“What sort of contest?” he asks, intrigued.

  “I present you with a choice,” she tells him. “We can play a game of chance in which we have equal odds. Or you can duel my chosen champion and bet on your own skill.”

  A strange gleam comes into his fox eyes. “I choose the duel.”

  “And I shall fight in your stead,” Tiernan says.

  Queen Annet opens her mouth to object, but Oak speaks first. “No. I’ll do it. That’s what she wants.”

  I take a half step toward him. She must have heard of his poor performance the night before. He’s still got the bruise as evidence. “A duel isn’t a contest,” I say, cautioning. “It’s not a game.”

  “Of course it is,” Oak replies, and I am reminded once again that he is used to being the beloved prince, for whom everything is easy. I don’t think he realizes this won’t be the polite sort of duel they fought in Elfhame, with plenty of time for crying off and lots of deference given. No one here will feign being overcome. “To first blood?”

  “Hardly.” Queen Annet laughs, proving all I feared. “We are Unseelie. We want a bit more fun than that.”

  “To the death, then?” he asks, sounding as though the idea is ridiculous.

  “Your sister would have my head if you lost yours,” says Queen Annet. “But I think we can agree that you shall duel until one of you cries off. What weapon will you have?”

  The prince’s hand goes to his side, where his needle of a sword rests. He puts his hand on the ornate hilt. “Rapier.”

  “A pretty little thing,” she says, as though he proposed dueling with a hairpin.

  “Are you certain it’s a fight you want?” Oak asks, giving Queen Annet a searching look. “We could play a different sort of game of skill—a riddle contest, a kissing contest? My father used to tell me that once begun, a battle was a living thing and no one could control it.”

  Tiernan presses his mouth into a thin line.

  “Shall we set this duel for tomorrow at dusk?” Queen Annet inquires. “That gives us both time to reconsider.”

  He shakes his head, quelling her attempt at a delay. “Your pardon, but we are in a hurry to see the Thistlewitch, now more than ever. I’d like to have this fight and be on my way.”

  At that, some of Queen Annet’s courtiers smile behind their hands, although she does not.

  “So sure of winning?” she asks.

  He grins, as though in on the joke despite it being at his expense. “Whatever the outcome, I would hasten it.”

  She regards him as one would a fool. “You will not even take the time to don your armor?”

  “Tiernan will bring it here,” he says, nodding toward the knight. “Putting it on won’t take long.”

  Queen Annet stands and motions to her knight. “Then let us not detain you longer—Revindra, fetch Noglan and tell him to bring the slenderest and smallest sword he owns. Since the prince is in haste, we must make do with what he can find.”

  Tiernan bends toward me. He lowers his voice so that only I can hear. “You should have left with Hyacinthe.”

  I look down at my feet, at the boots that the Court of Moths gave me for the prince’s sake. If I were to reach up to my head, I know I would be able to feel the braid he wove into my hair. If he dies, it will be my fault.

  It is not long before the hall is filled with spectators. Watching the heir to Elfhame bleed will be a rare treat.

  As Tiernan helps Oak into his scale-mail shirt, the crowd parts for an ogre I instantly recognize. The one that punched Oak twice the night before. He’s grinning, walking into the room with insufferable swagger. He looms over the spectators in his leather-and-steel chest plate, his heavy pants tucked into boots. His arms are bare. His lower canines press into his top lip. This must be Noglan.

  He bows to his queen. Then he sees me.

  “Hello, morsel,” he says.

  I dig my fingers into my palm.

  His gaze goes to the prince. “I guess I didn’t hit you hard enough last time. I can remedy that.”

  Queen Annet claps her hands. “Clear some space for our duel.”

  Her courtiers arrange themselves in a wide circle around an empty patch of packed earth.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I whisper to Oak. “Leave me. Leave Jack.”

  He gives me a sidelong look. His face is grave. “I can’t.”

  Right. He needs me for his quest to save his father. Enough to make himself kiss me. Enough to bleed to keep me.

  Oak strides to a place opposite where the ogre has chosen to stand. The ogre jests with a few folks in the eager, bloodthirsty crowd—I can tell because they laugh, but I am too far to hear what he says.

  I think of Oak’s father, who I saw in war councils. Mostly, his eyes went past me, as though I were like one of the hunting hounds that might lounge under a table, hoping to have bones tossed to them. But there was a night when he saw me sitting in a cold corner, worrying at my restraints. He knelt down and gave me the cup of hot spiced wine he had been drinking, and when he rose, he touched the back of my head with his large, warm hand.

  I’d like to tell Oak that Madoc isn’t worth his love, but I don’t know if I can.

  The cat-headed lady pushes herself to the front and offers Oak her favor, a gauzy handkerchief. He accepts it with a bow, letting her tie it around his arm.

  Queen Annet holds a white moth on her open palm.

  “If he’s hurt…,” Tiernan tells me, not bothering to finish the threat.

  “When the moth takes flight, the duel shall begin,” the queen says.

  Oak nods and draws his blade.

  I am struck by the contrast of his gleaming golden mail, the sharpness of his rapier, the hard planes of his body with the softness of his mouth and amber eyes. He scrapes one hoofed foot on the packed earth of the floor, moving into a fighting stance, turning to show his side to his opponent.

  “I borrowed a toothpick,” Noglan the ogre calls, holding up a sword that looks small in his hand but is far larger than what the prince wields. Despite Oak’s height, the ogre is at least a foot taller and three times as wide. Muscles cord his bare arms as though rocks are packed beneath his skin.

  At that moment, I see something waver in the prince’s eyes. Perhaps he finally realizes the danger he’s in.

  The moth flutters upward.

  Oak’s expression changes, neither smiling nor grim. He looks blank, empty of emotion. I wonder if that’s how he appears when he’s scared.

  The ogre strides across the circle, holding his thin sword like a bat. “Don’t be shy, boy,” he says. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” Then he swings his blade toward Oak’s head.

  The prince is fast, ducking to the side and thrusting the point of his rapier into the ogre’s shoulder. When Oak pulls it free, Noglan roars. A dribble of blood trickles over the ogre’s bicep.

  The crowd sucks in a collective breath. I am stunned. Was that a lucky shot?

  But I cannot continue to believe that when Oak spins to slash across the ogre’s belly, just below his chest plate. The prince’s movements are precise, controlled. He’s faster than anyone I’ve seen fight.

  There’s a gleam of wet pink flesh. Then Noglan crashes to the floor, knocking other faeries out of his way. There are screams from the spectators, along with astonished gasps.

  The prince steps to the other side of the circle. “Don’t get up,” he warns, a tremor in his voice. “We can be done with this. Cry off.”

  But Noglan pushes himself to his feet, snorting in pain. There is a bloodstain growing on his pants, but he ignores it. “I am going to eviscerate—”

  “Don’t,” the prince says.

  The ogre runs at Oak, slashing with his sword. The prince turns the slim rapier so that it slides straight up the blade, the sharp point sinking into the ogre’s neck.

  Noglan’s hand goes to his throat, blood pooling between his fingers. I can see when the light goes out of his eyes, like a torch thrown into the sea. He slumps to the floor. The crowd roars, disbelief on their faces. The scent of death hangs heavily in the air.

  Oak wipes his bloody blade against his glove and sheaths it again.

  Queen Annet would have heard the story of Oak not defending himself against Noglan. She’d come to the same conclusion that I had, that there was no fight in him. That there was nothing sinister hidden behind Oak’s easy smile. That he was the coddled prince of Faerie he seemed, spoiled by his sisters, doted on by his mother, kept in the dark regarding his father’s schemes.

  I had supposed he might not even know how to use his sword. He’d acted the fool, that his enemies might believe he was one.

  How could I have forgotten that he’d been weaned on strategy and deception? He was a child when murders over the throne began, and yet not so young that he didn’t remember. How had I not considered that his father and sister would have been his tutors in the blade? Or that if he was a favorite target of assassins, he might have had reason to learn to defend himself?

  Queen Annet’s expression is grim. She expected this match to go her way, with Noglan knocking around the prince, her honor restored, and us imprisoned long enough for her to get a message from her contacts at the High Court.

  Tiernan turns a fierce look on me and shakes his head. “I hope you’re pleased with what you wrought.”

  I am not sure what he means. Oak is clearly unharmed.

  Seeing my expression, his only grows angrier. “Oak was never taught to fight any way but to kill. He doesn’t know any elegant parries. He cannot show off. All he can do is deal death. And once he starts, he doesn’t stop. I’m not sure he can.”

  A shiver goes through me. I remember the way his face went blank and the awfulness of his expression when he saw Noglan spread out on the ground, as though surprised by what he had done.

  “Long, I wished for a child.” Queen Annet’s gaze goes to me again, then back to Oak. The shock seems to be wearing off, leaving her seeing that she must speak. “Now that one comes, I hope mine will do as much for me as you do for your sire. It pleases me to see a Greenbriar with some teeth.”

  I assume that last is a dig at the High King, well known for leaving the fighting to his wife.

  “Now, Lady Suren, I promised to return you to the prince, but I don’t recall promising you’d be alive when I handed you over.” Then the Unseelie queen smiles without amusement. “I understand you like riddles, having solved so many in my prisons. So let us have one more contest of skill. Answer, or suffer the riddle’s fate and leave Prince Oak with only your corpse: Tell a lie and I will behead you. Tell me the truth and I will drown you. What is the answer that will save you?”

  “Queen Annet, I caution you. She is no longer yours to toy with,” Oak says.

  But her smile does not dim. She waits, and I am without any choice but to play her cruel little game.

  Despite my mind having gone blank.

  I take a shuddery breath. Queen Annet posited that there was a solution to the riddle, but it’s an either-or situation. Either drowning or beheading. Either lying or truth. Two very bad outcomes.

  But if the truth results in drowning and a lie results in beheading, then I have to find a way to use one of those against her.

  I am tired and hurting. My thoughts are in knots. Is this one of those chicken-or-egg questions, a trap to seal my doom? If I were to choose drowning and it’s the truth, then she’d have to do it. Which means beheading is the fate of a liar. So…

  “I must say, ‘You will behead me,’” I tell her. Because if she does it, then I am a truth-teller and she ought to have drowned me. There’s no way to execute me properly.

  I let out a sigh of relief—since there is an answer, whatever she might have wanted to do, she must now let me go.

  Queen Annet gives a tight smile. “Oak, take your traitor with the blessings of the Court of Moths.” As he takes a step toward me, she continues. “You may think that Elfhame will look ill on my attempts to keep you here, but I promise you that your sister would like it far less well to find I’d let you leave with Lady Suren, only to discover she sliced open your throat.”

  Oak winces.

  Annet notes his reaction. “Exactly.” Then she turns away with a swirl of her long black skirts, one hand on her gravid belly.

  “Come,” the prince commands me. A muscle in his jaw twitches, as though he’s clenching his teeth too hard.

  It would be safer if I hated him. Since I cannot, perhaps it is good that he now hates me.

  They release Jack of the Lakes outside of the hill. His face is bruised. He slinks toward us, swallowing any witty comments. He goes to his knees before Oak, reminding me uncomfortably of Hyacinthe when he swore to me.

  Jack says nothing, only bowing so low that his forehead touches Oak’s hoof. The prince is still clad in his armor. The golden mail glitters, making him seem both royal and remote.

  “I am yours to punish,” says the kelpie.

  Oak reaches out a hand and cups it lightly over Jack’s head, as though offering a benediction.

  “My debt to you is paid, and yours to me,” Oak says. “We will owe each other nothing going forward, save friendship.”

  I wonder at his kindness. How can he mean it when he is so angry with me?

  Jack of the Lakes rises. “For the sake of your friendship, prince, I would carry you to the ends of the earth.”

  Tiernan snorts. “Since Hyacinthe spirited off Damsel Fly, maybe you should take him up on his offer.”

  “It is tempting,” Oak says, a half smile on his face. “And yet, I think we will make our own way from here.”

  I study the tops of my boots, avoiding eye contact with absolutely everyone.

  “If you change your mind, you have only to call on me,” says the kelpie. “Wheresoever you are, I will come.”

  Then Jack transforms into a horse, all mossy black and sharp-toothed. As he rides off into the waning afternoon, despite everything, I am sorry to see him go.

  Clouds of mosquitoes and gnats blow through the hot, wet air of the marsh where the Thistlewitch lives. My boots sink into the gluey mud. The trees are draped heavily in creeper and poisonous trumpet vine, swaths of it blocking the path. In the brown water, things move.

  “Sit,” Oak says when we come to a stump. This is the first time he’s spoken to me since we left Queen Annet’s Court. From his pack, he takes out a brush and a pot of shimmering gold paint. “Stick out a foot.”

  Tiernan walks ahead, scoping the area.

  The prince marks the bottom of my one boot, then the other, with the symbol we were given. His fingers hold my calves firmly in place. A treacherous heat creeps into my cheeks.

  “I know you’re angry with me…,” I begin.

  “Am I?” he asks, looking up at me as though there is a bitter taste in his mouth. “Maybe I’m glad that you gave me an opportunity to be my worst self.”

  I am still sitting on the stump, pondering that, when Tiernan returns and yanks a twist of hair from my head.

  I hiss, coming to my feet, teeth bared, hand going for a knife that I no longer have.

  “You know how the bridle works as well as anyone,” Tiernan says, low, so that Oak, busy drawing symbols on the bottoms of his hooves, does not seem to hear. He holds three pale blue strands of my hair in his hand. “Do not betray us again.”

  A chill goes through me at those words. The great smith Grimsen forged that bridle, and like all his creations, it has a corrupt secret. There is another way than wearing it to be controlled—wrapped hair, and a few words—that was how Lady Nore and Lord Jarel had hoped to trick the High Queen into binding herself along with the serpent king.

  The strands of my hair between Tiernan’s fingers are a reminder that even if they don’t put it on me, I am not safe from it. I should be grateful that I am not wearing it already.

  “Were it up to me,” he says, “I’d have left you behind and taken my chances against Lady Nore.”

  “It’s not too late,” I say.

  “Don’t tempt me,” the knight growls back. “If not for you, Hyacinthe would still be with us.”

  Even though I know he has reason to be cross with me, I am suddenly angry, too. Hyacinthe, with his half-broken curse, reminded me too much of myself, of my desire to have someone free me, whether I was deserving of it or not. “No one in chains could ever truly love you.”

  He glares. “Do you expect me to believe you know anything about love?”

  The truth of that hits like a blow.

  I turn away and tromp along through the muck and rotted vegetation, the song of frogs loud in my ears, reminding me that the sharpness of the knight’s tongue already cost Oak the loyalty of Jack of the Lakes. He throws his words around like knives. Recklessly. Heedlessly.

  Whatever the opposite of being honey-tongued might be.

  A slithering snake catches my eye, its body as black as the serpent the High King became. Out in the water, something that is perhaps the head of a crocodile, if not more monstrous, breaks the surface. The creature’s skin has become green with vegetation.

  I trust that the others see it, too, although they do not slow their step.

  The air is overwarm and close, and I am exhausted from the events of the night before. My ribs hurt where they met Revindra’s boot. But I bite the inside of my cheek and keep going.

  We walk for a long time before we come to a clearing where a few mismatched and rusty human chairs sit. A few steps farther and we see a shriveled and ancient faerie squatting beside a fire. Over it is a spit, and threaded on the metal rod is a skinned rat. The Thistlewitch turns it slowly, making the meager fat sizzle.

  The braided weeds and briars of her hair fall around her, serving as a cape. Large black eyes peer out from the tangle. She wears a gown of drab cloth and bark. When she moves, I see her feet are bare. Rings shine on several of her toes.

  “Travelers,” she rasps. “I see you have made your way through my swamp. What is it that you seek?”

  Oak steps forward and bows. “Honored lady, finder of lost things, we have come to ask you to use your power in our behalf.” From his pack, he pulls a bottle of honey wine, along with a bag of powdery white doughnuts and a jar of chili oil, and sets them down on the earth in front of her. “We’ve brought gifts.”