He hadn’t found out her reasons before he’d let them take her. He recalls the uncomfortable mix of anger and fear over what might be happening to her, the horror of not being certain he could save her from Queen Annet.
He wonders if this dinner is because Wren heard he was hurt and regrets that, if nothing else. She certainly felt betrayed. But betrayal didn’t stop one from feeling other things. “I do have some experience with deception,” he admits.
She frowns at that unexpected confession, taking her seat as well.
Another servant pours black wine into a goblet in front of him, one carved of ice. Oak lifts it, wondering if there’s any way to tell if the liquid within is poisoned. Some he can identify by taste, but plenty have either no flavor or one subtle enough to be masked by something more aromatic.
He thinks of Oriana, patiently feeding him a little bit of poison along with goat milk and honey when he was an infant, making him sicker to make him better. He takes a tentative sip.
The wine is strong and tastes of something like currants.
He notes that Wren has not touched her glass.
I have to show her that I trust her, he tells himself, even though he’s not entirely sure that he does. After all, she wouldn’t be the first person he liked who tried to kill him. She wouldn’t even be the first person he loved who tried to kill him.
He pushes the thought away. Lifting his wineglass in salute, he takes a deep draught. At that, Wren finally brings her goblet to her lips.
Oak tries not to show his relief. “I asked you once about whether you might like to be queen in earnest. It seems you changed your mind.” He manages to keep his voice light, although he still isn’t sure why he’s sitting here and not at the other end of an ice whip.
“Have you changed yours?” she asks.
He smiles. “Ought I? Tell me, Your Majesty, what is it like, now that you sit on a throne and have so many demands on your time and resources? Do you like having courtiers at your beck and call?”
Her returning smile is tinged with bitterness. “You know well, prince, that sitting at the head of the table does not mean your guests will not fall to bickering over the portions on their plates, the seating arrangements, or the polish on the silver. Nor does it mean they will not scheme for your seat.”
As though part of her speech, two huldufólk servants enter the room and set the first course before Oak and Wren.
Thin slivers of cold fish on a plate of ice with a scattering of cracked pink peppercorns. Elegant and cold.
“As your guest,” Oak says, lifting his fork, “I have few complaints. And I am, in fact, at your beck and call.”
“Few complaints?” she echoes, one pale blue brow rising. “The prisons were just to your liking?”
“I would prefer not to return to them,” Oak admits. “But if I had to remain there to be here, then I have none at all.”
A faint flush comes into Wren’s cheeks, and she frowns again. “You asked me what I wanted with you.” She peers down the table at him with her moss-green eyes. A soft green, he always thought, but they are hard now. “But all that matters is that I do want you. And I have you.” Though that seems like a confession, she delivers the words like a threat.
“I thought you believed that there could be no love where one person was bound. Isn’t that what you told Tiernan?”
“You need not love me,” she tells him.
“What if I did? If I do?” Oak has proclaimed his love to people before, but that felt like play and this feels like pain. Maybe it’s because she sees him, and no one else has. The illusion he wears is much easier to love than what’s underneath.
Wren laughs. “What if? Do not play word games with me, Oak.”
He feels a hot flush of shame, realizing that was exactly what he was doing. “You’re right. Let me be plain. I do—”
“No,” she says, cutting him off, her voice simmering with the magic of unmaking, sending one of the fruits on a footed tray to pulp and seeds, one of the platters to molten silver. It sears through the ice of the table to drip onto the floor in shining strings, cooling on the way down.
She looks as startled as he is, but she recovers quickly, pushing herself into a standing position. A strand of blue hair has come loose, falling over her face. “Do not think I will be flattered because you think me a better opponent and therefore set me a more careful romantic riddle to solve. I need no protestations of your feelings. Love can be lost, and I am done with losing.”
He shivers, thinking of Lady Nore and Lord Jarel and how, though what was between them certainly was not love, it had something of love in it. He saw the former queens of the Court of Teeth immured inside the frozen walls of the Hall of Queens. That’s what it was to want to possess another, being unwilling to let them go, even in death. To murder them when you decided it was time for them to be replaced, so that you could keep them still.
Oak hadn’t thought Wren capable of wanting to possess someone that way, and he didn’t want to believe it now.
But she may think—after throwing him in prison and leaving him there—they are enemies. That she made a choice in anger that cannot be taken back. That whatever else he says, he will always hate her.
And perhaps he would hate her, eventually. He blames himself for much, and is willing to endure much, but there’s an end to his endurance.
“Perhaps you could remove the bridle, at least?” he asks. “You want me. You can have me. But will you kiss me even as I wear it? Feel the leather straps against your skin once more?”
A small shudder goes through her as she takes her seat again, and he knows he scored that point at least.
“What would you do to be freed from it?” she asks.
“Since you can use the bridle to make me do anything, it stands to reason that there ought to be nothing I wouldn’t do to get it off,” he says.
“But that’s not the case.” Her expression is canny, and he remembers how many bad bargains she has heard mortals make with the Folk.
He gives her a small, careful smile. “I would do a lot.”
“Would you agree to stay here with me?” she asks. “Forever.”
He thinks of his sisters, his mother and his father, his friends, and the idea of never seeing them again. Never being in the mortal world nor walking through the halls of Elfhame. He cannot imagine it. And yet, perhaps they could visit, perhaps in time he could persuade—
She must see the hesitation in his face. “I thought not.”
“I didn’t say no,” he reminds her.
“I’ll wager you were thinking of how you might bend the language in your favor. To promise something that sounded like what I asked for but had another meaning entirely.”
He bites the inside of his cheek. That wasn’t what he was thinking, but he would have eventually come around to it.
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.”