He jumps onto the bench and grabs for it, catching the end of its tail. With a tug, it comes off the wall, falling against his body and coiling around his forearm.

  “Prinsssss,” it hisses. As it opens its mouth to speak, he notes the tiny holes in the points of its silvery fangs.

  When it does not strike, Oak pries the snake carefully from around his arm. Then, gripping the end of its tail firmly, he slams it down against the stone bench. Hears the cracking of its delicate mechanical parts. A gem flies off. So does a piece of metal. He whips it against the bench again.

  A sound like the whistle of a teakettle comes from it, and its coils writhe. He brings its body down hard twice more, until it is broken and utterly still.

  Oak feels relieved and awful at the same time. Perhaps it was no more alive than one of the ragwort steeds, but it had spoken. It had seemed alive.

  He sinks to the floor. Inside the metal creature, he finds a glass vial, now cracked. The liquid inside is bloodred and clotted. Blusher mushroom. The one poison unlikely to harm him. Welcome proof that his sister doesn’t want him dead. Maybe Cardan doesn’t, either.

  The snake is limp in his hands, the magic gone from it. He trembles to think of what could have happened had the creature been sent to visit Wren before finding him in the prisons. Or if his iron-addled mind had only realized the danger too late.

  Three days.

  He can no longer dawdle. No longer dread. No longer scheme. He has to act, and fast.

  Oak listens for the changing of the guard. Once he hears Straun’s voice, he bangs on the bars until the guard comes. It takes a long time, but not as long as it might have if Straun wasn’t in a foul mood from a night of drinking and losing money at dice.

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” the falcon roars.

  “You’re going to get me out of this cell,” Oak says.

  Straun pauses, then sneers, but there’s a little wariness in it. “Have you run mad, princeling?”

  Oak holds out his hand. A collection of gemstones rests in his scratched palm. He spent the better part of the night prying them out of the body of the snake. Each is worth ten times what Straun gambled away.

  The falcon snorts in disgust but cannot disguise his interest. “You intend to bribe me?”

  “Will it work?” Oak asks, walking to the edge of his cell. He’s not sure if it’s his magic urging him on or not.

  Almost against his will, Straun steps closer. Good. The prince can smell the sharpness of the juniper liquor on his breath. Perhaps he is still a little drunk. Even better.

  Oak reaches his right hand halfway through the bars, lifting it so the gems catch the faint edge of torchlight. He slides his other hand through, too, lower.

  Straun smacks Oak’s arm hard. His skin hits the iron bar on his cell, burning. The prince howls as the gems fall, most scattering across the corridor between the cells.

  “Didn’t think I was half so clever as you, did you?” Straun laughs as he gathers up the stones, not having promised a single thing.

  “I did not,” Oak admits.

  Straun spits on the floor in front of the prince’s cage. “No amount of gold or gems will save you. If my winter queen wants you to rot here, you’re going to rot.”

  “Your winter queen?” Oak repeats, unable to stop himself.

  The falcon looks a little shamefaced and turns to go back to his post. He’s young, Oak realizes. Older than Oak, but not by so very much. Younger than Hyacinthe. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Wren made such an impression on him.

  It shouldn’t bother Oak, shouldn’t fill him with a ferocious jealousy.

  What the prince needs to concentrate on is the key in his left hand. The one he grabbed from the loop at Straun’s belt when the falcon smacked his right arm. Straun, who was, thankfully, exactly as clever as Oak had supposed him to be.

  The key fits smoothly into the lock of Oak’s cell. It turns so soundlessly it might as well have been greased.

  Not that Straun is likely to come back to check on him, no matter how loud he bangs on the bars. The guard will be feeling smug. Well, let him.

  The prince lifts a piece of cloth he’s torn from his shirt and soaked in blusher mushroom liquid salvaged from the snake. Then he starts down the hall, his breath clouding in the cold air.

  The Ghost taught him how to move stealthily, but he’s never been very good at it. He blames his hooves, heavy and hard. They clack at the worst possible times. But he makes an effort, sliding them against the floor to minimize noise.

  Straun is grumbling to another guard about how the others are cheats, refusing to play any more dice games. Oak waits until one leaves to bring back more refreshments and listens hard to the retreating steps of boots.

  After he’s sure there’s only one guard there, he tries the gate. It’s not even locked. He supposes there’s no reason for it to be when there’s only one prisoner, and he wears a bridle to keep him obedient.

  Oak moves fast, jerking Straun backward and covering his nose and mouth with the cloth. The guard struggles, but inhaling blusher mushroom slows his movements. Oak presses him to the floor until he’s unconscious.

  From there, it’s just a matter of arranging his body so that when the other guard returns, he might believe he’s dozed off. It’s hard for Oak to leave the guard’s sword at his hip, but its absence would almost certainly give him away. He does, however, snatch up the cloak he finds hanging on a hook beside the door.

  Oak takes the stairs, careful now.

  He has the surreal feeling of being in a video game. He played enough of them, sitting on Vivi’s couch. Creeping through pixelated rooms that had more of the appearance of Madoc’s stronghold where he grew up than anywhere they went in the mortal world. Leaning on Heather’s shoulder, controller in his hands. Killing people. Hiding the bodies.

  This is a stupid, ugly, violent game, Vivi said. Life isn’t like that. And Jude, who was visiting, raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

  He recalls following Wren through these icy halls. Killing people. Hiding the bodies.

  There are more visitors to the Citadel now than there were then; ironically, that makes it easier to be overlooked. There are so many new faces, neighboring Folk arriving to discover the nature of the new lady and curry her favor. Well-dressed nisse and huldufólk courtiers gather in knots, passing gossip. Trolls size one another up, and a few selkies hang around at the edges, no doubt gathering news of a rising power to take back to the Undersea.

  Oak cannot blend in, not in his worn and filthy clothes, not with the straps of Grimsen’s bridle tight to his cheeks. He sticks to the shadows, putting up the hood of the cloak and moving with slow deliberation.

  After growing up with servants in his father’s stronghold in Faerie and then without any when he was in the mortal world, the prince is very aware of what it takes to keep a castle like this one running. As a small child, he was used to his dirty clothing disappearing from his floor and returning to his armoire, cleaned and hung. But after he and Vivi and Heather had to carry bags of laundry to the basement of their apartment building and feed quarters into a machine, along with detergent and fabric softener, he realized that someone must have been performing a related service for him in Faerie.

  And someone is performing that service here in the Citadel, washing linens and uniforms. Oak heads in the direction of the kitchens, figuring the flames of the ovens are likely the same ones used to heat the tubs of water necessary to clean fabric. Real fire would be easier to keep confined to the stone basements and first floor of the Citadel.

  Oak keeps his head down, although the servants barely spare him a glance. They rush through the halls. He’s sure the household is vastly understaffed.

  It takes him a tense twenty minutes of creeping about before a change in the humidity of the air and the scent of soap reveal the laundry area. He pushes open the door to the room gingerly and is relieved to find no servant currently doing the wash. Three steaming vats rest on the black rock floor. Dirty bedding, tablecloths, and uniforms soak inside them. Clean linens hang from ropes strung overhead.

  Oak pulls off his own filthy garments, dropping them into the water before stepping in, too.

  He feels a bit foolish as he wades into a vat, naked. Should he be discovered, he will doubtless have to play the silly, carefree prince, so vain that he escaped his prison for a bath. It would be a crowning achievement of embarrassment.

  The soapy water is merely warm, but it feels deliciously hot after being so chilled for so long. He shudders with the pleasure of it, the muscles in his limbs relaxing. He dunks himself, submerging his head and scrubbing at his skin with his fingernails until he feels clean. He wants to stay there, to float in water as it grows ever more tepid. For a moment, he allows himself to do just that. To stare at the ceiling of the room, which is black stone, too, although above this level, the walls, floors, and ceilings are all of ice.

  And Wren, somewhere inside them. If he could just speak to her, even for a moment…

  Oak knows it’s ridiculous, and yet he can’t help feeling as though they have an understanding of each other, one that transcends this admittedly not-great moment. She will be angry when he talks with her, of course. He deserves her anger.

  He has to tell her that he regrets what he did. He’s not sure what happens after that.

  Nor is he sure what it means about him that he finds hope in the fact that Wren has kept him. Fine, not everyone would see being thrown into a dungeon as a romantic gesture, but he’s choosing to at least consider the possibility that she put him there because she wants something more from him.

  Something beyond, say, skinning him and leaving his rotting corpse for ravens to pick over.

  On that thought, he splashes his way out of the tub.

  Among the drying uniforms, he finds one that seems as though it will fit him—certainly fit better than the bloodstained one he used to get into the palace weeks ago. It’s damp, but not so much as to draw notice, and only slightly too tight across his chest. Still, dressed this way and with the hood of the cloak pulled forward to hide his face, he might be able to walk straight out the door of the Citadel, as though he were going on patrol.

  It would serve her right for never coming to see him, not even to use the bridle and command him to stay put.

  He’s not sure how far he could get in the snow, but he still has three of the stones from the snake. He might be able to bribe someone to take him in their carriage. And even if he didn’t want to risk that, he might well find his own horse in the stables, since Hyacinthe was the one who stole Damsel Fly and Hyacinthe is now Wren’s second-in-command.

  Either way, he’d be free. Free to not need rescuing. Free to attempt to talk his sister out of whatever homicidal plan she might foment against the Citadel. Free to return home and go back to performing fecklessness, back to sharing the bed of anyone he thought might be planning a political coup, back to being an heir who never wants to inherit.

  And never seeing Wren again.

  Of course, he might not make it to Jude in time for her to know he was free, to stop whatever plans she set in motion. Whatever murders her people would commit in his name. And then, of course, there would be the question of what Wren did in retaliation.

  Not that he knows how to stop either of them if he remains here. He’s not sure anyone knows how to stop Jude. And Wren has the power of annihilation. She can break curses and tear spells to pieces with barely any effort. She took apart Lady Nore as though she were a stick creature and spread her insides over the snow.

  Really, that memory alone should send the prince out of the Citadel as quickly as his legs could carry him.

  He pulls the hood of the cloak down over his face and heads toward the Great Hall. Getting a glimpse of her feels more like a compulsion than a decision.

  He can feel the gaze of courtiers drift toward him—covering one’s face in a hood is unusual, at the very least. He keeps his own eyes unfocused and his shoulders back, though his every instinct screams to meet their looks. But he is dressed like a soldier, and a soldier would not turn.

  It is harder to pass falcons and to know they might spot his hooves and wonder. But he is hardly the only one to have hooves in Faerie. And everyone who knows that the Prince of Elfhame is in the Citadel believes him to be locked up tight.

  Which doesn’t make him any less of a fool for coming into the throne room. When everything goes wrong, he will have no one to blame but himself.

  Then he sees Wren, and longing shoots through him like a kick to the gut. He forgets about risk. Forgets about schemes.

  Somewhere in the crowd, a musician plucks at a lute. Oak barely hears it.

  The Queen of the Ice Citadel sits upon her throne, wearing a severe black dress that shows her bare pale blue shoulders. Her hair is a tumble of azure, some strands pulled back, a few pieces braided through with black branches. On her head is a crown of ice.

  In the Court of Moths, Wren flinched away from the gazes of courtiers as she entered the revel on his arm, as though their very notice stung. She curled her body so that, small as she was, she appeared even smaller.

  Now her shoulders are back. Her demeanor is that of someone who does not consider anyone in this room—not even Bogdana—a threat. He flashes on a memory of her younger self. A little girl with a crown sewn to her skin, her wrists leashed by chains that threaded between bones and flesh. No fear in her face. That child was terrifying, but no matter how she seemed, she was also terrified.

  “The delegation of hags has come,” snaps Bogdana. “Give me the remains of Mab’s bones and restore my power so that I can lead them again.”

  The storm hag stands before the throne, in the place of the petitioner, although nothing about her suggests submission. She wears a long black shroud, tattered in places. Her fingers move expressively as she speaks, sweeping through the air like knives.

  Behind her are two Folk. An old woman with the talons of some bird of prey instead of feet (or hooves) and a man shrouded in a cloak. Only his hand is visible, and that is covered in what seems to be a scaled, golden glove. Or perhaps his hand itself is scaled and golden.

  Oak blinks. He knows the woman with the feet like a bird of prey. That’s Mother Marrow, who operates out of Mandrake Market on the isle of Insmire. Mother Marrow, whom the prince went to at the very start of his quest, asking for guidance. She sent him to the Thistlewitch for answers about Mellith’s heart. He tries to recall now, all these weeks later, whether she’d said anything that might have put him in Bogdana’s path.

  Knots of courtiers are scattered around the room, gossiping, making it hard to hear Wren’s soft reply. Oak steps closer, his arm brushing against a nisse. She makes an expression of annoyance, and he shifts away.

  “Have I not suffered long enough?” asks Bogdana.

  “You would speak to me of suffering?” Nothing in Wren’s expression is soft or yielding or shy. She is every bit the pitiless winter queen.

  Bogdana frowns, perhaps a little unnerved. Oak feels somewhat unnerved himself. “Once I have them, my might will be restored—me, who was once first among hags. That’s what I gave up to secure your future.”

  “Not my future.” There is a hollowness to Wren’s cheeks, Oak notices. She’s thinner than she was, and her eyes shine with a feverish brightness.

  Has she been ill? Is this because of the wound in her side when she was struck by an arrow?

  “Do you not have Mellith’s heart?” demands the storm hag. “Are you not her, reborn into the world through my magic?”

  Wren does not reply immediately, letting the moment stretch out. Oak wonders if Bogdana has ever realized that the trade she made must have ruined her daughter’s life, long before it led to her horrible death. From the Thistlewitch’s tale, Mellith must have been miserable as Mab’s heir. And since Wren has at least some of Mellith’s memories in addition to her own, she has plenty of reasons to hate the storm hag.

  Bogdana is playing a dangerous game.

  “I have her heart, yes,” says Wren slowly. “Along with part of a curse. But I am not a child, no less your child. Do not think you can so easily manipulate me.”

  The storm hag snorts. “You are a child still.”

  A muscle jumps in Wren’s jaw. “I am your queen.”

  Bogdana does not contradict her this time. “You have need of my strength. And you have need of my companions if you hope to continue as you are.”

  Oak stiffens at those words, wondering at their meaning.

  Wren stands, and courtiers turn their attention to her, their conversations growing hushed. Despite her youth and her small stature, she has vast power.

  And yet, Oak notices that she sways a little before gripping the arm of her throne. Forcing herself upright.

  Something is very wrong.

  Bogdana made this request in front of a crowd rather than in private and named herself as Wren’s maker. Called Wren a child. Threatened her sovereignty. Brought in two of her hag friends. These were desperate, aggressive moves. Wren must have been putting her off for some time. But also, the storm hag may have thought she was attacking in a moment of weakness.

  First among the hags. He doesn’t like the thought of Bogdana being more powerful than she already is.

  “Queen Suren,” says Mother Marrow, stepping forward with a bow. “I have traveled a long way to meet you—and to give you this.” She opens her palm. A white walnut sits at the center of it.

  Wren hesitates, no longer quite as remote as she seemed a moment before. Oak recalls the surprise and delight in her face when he bought her a mere hair ornament. She hasn’t been given many presents since she was stolen from her mortal home. Mother Marrow was clever to bring her something.

  “What does it do?” A smile twitches at the corners of Wren’s mouth, despite everything.

  Mother Marrow’s smile goes a little crooked. “I have heard you’ve been traveling much of late and spending time in forest and fen. Crack the nut and say my little poem, and a cottage will appear. Bring the two halves together again with another verse, and it will return to its shell. Shall I demonstrate?”