It was Bogdana who wrapped me in a cloak and carried me inside after I collapsed in the snow.

  The hag carried me to my room, with its walls of ice, and set me down on the skins of my bed. She touched my brow with fingers twice as long as fingers ought to be. Looked down at me with her black eyes, shook her head of wild, storm-tossed hair. “You will not always be so small or so frightened,” she told me. “You are a queen.”

  The way the hag said those words made me raise my head. She made the title sound as though it was something of which I ought to be proud.

  When the Court of Teeth ventured south, to war with Elfhame, Bogdana did not come with us. I thought to never see her again and was sorry for it. If there was one of them who might have looked out for me, it was her.

  Somehow that makes it worse that she’s the one at my heels, the one hunting me through the streets.

  When I hear the hag’s footfalls draw close, I grit my teeth and try for a burst of speed. My lungs are already aching, my muscles sore.

  Perhaps, I try to tell myself, perhaps I can reason with her. Perhaps she is chasing me only because I ran.

  I make the mistake of glancing back and lose the rhythm of my stride. I falter as the hag reaches out a long hand toward me, her knife-sharp nails ready to slice.

  No, I don’t think I can reason with her.

  There is only one thing left to do, and so I do it, whirling around. I snap my teeth in the air, recalling sinking them into flesh. Remembering how good it felt to hurt someone who scared me.

  I am not stronger than Bogdana. I am neither faster nor more cunning. But it’s possible I am more desperate. I want to live.

  The hag draws up short. At my expression, she takes a step toward me, and I hiss. There is something in her face, glittering in her black eyes, that I do not understand. It looks triumphant. I reach for one of the little blades beneath my dress, wishing again for the carving knife.

  The one I pull out is folded, and I fumble trying to open it.

  I hear the clop of a pair of hooves, and I think that somehow it is the glaistig, come to watch me be taken. Come to gloat. She must have been the one to alert Bogdana to what I was doing; she must be the reason this is happening.

  But it is not the glaistig who emerges from the darkness of the woods. A young man with goat feet and horns, wearing a shirt of golden scale mail and holding a thin-bladed rapier, steps into the pool of light near a building. His face is expressionless, like someone in a dream.

  I note the curls of his tawny blond hair tucked behind his pointed ears, the garnet-colored cloak tossed over wide shoulders, the scar along one side of his throat, a circlet at his brow. He moves as though he expects the world to bend to his will.

  Above us, clouds are gathering. He points his sword toward Bogdana.

  Then his gaze flickers to me. “You’ve led us on a merry chase.” His amber eyes are bright, like those of a fox, but there is nothing warm in them.

  I could have told him not to look away from Bogdana. The hag sees the opening and goes for him, nails poised to rip open his chest.

  Another sword stops her before he needs to parry. This one is held in the gloved hand of a knight. He wears armor of sculpted brown leather banded with wide strips of a silvery metal. His blackberry hair is cropped short, and his dark eyes are wary.

  “Storm hag,” he says.

  “Out of my way, lapdog,” she tells the knight. “Or I will call down lightning to strike you where you stand.”

  “You may command the sky,” the horned man in the golden scale mail returns. “But, alas, we are here on the ground. Leave, or my friend will run you through before you summon so much as a drizzle.”

  Bogdana narrows her eyes and turns toward me. “I will come for you again, child,” she says. “And when I do, you best not run.”

  Then she moves into the shadows. As soon as she does, I try to dash to one side of him, intent on escape.

  The horned man seizes hold of my arm. He’s stronger than I expect him to be.

  “Lady Suren,” he says.

  I growl deep in my throat and catch him with my nails, raking them down his cheek. Mine are nowhere near as long or sharp as Bogdana’s, but he still bleeds.

  He makes a hiss of pain but doesn’t let go. Instead, he wrenches my wrists behind my back and holds them tight, no matter how I snarl or kick. Worse, the light hits his face at a different angle and I finally recognize whose skin is under my fingernails.

  Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame. Son of the traitorous Grand General and brother to the mortal High Queen. Oak, to whom I was once promised in marriage. Who had once been my friend, although he doesn’t seem to remember it.

  What was it the pixie had said about him? Spoiled, irresponsible, and wild. I believe it. Despite his gleaming armor, he is so poorly trained in swordplay that he didn’t even attempt to block my blow.

  But after that thought comes another one: I have struck the Prince of Elfhame.

  Oh, I am in trouble now.

  “Things will be much easier if you do exactly as we tell you from this moment forward, daughter of traitors,” the dark-eyed knight in the leather armor informs me. He has a long nose and the look of someone more comfortable saluting than smiling.

  I open my mouth to ask what they want with me, but my voice is rough with disuse. The words come out garbled, the sounds not the ones I intended.

  “What’s the matter with her?” he asks, frowning at me as though I am some sort of insect.

  “Living wild, I suppose,” says the prince. “Away from people.”

  “Didn’t she at least talk to herself?” the knight asks, raising his eyebrows.

  I growl again.

  Oak brings his fingers to the side of his face and draws them back with a wince. He has three long slashes there, bleeding sluggishly.

  When his gaze returns to me, there’s something in his expression that reminds me of his father, Madoc, who was never so happy as when he went to war.

  “I told you that nothing good ever came out of the Court of Teeth,” says the knight, shaking his head. Then he takes a rope and ties it around my wrists, looping it through the middle to make it secure. He doesn’t pierce my skin like Lord Jarel used to, leashing me by stabbing a needle threaded with a silver chain between the bones of my arms. I am not yet in pain.

  But I do not doubt that I will be.

  As I trudge through the woods, I think about how I will escape. I have no illusions that I won’t be punished. I struck the prince. And if they knew about the curses I’ve been unraveling, they’d be even more furious.

  “Next time you’ll remember not to drop your guard,” the knight says, observing the wounds on Oak’s cheek.

  “My vanity took the worst of the blow,” he says.

  “Worried about your pretty face?” the knight asks.

  “There is too little beauty in the world,” says the prince airily. “But that is not my area of greatest conceit.”

  It can’t be coincidence that they turned up clad in armor and prepared to fight at nearly the same time Bogdana started poking around my unfamily’s home. They were all looking for me, and whatever the reason, it cannot be one I will like.

  I breathe in the familiar scent of wet bark and kicked-up leaf mold. The ferns are silvery in the moonlight, the woods full of shifting shadows.

  I wriggle my wrists experimentally. Unfortunately, I am tied well. Flexing my fingers, I try to slip one underneath the binding, but the knots are even too tight for that.

  The knight snorts. “Not sure this is the luckiest start to a quest. If the hob hadn’t spotted your little queen here, that hag might be wearing her skin for a coat.”

  The owl-faced hob. I grimace, not certain whether I ought to be grateful. I have no idea what they mean to do to me.

  “Isn’t that the very definition of luck—to have arrived in time?” Oak throws a mischief-filled glance in my direction, as though at some feral animal he wonders if it would be fun to tame.

  I think of him in the High Court, as I was about to be sentenced for my crimes as queen of the traitorous Court of Teeth. I was eleven, and he’d just turned nine. I was bound then, as now. I think of him at thirteen, when he met me in the woods and I sent him away.

  At seventeen, he has grown tall, towering over me, lithe and finely muscled. His hair catches the moonlight, warm gold threaded with platinum, bangs parting around small goat horns, eyes of shocking amber, and a constellation of freckles across his nose. He has a trickster’s mouth and the swagger of someone used to people doing what he wanted.

  Faerie beauty is different from mortal beauty. It’s elemental, extravagant. There are creatures in Faerie of such surpassing comeliness that they’re painful to look at. Ones that possess a loveliness so great that mortals weep at the sight of them or become transfixed, haunted by the desire to see them even once more. Maybe even die on the spot.

  Ugliness in Faerie can be equally extravagant. There are those among the Folk so hideous that all living things shrink back in horror. And yet others have a grotesquerie so exaggerated, so voluptuous, that it comes all the way around to beauty.

  It isn’t that mortals can’t be pretty—many of them are—but their beauty doesn’t make you feel pummeled by it. I feel a little pummeled by Oak’s beauty.

  If I look at him too long, I want to take a bite out of him.

  I turn my gaze to my muddy feet, scratched and sore, then Oak’s hooves. I recall from a stolen school science book that hooves are made from the same stuff that makes up fingernails. Keratin. Above them, a dusting of fur the same color as his hair disappears into a pant cuff hitting just below his knees, revealing the odd curve of his lower legs. Slim-fitting trousers cover his thighs.

  I shiver with the force of keeping myself from thrashing against my bindings.

  “Are you cold?” he asks, offering his cloak. It’s embroidered velvet, with a pattern of acorns, leaves, and branches. It’s beautifully stitched and looks wildly out of place this far from Elfhame.

  This is a pantomime I am familiar with. The performance of gallantry while keeping me in restraints, as though the chill in the air is what I am most worried about. But I suppose this is how princes are expected to behave. Noblesse oblige and all that.

  Since my hands are tied, I am not sure how he expects me to put it on. When I say nothing, he drapes it over my shoulders, then ties it at my throat. I let him, even though I am used to the cold. Better to have something than not, and it’s soft.

  Also, it hangs over my hands, shielding them from view. Which means that if I do manage to get my wrists loose from the knots, no one will know until it’s too late.

  That’s twice he’s been foolish.

  I try to concentrate on escape and on not allowing hopelessness to sweep over me. Were my hands free, I would still need to get away. But if I did, I think I could prevent them from tracking me. The knight may have been taught how to follow a trail, but I have had years of experience obscuring mine.

  Oak’s skills—if he has any outside of being a lordling—are unknown to me. It’s possible that despite all his big talk and his pedigree, the prince has brought the knight along to make sure he doesn’t trip and impale himself on his own fancy sword.

  If they leave me alone for a moment, I can bring my arms down and step backward through the circle of them, bringing my bound hands to the front of my body. Then I’d chew through the rope.

  I cannot think of any reason they will give me that chance. Still, under cover of Oak’s cloak, I fidget with my bindings, trying to stretch them as far as I am able.

  When we depart the woods, we step onto an unfamiliar street. The houses are farther apart than in my unfamily’s neighborhood and more run-down, their lawns overgrown. In the distance, a dog is barking.

  Then I am guided onto a dirt road. At the very end is a deserted house with boarded-up windows and grass so tall a mower might choke on it. Outside stand two bone-white faerie steeds, the gentle curve of their necks longer than those of mortal horses.

  “There?” I ask. The word comes out clearly enunciated, even if my voice still sounds rough.

  “Too filthy for Your Highness?” the knight asks, raising his brows at me as though I am unaware of the dirt on my dress and mud on my feet. As though I don’t know I am no longer a queen, that I do not remember Oak’s sister disbanding my Court.

  I hunch my shoulders. I’m used to word games like this one, where there is no right answer and every wrong answer leads to punishment. I keep my mouth shut, my gaze going to the scratches on the prince’s cheek. I have made enough mistakes already.

  “Ignore Tiernan. It’s not so awful inside,” Oak says, giving me a courtier’s smile, the kind that’s supposed to convince you it’s okay to relax your guard. I tense up even further. I have learned to be afraid of smiles like that. He continues, with a wave of one hand. “And then we can explain the necessity for our being so wretchedly impolite.”

  Impolite. That was one way to refer to tying me up.

  The knight—Tiernan—opens the door by leaning his shoulder against it. We go inside, Oak behind me so there’s no hope of running. The warped wooden floorboards groan beneath the tread of his hooves.

  The house has obviously been empty for a long time. Graffiti sprawls across floral wallpaper, and a cabinet under the sink has been ripped out, probably to get at any copper pipes. Tiernan guides me toward a cracked plastic table that’s in a corner of the kitchen along with a few scuffed-looking chairs.

  In one is a soldier with a wing where an arm ought to be, light brown skin, a long fall of mahogany hair, and eyes the startling purple of monkshood. I do not know him, but I think I know the curse. Oak’s sister, the High Queen, had the unrepentant soldiers who followed Madoc turned into falcons after the Battle of the Serpent. They were cursed so that if they wanted to return to their true forms, they couldn’t hunt for a year and a day, eating only what they were given. I do not know what it means that he seems half-cursed now. If I squint, I can see the trailing threads of magic around him, winding and coiling like roots trying to regrow.

  No easy spell to unmake.

  And against his mouth, I see the thin leather straps and golden fastenings of a bridle. A shudder of recognition goes through me. I know that, too.

  Created by the great smith Grimsen, and given to my parents.

  Lord Jarel placed that bridle on me long ago, when my will was an inconvenience to be cleared away like a cobweb. Seeing the bridle brings back all the panic and dread and helplessness I’d felt as the straps slowly sank into my skin.

  Later, he’d tried to use it to trap the High King and Queen. He failed and it fell into their hands, but I am horrified that Oak would have made a prisoner wear it, casually, as though it were nothing.

  “Tiernan captured him outside your mother’s Citadel. We needed to know her plans, and he’s been immensely helpful. Unfortunately, he’s also immensely dangerous.” Oak is speaking, but it’s hard to see anything but the bridle. “She has a motley crew of vassals. And she has stolen something—”

  “More than one something,” says the bridled former falcon.

  Tiernan kicks the leg of the falcon’s chair, but the falcon only smiles up at him. They can make that bridled soldier do anything, say anything. He is trapped inside himself far more securely than he could be bound by any rope. I admire his defiance, however useless.

  “Vassals?” I echo the prince’s statement, my voice scratchy.

  “She has reclaimed the Citadel of the Court of Teeth and, since that Court is no more, has made a new one,” Oak says, raising his brows. “And she has an old magic. She can create things. From what we understand, mostly creatures from twigs and wood, but also parts of the dead.”

  “How?” I ask, horrified.

  “Does it matter?” Tiernan says. “You were supposed to keep her under control.”

  I hope he can see the hate in my eyes. Just because the High Queen forced Lady Nore to swear fealty to me after the battle, just because I could command her, didn’t mean I’d had the first idea of what to actually do.

  “She was a kid, Tiernan,” Oak says, surprising me. “As was I.”

  A few embers glow in the fireplace. Tiernan huffs and moves to kneel beside it. He adds logs from a pile, along with balled-up pages he rips from an already-torn cookbook. The edge of a page catches, and flames blaze up. “You’d be a fool to trust the former queen of the Court of Teeth.”

  “Are you so sure you know our allies from our enemies?” Oak takes out a long stick from the pile of wood, thin enough to be kindling. He holds it in the fire until the end sparks. Then he uses it to light the wicks of candles set around the room. Soon warm pools of light flicker, making the shadows shift.

  Tiernan’s gaze strays to the bridled soldier. It rests there a long moment before he turns to me. “Hungry, little queen?”

  “Don’t call me that,” I rasp.

  “Grouchy, are we?” Tiernan asks. “How would you like this poor servant to address you?”

  “Wren,” I say, ignoring the taunt.

  Oak watches the interaction with half-lidded eyes. I cannot guess at his thoughts. “And do you desire repast?”

  I shake my head. The knight raises his eyebrows skeptically. After a moment, he turns away and takes out a kettle, already blackened by fire, and fills it from the tap in the bathroom sink. Then he hangs it on a prop stick they must have rigged up. No electricity, but the house still has running water.

  For the first time in a very long while, I think about a shower. About how my hair felt when it was combed and detangled, my scalp spared from the itch of drying mud.

  Oak walks to where I am sitting, my tied wrists forcing my shoulders back.

  “Lady Wren,” he says, amber eyes like those of a fox meeting mine directly. “If I undo your bindings, may I rely upon you to neither attempt escape nor attack one of us for the duration of our time in this house?”

  I nod once.

  The prince gives me a quick, conspiratorial grin. My mouth betrays me into returning the smile. It makes me recall how charming he was, even as a child.