Page 102

“And not from the High King?” Lady Nore asks. She walks around the table, toward us.

Oak scowls, clearly confused. “If you like. Either one.”

“They say that sister of yours has trapped him in some bargain.” Lady Nore’s words are light, but I can see that underneath it, nothing must have galled her as much as being outmaneuvered by a mortal. If anything other than the death of Lord Jarel has driven her mad, it’s that. “Why else marry her? Why else do whatever she wants?”

“She’s going towantto wear your skull for a hat,” Oak warns. There is an uncomfortable shifting among the ex-falcons. Perhaps they are recalling their own choice to denounce her, their own punishment. “And Cardan is going to laugh and laugh when she does.”

Lady Nore curls her lip. “Three things I need. Mab’s bones, Mellith’s heart, and Greenbriar blood. And here I am with two, and the third so close that I am able to taste it. Do not fail me, Prince of Elfhame, for if you do, your father will die and I will still get what I want.”

Oak raises both eyebrows. However he actually feels, his ability to make himself seem unimpressed is immensely satisfying.

Lady Nore goes on, as though thrilled to have someone to whom she can deliver this speech. “Were it not for your father’s weakness, we might have won the war against Elfhame. But I have a truer ally now and vast power. I am ready for revenge.”

“King Hurclaw,” Oak says, his gaze going toward the troll king. “I hope that Lady Nore hasn’t promised you more than she can give.”

A small smile quirks a corner of his mouth. “I do as well,” he says in a deep voice.

Lady Nore scowls, then stands and walks to me. Oak’s jaw tightens. His hand fists at his side.

“I suppose the prince thought thatyoucould stop me.” A terrible smile curls on her lips as she touches the frayed rope pressed between my teeth like a bit. “Little did he know what a sniveling creature you are.”

I hiss, low in my throat.

To my surprise, she begins to loosen the cords I’ve been chewing. I part my lips the moment they fall away, desperate to speak. I am about to blurt out the stupidly unspecificI command you to surrender. But before I can get words out, she presses a petal into my mouth. I feel a twisting, worming sensation on my tongue. Whatever it is seems to move on its own, and I grit my jaw. The thing snakes around for another moment, then settles.

She lets go of the rope, smiling maliciously.

I shudder but finally can speak. I try to get the words out, but my tongue moves without my volition. “I renounce—” I begin to say before I slam my teeth down, trapping it painfully between them.

Lady Nore’s awful smile grows. “Yes, my dear?”

Somehow she’s woven a spell of control into the petal, no doubt plucked from the vine of the reliquary, where it grew impossibly from dry bones. If I try to speak, I will give up dominion over her.

I bite down harder on my tongue, to still it. It wriggles in my mouth like an animal.

“Bogdana told me how you lived,” she says. “In your wretched little hut, at the edge of the mortal world, scavenging for scraps as though you were a rat.”

I cannot reply, and so I do not.

There is a flicker of unease in Lady Nore’s eyes. She glances toward Bogdana, but the storm hag is watching me from her place at the table, her expression unreadable.

“You dull little thing, open your mouth. I can give you what you most desire,” Lady Nore snaps.

And what is that?I would ask were it safe for me to loosen my tongue. Instead, I keep it clamped between my teeth.

“I cannot make you human,” she goes on. “But I can come very close.”

I can’t say part of me doesn’t wish that were true. I think of the phone call, of how much easier it would be to slip into that old life if it didn’t mean hiding or lying, if I didn’t have to worry over them screaming at the sight of me.

She is still smiling as she walks to me and puts a finger against my chin. “I can put a glamour on you strong enough that not even the King of Elfhame is likely to see through it. I have the means to do that now, the power. I can make you forget the last nine years. You will return to the mortal world an empty vessel, free for them to project humanity on. They will decide that you were kidnapped, and whatever was done to you was so terrible that you blocked all memory of it. They won’t press. And even if they do, what does it matter? You will believe every word you tell them.”

I flinch away from her hand.

My greatest wish, the deepest desire of my heart. It infuriates me how well she knows me, and yet how she holds back every last mote of the comfort I so desperately crave.

Her yellow eyes study my face, trying to determine if I am hers yet. “Are you thinking about the prince? Oh, do not suppose I don’t know where you were when your own people died in the Battle of the Serpent. Hiding under that boy’s bed.”

My gaze is flat. I was a child, and I got away from her. I refuse to feel anything but glad about that.He wanted me there, I would say if I could speak.We were friends. We are friends.