And from the other direction, he sees the troll kings, stepping through the snow toward them. Their skin is the deep gray of granite, riddled with what appear to be cracks and fissures. Their faces look more sculpted than alive, even as their expressions shift. One has a beard, while the other’s face is bare. Both wear old and tattered scale armor, marbled with tarnish. Both have circlets on their brows of rough, dark gold. One has a club made from most of a fir tree attached to a leather belt that must have been sewn from the whole hides of several bears.

  Oak draws Damsel Fly up short. The others stop as well; even Wren’s carriage skids to a halt, the elk pawing at the ground and shaking their heads as though wishing they could pull free from their harnesses.

  Wren hops down fearlessly, her bare feet in the snow.

  Alone, she walks toward them. Her dress furls around her as the wind whips at her hair.

  Oak slides off his horse, sinking his nails into the palm of his hand. He wants to run after Wren even though he knows this would be a terrible moment to undermine her authority. Still, it’s hard to watch her, small and alone, standing before these massive, ancient beings.

  One begins to speak in an old tongue. Oak sort of learned it in the palace school, but only ever as a language used to read equally old books. No one spoke it conversationally. And it turned out his instructor’s pronunciations were waaaaay off.

  The prince is able to understand only the vaguest gist. They promise to watch over her lands until she returns. They agree to stay clear of the army but don’t seem to like the idea. Oak isn’t sure how Wren understands them—perhaps Mellith knew their speech—but she clearly does.

  “We entrust these lands to you while we are away,” she says. “And if I do not return, make war in my name.”

  Both troll kings sink to one knee and bow their heads to her. A deeper hush falls over the Folk standing witness. Even Randalin looks more awed than delighted.

  Wren touches the hand of each king, and they rise at the press of her fingers.

  Then she walks back, barefoot, to her carriage. Halfway there, she glances at Oak. He gives her a smile, a small one because he’s still a bit stunned. She doesn’t return it.

  The procession moves on to the coastline. Oak rides alone and speaks to no one.

  At the edge of the black rocks, where the waves crash, Tiernan dismounts. He says something to the Ghost, who signals to the ship with a waved hand. They cast off a rowboat to ferry the passengers aboard in groups.

  “You should head over first, Your Highness,” the Ghost says.

  Oak hesitates, then shakes his head. “Let the queen’s party go.”

  Tiernan sighs with annoyance at what he no doubt sees as Oak’s objection to reasonable security. Oak is aware that it seems he’s just being contrary, but he refuses to give them an opportunity to sail once he’s aboard, leaving Wren to Elfhame’s army.

  The Ghost gestures toward Hyacinthe, indicating Wren’s people should take precedence.

  It’s a strange feeling, after being in captivity for weeks, to realize that no one here has the authority to make him do anything. People have been thrusting power at Oak since the beginning of Cardan’s rule, and he’s been avoiding it for just as long. He wonders if, after being stripped of so many choices, he has finally grown a taste for it.

  Hyacinthe hands Wren into the boat. Her masked driver stays with the coach, though the footman climbs down and joins her, taking a seat in the front. The rest of her soldiers remain on the rocks as the crewperson who rowed to shore casts off again.

  Oak watches in puzzlement. Surely, she isn’t going with that few attendants?

  The storm hag dismounts from her bear. With a twist of her head, she transforms herself into a massive vulture. Giving a screech, she flies out to the ship, alighting atop the mast. And then, as if responding to some unseen signal, Wren’s soldiers become falcons. They soar up into the sky, leaving the sound of feathered wings echoing all around Oak.

  “What has she done?” Tiernan mutters.

  Oh, no one in Elfhame is going to like this. Wren didn’t just break the curse on the traitors; she turned it into a boon. She gave them the ability to turn into their cursed form at will.

  The falcons fly to the ship, landing on the boom, where, one by one, they drop to the deck as Folk again.

  Oak wonders if Hyacinthe can do that. He’s in a boat, so perhaps not. She broke his curse before she discovered the extent of her power.

  When the rowboat returns, Oak gets in with half the knights of Elfhame accompanying him. At the ship, sailors help him aboard, then bow low. The captain introduces himself—he is a wizened man with wild white hair and skin the color of rich clay.

  “Welcome, Your Highness. We’re all so glad the rescue was successful.”

  “I wasn’t precisely saved,” Oak says.

  The captain glances in Wren’s direction, a flicker of unease in his face. “Yes, we understand.”

  As the captain moves to greet the Minister of Keys, Oak admits to himself that went poorly.

  Then there is a great deal of negotiation over accommodations and storage, most of which the prince ignores. As the billowing white sails marked with the sigil of Elfhame rise, and the ship steers out into the sea, his heart speeds with the thought of going home.

  And with what he will find when he gets there.

  He stopped a war—or at least paused one. And yet, he is aware that bringing Wren into the heart of Elfhame puts the people there—people he loves—at risk. At the same time, spiriting Wren from her stronghold and separating her from the largest part of her defenders put her in an equally vulnerable position.

  Wren knows that. And so does Jude. He must be very careful to keep either of them from feeling they must act on that knowledge.

  He understands—or at least thinks he does—why Wren went along with his plan. She used up a lot of her power freeing the troll kings from their curse, and an engagement with the army of Elfhame, an army that could continuously replenish soldiers from the lower Courts, would be nearly impossible to win. After all, that’s what he’d been counting on when he put his ring on her finger.

  And after some consideration, he believes he also understands why Bogdana wants them to go to Elfhame. She hates the Greenbriars, hates the High Court, and yet has long desired to see her daughter on the throne. If she was willing to trade a portion of her own power for Mellith to be Mab’s heir, then as much as she desires revenge, she must also long for a do-over. If Wren marries Oak, she will be in line to be High Queen. That has to have some appeal.

  And if not, Cardan will be in Bogdana’s sights. She will have gotten closer to him than would be possible otherwise.

  And Wren herself? He suspects she’s venturing to the High Court because she wants the Court of Teeth made officially hers. But, of course, he hopes that some part of it has to do with him. He hopes that some part of her wants to see where this goes. The last time they were together in the Court of Elfhame, they’d been children. He hadn’t been able to do much for her. Neither of them is a child now, and he can do better. He can show her he cares about her. And he can show her some fun.

  Of course, Oak will have to keep his family from making things extra complicated. Jude will want to punish Wren for holding Oak captive. Cardan will probably still be a bit resentful if he thinks Oak is plotting against him. Cardan may even think Wren is part of a new plot.

  And so Oak needs to show his loyalty to a lot of different people, keep Bogdana from hurting anyone, and get a treaty signed before a battle breaks out in the heart of Elfhame. Not to mention he has to do that while proving to Wren he isn’t out for revenge—and that if she forgives him, he won’t see it as a chance to hurt her.

  Well, no time like the present to begin. Oak moves across the deck toward her. Two falcons step in his way.

  “She is my betrothed,” Oak says, as though there is merely some misunderstanding.

  “You ought to be her prisoner,” says one, low enough that he will not be overheard by the Elfhame contingent.

  “Both those things can be true,” Oak tells him.

  Wren frowns at the guards and the prince both. “I will receive him. I wish to hear what he has to say.”

  Her guards step away, but not far enough to be out of earshot.

  Oak smiles and attempts to find a tone to communicate his sincerity. “My lady, I wished to tell you how glad I was that you decided to accept my suit and return to Elfhame by my side. I hope you do not begrudge too greatly the manner in which the proposal was given.”

  “Should I?” she asks.

  “You might consider it romantic,” he suggests, but he knows what she really thinks—that this is a game. And should he claim otherwise, she will be insulted that he thinks her such a poor opponent as to fall for that.

  And it is not as though there is no strategy behind his offer, but he feels more like a hopelessly besotted ninny than a master strategist. He’d marry her, and happily.

  She gives him a chilly little smile. “However I might feel, I will keep my word.”

  Though you may not is heavily implied.

  “We need not forever be at daggers drawn,” he says, and hopes she will believe him. “To that end, I did hope that Bogdana would not be accompanying us, since she wants to murder the High King—and me. I think that could complicate our visit.”

  To his surprise, Wren glances up at the vulture in frustration. “Yes,” she says. “I told her to stay behind, but apparently I wasn’t clear enough. That’s why she’s hiding up there. If she came down, I could order her to go home.”

  “She can’t hide from you forever,” Oak says.

  The corners of Wren’s mouth twitch. “What do you think we will find when we arrive in Elfhame?”

  An excellent question. “The High King and Queen will throw us some sort of party. But I suppose they may have a few concerns for me to allay first.”

  Her lip lifts, showing off sharp teeth. “A polite way of putting it. But you are ever charming.”

  “Am I?” he asks.

  “Like a cat lazing in the sun. No one expects it to suddenly bite.”

  “I am not the one fond of biting,” he says, and is gratified when she blushes, the pink coming up bright enough to show through the pale blue of her skin.

  Not waiting to be dismissed, he takes that victory, makes a shallow bow, and departs, heading in the direction of Tiernan.

  Her guards watch him go with angry looks. They probably blame him for Valen. Perhaps they blame him for all the things that Valen blamed him for. Might there really be some day that he and Wren were not at daggers drawn? He believed it enough to say it, but he was an eternal optimist.

  “You’ve got a bruise on your face,” Tiernan says.

  Oak reaches up self-consciously and prods around until he finds it, to the left of his mouth. It joins the bump on his head and the burns from the iron knife hidden by his collar. He’s a mess.

  “How is my father?” he asks.

  “Allowed back into Elfhame, just as he planned,” Tiernan says. “Giving your sister lots of unsolicited advice.”

  Just because I’m bad doesn’t mean the advice is. That’s what Madoc told Wren, although Oak isn’t so sure he agrees on that point. Still, his father must be doing well, to be behaving like himself. That is the main thing.

  He lets out a sigh of relief, his gaze going to the horizon, to the waves. His mind wanders to the last time they crossed this water and how Loana tried to distract him with a kiss and then drag him down to the watery depths. That was the second time she tried to drown him.

  Drown me once, shame on me… He decides he doesn’t like the direction his thoughts are taking him. Nor does he like acknowledging that he has a particular sort of taste for paramours—the more dangerous, the better.

  “Do you still love Hyacinthe?” the prince asks.

  Tiernan looks at him in surprise. It isn’t that they never talk about their feelings, but Oak supposes it isn’t the second thing Tiernan expected him to ask about.

  Or perhaps it isn’t something that Tiernan is prepared to think too closely on, because he shrugs. When Oak does not retract the question, Tiernan shakes his head, as though at the impossibility of answering. Then, finally, he gives in and speaks. “In ballads, love is a disease, an affliction. You contract it as a mortal might contract one of their viruses. Perhaps a touch of hands or a brush of lips, and then it is as though your whole body is fevered and fighting it. But there’s no way to prevent it from running its course.”

  “That’s a remarkably poetic and profoundly awful view of love,” Oak says.

  Tiernan looks back at the sea. “I was never in love before, so all I had were ballads to go by.”

  Oak is silent, thinking of all the times he thought himself to be in love. “Never?”

  Tiernan gives a soft huff of breath. “I had lovers, but that’s not the same thing.”

  Oak thinks about how to name what he feels about Wren. He does not wish to write her ridiculous poems as he did for so many of the people with whom he thought he was in love, except that he does wish to make her laugh. He does not want to give her enormous speeches or to make grand, empty gestures; he does not want to give her the pantomime of love. He is starting to suspect, however, that pantomime is all he knows.

  “But…,” Tiernan says, and hesitates again, running a hand through his short blackberry hair. “What I feel is not like the ballads.”

  “Not an affliction, then?” Oak raises an eyebrow. “No fever?”

  Tiernan gives him an exasperated look—one with which the prince is very familiar. “It is more the feeling that there is a part of me I have left somewhere and I am always looking for.”

  “So he’s like a missing phone?”

  “Someone ought to pitch you into the sea,” Tiernan says, but he has a small smile in the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t seem like someone who would like being teased. His grimness is what often allows him to be mistaken for a knight, despite his training as a spy. But he does like it.

  “I think he’s rather desperately in love with you,” Oak says. “I think that’s why he was punching me in the mouth.”

  When Tiernan sighs and looks out at the sea, Oak follows his example and is silent.

  Three days, they are supposed to spend at sea. Three days before they land on the isles and Oak must face his family again.

  As the prince drowses in a hammock with the stars far above him on the first night, he hears Randalin boasting loudly that of course he was willing to give up his private cabin to Wren, as a queen needed privacy for travel, and that he hardly minded the hardship. Of course, she nearly persuaded him not to inconvenience himself, which was quite gracious of her. And she insisted on keeping him there for several hours to eat, drink, and speak with her of the Shifting Isles and his own loyalty to the prince, whereupon she praised him greatly, one might even say excessively.

  Oak is certain that her evening was stultifyingly dull and yet he can’t help wishing he’d been there, to share a glance over the obsequious councilor’s head, to watch her smother her smiles at his puffery. He craves her smiles. The shine of her eyes when she is trying to hold back laughter.

  He is no longer locked in a cell, no longer barred from seeing her. He may go to the door of the room where she is resting and bang on it until she opens up. But somehow knowing that he can and being afraid he wouldn’t be welcome make her seem even farther away.

  And so he lies there, listening to Randalin going on and on about his own consequence. The councilor falls silent only after the Ghost throws a balled-up sock at him.

  That reprieve lasts only the night.

  Invigorated by the success of their mission and certain of his elevated status with Wren, Randalin spends much of the second day trying to talk everyone into a version of the story where he can take credit for brokering peace. Maybe even for arranging a marriage with Oak.

  “Lady Suren just needed a little guidance. I really see the potential in her to be one of our great leaders, like a queen of old,” he is saying to the captain of the ship as Oak passes.

  The prince’s gaze goes to Wren, standing at the prow. She wears a plain dress the color of bone, dotted with sea spray, its skirts fluttering around her. Her hair is blown back from her face, and she bites her lower lip as she contemplates the horizon, her eyes darker and more fathomless than the ocean.

  Above them, the sky is a deep, bright blue, and the wind is good, filling the sails.

  “I told Jude,” Randalin goes on. “She proposed violent solutions, but you know mortals, and her in particular—no patience. I never supported her elevation. Neither kith nor kin to us.”

  Oak sets his jaw and reminds himself that nothing good will come of punching the councilor in his smug little horned face. Instead, the prince tries to concentrate on the feeling of the sun on his skin and the knowledge that things could have turned out much worse.

  Later that afternoon, when Oak is summoned to Wren’s cabin, he is particularly glad he didn’t hit anyone.

  The guard who leads him to her chambers isn’t one the prince knows, but he’s had enough experience of her falcons for just the uniform to put him on edge.

  Wren sits on a chair of white wood, beside a marble-topped side table and a settee upholstered in scarlet. Small, round windows high on the walls illuminate the space. A bed was built in to a corner, wood frame keeping the cushions from shifting with the swells, a half-open curtain for privacy. When he enters, she makes a movement with her hand and her guard leaves.

  Fancy, he thinks. I should work out a signal like that with Tiernan. Of course, he doubts Tiernan would leave if there was a gesture he could just ignore.

  “May I sit?” Oak asks.

  “Please,” she says, her fingers anxiously turning the ring he gave her. “I summoned you to talk about the dissolution of our engagement.”

  His heart sinks, but he keeps his voice light. “So soon? Shall we turn the ship around?” He settles himself grimly on the settee.