“Well, it’s accurate that Lady Nore offered to trade for what the storm hag thinks I am bringing north,” Oak says. “Mellith’s heart. That’s what she asked for, and if I’ve managed to convince Bogdana that I have it, so much the better. Maybe Lady Nore will believe it as well. But what the storm hag told you—she meant to trick you with the way she put together those words.”

  I think over the tangle of what Bogdana said and what she didn’t. Not simply Lady Nore offered to trade Madoc for you. If she’d been able to say that, she would have.

  “So you don’t have Mellith’s heart and you’re not going to give me—or it—to Lady Nore?” I need him to say the words.

  He grins. “I am not planning on handing you over to anyone. Lady Nore did not ask for you in trade. As for Mellith’s heart, I will show you what I intend when we reach the market. It’s a nice bit of trickery, I think.”

  I stare into his fox eyes and feel relief so acute that I am dizzy with it.

  I look up at the sky overhead, the intense blue that follows a storm, and let myself believe I am not in danger. Not right then. Not from him.

  I pick up the gaming piece, and when he doesn’t seem to notice or demand it back, I slip it into my pocket. Then we resume walking.

  It’s not far before a riot of colors shows through the trees. That must be Undry Market. In the wind, I hear the scrap of a song.

  “What if,” he says, mischief in his eyes, “in the interest of saving time, we pretend that we’ve played twice more and I won once, so you owe me a dance. But you won the second time, so if you have anything else to ask me, you may.”

  Those are teasing words, and I am suddenly in a teasing mood. “All right. Tell me about your girls, then.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Girls?”

  “Tiernan says there were two ladies in particular that you wanted to impress. Violet, I think. And Sibi. But he also says you fall in love a lot.”

  That surprises a laugh out of him, although he doesn’t deny any of it. “There are certain expectations of a prince in Court.”

  “You cannot be serious,” I say. “You feel obliged to be in love?”

  “I told you—I am a courtier, versed in all the courtly arts.” He’s grinning as he says it, though, acknowledging the absurdity of the statement.

  I find myself shaking my head and grinning, too. He’s being ridiculous, but I am not sure how ridiculous.

  “I do have a bad habit,” he says. “Of falling in love. With great regularity and to spectacular effect. You see, it never goes well.”

  I wonder if this conversation makes him think of our kiss, but then, I was the one who kissed him. He’d only kissed back.

  “As charming as you are, how can that be?” I say.

  He laughs again. “That’s what my sister Taryn always says. She tells me that I remind her of her late husband. Which makes some sense, since I would have been his half brother. But it’s also alarming, because she’s the one who murdered him.”

  Much as when he spoke about Madoc, it’s strange how fond Oak can sound when he tells me a horrifying thing a member of his family has done. “Whom have you fallen in love with?” I ask.

  “Well, there was you,” the prince says. “When we were children.”

  “Me?” I ask incredulously.

  “You didn’t know?” He appears to be merry in the face of my astonishment. “Oh yes. Though you were a year my senior, and it was hopeless, I absolutely mooned over you. When you were gone from Court, I refused any food but tea and toast for a month.”

  I cannot help snorting over the sheer absurdity of his statement.

  He puts a hand to my heart. “Ah, and now you laugh. It is my curse to adore cruel women.”

  He cannot expect me to believe he had real feelings. “Stop with your games.”

  “Very well,” he says. “Shall we go to the next? Her name was Lara, a mortal at the school I attended when I lived with my eldest sister and her girlfriend. Sometimes Lara and I would climb up into the crook of one of the maple trees and share sandwiches. But she had a villainous friend, who implicated me in a piece of gossip—which resulted in Lara stabbing me with a lead pencil and breaking off our relationship.”

  “You do like cruel women,” I say.

  “Then there was Violet, a pixie. I wrote her terrible poetry about how I adored her. Unfortunately, she adored duels and would get into trouble so that I would have to fight for her honor. And even more unfortunately, neither my sister nor my father bothered to teach me how to sword fight for show.”

  I thought of the dead-eyed expression on his face before his bout with the ogre and Tiernan’s angry words.

  “That resulted in my accidentally killing a person she liked better than me.”

  “Oh,” I say. “That is three levels of unfortunate.”

  “Then there was Sibi, who wanted to run away from Court with me, but as soon as we went, hated it and wept until I took her home. And Loana, a mermaid, who found my lack of a tail unbearable but tried to drown me anyway, because she found it equally unbearable that I would ever love another.”

  The way he tells these stories makes me recall how he’s told me many painful things before. Some people laugh in the face of death. He laughs in the face of despair. “How old were you?”

  “Fifteen, with the mermaid,” he said. “And nearly three years later, I must surely be wiser.”

  “Surely,” I say, wondering if he was. Wondering if I wanted him to be.

  The threshold of Undry Market is announced by two trees leaning toward each other, their branches entangled. As we duck beneath, what had previously been scraps of song and spots of color lose their disguise and the entire panoply comes into view. Shops and stalls fill the clearing. The air is rich with perfumes, honey wines, and grilled fruits. We pass a tented area with lutes and harps, the vendor trying to call to us over the sound of one of his instruments recounting a terrible tale of how it was made.

  As we walk, I see that the market stretches down to a rocky area near the shoreline, where a pier has been built out into the waves. A single ship bobs at the end of it. I wonder if that is what Tiernan is trying to buy from the goblins.

  Then I am distracted by the hammering of smiths and a smattering of song. There is a forge not far from where we are standing, one with a display of swords in the front. And beside that, a maypole and a few dancers going around it, winding the ribbons. A stall selling cloaks in all the colors of the sky, from the first blush of dawn to deep as midnight and spangled with stars. A bakeshop hawking braided breads, their shining crusts decorated with herbs and flowers.

  “Don’t have gold?” calls an antlered shopkeeper. “Pay with a lock of hair, a year of your life, a dream you wish to never have again.”

  “Come!” calls another. “We have the finest jackets in a hundred leagues. Green as poison. Red as blood. Black as the heart of the King of Elfhame.”

  Oak stops to purchase cheese wrapped in wax paper, a half dozen apples, and two loaves of bread. He also gets us warmer clothes, along with hats and gloves. Rope, new packs, and a grappling hook, the tines of which fold down like the tentacles of a squid skimming through water.

  We pass a fletcher, selling barrels of arrows with different feathers affixed to the ends. Crows and sparrows, even those from a wren. Pass a display of gowns in beetle-bright green, saffron, and pomegranate red. A stall with bouquets of drying herbs hanging upside down, beside seedpods. Then a bookseller, shelves of old tomes and empty, freshly bound books open to creamy pages waiting to be written in. One stall over, an alchemist displays a shelf of poisons, including poisoned ink. A row of oddly shaped skulls sits alongside them.

  Oak pauses to purchase some explosives. “Just in case,” he reassures me.

  “Dear lady,” says a faerie, coming toward us from a shop that sells jewels. He has the eyes of a snake and a forked tongue that darts out when he speaks. “This hairpin looks as though it were made for you.”

  It’s beautiful, woven gold and silver in the shape of a bird, a single green bead in its mouth. Had it been in a display, my eyes would have passed over it as one of a dozen unobtainable things. But as he holds it out, I can’t help imagining it as mine.

  “I have no money and little to trade,” I tell him regretfully, shaking my head.

  The shopkeeper’s gaze goes to Oak. I think he believes the prince is my lover.

  Oak plays the part, reaching out his hand for the pin. “How much is it? And will you take silver, or must it be the last wish of my heart?”

  “Silver is excellent.” The shopkeeper smiles as Oak fishes through his bag for some coins.

  Part of me wants to demur, but I let him buy it, and then I let him use it to pin back my hair. His fingers on my neck are warm. It’s only when he lets go that I shiver.

  He gives me a steady look. “I hope you’re not about to tell me that you hate it and you were just being polite.”

  “I don’t hate it,” I say softly. “And I am not polite.”

  He laughs at that. “A delightful quality.”

  I admire the hairpin in every reflective surface we pass.

  We cross a wide lawn where a puppet show is under way. Folk are gathered around a curtained box, watching an intricate paper cutout of a crow seem to fly above a mill. I spot a few human children and pause to wonder if they are changelings.

  The crow puppet sweeps down to a painted papier-mâché tree. The hidden operator moves a pole, and the crow’s beak opens and closes.

  The bird sings:

  Ca-caw, ca-caw,

  My mother she killed me,

  My father he ate me,

  My sister gathered my bones,

  And buried them beneath the apple tree.

  Behold! I hatched as a young crow.

  Ca-caw, ca-caw, how beautiful a bird am I.

  I stop to watch. It turns out that the miller loves the song so much that he gives the crow a millstone in order to hear it again. And when the bird flies home, he drops the stone onto his stepmother’s head and kills her.

  The crowd is still clapping when I realize that Oak has gone on to the blacksmith shop. I arrive in time to see the bushy-eyebrowed smith returning from the back with what appears to be a metal-and-glass box, designed to display its contents. It is golden-footed and empty.

  “What is that?” I ask as he carefully places it into his bag.

  “A reliquary,” he says. “Enchanted to keep whatever is inside forever preserved. It’s much like the one that contained Mab’s bones. I sent ahead Titch to commission it.”

  “And that’s for—”

  He signals me away from the shop. Together we walk toward the pier. “A deer heart,” he says. “Because that’s what I am going to bring Lady Nore. In a fancy reliquary, she won’t know the difference for some amount of time, hopefully enough for us to be able to accomplish our goal and get you close to her.”

  “A deer heart?” I echo.

  “That’s what I am bringing north. A trick. Sleight of hand, like the coin.”

  I smile up at him, believing, for once, that we are on the same side.

  When we come to the edge of the water, we find Tiernan still haggling with three goblins. One has golden hair and a pointy chin, the second has black hair and bushy eyebrows, and the third has very large ears and no hair on his head at all. The hairless one has a skin of wine and stares at me with the seriousness of the very drunk. He is passing his booze back and forth with a redheaded giant, who sits on the pier, dangling enormous feet in the sea.

  The black-haired goblin holds up a silver-handled knife and tests its weight. “What else have you got?”

  There is a small pile of treasure on a nearby boulder—a fat pearl, at least sixteen pieces of gold, and a stone that might be an emerald.

  “You overestimate the value of what you’re selling,” says Tiernan.

  The drunk goblin laughs uproariously.

  In the water is a boat carved in the shape of a cormorant. At the front, the long curve of its neck makes it appear rampant, and the wings rise on either side, protecting those resting in the hull. It’s beautifully made, and if I squint, I can see that it’s also magical.

  “Ahhhh,” says the golden-haired goblin to Oak as we approach. “You must explain to your friend here that he cannot purchase one of our finest crafts with a few trinkets.”

  Tiernan is obviously frustrated. “We’ve come to a price, but I’m a little short of it, that’s all. Now that you’re here, we can make up the difference and go.”

  Whatever his reason for believing he would be better at negotiation than Oak, he’s mistaken. It’s not in his nature to dress up the truth, or slither around it.

  The golden-haired goblin looks at us expectantly. “We would like the remainder of our payment now, please.”

  Oak reaches into his bag and pulls out several more gold coins, as well as a handful of silver ones. “Is this enough?”

  “We’ll have your rings,” says the golden-haired goblin, pointing at the three encircling Oak’s fingers.

  I am not sure if they have any significance, but I suppose they mustn’t since Oak heaves a sigh and starts to twist them off. Not only that, but he places his circlet beside them. Surely a crown is enough payment.

  The golden-haired goblin shakes his head.

  I see the shift of the prince’s smile. Honey-tongued. “Mayhap your boat is too beautiful for our needs. We need seaworthy and little more.”

  Two of the goblins exchange glances. “Our craft is as seaworthy as they come,” says the black-haired one.

  “And yet, one might weep to see such a beautiful vessel as this battling the elements.” Oak’s expression turns thoughtful. “Perhaps you have something less fine you could sell us.”

  At this the black-haired goblin sniffs, offended. “We do not make ugly things.”

  “No, no,” Oak says, acting as if he’s disappointed. “Of course not.”

  I twig his game. “Maybe we should seek a boat elsewhere,” I suggest.

  Tiernan looks like he wants to strangle us. I can’t decide if he’s not sure what Oak is about or only skeptical that it will work.

  The golden-haired goblin watches Oak. “You truly have nothing more to trade? I can hardly believe it, handsome travelers like yourselves. What’s that in her hair?”

  Oak frowns as I remove it from my braids. Regretfully, I set it down on the pile with the rest of our treasures. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. It would have been useless anyway, where we’re going.

  The bushy-browed goblin snorts, picking up the hairpin and turning it over. “Very well. If this assortment of baubles is all you can give us, I suppose we will take pity on you and make the trade. Your rings, the knife, the pearl, the coins, the emerald that’s in no way the size of a duck egg, the circlet, and the hairpin. For these, we’ll sell you the boat.”

  Smiling, Oak walks forward to shake the goblin’s hand and seal the bargain.

  Tiernan hops down into the sea craft, motioning for me to throw him down my bag. He looks relieved that the negotiations are finally over and we can get moving.

  The drunk giant lumbers to his feet, fixing the prince with an accusatory stare. “Look at what he’s wearing beneath his clothes. Armor of gold,” he grunts. “We’ll have that, too. Tell him!”

  “We’ve agreed to a price,” Tiernan warns.

  Oak’s hand goes to his sword hilt, and I see something wild in his eyes. “I don’t want to fight,” he says, and I am sure part of him means that.

  “You meant to cheat us,” the giant shouts.

  Frantically, I kneel and begin to unknot the rope binding the boat to the dock. It is wet and pulled tight, with some magic on it besides.

  “Rangi,” one of the goblins says to the giant. “We’ve made a deal.”

  The giant is very drunk, though, too drunk to bother with further negotiations. He grabs for the prince, who jumps back, out of reach. Tiernan shouts a warning, although I am not sure to which of them. The prince’s expression has turned cold and blank.

  Finally, I get the knot loose and the boat begins to drift free of the moorings.

  I grab for Oak’s shoulder, and he looks at me with empty eyes. For a moment, I don’t think he knows me at all.

  “Can you swim?” I ask.

  He nods once, as though coming out of a dream. A moment later, he lunges.

  Not to stab the giant, as I expect. Or me. He grabs my hairpin. Then, turning, he races for the water.

  “Thieves!” yells a goblin as we jump off the side of the pier together.

  I land with a splash and a yelp about two feet from the boat. I go under, sinking until my feet hit the mud, then kick off toward the surface.

  When I bob up through the waves, I see the prince holding on to the wing of the carved cormorant. He reaches out his hand.

  I paddle toward him, spitting out muddy water.

  Behind us, the goblins are shouting. Tiernan ignores them as he hauls me up onto the deck. Then he reaches for Oak.

  Enraged, the giant jumps down and begins to wade through the waves.

  The prince stumbles to the mast and unfurls a cloth sail. As soon as it goes up—despite the afternoon not being all that windy—it billows and then fills. Whatever magic speeds us out to sea cannot seem to be called back by the goblins. In moments, we are well out of the giant’s reach.

  I lick salt off my top lip. Tiernan takes the tiller, steering us away from the shoreline. With a whistling noise, Titch comes flying out of the market, circling once before settling on the mast.

  It is not long before we are out of sight of the pier.

  Oak walks to the prow, wrapping himself in a cloak. Staring into the sea.

  I remember the voyage to the isles of Elfhame on a much larger boat. I was kept below for most of the trip but brought up once or twice to breathe the salty sea air and listen to the calls of gulls.

  If you marry the boy, Lady Nore told me, you can’t carve out his heart right away. I know how bloodthirsty you are, but you’ll have to be patient. And she laughed a little.