Above them, the sky is a deep, bright blue, and the wind is good, filling the sails.
“I told Jude,” Randalin goes on. “She proposed violent solutions, but you know mortals, and her in particular—no patience. I never supported her elevation. Neither kith nor kin to us.”
Oak sets his jaw and reminds himself that nothing good will come of punching the councilor in his smug little horned face. Instead, the prince tries to concentrate on the feeling of the sun on his skin and the knowledge that things could have turned out much worse.
Later that afternoon, when Oak is summoned to Wren’s cabin, he is particularly glad he didn’t hit anyone.
The guard who leads him to her chambers isn’t one the prince knows, but he’s had enough experience of her falcons for just the uniform to put him on edge.
Wren sits on a chair of white wood, beside a marble-topped side table and a settee upholstered in scarlet. Small, round windows high on the walls illuminate the space. A bed was built in to a corner, wood frame keeping the cushions from shifting with the swells, a half-open curtain for privacy. When he enters, she makes a movement with her hand and her guard leaves.
Fancy, he thinks. I should work out a signal like that with Tiernan. Of course, he doubts Tiernan would leave if there was a gesture he could just ignore.
“May I sit?” Oak asks.
“Please,” she says, her fingers anxiously turning the ring he gave her. “I summoned you to talk about the dissolution of our engagement.”
His heart sinks, but he keeps his voice light. “So soon? Shall we turn the ship around?” He settles himself grimly on the settee.
She gives a little sigh. “Too soon, yes, I agree. But we will have to break it off eventually. I understand what you did at the Citadel. You managed to keep a battle from happening and bloodshed at bay with your lies, and you managed to remove yourself from my clutches. It was nicely done.”
“I can’t lie,” he objects.
“You lived in the mortal world,” Wren says. “But you never had a mortal mother. Mine would have called that a lie of omission. But name it a trick or a deception, name it whatever you will. What matters is that this betrothal cannot continue too long or we shall be wed and you, tied to me forever.”
“A terrible fate?” Oak inquires.
She nods briskly, as though he’s finally understanding the seriousness of the problem. “I suggest that you allow your family to persuade you to put off the ceremony for months. I will agree, of course. I can conclude my visit to Elfhame and return north. You will strongly suggest that your sister give me what was once the Court of Teeth to rule.”
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
She looks down at her hands. “Once, I thought I might return to my mortal home, but I cannot imagine it now. How could they see me as that child, when I would frighten them, even without knowing the nature of my magic?”
“They don’t have to see you as a child to care for you,” he says.
“They would never love me as much as I want to be loved,” she tells him with painful honesty. “I will do well in the north. I am well suited to it.”
“Do you—” he begins, not sure how to ask this question. “Do you remember much of being Mellith?”
She starts to shake her head and then hesitates. “Some things.”
“Do you remember Bogdana being your mother?”
“I do,” she says, so softly he can barely hear it. “I remember believing she loved me. And I remember her giving me away.”
“And the murder?” he asks.
“I was so happy to see her,” she says, fingers going almost unconsciously to her throat. “I almost didn’t notice the knife.”
For a moment, the sadness of the story robs him of speech. His own mother, Oriana, is so fiercely protective of him that he cannot imagine being pushed out on his own, among people who hate him enough to arrange his death. And yet, he recalls sitting at the end of his bed and hearing Vivi explain how it was a miracle Jude was alive after the way their father carved her up. And from the time he learned that he had a first father, he knew that person tried to kill him.
Maybe he doesn’t understand how she feels exactly, but he understands that familial love isn’t guaranteed, and even when you have it, it doesn’t always keep you safe.
Wren watches him with her fathomless eyes. “It seems as though it should change me, to have those memories, but I do not feel much changed.” She pauses. “Do I seem different?”
He notes the careful way she’s holding herself. Stiff, her back upright. She seems wary, yet underneath there’s a hunger in her. A spark of desire she cannot mask, although whether it is for him or power, he cannot say.
“You seem more like yourself than ever before,” he says.
He can see her considering that but not misliking his words. “So we are agreed. We delay the exchange of vows. Your sister will have a reason to send me back north with a kingdom of my own, and we will let her believe that her plan to separate us has worked. You can take up with any number of courtiers to drive the point home. Drown whatever lingering feelings you have for me in a new love, or ten.” She says the last bit with some asperity.
He puts a hand to his chest. “Have you no feelings to drown?”
Wren looks down. “No,” she says. “Nothing I have would I ever want to give away.”
After a dinner of kelp and cockles, which the cook serves up in wooden bowls with no spoons, the captain invites them to sit on the deck and tell tales, as is his crew’s tradition. Wren arrives with Hyacinthe by her side, settling some distance from the prince. When her gaze meets his, she tucks a long strand of hair behind her ear and gives him a hesitant smile. Her green eyes shine as one of the crew begins to speak.
She loves a story. He remembers that, remembers their evenings around the fire as they traveled north. Remembers her talking about Bex, her mortal sister, and their games of pretend. Remembers how she laughed when he retold some of his own antics.
The prince listens as crew members speak of far-off shores they’ve visited. One tells of an island with a queen who has the head and torso of a woman and the appendages of an enormous spider. Another, of a land so thick with magic that even the animals speak. A third, of their adventures with merfolk and how the captain wed a selkie without stealing its skin.
“We avoid talking politics,” the captain qualifies with a puff on a long, thin pipe of carved bone.
In a lull, the storm hag clears her throat.
“I have a tale for you,” says Bogdana. “Once, there was a girl with an enchanted matchbook. Whenever she lit one—”
“Is this a true story?” the Ghost interrupts.
“Time will tell,” the storm hag answers, giving him a lethal look. “Now, as I was about to say—when this girl struck a match, a thing of her choosing was destroyed. This made all of those in power want her on their side, but she fought only for what she herself considered right.”
Wren looks down at her hands, strands of hair falling to shield her face. Oak supposes there’s going to be a lesson in this, one that no one will like.
“The more terrible the destruction, the more matches needed to be struck. And yet, each time the girl looked in the matchbook, there were at least a few new matches within. To have such vast power was a great burden for the girl, but she was ferocious and brave in addition to being wise, and shouldered her burden with grace.”
Oak sees the way Hyacinthe is frowning at the storm hag, as though disagreeing with the idea that Wren’s “matches” are so easily replaced. When Oak thinks of the translucency of her skin, the hollowness beneath her cheekbones, he worries. But he believes that Bogdana very much wants to believe this is how Wren’s magic works.