Hyacinthe’s eyes widen, and Oak is very afraid that he is about to lose time again.

  He lets the blade drop.

  They stare at each other.

  Oak can feel the pulse of his blood, that part of him that’s eager for a real fight, that wants to stop thinking, stop feeling, stop doing anything but make the cold calculations of combat. His awareness of himself flickers like a light, warning that it’s about to cut out and welcome in the dark.

  “Well,” says a voice from behind the prince. “This is not at all what I expected to find when I went looking for both of you.”

  He whirls to see Tiernan standing there, sword drawn.

  A flush creeps up Hyacinthe’s neck. “You,” he says.

  “Me,” says Tiernan.

  “Be flattered.” Oak wipes blood off his chin. “I think we were fighting over you.”

  Tiernan looks at Hyacinthe with frightening coldness. “Striking the heir to Elfhame is treason.”

  “Good thing I am already well known to be a traitor,” Hyacinthe growls. “Allow me to remind you, however. This is my Citadel. I am in charge of the guard here. I am the one who enforces Wren’s will.”

  Tiernan bristles. “And I am responsible for the prince’s well-being, no matter where we are.”

  Hyacinthe sneers. “And yet you abandoned him.”

  Tiernan’s jaw is tight with the force of his restraint. “I assume you have no objections to the prince finding his own way back to his rooms. We can handle what is between us without him.”

  Hyacinthe glares at Oak, perhaps thinking of Wren ordering him to make sure the prince didn’t wind up wandering the Citadel again.

  “I’ll be good,” Oak says, heading up the stairs before Hyacinthe decides to stop him.

  When he glances back, Tiernan and Hyacinthe are still staring at each other with painful suspicion, in a standoff that he doesn’t think either of them knows how to end.

  Oak climbs two floors before he stops and listens. If he hears the clang of metal on metal, he’s going back. He must have missed something, because Hyacinthe speaks as though replying to Tiernan.

  “And where am I in this reckoning?” Hyacinthe asks.

  “Three times I put aside my duty for you,” Tiernan says, as angry as Oak has ever heard him. “And three times you spurned it. Once, when I went to you in the prisons before you were to be judged for following Madoc. Do you remember? I promised that were you sentenced to death, I would find a way to get you out, no matter the cost. Second, when I persuaded the prince, my charge, to use his power to mitigate the curse you wouldn’t even have had if you had simply repented your betrayal of the crown. And let’s not forget the third, when I pleaded for you to wear the bridle instead of being put to death for an attempted assassination. Do not ask me to do so again.”

  “I wronged you,” Hyacinthe says. Oak shifts on the stairs so he can see just a bit of him—his shoulders are slumped. “You have put aside your duty more than I have put aside my anger. But I—”

  “You will never be satisfied,” Tiernan snaps. “Joining Madoc’s falcons and turning on Elfhame, spitting on mercy, blaming Cardan and Oak and Oak’s dead mother and everyone except your father.

  “No vengeance will ever be enough, because you want to punish his murderer, but he died by his own hand. You refuse to hate him, so you hate everyone else, including yourself.”

  Tiernan didn’t raise his voice, but Hyacinthe makes a sound as though struck.

  “Including me,” says Tiernan.

  “Not you,” Hyacinthe says.

  “You didn’t punish me for being like him, for guarding her son? You didn’t hate me for that?”

  “I believed I was doomed to lose you,” Hyacinthe says, voice so soft that Oak can barely hear it.

  For a long moment, they are quiet.

  It seems unlikely they are going to break into violence. Oak should go up the rest of the stairs. He doesn’t want to invade their privacy more than he already has. He needs to go slowly, though, so they don’t hear his hooves.

  “Joy is never guaranteed,” Tiernan says, his voice gentle. “But you can wed yourself to pain. I suppose, at least in that, there is no chance of surprise.”

  Oak winces at those words. Wed yourself to pain.

  “Why would you want me after all I have done?” Hyacinthe asks, anguished.

  “Why does anyone want anyone else?” Tiernan answers. “We do not love because people deserve it—nor would I want to be loved because I was the most deserving of some list of candidates. I want to be loved for my worst self as well as my best. I want to be forgiven my flaws.”

  “I find it harder to forgive your virtues,” Hyacinthe tells him, a smile in his voice.

  And then Oak is up the stairs far enough to be unable to hear the rest. Which is good, because he hopes it involves a lot of kissing.

  When Oak was a child, he came down with fevers that laid him up for weeks. He would thrash in bed, sweating or shivering. Servants would come and press cold cloths to his brow or put him in baths stinking with herbs. Sometimes Oriana would sit with him, or one of his sisters would come and read.

  Once, when he was five, he opened his eyes to see Madoc in the doorway, regarding him with an odd, evaluating expression on his face.

  Am I going to die? he asked.

  Madoc was startled out of whatever he was thinking, but there was still something grim in the set of his mouth. He walked to the bed and placed his large hand on Oak’s brow, ignoring his small horns. No, my boy, he said seriously. Your fate is to cheat death like the little scamp you are.

  And because Madoc could not lie, Oak was comforted and fell back to sleep. The fever must have broken that night, because when he woke, he was well again and ready for mischief.

  This morning, Oak feels like a scamp who’s cheated death again.

  Waking to warmth and softness is such a delicious luxury that Oak’s burns and bruises cannot dent the pleasure of it. There is a taste on his tongue that is somehow the flavor of sleep itself, as though he went so deep into the land of dreams that he brought some of it back with him.

  He looks at his little finger, bare now, and smiles up at the ice ceiling.

  There is a knock on the door, shaking him out of his thoughts. Before he realizes he’s not wearing much in the way of clothes, Fernwaif bustles in with a tray and a pitcher. She’s got on a brown homespun dress and an apron, her hair pulled back in a kerchief.

  “Still abed?” she asks, plopping down the tray on his coverlets. It contains a teapot and cup, along with a plate of black bread, butter, and jam. “You’re leaving with the tide.”

  The prince feels oddly self-conscious at sleeping late, although lounging around at all hours is part of the self-indulgent persona he’s played for years. He’s not sure why that role feels so suffocating this morning, but it does.

  “We’re leaving today?” He pushes his back against the headboard so he can sit upright.

  Fernwaif gives a little laugh as she pours water into a bowl on a washing stand. “Will you miss us when you’re in the High Court?”

  Oak will not miss the endless boredom and despair of his prison cell, or the sound of cold wind howling through trees, but it occurs to him that while he’s glad to be headed home, being with Wren there will be complicated in new ways. The High Court is a place full of intrigues and ambition. Once Oak returns, he will be at the swirling center of at least one conspiracy. He has no idea if it will even be possible to play the feckless, merry courtier while winning Wren’s goodwill.

  And he is even less sure that’s who he wants to be.

  “Fate may bring me again to these shores,” Oak says.

  “My sister and I will look forward to tales of the great feasts and dances,” Fernwaif says, looking wistful. “And how you honored our lady.”

  Oak can only imagine what Wren might say if somehow she found herself having to actually exchange vows with him. I pledge my troth to thee and promise to turn thy guts inside out if you deceive. Oh yes, this is going well.

  What was it that Hyacinthe said? You deceive as easily as you breathe and with as little thought. Oak very much hopes that’s not true.

  He doesn’t hear the turn of the lock as Fernwaif leaves. He supposes there’s no point in restricting his movements now, when they’re planning on his leaving.

  Rising, Oak splashes his face with the water from the washing stand, slicking back his hair. He manages to pull on Lord Jarel’s pants before heavy footsteps on the stairs herald the appearance of five knights. To his surprise, they wear the livery of Elfhame—the crest of the Greenbriar line imprinted on their armor with its crown, tree, and grasping roots.

  “Your Highness,” one says, and Oak feels disoriented at the sound of his title, spoken without hostility. “Grima Mog sent us. Our commander wishes you to know that the boat awaits you and that we will accompany you on your return to the isles.”

  They have more appropriate garments for him, too—a green cloak embroidered in gold, heavy gloves, and a woolen tunic and trousers.

  “Do you have anything here you wish us to pack?” one of the knights asks. She has eyes like those of a frog, gold-flecked and wide.

  “I seem to have… misplaced my armor and my sword,” Oak admits.

  No one questions the strangeness of that. No one questions him at all. A knight with sharply pointed ears and moonlight-colored hair passes over his own curved blade—a cutlass—along with its sheath.

  “We can find some armor for you among our company,” the knight says.

  “That’s not necessary,” Oak says, feeling very self-conscious. They are looking at him as though he has endured a terrible trial, even though they must know he’s betrothed. “You really ought to keep your sword.”

  “Return it to me once you’ve found one better,” says the knight, crossing to the door. “We will await you in the hall.”

  Quickly, the prince changes clothes. The fabric carries the scent of the air that blew across the line where it was hung to dry—sweetgrass and the salty tang of the ocean. Breathing it in fills him with homesickness.

  Outside the Citadel, more soldiers of Elfhame wait, bundled up in heavily padded and fur-trimmed armor, their cloaks whipping behind them. They glare across the snow at the former falcons.

  One of them holds Damsel Fly’s reins. His horse’s legs are wrapped against the snow, and a blanket hangs over her back. When the prince draws close, she frisks up to him, butting her head against his shoulder.

  “Damsel!” Oak exclaims, stroking his hand over his horse’s neck. “Was there a messenger from the Citadel with her?”

  The soldier looks surprised to be asked for information. “Your Highness, I believe so. He rode into the camp yesterday. We recognized your steed.”

  “Where is that messenger now?” Valen became violent when Oak stopped actively using enchantment against him—but Valen hated Oak. Hopefully Daggry felt their transaction benefited them both. Hopefully Daggry was well on his way back to the lover he sacrificed so many years to save.

  “I’m not sure—” the soldier begins.

  From inside the stable comes the sounding of a horn, and he sees an open-topped carriage roll out, pulled by elk. It is all of black wood, looking as though it wasn’t painted that way but scorched instead. The wheels are as tall as one of the soldiers standing beside it, the spokes slender as spun sugar. A groom perches on the back, all in white with a mask in the shape of a falcon, the leather twisting like branches over his eyebrows. A similarly masked driver—this one wearing the mask of a wren—sits in the front, urging the elk on with a whip.

  They stop and open the door to the carriage, standing at attention.

  Wren walks from the Citadel, unaccompanied by guards or ladies-in-waiting. Her gown is all black, and the toothlike, obsidian crown of the Court of Teeth rests on her head. Her feet are bare—perhaps to show that the cold cannot harm her or because she prefers it. After all, she went barefoot for many years in the woods.

  She allows her groom to hand her into the carriage, where she sits, back straight. Her blue skin is the color of the clear sky. Her hair blows in a wild nimbus around her face, and her gown billows, making her seem elemental. One of the Folk of the Air.

  Wren’s gaze goes to him once, then darts away.

  The rest of Wren’s retinue assembles around her. Hyacinthe rides a large, shaggy deer, which seems as though it will be far better in picking its way through the snow than the delicate hooves of Oak’s faerie horse. Half a dozen falcons accompany him, wearing livery all of a shimmering gray. Bogdana rides a bear, which lumbers around, unnerving everyone.

  Tiernan rides up to where Oak has mounted Damsel Fly. His jaw is tight with tension. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  Randalin arrives a moment later, the Ghost beside him.

  “Your betrothed really is remarkable,” the Minister of Keys says. “Do you know she has two ancient troll kings swearing fealty to her?”

  “I certainly do,” Oak says.

  “It would be better for everyone if we move now,” says the Ghost.

  “I suppose,” Randalin says with a long-suffering sigh, somehow oblivious to the danger all around him. “We were in such a hurry to march here, and now we’re in such a hurry to leave. I personally would be interested in sampling local dishes.”

  “The kitchens are somewhat understaffed,” Oak says.

  “I am going to check on the queen’s party,” the Ghost says, then rides off in that direction.

  “When did the knights arrive?” Oak asks Tiernan, gesturing toward the Folk swarming around the castle.

  “This morning. Courtesy of Grima Mog. To escort us to the boat,” Tiernan says mildly since Randalin is beside them.

  Oak nods, taking that in.

  The horn blows again, and they begin to move.

  It takes them more than an hour to arrive at the rough-hewn ice wall built by the troll kings. As they draw closer, Oak is awed by the sheer scale of it. It towers over them as they ride into the gap.

  And then past the army of Elfhame.

  Fires dot the landscape, burning where soldiers crowd around them for warmth. Several knights sit alone on makeshift stools, polishing weapons, while larger groups gather to drink barley tea and smoke pipes. Although a few call out cheerfully at the sight of Oak, he notes something ugly in their gaze when they see Wren’s carriage.

  A loud sound like a clang of metal on metal rings across the snow, and the group comes to an abrupt halt. Bogdana’s bear growls. Wren’s guards crowd around her carriage, hands on their weapons. She says something to them, low. The air is thick with the threat of violence.

  Grima Mog and a group of armored soldiers walk toward the procession. Oak spurs Damsel Fly toward the grand general, his heart beating hard.

  Do they mean to betray Wren? Make a captive of her? If they try, he’ll invoke his authority as Cardan’s heir. He will find out the extent of all his powers. He will do something.

  “Greetings, Prince Oak,” says Grima Mog. She wears a hat, clotted and black with blood. Armor covers the rest of her, and she has a massive, two-handed sword strapped to her back. She passes a scroll up into his hands. It’s sealed with a ribbon and wax. “This explains to the High King and Queen that we will remain here until a treaty is signed.”

  The entire army, camped in the cold just beyond the wall, waiting and planning.

  “Word will come soon,” Oak promises.

  Grima Mog gives a half smile, lower canine escaping her lip. “Waiting is dull business. You wouldn’t want us to grow restless.”

  Then, taking a step back, Grima Mog gives a signal. Her people fall back. The soldiers of Elfhame who were part of Oak’s procession begin to move again. The wheels of Wren’s carriage roll forward. The bear plods on.

  Oak is immensely relieved to leave the army behind.

  Next, they draw close to the Stone Forest, the trees hanging heavy with their strange blue fruit. Wind whistles through branches, making an eerie tune.

  The Ghost rides up to Oak, reining in his horse. “I wasn’t sure how to interpret your note,” the spy says quietly.

  “I meant it quite literally,” Oak returns.

  He wrote it in haste, sitting on the floor of the storage room, with Daggry watching him. Certainly it could have been better, but he thought it was quite clear:

  Things are not as they seem. Call off the battle. Send someone to the Citadel, and I will explain.

  “Although I admit not to fully understanding how you accomplished what you did,” the Ghost says, “I am impressed.”

  Oak frowns, not liking what the spy is implying. That Oak’s offer of marriage is insincere, a lure. That the prince has set and sprung a trap. Oak doesn’t want Wren cast in the role of their enemy, nor that of a mark.

  “When one is charmed,” the prince says, “it’s easy to be charming.”

  “You worried your sisters,” the Ghost counters.

  Oak notes the plural. The spy has been close to Jude’s twin, Taryn, for years, leaving how close as a matter of speculation among the family.

  “They ought to recall what they were doing when they were my age,” Oak says. Jude has been worrying the rest of them for years.

  The spy gives a half smile. “Perhaps that’s what stopped the High Queen from hanging Tiernan up by his toes for going along with your plan instead of stopping you.”

  No wonder Tiernan was so stiff with Oak. He must have been interrogated, insulted. “Perhaps she remembered that if Tiernan had stopped me, that would have meant letting our father die.”

  The Ghost sighs, and neither of them speaks for the rest of the ride to the shore.

  A ship made of pale wood is anchored out past the black stones and shallow waters of the beach. Long and slender, with both bow and stern tapered to points that curl like the stems of leaves, she is a proud ship. Two masts rise from her deck, and around their bases, Oak can see puddles of the white sails that will be hoisted to catch the wind. The name Moonskimmer is emblazoned along the side in carved letters.