“How long were you with Hyacinthe?” I ask, pulling out my twice-soaked matchbook and handing it over, though it might be useless.

  Tiernan sighs. “We met the summer before King Eldred abdicated, at a late-night revel—not a Court one, the informal kind. I was still hoping to be chosen for a knight.”

  I frown, not sure what he means. “Aren’t you a knight?”

  Tiernan grins, as amused as I’ve ever seen him. “Me? No. I was trained for it but never got the chance.”

  I glance at Oak, more confused than ever. I don’t know a lot about the process, but I was fairly sure it involved some member of a royal family tapping you on the shoulder with a sword. Surely, this mission alone was cause for that.

  “I joined the Court of Shadows,” he says, answering the question I don’t ask.

  “You’re a spy?” I think my mouth might be hanging open.

  “Who else would my sister choose for a guard?” Oak interjects from the back. “She has a great fondness for spies who wanted to be knights, since she was one herself.”

  “I wasn’t then, though. I was young and hopeful and a little drunk.” He smiles at the memory. “Hyacinthe was standing half in shadow, and he asked me if I knew anything about prophecies. I think he was very drunk.

  “We got lost together in a hedge maze and spoke of the great deeds we planned on doing, like the knights of old. I thought his quest for revenge was impossibly romantic.” His mouth twists, as though it hurts for him to remember that version of himself, or a Hyacinthe who hadn’t yet chosen vengeance over him.

  The fire catches.

  “And here you are, doing great deeds,” I say.

  He half smiles. “Sometimes life gives us the terrible gift of our own wishes come true.”

  Oak has peeled the wax from the cheese in the chest. He sits beside us, chewing a piece of it and grimacing.

  “It’s aged,” the prince says, as though that might be cause to recommend it despite the taste.

  I rifle through his bag for a granola bar and eat that instead.

  “Tell her the rest,” Oak says.

  At Tiernan’s frown, the prince grins. “Yes, I’ve heard the tale before. Many times. But Wren has not.”

  “What Oak wants me to tell you, I suppose, is that Hyacinthe and I spent the better part of two years together, before he left with Madoc’s army. We made the sorts of promises lovers make.” There’s a stiffness to his speech. Tiernan seems to be the sort of person who, the more deeply he feels a thing, the harder it is for him to talk about—although apparently he’s told plenty to Oak. “But when Hyacinthe wanted me to commit treason with him, I couldn’t.

  “His revenge ought to be done, I thought. Prince Dain was dead. The High King did seem a bit of a fop, but no worse than Eldred. He disagreed. We had a big row, Sin declared me a coward, and I didn’t see him for another year.”

  Sin? I force myself not to grin at the nickname he’d managed to keep quiet until now.

  “Yeah, when he came back to kill you,” Oak says, then turns to me. “Hyacinthe would have been traveling with the Court of Teeth, like the rest of Madoc’s army. And would have fought in the Battle of the Serpent. Against Tiernan.”

  “We didn’t see each other,” Tiernan clarifies. “No less fight. Not until after.”

  I think about myself, under Oak’s bed. I wonder if that’s what he’s thinking about, too.

  Tiernan goes on. “In the prisons. I was part of the Court of Shadows by then, and they let me visit him. We talked, and I thought—well, I didn’t know what would happen, or whether there would be any mercy, but I promised that if he was going to be put to death, I would save him. Even if it meant betraying Elfhame after all.

  “In the end, though, all he had to do was repent. And he wouldn’t so much as do that.” Tiernan puts his head in his hands.

  “He was proud,” Oak says. “And angry.”

  “Was I supposed to be less proud?” Tiernan demands.

  Oak turns to me. “So here’s where falcon Hyacinthe goes to Tiernan, who could have fed him and in a year had him back, but…”

  He refused him.

  “I regretted it,” Tiernan said. “So, when I heard he’d gone to the Citadel, I came here and retrieved Hyacinthe. Brought him to Elfhame. Persuaded Oak to break his curse. Whereupon I got my thanks when he tried to kill the High King.”

  “No good deed goes unpunished, isn’t that what they say?” Oak breaks off another piece of the horrible cheese and attempts to spear it onto something to melt over the fire.

  “He worried about you,” I tell Tiernan. “Hyacinthe, I mean.”

  He looks over warily. “In what way?”

  “He believes you’ve been ensorcelled by Oak.”

  Tiernan sniffs, annoyed.

  Oak laughs, but it sounds more forced than delighted. After a moment, he speaks again. “You know, until this trip, I thought I liked the cold. One can dress extravagantly when there’s no risk of sweating—brocades, gold trims, hats. But I am reevaluating.”

  I can tell that Tiernan is grateful to have the attention off him. Oak’s silly words, his smile, all dare me to play along.

  I roll my eyes.

  He grins. “You have an understated elegance, so no need to worry about weather.”

  When it is time to sleep, Tiernan and Oak wrap themselves in bearskins. Oak drapes one over my shoulders. I say nothing to indicate that I don’t need it, that I am never too cold. When we lie down by the fire, he watches me. The light dances in his eyes.

  “Come here,” he says, beckoning with a hand.

  I am not sure I know the me who moves, who shifts so that I am resting my head against his shoulder. The me who feels his breath against my hair and the pressure of his splayed fingers at the small of my back. His feet tangle with mine, my toes brushing against the fur just above his hooves. My fingers are resting against his stomach, and I cannot help feeling the hard planes of him, the muscles and the scars. When I move my hand, his breath catches.

  We both go still. Tiernan, close to the fire, turns in his sleep.

  In the firelight, the prince’s amber eyes are molten gold.

  I am aware of my skin in a way I have never been before, of the slight movements of my limbs, of the rise and fall of my chest. I can hear the beat of his heart against my cheek. I feel as though I am shouting kiss me with every restless shift of my body. But his does not, and I am too much of a coward to do more than lie there and yearn until my eyes drift closed at last.

  When I wake in the afternoon, it is to Tiernan dragging in the body of a deer. He butchers it quickly, and he and I eat charred venison for breakfast.

  Oak washes the heart clean of blood and puts it into the reliquary while still warm. Once it’s secured, the prince fiddles with the lock, setting it carefully shut and adjusting something inside to keep it that way.

  Then we set off again, the prince and Tiernan wrapping bear fur over their cloaks for greater warmth. The Stone Forest is ahead of us, light shining off the trees where ice encases their branches.

  “We can’t go in there,” I say. “The trolls must be working with Lady Nore.”

  “Given what we saw yesterday, I must admit you were right to suggest we circle around this stretch of woods,” Oak says, staring into the trees and frowning.

  Tiernan gives a half smile. “I congratulate you on this wise decision.”

  We veer off to the east, skirting the edge of the forest. Even from this distance, it appears remarkable. Trees of ice grow blue fruits the size of peaches, encased in a frozen crust. Some have fallen and split open like candy apples. Their scent is that of honey and spice and sap. The leaves of the trees give off a haunting sound not unlike wind chimes when the air blows through the branches.

  The longer we walk, the more we realize we cannot get away from the Stone Forest. Sometimes it seems as though the woods itself moves. Twice, I looked up and found myself surrounded by trees. The drag of the magic reminds me of the undertow on a beach: a strip of calm, dark water that seems innocuous but, once it has you, pulls you far from land.

  We walk throughout the day, fighting to stay beyond the edges of the forest. We do not stop to eat but, fearing to be caught by the woods, walk while chewing supplies from our packs. At nightfall, our march is interrupted by something moving toward us through the snow.

  Stick creatures, enormous and terrible, huge spiders made of brambles and branches. Monstrous things with gaping mouths, their bodies of burned and blackened bark, their teeth of stone and ice. Mortal body parts visibly part of them, as though someone took apart people like they were dolls and glued them back together in awful shapes.

  “Make for the forest,” Tiernan says, resignation in his voice. His gaze goes to me and then to Oak. “Now.”

  “But—” the prince begins.

  “We’re not mounted,” Tiernan reminds him. “We have no chance on foot, unless we can get to someplace with cover. Let’s hope your mad plan was the right one after all.”

  And then we stop fighting the forest and plunge into it.

  We race past an enormous black boulder, then beneath a tree that makes a tinkling sound as the icicles threaten to fall. When I look over my shoulder, I am horrified to see the stick creatures lumbering toward us, faster than I expected.

  “Here,” Oak says, beside a fallen tree half-covered in snow. “We hide. Wren, get as far underneath as you can. If they don’t see us, perhaps we can trick them into passing us by.”

  Tiernan kneels, putting his sword in the snow beside him and motions for me to come. I crouch in the hollow beneath the tree, looking up at the spangled sky and the bright scythe of a moon.

  And the falcon, soaring across it.

  “They have eyes in the air,” I say.

  Puzzled, Oak follows my gaze, then he understands. “Tiernan,” he whispers, voice harsh.

  Tiernan rolls to his feet and takes off running in the direction of the creatures, just as the bird screeches. “Get her away from here,” he calls back to the prince.

  A moment later, a rain of ice arrows flies from the trees.

  The shaft of one slams into the earth beside my feet, tripping me. I stop so short that I fall in the snow.

  Oak hauls me up. He’s swearing, a streak of filthy words and phrases running into one another, some in mortal languages and some not.

  The monstrous creatures are closing in. The nearer they get, the more clearly I can see the roots writhing through their bodies, the bits of skin and unblinking eyes, the great fang-like stone teeth.

  “Keep going,” he tells me, and whirls around, drawing his blade. “We’re almost to the Citadel. If anyone can stop her, it’s you.”

  “I can’t—” I start.

  His eyes meet mine. “Go!”

  I run, but not far before I draw my borrowed knife and duck behind a tree. If I do not have Oak’s skill, at least I have ferocity on my side. I will stab anything I can, and if something gets close enough, I will bite out whatever seems most like a throat.

  My plan is immediately cut short. When I step out, an arrow skims over my leg, taking skin with it. A twisted creature with a bow lumbers toward me, notching another arrow. Aiming for my head.

  Only to have its weapon cut in half as Oak strikes from the side, slashing through the bow and into the stick thing’s stomach. Its mouth opens once, but no sound comes out as Oak pivots and beheads it. The creature goes down in a shower of dirt, berries, and blood that scatter across the snow.

  Oak’s face is still, but the frenzy of battle is back in his eyes. I think of his father, the redcap, whom he plans to rescue, and of how the prince must have been trained. I wonder if he has ever dipped a cap in someone’s blood.

  More of the stick creatures come at him, with their claws and fangs and stolen flesh, their shining ice arrows and black-stained blades.

  Oak might be a great swordsman, but it seems impossible that any one person could hold them all off. Nonetheless, he looks prepared to try.

  His gaze darts to me. “Hide,” he mouths.

  I scramble behind the black boulder and suck in a breath. The Stone Forest is so full of magic that even that is dizzying. A pulse of enchantment echoes off the trees and branches, ferns and rocks. I had heard the stories, but it was another thing to be inside it, to feel it surround me. The whole forest is cursed.

  Before I can stop it, I am drawn into the spell. I can feel stone all around, and pressure, and thoughts that flow like honey.

  Let me be flesh again. Me. Me. Two voices boom, loud enough to cause me to cover my ears, even though I hear the words only in my mind. Their raw power feels like touching a live wire. This boulder was once a troll king, turned to rock by the sun, and its twin is somewhere deeper in the forest. Their curse has grown, expanding to encompass the entire Stone Forest. I can smell it in the pine and the split blue fruit, so potent that I cannot understand how I could have not known before.

  Anticipation whispers through the trees, like an indrawn breath. Urging me on.

  I reach into the root of the enchantment, knotted tightly through everything around me. It started with the original curse of all trolls, to be turned to stone in the sunlight. As the magic has weakened, the trolls in Elfhame turn back to flesh at nightfall, but this curse is from a time when the magic was stronger, when stone was forever.

  That curse grew outward, feeding on the magic of the troll kings. Nourished by their anger at being trapped, now their curse imprisoned their people and their people’s descendants.

  I can feel the magic trying to bind me into it, to pull me into its heart the way the woods tried to envelop us. I feel as though I am being buried alive. Digging through dirt, ripping apart the hairy roots that attempt to encircle my limbs like snakes. But even as I pull myself free, the curse on the Stone Forest itself remains as sure as iron.

  But now that I have its attention, perhaps I can give the magic another target.

  There are invaders, I whisper in my mind, imagining the stick creatures as clearly as I am able. They will take your people from you.

  I feel the strands of magic curl away from me with a sigh. And then the earth itself cracks, the force of it enough to throw me back. I open my eyes to see a fissure splitting along the ground, wider than a giant’s mouth.

  A few minutes later, Oak stumbles out from between two trees, frost-covered ferns crackling beneath his steps. A wind blows through the branches to his left, sending a scattering of bladelike pieces of ice plummeting into the snow. The prince is bleeding from a cut on his shoulder, and both the bear fur and his cloak are gone.

  I push myself to my feet. My hands are scratched raw, and my knee is bruised. The wound where the arrow grazed my leg is throbbing.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  A bellow comes from the forest.

  “This place,” he says, giving the crack in the ground a wide berth. “Some of them fell into the earth as it opened. I cut a few apart. But there are still more. We have to keep moving.”

  He reaches for my hand.

  I take his, and together, we dart between trees. “Have you seen Tiernan?”

  “Not yet.” I admire how thoroughly he is not letting himself think of any other possibility.

  The prince stops suddenly. In the clearing ahead, an enormous spider creature of sticks and earth is shambling toward us.

  “Come on,” I say, but he lets go of my hand. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s only the one,” he tells me, holding his needle-thin blade aloft.

  The spider is enormous, half as tall as one of the trees. It looms over us. One is more than enough. “Oak!”

  As he rushes at it, I cannot help thinking of what Tiernan said, about how Oak wanted to be a ship that rocks broke against.

  The spider lunges, with snapping fangs that appear to be made from broken femurs. It comes down on the prince, who rolls beneath it, slicing upward with his sword. Dirt rains down on him. It swipes with a thorn-tipped leg.

  My heart is beating so hard that it hurts.

  Oak climbs up, into the creature. Into the weaving of branch and bone, as though it were a piece of playground equipment.

  The spider flips onto its back, the thorns on its legs tearing at its own chest. It’s ripping out its own insides to get to him. Oak strikes out with his sword, hacking at it. Pieces shred off. It thrashes and bites at the air as it pulls itself apart. Finally, what remains of it goes still.

  Oak climbs out of the husk, scratches all down his arms. He grins, but before I can say anything, there is a sound behind me. I whirl as three tall trolls step out from between the trees.

  They have light green skin, golden eyes, and arrows tipped in bronze pointing directly at my chest. “You brought those monsters from the Citadel here,” one says.

  “They followed us,” I sputter.

  They wear armor of heavy cloth, stitched with a pattern of sworls like the map to a hedge maze or a fingerprint. “Come with us and meet our speaker,” says the tallest of them. “She will decide what to do with you.”

  “It’s kind to invite a pair of strangers back to your village,” says Oak, walking to us, somehow misrepresenting their intention without actually lying. “But we’ve lost a friend in your woods and wouldn’t want to go anywhere without him.”

  The tallest troll looks as though he is on the verge of turning his request into an order. Then, from the darkness, a knife catches the moonlight as it is placed to the base of the shortest troll’s neck.

  “Let’s point those weapons elsewhere,” Tiernan says.

  The tallest troll’s eyes narrow, and he lowers his bow. So does the other. The third, knife to his throat, doesn’t move.

  “You seem to have found your friend,” the troll says.

  Oak gives him a slow, considering smile. “And are therefore left without a reason not to partake in your hospitality.”

  The troll camp is set in a large clearing, where buildings of stone and clay have been constructed around a massive bonfire. Sparks fly up from it, then fall as black rain, smudging whatever they touch.