“Oh, do you?” says Tiernan in a parody of the prince’s drawl. “Well, then, by all means—carry on.”

  “Oh, I shall,” Oak returns. Now they’re both obviously annoyed with each other, although I have no idea why.

  “What’s your horse’s name?” I ask in the long silence that follows. My voice rasps only a little.

  Oak strokes fingers over the velvet nap of her flank, visibly pushing off his mood. “My sister Taryn called her Damsel Fly when we were young, and it stuck. I’ll hand you up.”

  “Isn’t that sweet?” Hyacinthe says, the first words I’ve heard him speak. “Riding your sister’s horse into battle. Have you anything of your own, prince? Or just girls’ castoffs and scraps?”

  “Get up,” Tiernan tells Hyacinthe gruffly. “Mount.”

  “As you command,” the cursed soldier says. “You do delight in giving orders, don’t you?”

  “To you, I do,” Tiernan returns, heaving himself up behind the prisoner. A moment later he seems to realize what he’s said, and his cheeks pink. I don’t think Hyacinthe can see him, but I can.

  “He calls his horse Rags,” Oak goes on as though neither of the others spoke, although ignoring them must take some effort.

  Tiernan sees me glance in his direction and gives me a look that reminds me that, were it up to him, he’d have me bound and gagged and dragged along behind them.

  “I need to get my things,” I tell them. “From my camp.”

  Oak and Tiernan share a look. “Of course,” Oak says after whatever silent communication passed between them. “Lead the way, Lady Wren.”

  Then the prince clasps his fingers together to make a step so I can hop up onto the horse. I do, scrambling to throw my leg over. He swings up in front of me, and I do not know where to put my hands.

  “Hold on,” Oak urges, and I have no choice but to dig my nails into the flesh of his hip bones, just below the scale mail, and try not to fall off. The warmth of his skin is scalding through the thin cloth he’s wearing beneath the gold plates, and embarrassment pulls that heat to my cheeks. The faerie horse is supernaturally fleet of foot, moving so fast that it feels a little like flying. I try to speak into Oak’s ear, to give him directions, but I feel as though half the things I say are swept into the wind.

  As we get close to my woven willow hut, the horse slows to a trot. A shiver goes through the prince as he hits the spell I wove to protect this place. He turns with a swift accusatory look and then reaches into the air and swipes it away as easily as if it were cobwebs.

  Does he think I meant to use it to escape? To harm him? When he stops, I slide down with relief, my legs wobbly. Usually, this would be the hour when I slept, and I am more exhausted than usual as I stagger to my little home.

  I feel Oak’s gaze on me, evaluating. I cannot help but see this place through his eyes. The den of an animal.

  I grit my teeth and crawl inside. There, I scrounge around for an old backpack scavenged from a dumpster. Into this, I shove items, without being sure what I might need. The least-stained of my three blankets. A spoon from my unparents’ kitchen drawers. A plastic bag with seven licorice jelly beans in it. A bruised apple I was saving. A scarf, the ends unfinished, which my unmother was still knitting when I stole it.

  Oak walks through a pattern of mushroom rings nearby, studying my packing from a distance.

  “Have you been living here since last we spoke?” he asks, and I try not to read too much into the question. His expression isn’t disgusted or anything like that, but it is too carefully neutral for me to believe he isn’t hiding what he thinks.

  Four years ago, it was easier to disguise how far I’d fallen. “More or less,” I tell him.

  “Alone?” he asks.

  Not entirely. I’d made a human friend at twelve. I’d met her rooting through trash behind a bookstore, looking for paperbacks with their covers stripped off. She’d painted my toenails a bright glittering blue, but one day I saw her talking to my sister and hid from her.

  And then Bogdana showed up a few months later, hanging a human pelt over my camp and warning me not to reveal any of our secrets. I stayed away from mortals for a year after that.

  But there’d been a boy I saved from the glaistig when I was fourteen and he, seventeen. We’d sit together by a pond a few miles from here, and I would carefully avoid telling him anything I thought the storm hag wouldn’t like. I think he was half-sure that he’d conjured me with his vape pen, an imaginary girlfriend. He liked to start fires, and I liked to watch. Eventually, he decided that since I wasn’t real, it didn’t matter what he did to me.

  Then I demonstrated that I was very real, and so were my teeth.

  The storm hag came again after that, with another pelt, and another warning about mortals, but by then I hardly needed it.

  There was a silver-haired banshee I visited sometimes. As one of the sluagh, the other local faeries avoided her, but we would sit together for hours while she wept.

  But when I thought of telling Oak any of that, I realized it would make my life sound worse, instead of better. “More or less,” I say again.

  I pick up things and then put them down, wishing to keep them with me but knowing they won’t all fit. A chipped mug. A single earring hanging from a branch. A heavy textbook of poetry from seventh grade, with REBECCA written in thick Sharpie on the side. The butcher knife from the family kitchen, which Tiernan eyes skeptically.

  I stick with the two little knives I have on my person.

  There is one last thing I take, swiping it fast, so neither of them sees. A tiny silver fox with peridot eyes.

  “The Court of Moths is a savage place, risky even for a prince of Elfhame,” Tiernan informs Oak from where he sits on a log, cutting bark from a branch with a wicked little blade. I sense this is not the first time they’ve had this conversation. “Sure, they’re your sister’s vassals, but they’re violent as vultures. Queen Annet eats her lovers when she tires of them.”

  Hyacinthe kneels at the trickle of a nearby stream to drink. With only one hand to support himself and not a second to make a cup with, he puts his mouth directly into the water and gulps what he can. At Tiernan’s words, he lifts his face. Alert, perhaps, to an angle for escape.

  “We only need to speak with the Thistlewitch,” Oak reminds him. “Queen Annet can grant us a way to navigate her swamps and find the hag. The Court of Moths is only half a day’s ride, down and east, toward the sea. We won’t dally. We can’t afford to.”

  “The Thistlewitch,” Tiernan echoes. “She’s seen two queens dead in the Court of Termites. Rumor is, she had a hand in engineering it. Who knows what her game is now.”

  “She was alive during Mab’s reign,” Oak says.

  “She was old during Mab’s reign,” Tiernan supplies, as though that makes his point for him. “She’s dangerous.”

  “The Thistlewitch’s dowsing rod can find anything.” There is a deep anxiety under the surface of this conversation. I am too well acquainted with the feeling not to recognize it. Is he more afraid than he’s letting on, a prince on his first quest, riding his sister’s pretty horse?

  “And then what?” Tiernan says. “That’s a tricky gambit you’re considering.”

  Oak heaves a heavy sigh and does not answer, leaving me to wonder about his motives all over again. Leaving me to wonder what part of his plan he has elided, that he needs a hag to find something for him.

  Tiernan returns to whittling and doesn’t issue any further warnings. I wonder how hard it is to keep Oak out of trouble, and if Tiernan does it out of friendship or loyalty to Elfhame. If Oak is the sunlight filtering through trees in the woods, all shifting gold and shadow, then Tiernan seems like those same woods in winter, the branches barren and cold.

  As I move to rise, I notice something white is tucked into the edge of my hut, pushed into the weave of the woods. A wadded-up piece of paper, unmarked by dirt. As they speak, I manage to smooth it out beneath one of my filthy blankets so I can read what’s written there.

  You cannot outrun fate.

  I recognize Bogdana’s spidery handwriting. I hate the thought of her intruding on the place where I feel most safe, and the note itself makes me angry. A taunt, to make it clear that she hasn’t given up hunting me. A taunt, like giving me a head start in a game she is sure to win.

  I crumple the note and shove it into my backpack, settling it beside the little silver fox.

  “Got everything?” Oak asks, and I straighten up guiltily, slinging my bag across one shoulder.

  A gust of wind makes my threadbare dress blow around me, its hem dirtier than ever.

  “If you thought we went fast before—” the prince begins to say, his smile full of mischief. Reluctantly, I walk to the horse and resign myself to getting on her back again.

  That’s when arrows fly out of the dark.

  One hits the trunk of a nearby maple tree, just above my head. Another strikes the flank of the knight’s horse, causing her to let out a horrible whinny. Through my panic, I note the rough, uneven wood of the shafts, the way they are fletched with crow feathers.

  “Stick creatures!” the winged soldier shouts.

  Tiernan gives him a look of banked fury, as though this is somehow his fault. “Ride!”

  Oak reaches for my hand, pulling me up onto Damsel so that I am seated in front, my back against his metal-covered chest. I grab for the knots of the horse’s mane, and then we’re racing through the night, the horse thundering beneath us, arrows hissing through the air at our heels.

  The stick creatures come into view, beasts of branches and twigs—some shaped like enormous wolves, others like spiders, and one with three snapping heads, like nothing I have seen before. A few in vaguely human shapes, armed with bows. All of them crawling with moss and vine, with stones tucked into packed earth at their centers. But the worst part is that among those pieces of wood and fen, I see what appear to be waxy mortal fingers, strips of skin, and empty mortal eyes.

  Terror breaks over me like a wave.

  I throw a panicked glance back at the wounded horse riding after us, carrying Tiernan and Hyacinthe. Blood stains her flank, and her steps are stumbling, uneven. Though she is moving fast, the wicker creatures are swifter.

  Oak must know it, because he pulls on the reins and Damsel wheels around, back toward our attackers. “Can you get behind me?” he says.

  “No!” I shout. I am having a hard enough time hanging on, pressing my thighs against the horse’s flanks as firmly as I can and clinging to its neck, my fingers tangled in its mane.

  His arm encircles my waist, pressing me to him. “Then crouch down as low as you’re able,” he warns. With his other hand, he pulls a small crossbow from a saddlebag and notches a bolt with his teeth.

  He fires, missing spectacularly. The bolt strikes the dirt between Tiernan and the wicker men’s deer. There isn’t time to reload, and the prince doesn’t try, just takes a sharp, expectant breath.

  My heart sinks, desperately wishing for some talent other than curse breaking. Had I the storm hag’s power, I could call down lightning and singe them to cinders. Had I better control of my own magic, perhaps I could hide us behind an illusion.

  Then the bolt Oak shot explodes into blue shimmering fire, and I realize he didn’t miss after all. Burning stick men fall from the backs of their stick mounts, and one of the spidery creatures darts off, aflame, into the woods.

  Tiernan’s horse has nearly caught up to ours when we gallop away. I feel Oak tense behind me and I turn, but he shakes his head, so I concentrate on holding on.

  It was one thing to have Lady Nore’s power described, but seeing the stick creatures with their bits of flesh made me all too aware of how easy it would be to harvest human parts from cities like she might take rocks from quarries, and carve armies from forests. Elfhame should worry. The mortal world should fear. This is worse than I imagined.

  The horses break free of the woods, and we find ourselves on suburban roads, then crossing a highway. It’s late enough that there’s little traffic. Tiernan’s glamour settles over us, not quite a disguise but a piece of misdirection. The mortals still observe something out of the corner of their eyes, just not us. A white stag, perhaps. Or a large dog. Something they expect and that fits into the world they can explain. The magic makes my shoulders itch.

  We ride on for what feels like hours.

  “Oak?” the knight calls as we come to a crossroads. His gaze goes to me. “When was the prince hit?”

  I realize that the weight on my back has grown heavier, as though Oak slumped forward. His hand is still around me, but his grip on the reins has loosened. When I shift in the saddle, I see that his eyes are shut, lashes dusting his cheeks, limbs gone slack.

  “I didn’t know—” I begin.

  “You fool,” mutters Tiernan.

  I try to turn in the saddle and grab for the prince’s body so it doesn’t fall. He slumps against me, large and warm in my arms, his armor making him heavier than I am sure I can manage. I dig in my fingers and hope I can hold him, although it is all too easy to imagine the prince’s body dropped in the dirt.

  “Halt,” Tiernan says, slowing his horse. Damsel slows, too, keeping pace with the knight’s mount.

  “Get down,” he tells Hyacinthe, then pokes him in the back.

  The winged soldier slides off the horse with the sort of ease that suggests he’s ridden many times before.

  “So this is who you follow?” he asks sullenly, with a glare in the prince’s direction.

  Tiernan dismounts. “So you’re suggesting I throw in my lot with those things?”

  Hyacinthe subsides, but he studies me as though he wonders if I might be on his side. I am not, and I hope my look tells him so.

  Tiernan strides to Damsel. He reaches up, taking Oak’s weight in his arms and easing the prince onto the leaf-covered earth.

  I slip off the saddle gracelessly, hitting the ground hard and staggering to one knee.

  A bit of blood shows that one of the arrows struck Oak just above the shoulder blade. It was stopped by the scales of his golden armor, though; only the very tip punctured his flesh.

  It must have been poisoned.

  “Is he…?” I can see the rise and fall of his chest. He’s not dead, but the poison could still be working its way through his system. He might be dying.

  I don’t want to think of that. Don’t want to think that were he not behind me, I would have been the one struck.

  Tiernan checks Oak’s pulse. Then he leans down and sniffs, as though trying to identify the scent. Takes a bit of blood on his finger and touches it to his tongue. “Deathsweet. That stuff can make you sleep for hundreds of years if you get enough in your system.”

  “There can’t have been more than a little bit on the arrow,” I say, wanting him to tell me that couldn’t possibly have been enough.

  Tiernan ignores me, though, and rummages in a bag at his belt. He takes out an herb, which he crushes under the prince’s nose and then presses onto his tongue. Oak has enough consciousness to jerk his head away when the knight’s fingers go into his mouth.

  “Will that fix him?” I ask.

  “We can hope,” Tiernan says, wiping his hand on his trousers. “We ought to find a place to shelter for the night. Among mortals, where Lady Nore’s stick things are unlikely to look.”

  I give a quick nod.

  “It shouldn’t be too long a walk.” He lifts the prince, draping Oak back over his steed. Then we proceed, with Tiernan leading Damsel Fly. Hyacinthe walks behind him, and I am left to lead the knight’s mount.

  The bloodstain on her flank has grown, and her limp is noticeable. So, too, is the piece of an arrow still embedded in her side. “Was she poisoned, too?”

  He gives a curt nod. “Not enough to bring this tough girl down yet, though.”

  I reach into my backpack and take out the bruised apple I brought. I bite pieces off for both horses, who snuffle gently into my hands.

  I stroke the hair over Rags’s nose. She doesn’t seem to be in too much pain from the arrow, so I choose to believe she’ll be okay.

  “Maybe it would be better if he did sleep for a hundred years,” Tiernan says, although he seems to be talking more to himself. “Lady Nore is going to be hunting us as surely as we’re hunting her. Asleep is better than dead.”

  “Why is Oak really doing this?” I ask.

  The knight gives me a hard look. “Doing what?”

  “This task is beneath him.” I don’t know how else to say it. In the Court of Teeth, Lady Nore made me understand that she might pierce my skin to make a leash of silver mesh run through it, might cause me agony so great that my thoughts shrunk to those of an animal, but any disrespect of me by a commoner was punished by death. Being royal mattered.

  Surely, even at her worst, the High Queen cannot value the prince less than Lady Nore valued me. Jude ought to have sent a dozen knights rather than her own brother, with only a single guard to protect him.

  “Maybe there’s a lady he wants to impress with his heroics,” the knight says.

  “His sister, I imagine,” I say.

  He laughs at that. “Or Lady Violet, with lips of carmine and a crown of living butterflies in her hair, according to a poem written about her. Oak spent three days in her bed before a jealous lover appeared, waving around a dagger and making an ugly scene. There was a Lady Sibi, too, who will declare dramatically to anyone likely to listen that Oak made her mad with passion and then, once he tired of her, splintered her heart into shards.

  “Actually, now that I think on it, he’d be well served not to impress Sibi more than he already has. But there’s any of the other two dozen beauties of Elfhame, all of whom are very willing to be awed by his heroics.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek. “That’s a ridiculous reason.”

  “Some people are ridiculous,” says Tiernan with a glance back at the sullen Hyacinthe in the bridle, trudging along. “Especially when it comes to love.”