I wonder if somehow I have misread this situation, if somehow we could be on the same side.

  Oak takes a knife from a wrist guard hidden beneath his white linen shirt and applies it to the rope behind me.

  “Don’t cut it,” the knight warns. “Or we’ll have to get new rope, and we may have to restrain her again.”

  I tense, expecting Oak to be angry at being told what to do. As royalty, it is out of order for him to be directed by someone of lower status, but the prince only shakes his head. “Worry no more. I’m only using the point of my blade to help me pry apart your too-clever knots.”

  I study Tiernan in the half light of the fire. It is hard to gauge age among the Folk, but he looks to be only a little older than Oak. His blackberry hair is mussed; one of his pointed ears has a single piercing through it, a silver hoop.

  I bring my hands to my lap, rubbing my fingers over the indentations the rope left in my skin. Had I not been straining so hard against the bindings, they wouldn’t be half so deep.

  Oak puts the knife away and then says with great formality, “My lady, Elfhame requires your assistance.”

  Tiernan looks up from the fire but does not speak.

  I don’t know how to reply. I am unused to attention and find myself flustered to be the focus of his. “I have already sworn fealty to your sister,” I manage to croak out. I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t. “I am hers to command.”

  He frowns. “Let me try to explain. Months before the Battle of the Serpent, Lady Nore managed to cause an explosion underneath the castle.”

  I glance over at the former falcon, wondering if he was part of it. Wondering if I should remember him. Some of my memories of that time are terribly vivid, while others are blotted out like ink running over paper.

  “At the time, it was thought to be an attack on Elfhame’s spies and a coincidence that Queen Mab’s resting place was disturbed.” Oak pauses, watching me as though he’s trying to determine if I am following along. “Most faerie bodies break down into roots and flowers, but Mab’s did not. Her remains, from her ribs to her finger bones, were imbued with a power that kept them from crumbling—a power to bring things to life. That’s what Lady Nore stole, and that’s what she’s drawing her new power from.”

  The prince gestures toward the bridled soldier. “Lady Nore has attempted to recruit more Folk to her cause. For those who were cursed to be falcons, if they come to her Citadel, she offers to feed them from her own hand for the year and a day during which they are forbidden from hunting. And when they return to their original form, she demands their loyalty. Between them, her own Folk who remained loyal to her, and the monsters she’s making, her plans for revenge on Elfhame seem well under way.”

  I look at the prisoner. The High Queen granted clemency to any soldier who repudiated what they’d done and swore fealty to her. Anyone who repented. But he’d refused.

  I recall standing before the High Queen myself the night Oak spoke on my behalf. Remember when you said we couldn’t help her. We can help her now. Pity in his voice.

  I’d bragged to the High Queen that I knew all Lady Nore and Lord Jarel’s secrets, hoping to be useful, thinking that since they spoke in front of me heedlessly, treating me as a dumb animal instead of a little girl, they’d kept nothing back. Still, they’d never spoken of this. “I can’t recall any mention of Mab’s bones.”

  Oak gives me a long look. “You lived in the Ice Needle Citadel for more than a year, so you must know its layout, and you can command Lady Nore. You’re her greatest vulnerability. No matter her other plans, she has good reason to want to eliminate you.”

  I shudder at that thought because it should have occurred to me before now. I remember Bogdana’s long nails, the panic of her chasing me through the streets.

  “We need you to stop her,” Oak says. “And you need our help to fend off whomever she sends to kill you.”

  I hate that he’s right.

  “Did you make Lady Nore promise you anything before she left Elfhame?” Tiernan asks hopefully.

  I shake my head, looking away in shame. As soon as she was able, Lady Nore slipped off. I never had a chance to tell her anything. And when I realized she was gone, what I felt had been mostly relief.

  I think of the words she swore before the High Queen, when Jude demanded she give me her vow: I, Lady Nore, of the Court of Teeth, vow to follow Suren and obey her commands. Nothing about not sticking a dagger in my back, unfortunately. Nothing about not sending a storm hag after me.

  Tiernan frowns, as though my failing to give Lady Nore any orders has confirmed his suspicion that I am untrustworthy. He turns to Oak. “You know the grudge Lady Nore bears against Madoc, justified or not. Who knows what slights this one won’t forget.”

  “Let’s not discuss my father right at the moment,” Oak returns.

  Madoc, the traitor who marched on Elfhame with the Court of Teeth. Before that, the Grand General who was responsible for the slaughter of most of the royal family. And Oak’s foster father.

  Madoc had sought to put Oak on the throne, where he could rule through him. Though the crown would have rested on Oak’s head, all the power would have belonged to the redcap. At least until Lord Jarel and Lady Nore tricked Madoc and took over.

  I know how precarious it is to be a queen without power, controlled and thoroughly debased. That could have been Oak’s fate. But if the prince bears his father any ill will, it doesn’t show on his face.

  Tiernan leans forward to take the metal kettle off the prop stick with a poker, setting it gingerly on a folded-up towel. It steams steadily.

  Then he takes out several foam containers of instant ramen from a kitchen cabinet, along with an already-opened box of mint tea. Noticing me looking, he nods toward Oak. “The prince introduced me to this delicacy of the mortal world. Bollockses up your magic for a while—all that salt—but I can’t deny it is addictive.”

  The smell makes me recall the satisfaction of something burn-your-mouth hot, something straight from an oven instead of congealed in a garbage bin.

  I don’t take one of the noodle cups, but when Oak hands me a mug of tea, I accept that. I stare into the depths and see silt at the bottom. Sugar, he would tell me if I asked, and at least some of it would be, but I can’t be sure the rest isn’t a drug of some kind, or a poison.

  They do not want me dead, I try to tell myself. They need me.

  And I need them, too, if I want to live. If Lady Nore is hunting me, if Bogdana is helping her, the prince and his companion are my only hope of staying out of reach.

  “So, what would you have me to do?” I am proud to get the whole sentence out without my voice cracking.

  “Go north with me,” Oak says, sitting on the plastic chair beside mine. “Command Lady Nore to tie a big bow around herself and make a present to Elfhame. We’ll steal back Mab’s bones and end the threat to—”

  “With you?” I stare at him, sure I have misunderstood. Princes stay in palaces, enjoying revels and debauchery and the like. Their necks are too valuable to risk.

  “And my brave friend Tiernan.” Oak inclines his head toward Tiernan, who rolls his eyes. “Together, the four of us—counting Hyacinthe—will take back the Citadel and end the threat to Elfhame.”

  Hyacinthe. So that’s the cursed soldier’s name.

  “And when we complete our quest, you can ask a boon of me, and if it is within my power and not too terrible, I will grant it.” I wonder at the prince’s motive. Perhaps ambition. If he delivers Lady Nore, he could ask a boon of his own from the High King and cement his position as heir, effectively cutting any future children out of the line of succession.

  I can imagine a prince might do a lot for an unwavering path to the throne. One that by some accounts should have been his in the first place.

  And yet, I cannot help thinking of the sprite saying he would be unsuitable as a ruler. Too spoiled. Too wild.

  Of course, since she’s a companion of the glaistig and the glaistig is awful, perhaps what she thinks shouldn’t matter.

  Tiernan takes out a wooden scroll case carved with a pattern of vines. It contains a map, which he unfurls on the table. Oak weighs down the edges with teacups, spoons, and a brick that might have been thrown through one of the windows. “First we must go a ways south,” the prince says. “To a hag who will give us a piece of information that I hope will help us trick Lady Nore. Then we head north and east, over water, into the Howling Pass, through the Forest of Stone, to her stronghold.”

  “A small group is nimble,” Tiernan says. “Easier to hide. Even if I think crossing through the Stone Forest is a fool’s notion.”

  Oak traces the route up the coast with a finger and gives us a roguish grin. “I am the fool with that notion.”

  Neither seems inclined to tell me more about the hag, or the trickery she is supposed to inspire.

  I stare at the path, and at its destination. The Ice Needle Citadel. I suppose it is still there, gleaming in the sun as though made of spun sugar. Hot glass.

  The Stone Forest is dangerous. The trolls living there belong to no Court, recognize no authority but their own, and the trees seem to move of their own accord. But everything is dangerous now.

  My gaze goes to Hyacinthe, noting his bird wing and the bridle sinking into his cheeks. If Oak leaves it on him long enough, it will become part of him, invisible and unable to be removed. He will forever be in the prince’s thrall.

  The last time I wore it, Lady Nore and Lord Jarel’s plan to move against the High Court was the only reason they cut the bridle’s straps from my skin, leaving the scars that still run along my cheekbones. Leaving me with the knowledge of what they would do to me if I disobeyed them.

  Then they marched me before the High Queen and suggested that I be united in marriage with her brother and heir, Prince Oak.

  It is hard to explain the savagery of hope.

  I thought she might agree. At least two of Oak’s sisters were mortal, and while I knew it was foolish, I couldn’t help thinking that being mortal meant they would be kind. Maybe an alliance would suit everyone, and then I would have escaped the Court of Teeth. I kept my face as blank as possible. If Lady Nore and Lord Jarel thought the idea pleased me, they would have found a way to turn it to torment.

  Oak was lounging on a cushion beside his sister’s feet. No one seemed to expect him to act with any kind of formal decorum. At the mention of marriage, he looked up at me and flinched.

  His eldest sister’s lip curled slightly, as though she found the thought of me even coming near him repulsive. Oak shouldn’t have anything to do with these people or their creepy daughter, she said.

  In that moment, I hated him for being so precious to them, for being cosseted and treated as though he was deserving of protection when I had none.

  Maybe I still hate him a little. But he was kind when we were children. It’s possible there’s a part of him that’s still kind.

  Oak could always remove the bridle from Hyacinthe. As he might, if he decides he wants to put it on me. If I am Lady Nore’s greatest vulnerability, then he might well consider me a weapon too valuable to chance letting slip away.

  It is too great a risk to think of a prince as so kind that he wouldn’t.

  But even if he wouldn’t use the bridle to control me, or invoke his sister’s authority, I still have to go north and face Lady Nore. If I don’t, she will send the storm hag again or some other monster, and they will end me. Oak and Tiernan are my best chance at surviving for long enough to stop her, and they are my only chance at getting close enough to command her.

  “Yes,” I say, as though there was ever a choice. My voice doesn’t break this time. “I’ll go with you.”

  After all, Lady Nore ripped away everything I cared about. It will give me no small pleasure to do the same to her.

  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know that, no matter how courteously they behave, I am as much a prisoner as the winged soldier. I can command Lady Nore, but the Prince of Elfhame has the authority to command me.

  The night after Madoc, Lady Nore, and Lord Jarel failed to arrange our marriage, Oak snuck to the edge of where Madoc’s traitorous army and the Court of Teeth had made camp. There, he found me staked to a post like a goat.

  He was perhaps nine, and I, ten. I snarled at him. I remember that.

  I thought he was looking for his father and that he was a fool. Madoc seemed the sort to roast him over a fire, consume his flesh, and call it love. By then, I had become familiar with love of that kind.

  He looked upset at the sight of me. He ought to have been taught better than to let his emotions show on his face. Instead, he assumed that others would care about his feelings, so he didn’t bother to hide them.

  I wondered what would happen if, when he got close enough, I pinned him to the ground. If I beat him to death with a rock, I might be rewarded by Lord Jarel and Lady Nore, but it seemed equally likely that I would be punished.

  And I didn’t want to hurt him. He was the first child I’d met since coming to Faerie. I was curious.

  “I have food with me,” he said, coming closer and taking a bundle out of a pack he wore over one shoulder. “In case you’re hungry.”

  I was always hungry. Here in the camp, I mostly filled my belly by eating moss and sometimes dirt.

  He unwrapped an embroidered napkin on the ground—one made of spider silk finer than anything I wore—to reveal roasted chicken and plums. Then he moved away. Allowing me space to feed, as though he were the frightening one.

  I glanced at the nearby tents and the woods, at the banked fire a few feet away, embers still glowing. There were voices, but distant ones, and I knew from long experience that while Lord Jarel and Lady Nore were out, no one would check on me, even if I screamed.

  My stomach growled. I wanted to snatch the food, though his kindness was jarring and made me wonder what he’d want in return for it. I was used to tricks, to games.

  I stared at him, noting the sturdiness of his body, solid in a way that spoke of having enough to eat and running outside. At the alienness of the little goat horns cutting through his soft bronze-and-gold curls and the strange amber of his eyes. At the ease with which he sat, faun legs crossed, hooved feet tipped in covers of beaten gold.

  A woolen cloak of deep green was clasped at his throat, long enough to sit on. Underneath, he wore a brown tunic with golden buttons and knee-length trousers, stopping just above where his goat legs curved. I could not think of a single thing I had that he could want.

  “It’s not poisoned,” he said, as though that was my worry.

  Temptation won out. I grabbed a wing, tearing at the flesh. I ate it down to the bone, which I cracked so I could get at the marrow. He watched in fascination.

  “My sisters were telling fairy tales,” Oak said. “They fell asleep, but I didn’t.”

  That explained nothing about his reasons for coming here, but his words gave me a strange, sharp pain in my chest. After a moment, I recognized it as envy. For having sisters. For having stories.

  “Do you talk?” he asked, and I realized how long I’d been silent. I had been a shy child in the mortal world, and in Faerie nothing good had ever come from my speaking.

  “Not much,” I admitted, and when he smiled, I smiled back.

  “Do you want to play a game?” He shuffled closer, eyes bright. Reaching into his pocket, he produced some little metal figures. Three silver foxes resting in the middle of his callused palm. Inset chips of peridot sparkled in their eyes.

  I stared at him in confusion. Had he really come all this way to sit in the dirt and show me his toys? Maybe he hadn’t seen another kid in a while, either.

  I picked up one of the foxes to examine it. The detail work was very fine. “How do we play?”

  “You throw them.” He formed a cage of his hands with the foxes inside, shook it up, and then tossed them into the grass. “If they land standing, you get ten points. If they land on their backs, you get five points. If they land on their side, no points.”

  His landed: two lying on their sides, and one on its back.

  I reached out eagerly. I wanted to hold those foxes, feel them fall from my fingers.

  When they did and two landed on their backs, I gasped in delight.

  Over and over, we played the game. We made tally marks in the dirt.

  For a while, there was only the joy of escaping from where I was and who I was. But then I remembered that as little as he might want from me, there was plenty I needed.

  “Let’s play for stakes,” I proposed.

  He looked intrigued. “What will you bet?”

  I was not so foolish as to ask for anything much that first time. “If you lose, you tell me a secret. Any secret. And I will do the same for you.”

  We played, and I lost.

  He leaned in, close enough for me to smell the sage and rosemary his clothes had been wrapped with before he wore them, close enough to bite out a chunk of flesh from his throat.

  “I grew up in the mortal lands,” I said.

  “I’ve been there.” He seemed amused to discover we had something in common. “And eaten pizza.”

  It was hard to imagine a prince of Faerie journeying to the human world for anything but a sinister reason, but eating pizza didn’t seem that sinister.

  We played again, and this time he lost. His smile dimmed, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “This is a real secret. You can’t tell anyone. When I was little, I glamoured my mortal sister. I made her hit herself, a lot of times, over and over, and I laughed while she did. It was awful of me, and I never told her that I regretted it. I am afraid of making her remember. She might get really mad.”

  I wondered which sister he’d glamoured. I hoped not the one who sat on a throne now, his life in her hands.

  His words stood as a reminder, though, that no matter how soft he seemed or how young, he was as capable of cruelty as the rest. But cruel or not, his help could still be won. My gaze went to the stake to which I was bound. “This time, if my score is better, you cut the rope and free me. If your score is better, you can… ask me to do something, anything, and I will.”