, you can . . . ask me to do something, anything, and I will.”
A desperate bargain for me, but hope had made me reckless.
He frowned. “If I free you,” he said, “what happens then?”
He must have wondered if I had been tied here because I was dangerous. Maybe he wondered if, once free, I would run at him and hurt him. I supposed he was not so stupid after all. But if he wanted me to swear myself into his service, I could not.
All Courts pledge fealty to their ruler and that ruler pledges fealty to the High Court. When High King Cardan came to power, because I was hidden, and Queen of the Court of Teeth, my failure to give him an oath of loyalty was the reason Lady Nore and Lord Jarel were able to betray him. They would kill me on the spot if I pledged myself to anyone, because I would have become useless to them.
“We can go to the palace, and you can show me your other games,” I told him. I would hide there for as long as I could, perhaps long enough to get away from Lady Nore and Lord Jarel.
He nodded. “You toss first.”
I cupped the foxes in my hand and whispered to them softly. “Please.”
They fell, one on its back, one standing, and one on its side. A total of fifteen points. Good, but not great.
Oak picked them up, shook, and tossed. They all fell on their feet. Thirty points.
He laughed and clapped his hands. “Now you have to do whatever I want!”
I thought of what he’d made his sister do for his amusement and shuddered. At that moment the secret he’d told me seemed less a confession and more a warning.
“Well?” I growled.
Oak frowned, clearly trying to think of something. Then his brow cleared, and I dreaded what was to come next.
“Sing a song,” he said with a wicked smile.
I glanced over at the camp in panic. “They’ll hear,” I protested.
He shook his head, still grinning. “You can sing quietly. And we’ve been talking all this time. It doesn’t have to be any louder than that.”
My mind went blank. Only perhaps a year before, my unsister and I were dancing around the house to songs from movies with brave princesses, but at that moment I could think of none of their words. All I could recall were bloodthirsty ballads from the Court of Teeth. But when I opened my mouth, the tune was from a song my unmother had sung when she was putting me to bed. And the lyrics were a mishmash of the two.
“Sing a song of sixpence,” I sang as softly as I could. “Pocket full of snakes. If they take my head off, that’ ll cure my aches.”
Oak laughed as though my song was actually funny and not just some weird, grim doggerel. But however poorly done, my debt was paid, which meant I had another chance to win my freedom.
I grabbed up the foxes to play again before he could change the stakes.
Mine landed with one standing, two on their sides. Five measly, stupid, useless points. Nearly impossible to win with. I wanted to kick the figurines into the dirt, to throw them at Oak. I would owe him twice over and still have nothing. I could feel the old burn of tears behind my eyes, the taste of salt in my mouth. I was an unlucky child, ill-fated and—
On Oak’s toss, the foxes all landed on their sides for zero points.
I caught my breath and stared at him. I won. I won.
He didn’t seem disappointed to have to pay the forfeit. He got up with a grin and took out a knife from a sheath I hadn’t noticed, hidden in the sleeve of his shirt. The blade was small and leaf-shaped, its handle chased in gold, its edge sharp.
It barely parted the strands of the heavy rope, though, each one taking minutes of sawing to slice through. I had tried my own teeth on them before, with little success, but I hadn’t realized how tough they really were.
“There’s some kind of enchantment on this,” he said, frustrated.
“Cut faster,” I said, and received an annoyed look.
My fingers vibrated with the tension of waiting. Before he was a quarter of the way through, the thunder of horses and the rattle of a carriage made me realize that my win had come too late. Lady Nore and Lord Jarel were returning to camp. And they would check to make certain I was where they’d left me. Oak began to hack at the rope frantically, but I knew escape was impossible.
“Go,” I told him, disappointment bitter in my mouth.
He caught hold of my hand, pressing one of the silver foxes into my palm. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said. “I promise.”
I sucked in my breath at that casually given vow. Faeries couldn’t break their promises, so I had no choice but to believe him.
The next night the entire Court of Teeth was preparing for what Lord Jarel had announced with great smugness was to be a celebratory feast. The mortal High Queen had agreed to accept the bridle, along with their offer of a truce. I had been given a dress and told not to get it dirty, so I stood rather than sat on the ground.
I worried that Oak wouldn’t get there in time to keep me from being carted off to the feast. I was dreaming up ways to beseech him at the castle when he emerged from the woods. He dragged a sword behind him, too long to wear at his side. It made me recall that he’d jumped in front of his mother when the serpent king darted toward her, a prince from a fairy tale facing down a dragon. He might have been soft and cherished, but he could be brave.
Oak winked at me, and I wondered if he was brave because he didn’t understand the danger he was in.
I glanced at the camp, then at him, widening my eyes in warning. But he came to my side anyway, drew the sword, and started to saw away at my bindings.
“The sword’s name is Nightfell,” he whispered. “It belongs to Jude.”
His sister. The High Queen. It was such a different way to be royal, to have a family that you would consider by their relationship to you before their title. Whose weapon you wouldn’t be afraid to steal.
The blade was sharp and must have been well made, since it sliced through the enchanted rope much faster than the little knife.
“Her human father was a blacksmith,” he went on. “He forged the sword before she was born.”
“Where is he now?” I wondered if she had her own unfamily somewhere.
“Madoc killed him.” Oak’s tone made it sound as though he was aware that was bad, but not so bad that his sister would bear a grudge. I don’t know what I ought to have expected; Oak might make an exception for his sisters, might have enjoyed the pizza, but that didn’t mean he thought much of mortal lives.
My gaze went in the direction of the main camp, where Madoc’s tent would be. Inside, he’d be preparing for the banquet. Preparing to trick Jude, his foster daughter, whose sword this was and whose father he’d slain. Oak seemed to be laboring under the illusion that Madoc cared about him enough that Oak would be safe if he got caught, but I doubted that was the case.
The last strand of rope parted, and I was free, although it still braceleted my leg.
“They’ll be traveling to the banquet,” I whispered. “They might spot us.”
He took my hand and pulled me toward the woods. “Then we better go fast. Come on, we can hide in my room.”
Together, we ran through the mossy forest, past white trees with red leaves and streams holding pale-eyed nixies that watched us as we went by.
This felt a little bit like one of Lady Nore and Lord Jarel’s games. Sometimes they would act in a way that suggested affection, then behave as though they had never felt anything but disgust. Leave out something I desperately desired—food, a key to a room in the Citadel where I might hide, a storybook to hide with—and then punish me for taking it.
But I ran anyway. And clutched his fingers as though he could drag me into a world where other kinds of games were possible. Hope lit my heart.
We slowed at certain points when we spotted another one of the Folk. This far from the camp of the Court of Teeth, the soldiers we were avoiding belonged to Elfhame. That did little to reassure me, though. No harm would come to Oak at their hands, but they might well lock me up in their dungeons or take me to their Tower of Forgetting.
At the palace, we passed our first set of guards. They bowed to Oak, and if they were surprised to see him with another child trailing a piece of dirty rope, they kept it to themselves. The palace of Elfhame was a grassy hill, set with windows. Inside, there were stone walls, occasionally covered in plaster or packed earth. Nothing like the cold, carved ice chambers of the Citadel. We climbed one flight of stairs, and then another, when a knight stepped out in front of us.
She was dressed all in green, with armor cleverly shaped into leaves. Celery-colored hair was pulled back from an angular, insect-like face.
“Prince,” said the knight. “Your lady mother seeks you. She wanted to be sure you were safe.”
Oak nodded stiffly. “You may tell her I’ve returned.”
“And where ought I say you were . . . ?” The knight eyed me and then the stolen sword. I feared I saw a flash of recognition in her eyes.
“Tell her that I’m well,” the prince said, seeming to deliberately misunderstand her.
“But by what name ought I call—” the knight began, attempting to interrogate him and be deferential to his position all at once.
Oak seemed to have come to the end of his patience.
“Call us whatever you like!” he interrupted her to say. Then he grabbed my hand again, and we hurried up the stairs and into his room, where we slammed the door. We collapsed against it.
He was grinning, and looking at him, I had the strangest urge to laugh.
The room was large and painted a bright white. A round window let in light from the lamps outside. I heard strains of music, probably from the banquet, which was sure to start soon. A bed sat along one wall, topped with a velvet coverlet. A painting hung above it, of deer eating apples in a forest.
“This is your room?” I asked. Nothing about it spoke of him, except for a few paperback books on a small table and playing cards scattered beside an armchair.
He nodded but seemed a bit cautious about it. “I’ve only just gotten back to the isles. I was staying in the mortal world with one of my sisters. Like I told you last night.”
That wasn’t exactly what he’d said. I had thought he’d visited the place, not that he’d lived there and definitely not so recently.
I looked out the window. He had a view over the woods and to the sea beyond, the dark water rippling in the moonlight. “Are you going back?” I asked.
“I guess.” He knelt and opened a dresser drawer to reveal a few games and some toy bricks. “We couldn’t bring much with us.”
I supposed he wouldn’t be sure of anything, what with the unlikelihood of his sister keeping her crown, with so many forces conspiring against her.
“You have Uno,” I said, picking up the card game and staring at it as though it was the relic of some fallen city.
He grinned, delighted at my recognizing it. “And Nine Men’s Morris, Sorry!, and Monopoly, but that takes forever.”
“I’ve played some of those.” I felt shy now that we were in the palace, his territory. I wondered how long he would let me stay.
“You pick one,” he said. “I am going to see what I can swipe from the kitchens. The cooks ought to have plenty to spare, considering how much food they made for tonight.”
After he left, I reverently took the Sorry! game out of its box, sliding my fingers over the plastic pieces. I thought about playing with my unfamily one night when Rebecca sent me to Start three times in a row and teased me about it, back before I learned how much there really was to lose. I’d cried, and my unfather had told Rebecca that it was as important to be a good winner as a good loser.
I wanted Oak to give me an opportunity to be a good winner.
When he returned, it was with a whole pie and a pitcher of cream. He’d forgotten spoons and plates and cups, so we had to scoop handfuls of blueberry filling and crust into our mouths and drink from the jug. We stained our fingers and then the edges of the game cards.
So lost in the joy of that moment, I didn’t think of danger until the latch of the door turned. I was barely able to roll underneath Oak’s bed, putting my sticky, stained fingers over my mouth, before Oriana came into the room.
I tried to remain as still as possible. Madoc’s wife had camped with us when we were in the north and would know me instantly if she saw me.
For a moment, I even considered throwing myself on her mercy. I might have made a useful hostage. If Oriana turned me over to the High Queen, she might not be cruel. Certainly, I had heard no rumors of her being awful in that way.
But if there were to be a truce, then I would be handed back to Lord Jarel and Lady Nore. The High Queen would want to give them all the easy things they asked for so that she’d have half a chance at denying them the hard ones.
Moreover, I wasn’t entirely sure whose side Oriana was on.
“Where were you?” she asked Oak, voice sharp. “Is this what Vivi and that Heather girl let you get up to in the mortal world? Running off without telling anyone?”
“Go away,” Oak said.
“The guards said you had someone with you. And there’s a rumor that monster child from the Court of Teeth is missing.”
He gave her a bored look.
“You are not to go near her alone.”
“I am the prince,” he said. “I can do whatever I like.”
Oriana looked momentarily surprised, then hurt. “I left Madoc’s side for you.”
“So what?” He didn’t appear at all sorry. “I don’t have to listen to you or do what you say. And I don’t have to tell you anything.”
I expected her to slap him or call the guards to do it for her, but then I realized the guards would follow the prince’s commands over those of Lady Oriana. He was the one his sisters loved and they had all the power now.
But I could not have predicted how his mother went to him and touched his forehead, fingers pushing back his dark gold hair from his horns. “I know,” she said. “I cannot hope for one side to win, either. I used to wish that Madoc never went looking for those girls, and now all I wish is that we could be together again as we once were.”
Despite what he’d told her, Oak leaned his head against her hand and closed his eyes. In that moment, I understood how little I knew about any of them. But I recognized love, and I envied the brush of her hands through his hair.
She sighed. “Stay in your room tonight, if not because I ask you, then because the banquet will be dull and your sister cannot handle one more distraction.”
With a kiss upon his brow, she left.
The closing of the door recalled me to the precariousness of my position. I needed to find a way to persuade Oak to keep me in the palace. A reason for him to stand up to his mother and sisters in my behalf. I was certain I knew the mortal games better than he did, even if he’d been in the mortal world more recently, and moreover, I knew how to cheat at them. I could count the number of blueberry stains, could shuffle so that the first few cards most benefited me. Rebecca used to do that all the time.
“Let’s play Go Fish,” I said.
He appeared relieved that I didn’t ask him questions about his mother, like why he was upset with her or why she’d been kind despite it. I wondered again if he’d been looking for Madoc when he found me the night before.
I began to shuffle the cards and talked as I did so he wouldn’t notice my hands. “What else was there in the kitchens?”
He frowned a little, and it made me nervous until I realized he was just concentrating. “Pheasant,” he said. “Acorn cakes. Oh, and I think I have Ring Pops somewhere here, from trick-or-treating. I went as myself.”
There was something horrifying about that, but some part of me wished I could have done it, too.
I dealt to him from the bottom of the deck and to myself from the top, where I’d been careful to put plenty of matches. He won once anyway. But I won twice.
He let me hide under his bed that day, and the next, after I learned that there hadn’t ever been a chance at peace, that the Court of Teeth had lost the war, and that Lord Jarel, my father, was dead.
That was the first time in over a year that I slept through the night and deep into the afternoon without waking.
I will always be grateful for that, even after guards dragged me out of his room three days later in chains. Even after the High Queen sent me away from Elfhame, and Oak said not a single word to stop her.
