My heart races at the evidence of what’s happened to other travelers. I heap a few onto the sled and pull it back to the house. Tiernan is standing in the snow, Oak leaning against him as though he’s passed out after a night of too much wine.

  “We need to go,” I whisper.

  Using the clothes for padding, we strap him to the sled. Tiernan drags it behind us as we creep out of the troll encampment as quietly as we are able.

  As we get closer to the tree line, I feel the curse try to steer me the wrong way, to make my steps turn back toward the forest’s heart. But now that I am aware, the magic has a harder time putting my feet wrong. I cut in front of Tiernan so that he can follow me. Each step feels as though I am fighting through fog until we hit the very edge of the woods.

  I look behind me to see Tiernan hesitate, confused. “Are we—”

  Behind him, on the sled, Oak’s body writhes against the ropes.

  “It’s this way.” I reach for Tiernan’s gloved hand and force myself to take it, to pull him along with me, though my legs feel leaden. I take another step. And another. As we hit the expanse of snow, my breaths come more easily. I release Tiernan’s hand and squat, sucking in air.

  On the sled, Oak has gone still again. “What was that?” he asks, shuddering. He looks back at the woods and then at me, as though he can’t quite remember the last few minutes.

  “The curse,” I say. “The farther we are from the forest, the better. Come on.”

  We begin moving again. We walk through the morning, the sun shining off the snow.

  An hour in, Oak begins to mutter to himself. We stop and check on him, but he seems disoriented.

  “My sister thinks that she’s the only one who can take poison, but I am poison,” he whispers, eyes half-closed, talking to himself. “Poison in my blood. I poison everything I touch.”

  That’s such a strange thing to hear him say. Everyone adores him. And yet, I recall him running away at thirteen, sure so many things were his fault.

  I frown over that as we trudge on, bits of ice catching in my hair and on my tongue.

  “You’re tough, you know that?” Tiernan tells me, his breath clouding in the air. “And quick-thinking.”

  Perhaps this is his way of thanking me for guiding him out of the woods.

  “Not just some rabid animal, unworthy of being your companion on a quest?” I counter, still resentful over him tying my ankle to the motel bed.

  He doesn’t defend himself. “And not hideous, even. In case you wondered what I thought, which I am fairly sure you didn’t.”

  “Why are you saying all this?” I ask, my voice low. I glance back at Oak, but he is staring at the sky, laughing a little to himself. “You can’t possibly care what I look like.”

  “He talked about you,” Tiernan says.

  I feel like an animal after all, one that’s been baited in its den. I both dread and desire him to keep talking. “What did he say?”

  “That you didn’t like him.” He gives me an evaluating look. “I thought maybe you’d had a falling-out when you were younger. But I think you do like him. You just don’t want him to know it.”

  The truth of that hurts. I grind my sharp teeth together.

  “The prince is a flatterer. And a charmer. And a wormer around things,” Tiernan informs me, entirely unnecessarily. “That makes it harder for him to be believed when he has something sincere to say. But no one would ever accuse me of being a flatterer, and he—”

  He bites off the rest because, there, in the distance, rising out of the snow, is the Ice Needle Citadel.

  One of the towers has fallen. The castle of cloudy ice, like some enormous piece of quartz, was once full of spires and points, but many of them have cracked and splintered. The jagged icicles that were once ornamentation have grown into elephantine structures that cover some of the windows and cascade down the sides. My breath stutters. I have seen this place so many times in my night terrors that, even half-demolished, I cannot help but feel like I am in another awful dream.

  Rays of sunlight strike the snow, melting an ice layer that freezes and re-forms every day. As I take a step, I feel the sheet break, a craquelure spreading from my feet.

  This time, I do not fall. In that reflective, glittering brightness, though, it is hard to hide.

  During our trudge toward the Citadel, Oak untied himself and crawled from the sled, declaring he was well enough, and then proved that his definition of “well enough” wasn’t the same as “well,” since he has spent the time since staggering along as though drunk.

  Titch found us again, swooping low and settling on Tiernan’s shoulder. The knight sent the hob off to scout ahead.

  “Let’s stop here,” Tiernan says, and Oak collapses gratefully into the snow. “Wren has suggested we change clothes.”

  “I do appreciate your commitment to us looking our best,” says the prince.

  By now, I am used to Oak and do not think for a moment he doesn’t understand the plan. I haul out the uniforms I stole from Gorga. For myself, with my bluish skin, I take the dress of one of the castle servants. Huldufólk, like Lady Nore, have gray skin and tails. My skin isn’t quite right, and I have no tail, but its absence is hidden by the long skirts.

  I wrap the bridle in a strip of cloth around my waist, then tie it on underneath the dress like a girdle. My knife goes into my pocket.

  I change quickly. So does Oak, who shivers as he pulls rough woolen pants over his smooth linen ones. They hang low enough that his hooves look passably like boots when half-covered with snow. Tiernan shivers almost continuously as he pulls on the new uniform.

  “You’re still likely to be identified if anyone sees you close-up,” I warn Oak.

  He is the prince, after all, with hooves not unlike the former Prince Dain’s.

  “Which is why I should go in, not you,” says Tiernan for what feels like the millionth time.

  “Nonsense; if they catch me, they won’t immediately put my head on a spike,” Oak returns.

  He’s probably right. Still. “Yes, but they’re more likely to catch you,” I say.

  “You ought to be on my side,” he says, looking hurt. “I was poisoned.”

  “That’s another good reason for me to go in your place,” Tiernan puts in.

  “Pragmatist,” says Oak, as though it’s a dirty word.

  We get as close as we dare and then hollow out snow into a cavern to wait in until nightfall. Oak and Tiernan pull their hands and feet tight to their bodies, but the prince’s lips still take on a bluish color.

  I unclasp the cloak that I’ve been wearing and pass it to him.

  He shakes his head. “Keep it. You’ll freeze.”

  I push it at him. “I’m never cold.”

  He gives me an odd look, perhaps thinking of me lying with him by the fire, but must be too chilled to debate.

  As they go over our plan one more time, I start to believe that this is possible. We get in, steal back Mab’s remains, and leave with the general. If something goes wrong, I suppose we have the deer heart in the reliquary, but since Oak’s bluff seems like a long shot, I hope we don’t have to rely on it. Instead, I concentrate on remembering that I still have the power of command over Lady Nore.

  And yet, as we approach the Citadel, I cannot help but recall being lost in this snow, weeping while tears froze on my cheeks. Just being here makes me feel like that monster child again, unloved and unlovable.

  As night falls, Tiernan crawls out of our makeshift dwelling. “If you’re going in, then at least let me be the one to go down and make sure all is how we expect it.”

  “You need not—” Oak begins, but Tiernan cuts him off with a glare.

  “Wren ought to stay behind with the heart,” Tiernan says. “If you’re not planning on confronting Lady Nore, then it doesn’t matter if Wren can command her, and Wren’s no use to you in a fight.”

  “I could be useful in avoiding one,” I remind him.

  Oak does not seem moved by Tiernan’s argument. “If she’s willing to come, then she’s coming.”

  Tiernan throws up his hands and storms off through the snow, obviously angry with both of us.

  “I do think I may need you inside the Citadel,” Oak tells me. “Although I wish that wasn’t the case.”

  I am glad he wants me there, though I am no knight or spy. “Perhaps all three of us could go in,” I venture.

  “He needs to stay here, lest we get caught,” Oak says. “He’ll keep the heart with him and bargain for our return with it.”

  A moment later, Tiernan ducks his head back inside, the owl-faced hob on his shoulder. “You two can climb the side to the birdie entrance. Titch has been watching the patrol shifts, and they’re sloppy. Makes it hard to know when they are going to happen, but there’s a window of opportunity when they do.”

  Oak nods and pushes himself to his feet. “Very well, then,” he says. “No time like the present.”

  “One more thing,” Tiernan says. “There are trolls on the battlements, along with those stick creatures and some falcon soldiers.”

  “But I thought the trolls were trapped…,” I begin, but trail off because there are so many possibilities. They could be trolls that do not come from the Stone Forest and are therefore not subject to its curse. But when I think about the heaps of clothing, and the mounted heads, I wonder if what we witnessed were the remains of sacrifices meant to appease the ancient troll kings to open the way from the forest.

  My blood was spilled for the glory of the Kings of Stone who rule from beneath the world, but my body belongs to the Queen of Snow.

  At that unsettling thought, I follow Tiernan and Oak out of our snow tunnel and into the frigid air.

  We stay as low to the ground as we are able. In the dark, it’s easier to approach the Citadel without drawing much attention to ourselves. At least until we see a great and horrible spiderlike construction of ice and stone, flesh and twig, lumbering through the night.

  We hear a piercing scream, and I see that the spider has a huldu woman in its pincers. They are too far away for us to help her. A moment later, her screams cease and the stick-spider begins to feed.

  “If that thing can eat,” Oak says, “then it’s truly alive. Not like one of Grimsen’s ornamental creations with fluttering wings that move like clockwork. Not like that head on a spike, repeating the same message over and over. It hungers and thirsts and wants.”

  Like me.

  Oh, I do not want to be here. I hate this place. I hate everything about it and everything it might teach me about myself.

  Enormous braziers burn on either side of the Citadel gate. We wait in the snow until there is movement on the battlements.

  Tiernan flips a knife in his hand. “I’ll create a distraction at the garrison while you and the prince go up that wall.”

  This is my last chance to avoid returning to the place of my nightmares. All I have to do is tell Oak I changed my mind. Tiernan would be thrilled.

  I think of Bogdana’s words to me in the woods. The prince is your enemy.

  I think about the feeling of Oak’s breath against my neck, the way his fox eyes looked with the pupils gone wide and black. I think about how desperate he must be, to come all this way for his father, to gulp down poison, to risk his life on an uncertain scheme.

  I think about the bridle wrapped around my waist, the one I tried to steal. The one he gave me to keep.

  I have to trust him. Without me, we cannot command Lady Nore.

  “We should go straight to the prisons,” Oak says. “Get Madoc. Go from there.”

  “Better not,” I tell him. “We don’t know how hurt he’s going to be, and we can move faster without him. If we get the reliquary, then we can free him and move him to the sled directly.”

  Oak hesitates. I can see the conflict between getting what he came here for and getting everything. “All right,” he says finally.

  “If you’re not back by dawn,” Tiernan says, “then you know where I will be with the reliquary.” With that, he heads off through the snow.

  “How exactly is he going to create a distraction?” I ask, attempting to walk with my head down, as though I am a servant who belongs to the Citadel and am returning from a dull errand—perhaps gathering crowberries. Attempting to behave as though Oak is a soldier walking me inside.

  “Better not to ask,” the prince says with a slight smile.

  Up close, the outside of the Citadel is not a single piece of cloudy ice, but one composed of blocks, which have been melted smooth. Oak sticks his hand into his pack, and I recognize the grappling hook and rope from Undry Market.

  He’s eyeballing the spires, looking for the correct one.

  “There,” I whisper, pointing up.

  The entrance, three stories above us, isn’t visible when standing beneath it, as we are. It looks like an arch, the mirror of those that surround it.

  “You ready?” he asks.

  I’m not. When I think of Lady Nore, it’s as though my mind becomes full of scribbles, blotchy and looping, scratching through all my other thoughts. I nod in answer, because I don’t trust myself to speak when I have no ability to tell anything but the truth.

  Oak throws the grappling hook. Built for ice, the sharp edge sticks in hard. “If I fall, you must promise not to laugh. I may still be a little bit poisoned.”

  I think of Tiernan and how exasperated he would be if he heard those words. I wonder exactly how much a little bit means. “Maybe I should be the one to go first.”

  “Nonsense,” he says. “If you weren’t behind me, then who would break my fall?” Then he grabs the rope, presses his feet to the side of the Citadel, and proceeds to walk himself up the wall.

  I roll my eyes, grab hold, and follow far more slowly.

  We stop at the edge of the tower, and he winds the rope and removes the hook, while I peer down into the chamber through the opening. I hear distant strains of music. That must come from the great hall, where the thrones sit, and where instruments strung with the dried guts of mortals, or ones inlaid with bits of their bones, had been played to the delight of the Court of Teeth. This sounds more like a lone musician, though, rather than the usual troupe.

  As I look down, a servant rushes through, holding a tray filled with empty goblets that clatter together. Thankfully, they do not glance up.

  I press my hand to my heart, grateful we weren’t descending at that moment.

  “This time you go first,” Oak says, sinking the hook into new ice. “I’ll cover you.”

  I think he means that if someone spots me, no matter if they are a servant or guard, he’s going to kill them.

  “They taught you a lot of things, your family,” I say. The sleight of hand, the wall climbing, the swordsmanship.

  “Not to die,” he says. “That’s what they attempted to teach me, anyway. How not to die.”

  Considering how often he throws himself directly into the path of danger, I do not think they taught him well enough. “What’s the number of times that someone tried to assassinate you?”

  He gives a one-shouldered shrug, his attention on the tableau below. “Hard to know, but I’d guess there were a few dozen attempts since my sister came to power.”

  That would be more than twice a year for every year since I met him. And that scar on his neck suggests that someone got very, very close.

  I think of him as he was in the woods at thirteen, wanting to run away. Angry and afraid. I think of him lying on the sled this morning.

  I poison everything I touch.

  Every time I feel as though I know him, it seems there is another Oak underneath.

  I shimmy down the rope, dropping when I am close enough to the ground not to hurt myself. My feet make a soft, echoing noise when they hit the floor, and I am struck by the nausea-inducing familiarity of the place. I spent not even two years here, and yet the very smell of the air makes me sick.

  A massive bone chandelier hangs in the center of the room, candle wax dripping hot enough to melt indentations in the floor.

  While the exterior of the Citadel is formed of giant slabs of clear, bright ice, some of the interior walls are enhanced by having things frozen inside the ice, resulting in something like wallpaper. Stones suspended, as though forever in midfall. Bones, picked clean, occasionally used to form sculptures. Roses, their petals forever preserved in their full flowering. This room’s walls have two faerie women frozen inside them, preserved so that they never decayed into moss and stone, like the rest of the Folk. Two faerie women, dressed in finery, crowns on their heads.

  The Hall of Queens.

  I had never known that Lady Nore might have joined their number, if not for me. A fresh horror, on top of all the others.

  I can’t help feeling like a child again, with time seeming to dilate around me. Every hour, each day had felt endless, telescopic. The spaces were distorted in my memory, the halls shorter, the ceilings less high.

  My wrists still show knots of skin where Lord Jarel pierced them to drive through the thin silver chains that leashed me. If I touch my cheeks, I can still feel, right underneath the bone, the marks of scars.

  I do not realize how long I have been staring until Oak lands beside me, the clatter of his hooves louder than my soft-shod feet. He takes in the room, and me.

  “Do you know the way from here?” he asks.

  I give a quick nod and begin to move again.

  One of the dangers of the Citadel is that the ice throughout varies in translucence, so there are places where movement is visible between rooms, or even through floors and ceilings. We could be semi-exposed at all times. Therefore, we must not crouch or attempt to hide. We must move in such a way that our faint outlines do not betray us.

  I lead us into a hall, and then another. We pass a thin window of ice that looks out on the interior courtyard, and I glance through it. Oak pulls me back into shadow, and after a moment, I realize why.

  Lady Nore stands outside, in front of sculptures of stick and snow. A line of ten, some in the shapes of men, some beasts, some creatures that are neither. Each one’s mouth is filled with sharp, jagged icicle teeth. Each one has stones in place of eyes; a few have them pressed into sockets of flesh. I spot other horrible things: a foot, fingers, bits of hair.