Oak stabs a piece of fish and eats it. It’s peppery and has been splashed with vinegar. “What will you do when the High Court asks for me back?”

  She gives him a mild look. “What makes you think they haven’t already?”

  He thinks of all the war meetings she was dragged to by a silver chain back in the Court of Teeth. She knows what a conflict with Elfhame means. “If you let me speak with my sister—” he begins.

  “You would put in a good word?” There’s a challenge in her voice.

  Before, she played defensively. Her goal was to protect herself, but one cannot win that way.

  I am done with losing.

  He sees in Wren’s face the desire to sweep the board.

  He thinks of Bogdana, standing outside his cell, telling him that it is the High King she wants.

  Was this all part of the storm hag’s plan? His sister’s lessons and his father’s lessons come to him in a confusing rush, but they are all wrong for this.

  “I could persuade Jude to give us a little longer to settle our differences. But I admit that it will be harder with this bridle on my face.”

  Wren takes another sip of her wine. “You can’t stop what’s coming.”

  “What if I promise to return if you let me go?” Oak asks.

  She looks at him as though they are sharing an old joke. “Surely you don’t expect me to fall for such a simple trick as that.”

  The prince thinks of the key on the mantel, of the possibility of escape. “I could have left.”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten far.” She sounds very sure.

  Another course comes. This one is hot, so hot that the plate steams and the side of his ice wine goblet shines with melt. Deer hearts grilled over a fire, a sauce of red berries beneath them.

  He wonders if Wren planned the progression of this meal. If not, someone in the kitchens has a truly grim sense of humor.

  He doesn’t lift his fork. He doesn’t eat meat, but he’s not sure he’d eat this even if he did.

  She watches him. “You wish me to make you my advisor. To sit at my feet, tame and helpful. So advise me—I wish to be obeyed, even if I cannot be loved. I have few examples of queens that I might model myself after. Ought I rule like Queen Annet, who executes her lovers when she grows tired of them? Like your sister? I am told the High King himself called her method of diplomacy the path of knives. Or perhaps like Lady Nore, who used arbitrary and almost constant cruelty to keep her followers in line.”

  Oak sets his jaw. “I believe that you can be obeyed and loved. You don’t need to rule like anyone other than yourself.”

  “Love, again?” Wren says, but the twist of her mouth softens. Some part of her must be frightened to be back in this Citadel, to be sovereign over those she was fighting mere weeks before, to have been ill, to have demands on her power. She doesn’t behave as though she’s afraid, though.

  He looks across the table at the scars on her cheeks that came from wearing the bridle so long. At her moss-dark eyes. A feeling of helplessness sweeps over him. All his words tangle in his mouth, though he is used to having them come easily, tripping off his tongue.

  He would tell her that he wants to stay with her, that he wants to be her friend again, wants to feel her teeth against his throat, but how can he possibly convince her of his sincerity? And even if she did believe him, what would it matter when his desires didn’t keep her safe from his machinations?

  “I never pretended to feelings that weren’t real,” he manages.

  She watches him, her body tense, her eyes haunted. “Never? In the Court of Moths, would you really have endured my kiss if you didn’t think you needed me on your quest?”

  He snorts in surprise. “I would have endured it, yes. I would endure it again right now.”

  A slight rosiness comes into her cheeks. “That’s not fair.”

  “This is nonsensical. Surely you could tell I liked it,” he says. “I even liked it when you bit me. On the shoulder, remember? I might have a few tiny scars yet from the points of your teeth.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she tells him, annoyed.

  “Unfair,” he says. “When I so love being ridiculous.”

  Servants come to collect their plates. The prince’s food is untouched.

  She looks down at her lap, turning enough away from him to hide her expression. “You cannot really expect me to believe you liked being bitten?”

  He finds himself in the position he has so often put others, on his back foot. A hot flush creeps up his neck.

  “Well?” she says.

  He grins at her. “Didn’t you mean for me to enjoy it a little?”

  For a long moment, there’s a silence between them.

  The final course comes. Cold again, ice shaved into a pyramid of flakes, coated in a thin syrup as red as blood.

  He eats it and tries not to shiver.

  A few minutes later, Wren stands. “You will go back to the room in the tower, where I trust you will remain until I summon you again.”

  “To sprawl at your feet like a war prize?” he asks hopefully.

  “That might amuse you enough to keep you from mischief.” A small smile tugs at a corner of her mouth.

  Oak pushes back his chair and walks to her, reaching for her hand. He is surprised when she lets him take it. Her fingers are cold in his.

  She glances toward the guards. A red-haired falcon steps forward. Before Oak lets her hand go, though, he brings the back of it to his lips.

  “My lady,” he says, eyes closing for a moment when his mouth touches her skin. He feels as though he is attempting to cross a chasm on a bridge of razors. One misstep and he’s going to be in a world of pain.

  But Wren only makes a small frown, as though expecting to find mockery in his gaze. She takes back her hand, her face unreadable as the guards lead him to the door.

  “I am not the person you believe me to be,” she says in a rush.

  He turns back to her, surprised.

  “That girl you knew. Inside her was always this great rage, this emptiness. And now it’s all I am.” Wren looks wretched, her hands pressed together in front of her. Her eyes haunted.

  Oak thinks of Mellith and her memories. Of her death and Wren’s birth. Of the way she’s watching him now.

  “I don’t believe that,” he tells her.

  She turns to one of the guards. “On the way to his rooms,” she tells him, “make sure you pass the Great Hall.”

  One of the falcons nods, looking discomfited. The guards escort Oak out, marching him through the corridor. As they pass the throne room, they slow their steps enough for him to get a clear look inside.

  Against the ice of the wall, as though a piece of decor, hangs Valen’s body. For a moment, Oak wonders if this is Bogdana’s handiwork, but the falcon is neither flayed nor displayed in the manner of the storm hag’s other victims.

  His throat is cut. A gruesome necklace of blood has dried along his collarbone. His clothing is stiff with it, as though starched. Oak can see the gape of flesh, cut cleanly with a sharp knife.

  The prince glances back in the direction of where he had dinner with Wren.

  When she noted his reluctance to name the person responsible for his bruises, she already knew. Hyacinthe must have conveyed Oak’s words to her. She could have done this while the prince donned his clothes for their dinner.

  It is not as if he hasn’t seen murders before. In Elfhame, he saw plenty. His hands aren’t clean. But looking at the dead falcon, displayed thus, he recognizes that, even without Mellith’s memories, Wren saw things that were far more terrifying and cruel than anything he witnessed. And perhaps somewhere inside her, she is coming to learn that she can be all the things that once scared her.

  Oak was a child when Madoc was exiled to the mortal world, and yet, no matter what anyone said, he still knew it was his fault.

  Without Oak, there would have been no war. No plan to steal the crown. No family at one another’s throats.

  At least your father wasn’t executed for treason, Oriana told Oak when he complained about not being able to see him. Oak laughed, thinking she made a joke. When he realized that really could have happened, the idea of Madoc’s dying while he watched, powerless to stop it, haunted his nightmares. Beheadings. Drownings. Burnings. Being buried alive. His sisters, grim-faced. Oriana, weeping.

  Those bad dreams made not seeing Madoc even harder.

  It’s not a good idea right now, Oriana told him. We don’t want to seem as though we’re not loyal to the crown.

  And so he lived with Vivi and Heather in the mortal world, went to the mortal school, and during library time, compulsively looked up new, horrible details of executions. Sometimes Jude or Taryn would visit him at the apartment. His mother came often. Occasionally, someone like Garrett or Van would show up and instruct him in bladework.

  No one thought he had any real talent for it.

  Oak’s problem was that he thought of sword fighting as a game and didn’t want to hurt anyone. Games were supposed to be fun. Then, after a lot of scolding, he understood sword fighting as a deadly game and still didn’t want to hurt anyone.

  Not everyone needs to be good at killing things, Taryn told him with a pointed look at Jude, who was dangling a toy over baby Leander’s head as though he were a cat ready to swat at it.

  Sometimes after his nightmares, Oak would sneak out and stand on the lawn of the apartment complex and look up at the stars. Missing his mother and father. Missing his old house and his old life. Then he would walk into the woods and practice with his sword, even though he didn’t know what he was practicing for.

  A few months in, Oriana finally took him to see Madoc. There was no objection or interference from Jude. Either she didn’t know—which was unlikely—or she looked the other way, reluctant to forbid the visits but unable to officially allow them.

  Be nice to your father, Oriana warned. As though Madoc was ill, rather than exiled and bored and angry. But if Oriana taught Oak one thing, it was how to pretend everything was fine without actually lying about it.

  Oak felt shy as he stood in front of his father after all this time. Madoc had a ground-floor apartment in an old brick building by the waterfront. It wasn’t quite like Vivi’s, since it was furnished with ancient pieces from their home in Elfhame, but it was clearly a mortal space. There was a refrigerator and an electric stove. Oak wondered if his father resented him.

  Madoc seemed mostly concerned about Oak becoming soft.

  “Those girls were always fussing over you,” his father said. “Your mother, too.”

  Because he was born poisoned and was sickly as a baby, Oriana was constantly worried that Oak would overextend himself or that one of his sisters would be too rough with him. He hated her fretting. He was forever running off and swinging from trees or riding his pony in defiance of her edicts.

  After months apart from his father, though, he felt ashamed of all the times he went along with her wishes.

  “I’m not very good with a sword,” he blurted out.

  Madoc raised his brows. “How’s that?”

  Oak shrugged. He knew that Madoc never trained him the way he trained Jude and Taryn, certainly not the way he trained Jude. If he’d come inside with bruises the way she used to, Oriana would have been furious.

  “Show me,” Madoc said.

  Which is how he found himself on the lawn of a cemetery, blade raised, as his father walked around him. Oak went through the exercises, one after the other. Madoc poked him with a mop handle when he was in the wrong position, but it wasn’t often.

  The redcap nodded. “Good, fine. You know what you’re doing.”

  That part was true. Everyone had seen to that. “I have a hard time hitting people.”

  Madoc laughed in surprise. “Well, that is a problem.”

  Oak made a sour face. Back then, he didn’t like being laughed at.

  His father saw the expression and shook his head. “There’s a trick to it,” he said. “One that your sisters never quite learned.”

  “My sisters?” Oak asked, incredulous.

  “You need to let go of the part of your mind that’s holding you back,” Madoc said moments before he attacked. The redcap’s mop handle caught Oak in the side, knocking him into the grass. By the conditions of his exile, Madoc wasn’t allowed to hold a weapon, so he improvised.

  Oak looked up, the breath knocked out of him. But when Madoc swept the wooden stick toward him, he rolled to one side, blocking the blow.

  “Good,” his father said, and waited for him to get up before striking again.

  They sparred like that, back and forth. Oak was used to fighting, although not with this great intensity.

  Still, his father wore him down, hit by hit.

  “All the skill in the world doesn’t matter if you won’t strike me,” Madoc shouted finally. “Enough. Halt!”

  Oak let his blade sag, relieved. Tired. “I told you.”

  But his father didn’t look as though he was going to let things go. “You’re blocking my blows instead of looking for openings.”

  Barely blocking, Oak thought, but nodded.

  The redcap looked like he was going to gnash his teeth. “You need to get some fire in your belly.”

  Oak didn’t reply. He’d heard Jude tell him something similar many times. If he didn’t fight back, he could die. Elfhame wasn’t a safe place. Maybe there were no safe places.

  “You need to turn off the part of you that’s thinking,” Madoc said. “Guilt. Shame. The desire to make people like you. Whatever is getting in your way, you need to excise it. Cut it out of your heart. From the time your sword leaves your sheath, put all that aside and strike!”

  Oak bit his lip, not sure if that was possible. He liked being liked.

  “Once your sword is out of your sheath, you aren’t Oak anymore. And you stay that way until the fight is over.” Madoc frowned. “And do you know how to tell the fight is over? All your enemies are dead. Understand?”

  Oak nodded and tried. He willed himself to forget everything but the steps of the fight. Block, parry, strike.

  He was quicker than Madoc. Sloppier, but faster. For a moment, he felt as though he was doing okay.

  Then the redcap came at him hard. Oak responded with a flurry of parries. For a moment, he thought he saw an opportunity to get under his father’s guard but flinched from it. His nightmares flashed in front of him. He parried instead, harder this time.

  “Halt, child,” said Madoc, stopping, frustration clear on his face. “You let two obvious openings pass.”

  Oak, who had seen only one, said nothing.

  Madoc sighed. “Imagine splitting your mind into two parts: the general and the foot soldier. Once the general gives an order, the foot soldier doesn’t need to think for himself. He just has to do what he’s told.”

  “It’s not that I’m thinking I don’t want to hit you,” Oak said. “I just don’t.”

  His father nodded, frowning. Then his arm shot out, the flat of the mop handle knocking Oak into the dirt. For a moment, he couldn’t get his breath.

  “Get up,” Madoc said.

  As soon as he did, his father was on him again.

  This time Madoc was serious, and for the first time, Oak was scared of what might happen. The hits came hard enough to bruise and too fast to be stopped.

  He didn’t want to hurt his father. He wasn’t even sure that he could.

  His father wasn’t supposed to really hurt him.

  As the blows came relentlessly, he could feel tears sting his eyes. “I want to stop,” he said, the words coming out in a whine.

  “Then fight back!” Madoc shouted.

  “No!” Oak threw his sword to the ground. “I give up.”

  The mop handle caught him in the stomach. He went down hard, scuttled back, out of his father’s range. Only barely, though.

  “I don’t want to do this!” he shouted. He could feel that his cheeks were wet.

  Madoc came forward, closing the distance. “You want to die?”

  “You’re going to kill me?” Oak was incredulous. This was his father.

  “Why not?” Madoc said. “If you don’t defend yourself, someone is going to kill you. Better it be me.”

  That made no sense. But when the mop handle hit him in the side of the head, he started to believe it.

  Oak looked at his sword, across the grass. Pushed himself to his hooves. Ran toward it. His cheek was throbbing. His stomach hurt.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever been scared like this, not even when he was in the Great Hall with the serpent coming toward his mother.

  When he turned back to Madoc, his vision was blurry with tears. Somehow that made things easier. To not have to really see what was happening. He could feel himself slipping into that state of not quite awareness. Like times that he was daydreaming on the walk to school and got there without remembering being on the route. Like when he gave over to his gancanagh magic and let it turn his words to honey.

  Like those things, except he was angry enough to give himself a single order: win.

  Like those things, except when he blinked, it was to find the point of his blade nearly at his father’s throat, held back only by the half-splintered end of the mop handle. Madoc was bleeding from a slash on his arm, one Oak didn’t recall causing.

  “Good,” said Madoc, breathing hard. “Again.”

  When Oak returns to the bedroom in the tower, two servants are waiting for him. One has the head of an owl and long, gangly arms. The other has skin the color of moss and small moth wings.

  “We are to ready you for bed,” says one, indicating the dressing gown.

  After weeks wearing the same rags, this is a lot. “Great. I can take it from here,” he says.

  “It is our duty to make sure you’re properly cared for,” says the other, ignoring Oak’s objections and shoving his arms into the positions necessary for the removal of his doublet.

  The prince submits, allowing them to strip him down and put him in the robe. It’s a thick blue satin, lined in gold and warm enough that he doesn’t entirely begrudge the change. It is strange to have spent weeks being treated as a prisoner, to now be treated as a prince. To be pampered and bullied just as he would be in Elfhame, not trusted to do basic tasks for himself.