I watch the clock and the door, half-expecting Oak to come striding through and drag me back to the camp at sword’s point. I remind myself that I have the bridle, and that even if he was looking for me, he’d have no reason to look here.

  “Can I speak with Bex, please?” I ask, keeping my voice steady.

  For a long moment, my unfather is quiet, and I think he’s going to hang up. Then I hear him call for my unsister.

  I bite my nails and watch the seconds tick by on the clock, watch the other people shuffle around the station.

  She comes to the phone. “Yeah?”

  “You have to listen to me,” I tell her, keeping my voice low so that the whole bus station doesn’t listen in. “You’re in trouble.”

  She takes a sharp breath. “Mom!” she yells, then she sounds muffled, like she has her hand over the speaker. “She called back. No, it’s her.”

  I panic, worried that she’s going to hang up. “Just hear me out. Before that monster comes for you.”

  Listen to this monster, not that one.

  “Mom wants to talk.”

  I feel a little sick at the thought. “You. Just you. For now, at least. Please.”

  Her voice goes distant, as though she’s speaking to someone other than me. “Wait. Yes, I’ll tell her.”

  “Why did you go outside that night?” I ask.

  There’s a pause, footsteps, then I hear a door close. “Okay, I’m away from them.”

  I repeat my question, anxiety narrowing my focus to the gum on the floor, the smell of exhaust, the pinesap on my fingers, the sound of her sighs.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Bex says finally.

  “You remember me?” I choke out.

  “You lived with us for seven years,” she says, accusation creeping into her voice. “After you went back to your birth family, we hoped we’d hear something. Mom used to cry on that made-up birthday she invented for you.”

  “She told me to leave.” I growl out the words. I know it wasn’t her fault, that she and Dad and Bex were glamoured. But how could I go back to them, make them face my monstrousness, allow them to reject me again? “Dad kicked me.”

  I look at the clock. It’s nearly time for the bus to pull in.

  Bex sounds angry. “That’s not true.”

  I need to end this call. I pull the charging cord out of the wall and out of the base of the phone, then start to wind it up. Soon I will be on my way north. Soon I will be cold inside and out.

  “You met the storm hag,” I say. “You know that whatever story you heard can’t be the whole of it. And you know that I was adopted, not a foster child any longer. I couldn’t just up and return to my birth parents, nor could they come and take me away. Think about it, and the story falls apart. Because it’s one that you were enchanted with to explain something unexplainable.”

  There’s a silence from the other end, but I hear people in the background. I don’t think the door is closed anymore.

  “I thought you were a ghost the first time I spotted you,” she says softly.

  I feel foolish, thinking that no one saw me slipping in and out of the house. If you do anything for long enough, you’re bound to be caught. “When?”

  “About six months ago. I was up late reading, and I saw something moving outside. When I looked, it was like seeing your spirit, back from the dead. But then I thought you were in some kind of trouble. And I started to wait for you.”

  “And the milk,” I say. “You left out milk.”

  “You aren’t human, are you?” She whispers the words, as though she’s embarrassed to say them aloud.

  I think of my unmother’s surprise at hearing my voice. “Did you tell—”

  “No!” she interrupts me. “How was I supposed to? I wasn’t even sure what I saw. And they’re not happy with me right now.”

  I look at the clock. The bus should be here. For a heart-stopping moment, I think that I’ve missed it, that time has jumped while I’ve been speaking with Bex. But a quick glance around shows me that none of the people waiting have moved from their seats.

  The bus is late, I tell myself. It’s coming. Just late. But my heart keeps beating harder, and I shrink into myself, as though if I am still enough, anxiety will stop gnawing on my insides.

  And if the bus is not the whole reason I feel the way that I do, it’s enough of it.

  “Listen,” I say, my gaze going to the road, watching for headlights. “I don’t know how long I have, but if Bogdana knows where you are, it’s not safe. Fill your pockets with salt. Rowan berries will keep you from being glamoured by their magic. They hate cold-wrought iron. And they can’t lie.” I correct myself. “We. We can’t lie.”

  “What are—”

  I hear cloth rustling and my unmother’s voice cutting off Bex. “Wren, I know you want to talk to your sister.” She emphasizes the word as though I am about to deny it. “But I have something quick to say. If you’re in some kind of trouble, we can help you. You just tell us what’s going on. Bex made it sound like you were living on the streets.”

  I almost laugh at that. “I’m surviving.”

  “That’s not enough.” She gives an enormous shaky sigh. “But even if it were, I’d like to see you. I’ve wondered how you were doing. What you were doing. If you had enough to eat. If you were warm.”

  My eyes burn, but I can’t imagine being there, in their living room, wearing my true face. I would horrify them. Maybe they wouldn’t scream and shove me away at first, the way they did when they were enchanted, but it would quickly turn awful. I couldn’t be the child that they had loved.

  Not after everything that happened to me. Not after learning that I am made of sticks and snow.

  Headlights swing into view. I am already moving by the time I hear the squeal of brakes.

  “I never needed to be warm,” I tell my unmother, my voice hard, full of the anger that has been gnawing at my insides for years.

  “Wren,” she says, stung.

  I feel as though I am about to weep, and I am not even sure why.

  “Tell Bex to remember the salt, the rowan, and the iron,” I say, and hang up the phone, racing for the bus.

  Only one person gets off, and then I get on, holding out my fake ticket to the driver and concentrating my magic on him. Believe me, I plead with all the force I possess. Believe I have a ticket.

  He nods in a distracted fashion, and I flee to the back of the bus, still holding the phone. A few more people board, including the man who was watching me so strangely. My feelings are too tangled up for me to pay any of them much attention.

  Once Lady Nore is dead, or perhaps wearing the bridle, maybe I will speak with Bex and my unmother and unfather again. Maybe, if I knew I could keep them safe from Bogdana. If I knew I could keep them safe from me.

  Leaning my cheek against the glass, I slip my hand into the folds of the scarf, just to have the reassuring feel of the bridle’s leather strap, to know I have a plan. I dig my fingers through the cloth, then reach around my body, scratching at my stomach, fresh panic flooding my chest.

  The bridle isn’t there.

  Outside the window, Titch sits on the gutter of the bus station, blinking at me with golden eyes.

  The bus begins to roll forward. I try to tell myself that I can still get away. That perhaps the bus will drive faster than the creature can fly. That Oak and Tiernan will not be able to follow.

  That’s when I hear a tire pop. The bus lurches to a stop, and I realize there is nowhere for me to go.

  As I walk back through the woods, I am furious with all the world, but especially myself.

  Even though I knew Oak had played the entire Court of Moths false and gotten himself punched in the face twice to convince them he was a vain, useless courtier, had preened and drank a trough of wine to hide his swordsmanship. Even though Oak told me the Roach had taught him the trick with the coin, still I didn’t consider that the goblin might also have taught Oak the far more practical skill of stealing.

  The prince was careful to speak to me as if nothing at all was the matter, even as he lifted the bridle from around my waist. Worked it off with such deftness that I hadn’t felt more than a single touch. Lulled by his conversation, I let myself believe I had fooled him at the very moment he was fooling me.

  He was as deceptive as the rest of his family. More, maybe.

  He never let down his guard with me, not once.

  Too late, I understand what’s terrifying about his charm. He seems entirely open when he is unknowable. Every smile is painted on, a mask.

  Maybe I’m glad that you gave me an opportunity to be my worst self.

  The campsite is as quiet as when I left it. Tiernan remains draped in the tree, making soft snoring sounds. Titch shadows me with shining eyes. I stare at Oak, half-hoping he will turn over and confront me, and half-dreading it.

  As I pass him, I note that his breaths are even, though I bet he sleeps the way cats do, lightly. If I got too close, I bet he would spring up, ready to fight.

  That is, if he’s sleeping at all.

  I creep over to my own blankets and flop onto them. Despair drags me down into dreams, where I am back in the snow, walking in circles.

  When I wake, it is to the smell of buttered rolls and coffee from town. Oak and Tiernan are eating and talking quietly. I hear Tiernan laugh, and I wonder how much of what they are saying is about my escape attempt, if they find my failure hilarious.

  Oak wears mortal clothes over his shining golden mail. It peeks out at his collar and cuffs. Tiernan wears his armor without any cover.

  When the prince glances over at me, nothing changes in his expression. Maybe that’s because, to him, nothing has changed. He’d never believed I was anything but a potential adversary or a potential sacrifice.

  I bite my tongue until it bleeds.

  He smiles, and finally I see the flicker of anger in his eyes. It’s satisfying that he, who hides so much, can’t hide that. He walks over and sits beside me. “You knew I was a trickster.”

  Then, before I can react, he presses a finger to his lips, glancing sideways at Tiernan. It takes me a moment to understand that he hasn’t told the knight that I attempted to steal the bridle. What I don’t understand is why.

  Tiernan rises and throws water onto the fire, causing a cloud of steam to rise. The late afternoon is bright, the sky almost aggressively blue after the storm.

  I stick a roll in my mouth and pack up the remains of my gown, transferring the knife Oak lent me to my boot.

  Tiernan mutters something and then heads off into the woods.

  “Where is he going?” I ask.

  “To Undry Market, ahead of us, to negotiate for the boat. Tiernan believes if the goblins know who I am, they will ask for outlandish things. We will take another path and see if anything follows.” He pauses. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  I get up and brush off my legs. When someone thwarted your attempt to rob them, made it clear you were their prisoner, and then asks you a question like that, it’s not really a question.

  We walk for a while in silence.

  “Do you remember what I said about us being formidable, were we able to put mistrust aside?” he asks.

  I nod reluctantly.

  “I see we were not able,” he reminds me. “Now what, Wren?”

  I feel helpless, as though he’s herding me around a chessboard to checkmate. “Why are you asking me this?”

  He lets out a frustrated huff. “Fine, I will be plain. If you wanted to leave, why not go any other night?”

  Another trap. “Why should I tell you anything, when you’re the one with so many secrets?”

  “Everyone has secrets,” he says, although there is something like despair in his voice.

  “Secrets about me,” I clarify.

  “You’ve betrayed me. You’ve stolen from me. You met with the storm hag, and then hours later you snatch a powerful magical object and run. Do I deserve no answers?”

  “I wanted the bridle,” I say. “So that you could never make me wear it.”

  He kicks up a tornado of leaves. “What cause have I ever given you to accuse me of that?”

  I look sullenly away.

  He says nothing, merely waiting for my reply. The silence stretches on, and I am surprised that I am the one who breaks first and fills it.

  “Tiernan told me he’d use the bridle on me if I betrayed you again.” I fix him with a glare.

  Oak blinks in surprise and is quiet for a long moment. “He doesn’t understand why you freed Hyacinthe and the others,” he says finally. “He can’t believe you did it because you wanted to help them. Folk do not do such things where we come from.”

  I kick a rock, hard.

  “If you want to go, go,” the prince tells me with an elaborate swish of his hand toward the trees around us.

  I look into the woods but am not so foolish as to take his offer at face value. “Then why not just let me leave last night?”

  Oak gives me a slightly guilty look. “Because I don’t like being the fool who’d been tricked. I like games, but I hate to lose.”

  I blink at him in surprise. “What?”

  He shrugs impatiently. “It’s not my best quality,” he says. “And besides, it seemed worthwhile to ask you if you were working with Bogdana.”

  “I’m not,” I say, and when he gives me a long look, I say it in full. “I am neither working for nor with Lady Nore. I am not allied with Bogdana. I want to go north and keep Lady Nore from making more monsters. I even want to see your father freed.”

  “Then why leave?” This is the difficulty with Oak. He invites you to trust him, makes you feel silly for doubting, and then you find yourself in a bus station, discovering how thoroughly you’ve been played.

  “Rather than be sent to Elfhame, I decided I would go north without you and face my mother alone.” I wonder if I can get away with saying only that.

  When he glances in my direction, his fox eyes are bright. “That’s even more foolish than our current plan.”

  My stomach twists.

  “I don’t understand it,” he says, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I feel as though I ought to be angry with you, but I admired what you did back at the Court of Moths. Even when it did, as you say, inconvenience me.”

  I grimace a little at my own words, but then the import of what he’s saying sinks in. “You… admired that?”

  “More than I’d like to admit.” When he looks at me, I see that same intensity in his face that I remember from when he stood beside Queen Annet. “You cared about the mortal and the merrow and even Hyacinthe. You defied all of us and, as far as I can tell, got nothing in return.”

  I am not sure how to answer. “Did it weigh on you, keeping Hyacinthe prisoner?”

  “He tried to kill the High King.”

  “What?” I recall Tiernan saying there’d been an incident.

  Oak appears amused by the shock of my voice. “Once, my father said that conflicts seem as though they are between beliefs or desires. But more often conflicts are between rulers. Those that follow rulers can be perfectly nice, which is how you wind up with two perfectly nice people with daggers to each other’s throats. Hyacinthe and I might have been friends, but for the part where we were set on opposite sides of a battlefield.”

  I think on that for a long moment, wondering if that’s how he sees me as well. How it would be for him to discover that I am stitched together with magic, a manikin animated by a hag? Perhaps he would feel less guilty then.

  I could take him at his word and attempt to leave. But he made no promises not to chase after me. Nor did he say he wouldn’t make me wear the bridle.

  I could slip away in Undry Market and find a place to hide. But I have no reason to believe that the Folk there would help me over their prince. Most likely they would give me up for a few coins.

  Or I could try to get the truth out of him. “You like games,” I tell him. “How about we play one?”

  “What’s the wager?”

  “If I win,” I say. “You answer my question. Without evasion.”

  Nothing about the way he looks at me suggests that he does not consider these to be large stakes. Still, he nods. “And what is the game?”

  “You have the piece. Just as when we were children, let’s see which of us throws better.”

  He nods again, taking it from his pocket. The peridot eyes glimmer. “And if I win?”

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  He studies me and I study him in return. No smile now can disguise the steel underneath. “You promise to dance with me so that our practice back in the Court of Moths won’t be for nothing.”

  “Those are absurd stakes,” I tell him, my cheeks hot.

  “And yet they are mine,” he says.

  I nod quickly, unsettled. “Very well. You throw first.”

  We stop walking. He squats down and clears off the twigs and fallen leaves from a patch of grass. It feels like being children, like playing. It occurs to me that so many awful things in my life happened before that moment, and so many awful things in his life happened after.

  The fox tumbles onto the ground, falling on its side. No points.

  He looks over at me and raises his eyebrows.

  I pick it up and throw, holding my breath. It falls on its side, too.

  He reaches for it and I think he’s going to throw again, but he sets the fox on its back, with its legs pointing up. “You win.”

  I shake my head, incredulous.

  “You win,” he says again, more firmly. “Ask.”

  Very well. If he is going to give me the game, I would be a fool not to take it. “Lady Nore asked for me in trade for Madoc, didn’t she?” I brace myself for his answer, or for whatever he does in place of giving me one. “That’s why you’re really bringing me north.”

  His surprise is evident. “Is that what Bogdana told you?”

  I nod.

  He sighs. “No wonder you ran.”

  “Is it true?” I ask.

  He frowns. “What did she say, exactly? So that I may answer without evasion.”

  “That Lady Nore offered to trade Madoc to the prince in exchange for the very thing he is bringing north. A foolish girl.”