Page 96

Tiernan flips a knife in his hand. “I’ll create a distraction at the garrison while you and the prince go up that wall.”

This is my last chance to avoid returning to the place of my nightmares. All I have to do is tell Oak I changed my mind. Tiernan would be thrilled.

I think of Bogdana’s words to me in the woods.The prince is your enemy.

I think about the feeling of Oak’s breath against my neck, the way his fox eyes looked with the pupils gone wide and black. I think about how desperate he must be, to come all this way for his father, to gulp down poison, to risk his life on an uncertain scheme.

I think about the bridle wrapped around my waist, the one I tried to steal. The one he gave me to keep.

I have to trust him. Without me, we cannot command Lady Nore.

“We should go straight to the prisons,” Oak says. “Get Madoc. Go from there.”

“Better not,” I tell him. “We don’t know how hurt he’s going to be, and we can move faster without him. If we get the reliquary, then we can free him and move him to the sled directly.”

Oak hesitates. I can see the conflict between getting what he came here for and getting everything. “All right,” he says finally.

“If you’re not back by dawn,” Tiernan says, “then you know where I will be with the reliquary.” With that, he heads off through the snow.

“How exactly is he going to create a distraction?” I ask, attempting to walk with my head down, as though I am a servant who belongs to the Citadel and am returning from a dull errand—perhaps gathering crowberries. Attempting to behave as though Oak is a soldier walking me inside.

“Better not to ask,” the prince says with a slight smile.

Up close, the outside of the Citadel is not a single piece of cloudy ice, but one composed of blocks, which have been melted smooth. Oak sticks his hand into his pack, and I recognize the grappling hook and rope from Undry Market.

He’s eyeballing the spires, looking for the correct one.

“There,” I whisper, pointing up.

The entrance, three stories above us, isn’t visible when standing beneath it, as we are. It looks like an arch, the mirror of those that surround it.

“You ready?” he asks.

I’m not. When I think of Lady Nore, it’s as though my mind becomes full of scribbles, blotchy and looping, scratching through all my other thoughts. I nod in answer, because I don’t trust myself to speak when I have no ability to tell anything but the truth.

Oak throws the grappling hook. Built for ice, the sharp edge sticks in hard. “If I fall, you must promise not to laugh. I may still be a little bit poisoned.”

I think of Tiernan and how exasperated he would be if he heard those words. I wonder exactly how mucha little bitmeans. “Maybe I should be the one to go first.”

“Nonsense,” he says. “If you weren’t behind me, then who would break my fall?” Then he grabs the rope, presses his feet to the side of the Citadel, and proceeds to walk himself up the wall.

I roll my eyes, grab hold, and follow far more slowly.

We stop at the edge of the tower, and he winds the rope and removes the hook, while I peer down into the chamber through the opening. I hear distant strains of music. That must come from the great hall, where the thrones sit, and where instruments strung with the dried guts of mortals, or ones inlaid with bits of their bones, had been played to the delight of the Court of Teeth. This sounds more like a lone musician, though, rather than the usual troupe.

As I look down, a servant rushes through, holding a tray filled with empty goblets that clatter together. Thankfully, they do not glance up.

I press my hand to my heart, grateful we weren’t descending at that moment.

“This time you go first,” Oak says, sinking the hook into new ice. “I’ll cover you.”

I think he means that if someone spots me, no matter if they are a servant or guard, he’s going to kill them.

“They taught you a lot of things, your family,” I say. The sleight of hand, the wall climbing, the swordsmanship.

“Not to die,” he says. “That’s what they attempted to teach me, anyway. How not to die.”

Considering how often he throws himself directly into the path of danger, I do not think they taught him well enough. “What’s the number of times that someone tried to assassinate you?”