She gives a little sigh. “Too soon, yes, I agree. But we will have to break it off eventually. I understand what you did at the Citadel. You managed to keep a battle from happening and bloodshed at bay with your lies, and you managed to remove yourself from my clutches. It was nicely done.”

  “I can’t lie,” he objects.

  “You lived in the mortal world,” Wren says. “But you never had a mortal mother. Mine would have called that a lie of omission. But name it a trick or a deception, name it whatever you will. What matters is that this betrothal cannot continue too long or we shall be wed and you, tied to me forever.”

  “A terrible fate?” Oak inquires.

  She nods briskly, as though he’s finally understanding the seriousness of the problem. “I suggest that you allow your family to persuade you to put off the ceremony for months. I will agree, of course. I can conclude my visit to Elfhame and return north. You will strongly suggest that your sister give me what was once the Court of Teeth to rule.”

  “Is that what you want?” he asks.

  She looks down at her hands. “Once, I thought I might return to my mortal home, but I cannot imagine it now. How could they see me as that child, when I would frighten them, even without knowing the nature of my magic?”

  “They don’t have to see you as a child to care for you,” he says.

  “They would never love me as much as I want to be loved,” she tells him with painful honesty. “I will do well in the north. I am well suited to it.”

  “Do you—” he begins, not sure how to ask this question. “Do you remember much of being Mellith?”

  She starts to shake her head and then hesitates. “Some things.”

  “Do you remember Bogdana being your mother?”

  “I do,” she says, so softly he can barely hear it. “I remember believing she loved me. And I remember her giving me away.”

  “And the murder?” he asks.

  “I was so happy to see her,” she says, fingers going almost unconsciously to her throat. “I almost didn’t notice the knife.”

  For a moment, the sadness of the story robs him of speech. His own mother, Oriana, is so fiercely protective of him that he cannot imagine being pushed out on his own, among people who hate him enough to arrange his death. And yet, he recalls sitting at the end of his bed and hearing Vivi explain how it was a miracle Jude was alive after the way their father carved her up. And from the time he learned that he had a first father, he knew that person tried to kill him.

  Maybe he doesn’t understand how she feels exactly, but he understands that familial love isn’t guaranteed, and even when you have it, it doesn’t always keep you safe.

  Wren watches him with her fathomless eyes. “It seems as though it should change me, to have those memories, but I do not feel much changed.” She pauses. “Do I seem different?”

  He notes the careful way she’s holding herself. Stiff, her back upright. She seems wary, yet underneath there’s a hunger in her. A spark of desire she cannot mask, although whether it is for him or power, he cannot say.

  “You seem more like yourself than ever before,” he says.

  He can see her considering that but not misliking his words. “So we are agreed. We delay the exchange of vows. Your sister will have a reason to send me back north with a kingdom of my own, and we will let her believe that her plan to separate us has worked. You can take up with any number of courtiers to drive the point home. Drown whatever lingering feelings you have for me in a new love, or ten.” She says the last bit with some asperity.

  He puts a hand to his chest. “Have you no feelings to drown?”

  Wren looks down. “No,” she says. “Nothing I have would I ever want to give away.”

  After a dinner of kelp and cockles, which the cook serves up in wooden bowls with no spoons, the captain invites them to sit on the deck and tell tales, as is his crew’s tradition. Wren arrives with Hyacinthe by her side, settling some distance from the prince. When her gaze meets his, she tucks a long strand of hair behind her ear and gives him a hesitant smile. Her green eyes shine as one of the crew begins to speak.

  She loves a story. He remembers that, remembers their evenings around the fire as they traveled north. Remembers her talking about Bex, her mortal sister, and their games of pretend. Remembers how she laughed when he retold some of his own antics.

  The prince listens as crew members speak of far-off shores they’ve visited. One tells of an island with a queen who has the head and torso of a woman and the appendages of an enormous spider. Another, of a land so thick with magic that even the animals speak. A third, of their adventures with merfolk and how the captain wed a selkie without stealing its skin.

  “We avoid talking politics,” the captain qualifies with a puff on a long, thin pipe of carved bone.

  In a lull, the storm hag clears her throat.

  “I have a tale for you,” says Bogdana. “Once, there was a girl with an enchanted matchbook. Whenever she lit one—”

  “Is this a true story?” the Ghost interrupts.

  “Time will tell,” the storm hag answers, giving him a lethal look. “Now, as I was about to say—when this girl struck a match, a thing of her choosing was destroyed. This made all of those in power want her on their side, but she fought only for what she herself considered right.”

  Wren looks down at her hands, strands of hair falling to shield her face. Oak supposes there’s going to be a lesson in this, one that no one will like.

  “The more terrible the destruction, the more matches needed to be struck. And yet, each time the girl looked in the matchbook, there were at least a few new matches within. To have such vast power was a great burden for the girl, but she was ferocious and brave in addition to being wise, and shouldered her burden with grace.”

  Oak sees the way Hyacinthe is frowning at the storm hag, as though disagreeing with the idea that Wren’s “matches” are so easily replaced. When Oak thinks of the translucency of her skin, the hollowness beneath her cheekbones, he worries. But he believes that Bogdana very much wants to believe this is how Wren’s magic works.

  “Then the girl met a boy with a shining brow and an easy laugh.” The storm hag’s eyes narrow, as though in warning of what is to come. “And she was struck low by love. Though she ought to fear nothing, she feared the boy would be parted from her. Not wisdom, nor ferocity, nor bravery saved her from her own tender heart.”

  Ah, so this isn’t going to be about Wren’s magic. This is going to be about him. Great.

  “Now, our girl had many enemies, but none of those enemies could stand against her. With a single match, she caused castles to crumble. With a handful of matches, she burned whole armies to the ground. But in time the boy tired of that and persuaded her to put away her matchbook and fight no more. Instead, she would live with him in a cottage in the woods, where no one would know of her power. And though she ought to have known better, she was beguiled by him and did what he wished.”

  The ship goes quiet, the only sounds the slap of water against wood and the luff of the sails.

  “For some time they lived in what passed for happiness, and if the girl felt as though there was something missing, if she felt as though to be loved he must look through her and not at her, she pretended that away.”

  Oak opens his mouth to object and at the last moment bites his tongue. He would only make himself seem like a fool, and a guilty one at that, to argue with a story.

  “But in time, the girl was discovered by her enemies. They came for her together and caught her unawares, locked in an embrace with her beloved. Still, in her wisdom, she always kept her matchbook in a pocket of her dress. Under threat, she drew it out and struck the first match, and those who came for her fell back. The flames that consumed them consumed her cottage, too. Yet still more enemies came. Match after match was struck and fire raged all around her, but it was not enough. And so the girl struck all the remaining matches at once.”

  Oak glares at the storm hag, but she seems too swept up in her tale to even notice. Wren is plucking at a thread of her dress.

  “The armies were defeated and the land scorched black. The girl went up in flames with them. And the boy burned to cinders before he could pull free from her arms.”

  A respectful silence follows her final words. Then the captain clears his throat and calls for one of his crewmen to take up a fiddle and play a merry tune.

  As a few begin to clap along, Wren stands and moves toward her cabin.

  Oak catches up at her door, before her guards seem to have realized his intention. “Wait,” he says. “Can we speak?”

  She tilts her head and regards him for a long moment. “Come in.”

  One of her guards—Oak realizes, abruptly, that it’s Straun—clears his throat. “I can accompany you and make sure he doesn’t—”

  “There is no need,” she says, cutting him off.

  Straun attempts to keep the sting of her words from showing on his face. Oak almost feels sorry for him. Almost, except for the memory of his being party to the prince’s torture.

  Because of that, he gives Straun an enormous, irritating grin as he follows Wren across the threshold and into her room.

  Inside, he finds the chamber much as it was before, except that a few dresses have been spread out on her bed and a tray with tea things rests on the marble table.

  “Is that what your power is like?” Oak asks. “A book of matches.”

  Wren gives a soft laugh. “Is that truly why you’ve followed me? To ask that?”

  He smiles. “It’s hardly a surprise that a young man would want to spend time with his betrothed.”

  “Ah, so this is more playacting.” She moves across the floor gracefully, the pitch and roll of the ship not causing her a single stumble. Finding her way to the upholstered settee, she takes a seat, indicating with a gesture that he should take the chair across from her. A reversal of their positions the last time he visited this room.

  “I do wish to spend time with my betrothed,” he says, going to sit.

  She gives him a look of disdain, but her cheeks have a flush of pink on them. “My magic might be like the matches in the story, but I think it burns me, too. I just don’t know how much yet.”

  He appreciates her admitting that to him. “She’s going to want you to keep using it. If there’s one thing I took away from her story, it’s that.”

  “I do not plan on dancing to her tune,” Wren says. “Not ever again.”

  His father has managed to manipulate him cannily, without Oak ever once agreeing to a single thing that Madoc proposed out loud. “And yet you haven’t ordered her to go home.”

  “We’re far from shore,” Wren says with a sigh. “And she promised to be on her best behavior. Now, to be fair, since I told you about my magic, tell me about yours.”

  Oak raises his brows in surprise. “What do you want to know?”

  “Persuade me of something,” she says. “I want to understand how your power works. I want to know what it feels like.”

  “You want me to charm you?” This seems like a terrible idea. “That suggests a great deal more trust on your part than you’ve indicated you’re willing to extend to me.”

  She leans back on her cushions. “I want to see if I can break the spell.”

  He thinks of all the matches set ablaze. “Won’t it hurt you to do that?”

  “It should be a small thing,” she says. “And in return, you can obey an order.”

  “But I’m not wearing the bridle,” he protests, hoping that she isn’t going to ask him to put it on. He won’t, and if it’s a test, it’s one he’s going to fail.

  “No,” she says. “You’re not.”

  Willingly following a command seems interesting and not too dangerous. But he doesn’t know how to make his gancanagh magic tame. If he tells her what she most wants to hear and it is a distortion of the truth, what then? And if the words are ones he means, how will they ever seem true when they’ve first come from his mouth as persuasion?

  “Are you doing it?” Her body is slightly hunched as though against some kind of attack.

  “No, not yet,” he says with a surprised laugh. “I have to actually say something.”

  “You just did,” she protests, but she’s laughing a little, too. Her eyes glitter with mischief. She was right when she said they both loved games. “Just do it. I’m getting nervous.”

  “I’m going to try to persuade you to pick up that teacup,” he says, waving toward a clay vessel with a wide base and a little bit of liquid still at the bottom. It’s resting on the marble-topped table, and with all the rocking the boat has done as it goes over swells, he’s surprised it hasn’t slid to the floor already.

  “You’re not supposed to tell me,” she says, smiling. “Now you’ll never manage it.”

  He finds himself filled with a strange glee at the challenge. At the idea he could share this with her and it could be fun instead of awful.

  When he opens his mouth again, he allows the honey-tongued words to spill out.

  “When you came to Elfhame as a child,” he says, his voice going strange, “you never got to see the beauty of it. I will show you the silvery white trees of the Milkwood. We can splash in the Lake of Masks and see the reflections of those who have looked into it before us. I will take you to Mandrake Market, where you can buy eggs that will hatch pearls that shine like moonlight.”

  He can see that she’s relaxed, sinking back onto the cushions, eyes half-closed as though in a daydream. And although he wouldn’t choose those words, he does plan to take her to all those places.

  “I look forward to introducing you to each of my sisters and reminding them that you helped our father. I will tell the story of how you single-handedly defeated Lady Nore and bravely took an arrow in the side.” He’s not sure what he expects from his magic, but it isn’t this rush of words. Not a single thing he said is anything other than true. “And I will tell them the story of Mellith, and how wronged she was by Mab, how wronged you were and how much I want—”

  Wren’s eyes open, wet with unshed tears. She sits up. “How dare you say those things? How dare you throw everything I cannot have in my face?”

  “I didn’t—” he starts, and for a moment, he isn’t sure if he’s speaking as himself. If he’s using his power or not.

  “Get out,” she growls, standing.

  He holds up his hands in surrender. “Nothing I said was un—”

  Wren hurls the teacup at him. It smashes against the floor, jagged bits of pottery flying. “Get out!”

  He stares at the shards in horror, realizing what it means. She picked up the cup. I persuaded her to pick up the cup. This is the exact problem with being a love-talker. His power cares nothing for consequences.

  “You told me you’d give me an order after I tried to persuade you.” Oak takes a step toward the door, his heart beating painfully hard. “I shall obey.”

  When he passes Straun, the guard snorts, as though he believes Oak had his chance and blew it.

  The prince stands on the deck for the better part of the night, staring numbly into the sea as dawn blushes on the horizon. He’s still there when he hears a scream behind him.

  At the cry, he whirls, hand already going to the blade at his hip—finding not the needle-thin rapier he’s used to wielding but a borrowed cutlass. The curved blade rattles in its scabbard as he pulls it free—just as a thick black tentacle sprawls across the deck.

  It wriggles toward the prince like some disembodied finger, dragging itself forward. Oak takes several steps back.

  Another tentacle rises from the water to twine around the prow, ripping through one of the sails.

  A troll sailor, interrupted from a game of Fidchell with an ogre, scrambles to his feet and up the rigging in horror. Shouts ring out.

  “The Undersea! The Undersea is attacking!”

  The ocean churns as seven sharks surface with merrows astride their backs. All the merrows are different shades of mottled green and wield jagged-looking spears. They are armored in pearlescent scales of shells and draped in woven ropes of seaweed. The expression in their cold, pale eyes makes it clear they have come to fight.

  The captain blows on a crooked pipe. Sailors run to positions, beginning to haul out massive harpoons from hatches beneath the deck, each weapon heavy enough to take several of them to move.

  The knights and falcons spread out, swords and bows to hand.

  “Subjects of Elfhame,” a merrow shouts. Like the others, he is clad in shells cut into discs that overlap one another to make a sort of scale armor, but his bare arms are encircled in bracelets of gold, and his hair is knotted into thick braids, decorated with the teeth of sea creatures. “Know the power of Cirien-Cròin, far greater than the line of Orlagh.”

  Oak steps toward the gunwale, but Tiernan grabs his shoulder and squeezes it hard. “Don’t be a fool and draw their eye. Perhaps they won’t recognize you.”

  Before Oak can argue, Randalin raises his voice. “Is that your name? The name of your monster?” He sounds somewhere between stern lecturer and on the verge of panic.

  The merrow laughs. “The name of our master, who has gone courting. He sends us with a message.”

  “Deliver it, and go on your way,” says Randalin, making a shooing motion toward the tentacle. “And get that thing off our deck.”

  Oak spots Wren, not sure when she left her chambers. He catches her gaze, remembering the warning she was given by the merrow she freed from the Court of Moths—that a war was coming for control of the Undersea. And Loana mentioned that Nicasia was having a contest for her hand and, with it, her crown. Then Loana tried to drown him, which overshadowed the warning. But he recalls it vividly now.

  Wren widens her eyes, as though trying to tell him something. Probably that they’re screwed. If she unmakes the tentacle, she might unmake the ship along with it.

  At least this seems to have put their disastrous game out of her mind.

  “You are the message,” the merrow says. “You, at the bottom of the sea with crabs picking out your eyes.”