“You think you know what it is to be under someone’s control because I have given you a single command you were forced to obey,” she says, heat in her voice. “I could give you a demonstration of what it feels like to own nothing of yourself. You are owed a punishment, after all. You’ve broken out of my prisons and come to my rooms without my permission. You’ve made a mockery of my guards.”
A cold feeling settles in Oak’s gut. The bridle is uncomfortable, its straps pulling tight against his cheeks, but not painful. At least not yet. He knows that it will continue to tighten and that if he wears it long enough, it will cut into his cheeks as it cut Wren’s. If he wears it longer than that, longer than she did, it will eventually grow to be a part of him. Invisible to the world and impossible to remove.
That is why it was made. To make Wren eternally obedient to Lord Jarel and Lady Nore.
Wren hated that bridle.
“I grant you that I don’t know what it feels like to be compelled to follow someone else’s orders again and again,” Oak says. “But I don’t think you want to do that, not to anyone. Not even to me.”
“You don’t know me as well as you think, Greenbriar heir,” she says. “I remember your stories, like the one about how you used a glamour against your mortal sister and made her strike herself. How would you like to feel as she felt?”
He confessed that when Wren won a secret from him in a game they played with three silver foxes, tossed in the dirt outside the war camp of the Court of Teeth. Another thing he maybe ought not to have done.
“I’ll slap myself silly willingly, if you like,” he offers. “No need for a command.”
“What if, instead, I force you onto your hands and knees to make a bench for me to sit upon?” Wren inquires lightly, but her eyes are alight with fury and something else, something darker. She pads around his body, a prowling animal. “Or eat filth from the floor?”
Oak does not doubt that she saw Lord Jarel demand those things from people. He hopes that she was never asked to do those things herself.
“Beg to kiss the hem of my dress?”
He says nothing. Nothing he says could possibly help him.
“Crawl to me.” Her eyes shine, fever bright.
Again, Oak’s body moves without his permission. He finds himself writhing across the floor, his stomach against the carpet. He flushes with shame.
When he reaches her, he stares upward, rage in his eyes. He’s humiliated, and she’s barely begun. She was right when she said he didn’t understand what it would feel like. He hadn’t counted on the embarrassment, the fury at himself for not being able to resist the magic. He hadn’t counted on the fear of what she would do next.
Oak cuts his gaze toward Bran, who has remained stiff and still, as though afraid to draw Wren’s attention. The prince wonders how far she would go if he were not present.
How far she will go anyway.
Then the door opens.
Straun enters, along with a guard wearing battle-scraped armor and bearing a scar across the broadest part of his nose. He seems familiar, but Oak can’t quite place him—he must have served with Madoc but not come to the house much. Straun looks as though he’s fighting to move, and the scarred guard is looking as though he wants to murder Straun.
Straun steps forward, going to one knee. “Queen of winter, know that I only ever wished to serve—”
She holds up a hand, forestalling the groveling he seems to be working up to. “I have been tricked by the prince often enough to know how clever he can be. Now you will not be deceived again.”
“I shall make a new oath to you,” he declares. “That I will never—”
“Make no oaths you are not certain you can keep,” she tells Straun, which is better advice than he deserves. Still, he looks chastened by it.
Oak pushes to his hooves, since she hadn’t told him to stay there.
Wren barely spares him a glance.
“Bind my prisoner’s wrists,” she tells the scarred guard.
“As you command, Queen.” His voice is gruff.
He walks to Oak, pulling his arms behind him sharply. Tying his bonds uncomfortably tight. The prince’s wrists are going to be sore by the time he makes it back to his cell.
“We were discussing how best to discipline Prince Oak,” she says.
Straun and the other guard look a lot happier at that thought. Oak is certain that, after they were punished by the High Court for their treason, it would be at least a little satisfying to see a prince of Elfhame brought low. And that was before he gave them a reason to have a personal grudge.
Wren turns to him. “Perhaps I ought to have you sent to the Great Hall tomorrow and command that you endure ten strikes of an ice whip. Most barely get through five.”
Bran looks worried. He might want Oak humiliated but perhaps didn’t expect to see Madoc’s son’s blood spilled. Or maybe he is concerned that if they have to give back the prince, Elfhame will want him in one piece. Straun seems thrilled by the prospect of some suffering, however.
Dread and humiliation coil in Oak’s stomach. He has been such a fool.
“Why not whip me now?” he asks, a challenge in his voice.
“Spending a night dreading what will come in the morning is its own punishment.” She pauses. “Especially as you now know your own hand can be turned against you.”
Oak looks directly into her eyes. “Why are you keeping me at all, Wren? Am I a hostage to be ransomed? A lover to be punished? A possession to be locked away?”
“That,” she says, bitterness in her voice, “is what I am trying to figure out myself.” She turns to the guards. “Take him back to his cell.”
Bran reaches for him, and the prince struggles, pulling out of the guard’s grasp.
“Oak,” Wren says, pressing her fingers to his cheek. He goes still beneath her touch. “Go with Straun. Do not resist him. Do not trick him. Until you are confined again, you will follow these commands. And then you will stay in my prisons until you are sent for.” She gives the prince a stern look and withdraws her hand. Turns to the soldiers. “Once Oak is in his cell, the three of you can go to Hyacinthe and explain how you allowed the prince to slip past you.”
Hyacinthe. A reminder that the person in charge of the guards hates Oak more than the rest of them combined. As though he needed more miserable news.
“Will you send for me?” the prince asks, as though there’s any room for bargaining. As though he has a choice. As though his body will not obey its own accord. “You said only perhaps you’d have me whipped.”
Straun shoves him toward the door.
“Good night, Prince of Elfhame,” Wren says as he is led from the room. He manages a single glance back. Her gaze locks with his, and he can feel the frisson of something between them. Something that might well be terrible, but that he wants more of all the same.
CHAPTER
4
T
he scarred-nose guard follows Straun and Oak down the stairs. Bran trails behind them. For a while, none of them speak.
“Let’s take him to the interrogation room,” the guard says, low-voiced. “Pay him back for the trouble we’re going to be in. Find some information to make up for it.”
Oak clears his throat loudly. “I’m a valuable possession. The queen won’t thank you for breaking me.”
One corner of the guard’s mouth turns up. “Don’t recognize me? But then, why would you? I’m just another of your father’s people, just another one who fought and bled and nearly died to put you on the throne. All for you to throw it back in our faces.”
I didn’t want the throne. Oak bites the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting the words. That isn’t going to help. Instead, he stares at the scarred man’s face, at the dark eyes and auburn hair that hangs across his forehead. At the scar itself, which pulls his mouth up, as though his lip is perpetually curled.