The Ghost conjured the illusion of a blade out of thin air, its hilt decorated with ivy. His glamour was so good that Oak had to look closely to see that it wasn’t real. Your turn, prince.
Oak had actually liked making his own sword. It was huge and black with a bright red hilt covered in demonish faces. It looked like the sword of someone in an anime he’d been watching, and he felt like a badass, holding it in his hands.
The sight of Oak’s blade had made the Ghost smile, but he didn’t laugh. Instead, he started moving through a series of exercises, urging Oak to follow. He told the prince he should call him by his nonspy name, Garrett, since they were friends.
You can do this, the Ghost—Garrett—told him. When you have nothing else.
Nothing else to practice with, he probably meant. Although right now, Oak has nothing else, full stop.
The exercises warm him just enough to be halfway comfortable when he wraps the blanket around his shoulders.
The prince has been imprisoned three weeks, according to the tallies he’s made in the dust beneath the lone bench. Long enough to dwell on every mistake he has made on his ill-fated quest. Long enough to endlessly reconsider what he ought to have done in the swamp after the Thistlewitch turned to him and spoke in her raspy voice: Didn’t you know, prince of foxes, what you already had? What a fine jest, to look for Mellith’s heart when she walks beside you.
At the memory, Oak stands and paces the floor, his hooves clattering restlessly against the black stone. He should have told her the truth. Should have told her and accepted the consequences.
Instead, he convinced himself that keeping the secret of her origin protected her, but was that true? Or was it more true that he’d manipulated her, the way he manipulated everyone in his life? That was what he was good at, after all—tricks, games, insincerity.
His family must be in a panic right now. He trusts that Tiernan got Madoc to Elfhame safely, no matter what the redcap general wanted. But Jude would be furious with Tiernan for leaving Oak behind and even angrier with Madoc, if she guesses just how much of this is his fault.
Possibly Cardan would be relieved to be rid of Oak, but that wouldn’t stop Jude from making a plan to get him back. Jude has been ruthless on Oak’s behalf before, but this is the first time it’s scared him. Wren is dangerous. She is not someone to cross. Neither of them are.
He recalls the press of Wren’s sharp teeth against his shoulder. The nervous fumble of her kiss, the shine of her wet eyes, and how he repaid her reluctant trust with deception. Again and again in his mind, he sees the betrayal on her face when she realized what an enormous secret he’d kept.
It doesn’t matter if you deserve to be in her prisons, he tells himself. You still need to get out.
Sitting in the dark, he listens to the guards play dice games. They have opened a jug of a particularly strong juniper liquor in celebration of Wren’s accomplishment. Straun is the loudest and drunkest of the bunch, and the one losing the most coin.
Oak dozes off and wakes to the tread of soft footfalls. He surges to his hooves, moving as close to the iron bars as he dares.
A huldu woman comes into view, bearing a tray, her tail swishing behind her.
Disappointment is a pit in his stomach.
“Fernwaif,” he says, and her eyes go to his. He can see the wariness in them.
“You remember my name,” she says, as though it’s some kind of trick. As though princes have the attention spans of gnats.
“Most certainly I do.” He smiles, and after a moment, she visibly relaxes, her shoulders lowering.
He wouldn’t have noted that reaction before. After all, smiles were supposed to reassure people. Just maybe not quite so much as his smiles did.
Maybe you can’t help it. Maybe you do it without knowing. That’s what Wren had said when he claimed he didn’t use his honey-mouthed charm, his gancanagh ability, anymore. He’d stuck to the rules Oriana had given him. Sure, he knew the right things to say to make someone like him, but he’d told himself that wasn’t the same as just giving himself over to the magic, not the same as enchanting them.
But sitting in the dark, he has reconsidered. What if the power leaches out of him like a miasma? Like a poison? Perhaps the seducing of conspirators he’d done wasn’t his being clever or companionable; instead, he was using a power they couldn’t fight against. What if he is a much worse person than he’s supposed?
And as though to prove it, he presses his advantage, magical or not. He smiles more broadly at Fernwaif. “You’re far superior company to the guard who brought my food yesterday,” he tells her with utter sincerity, thinking of a troll who wouldn’t so much as meet his gaze. Who spilled half his water on the ground and then grinned at him, showing a set of cracked teeth.
Fernwaif snorts. “I don’t know if that’s much of a compliment.”
It wasn’t. “Shall I tell you instead that your hair is like spun gold, your eyes like sapphires?”
She giggles, and he can see her cheeks are pink as she pulls out the empty bowls near the slot at the bottom of the cell and replaces them with the new tray. “You best not.”
“I can do better,” he says. “And perhaps you might bring me a little gossip to cheer the chilly monotony of my days.”
“You’re very silly, Your Highness,” she says after a moment, biting her bottom lip a little.
His gaze travels, evaluating the pockets of her dress for the weight of keys. Her blush deepens.
“I am,” he agrees. “Silly enough to have gotten myself into this predicament. I wonder if you could take a message to Wr—to your new queen?”
She looks away. “I dare not,” she says, and he knows he ought to leave it at that.
He remembers Oriana’s warning to him when he was a child. A power like the one you have is dangerous, she said. You can know what other people most want to hear. Say those things, and they will not only want to listen to you. They will come to want you above all other things. The love that a gancanagh inspires—some may pine away for desire of it. Others will carve the gancanagh to pieces to be sure no one else has it.
He made a mistake when he first went to school in the mortal world. He felt alone at the mortal school, and so when he made a friend, he wanted to keep him. And he knew just how. It was easy; all he had to do was say the right things. He remembers the taste of the power on his tongue, supplying words he didn’t even understand. Soccer and Minecraft, praise for the boy’s drawings. Not lies, but nowhere near the truth, either. They had fun together, running around the playground, drenched in sweat, or playing video games in the boy’s basement. They had fun together until he found that when they were apart, even for a few hours, the boy wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t eat. Would just wait until he saw Oak again.
With that memory in his mind, Oak stumbles on, forcing his mouth into a smile he hopes looks real. “You see, I wish to let your queen know that I await her pleasure. I am hers to command, and I hope she will come and do just that.”
“You don’t want to be saved?” Fernwaif smiles. She’s the one teasing him now. “Shall I inform my mistress that you are so tame she can let you out?”
“Tell her . . . ,” Oak says, keeping his astonishment at the news she’s returned to the Citadel off his face through sheer force of will. “Tell her that I am wasted in all this gloom.”
Fernwaif laughs, her eyes shining as though Oak is a romantic figure in a tale. “She asked me to come today,” the huldu girl confides in a whisper.
That seems hopeful. The first hopeful thing he’s heard in a while.
“Then I greatly desire your report of me to be a favorable one,” he says, and makes a bow.
Her cheeks are still pink with pleasure when she leaves, departing with light steps. He can see the swish of her tail beneath her skirts.