The prince gestured toward the guard standing in front of the entrance to Jude and Cardan’s rooms—an ogress with a single eye, leather armor, and short hair. “She can look after me from here.”
Tiernan hesitated. But he would want to visit Hyacinthe, bored and angry and fomenting escape, as he’d been every night since being bridled. Tiernan didn’t like leaving him too long alone for lots of reasons. “If you’re sure . . .”
The ogress stood up straighter. “The High Queen is not in residence.”
Oak shrugged. “That’s okay.” It was probably better for him to get the stuff when Jude wasn’t there to laugh at the state of him. And while the ogress appeared not to like it, she didn’t stop him from walking past her, pushing open one of the double doors, and going inside.
The chambers of the High King and Queen were hung with tapestries and brocades depicting magical forests hiding even more magical beasts, with most surfaces covered in unlit, fat pillar candles. Those would be for his sister, who couldn’t see in the dark the way the Folk could.
Oak found the Walgreens bag tossed onto a painted table to one side of the bed. He dumped the contents onto the elaborately embroidered blanket thrown across a low couch.
There were, in fact, three bottles of store-brand ibuprofen. He opened one, stuck his thumb through the plastic seal, and fished out three gelcaps.
There was a castle alchemist he could go to who would give him a terrible-tasting potion if he was really hurting, but Oak didn’t want to be prodded, nor make conversation while the cure was prepared. He tossed the pills back and dry-swallowed them.
Now what he needed was a lot of water and his bed.
Swaying a little, he started shoving the contents back into the bag. As he did, he noticed a packet of pills in a paper sleeve. Curious, he turned it over and then blinked down in surprise that it was a prescription. Birth control.
Jude was only twenty-six. Lots of twenty-six-year-olds didn’t want kids yet. Or at all.
Of course, most of them didn’t have to secure a dynasty.
Most weren’t worried about cutting their little brother out of the line of succession, either. He hoped he wasn’t the reason she was taking these. But even if he wasn’t the only reason, he couldn’t help thinking he was in the mix.
And on that dismal thought, he heard steps in the hall. Cardan’s familiar drawling voice carried, although he couldn’t make out the words.
Panicking, Oak shoved the rest of the drugstore stuff back into the bag, flung it onto the table, and then scrambled beneath. The door opened a moment later. Cardan’s pointy boots clacked on the tiles, followed by Jude’s soft tread.
As soon as Oak’s belly hit the dusty floor, he realized how foolish he was being. Why hide, when neither Jude nor Cardan would have been angry to find him there? It was his own shame at invading his sister’s privacy. Guilt and wine had combined to make him absurd. Yet he would be even more absurd if he emerged now, so he rested next to an abandoned slipper and hoped they left again before he sneezed.
His sister sat on one of the couches with a vast sigh.
“We cannot ransom him,” Cardan said softly.
“I know that,” Jude snapped. “I am the one who sent him into exile. I know that.”
Were they speaking of his father? And ransom? Oak had been with them most of the night, and no mention had been made of this. But who else had she exiled that she would care enough to want to ransom? Then he remembered Jude’s question at dinner. Perhaps she hadn’t been asking after Madoc at all. Perhaps she’d been trying to determine whether any of them knew something.
Cardan sighed. “Let it be some comfort that we don’t have what Lady Nore wants, even should we allow ourselves to be blackmailed.”
Jude opened something out of the line of Oak’s sight. He crawled a little to get a better angle and see the box of woven branches she had in her hand. Tangled in her fingers was a chain, strung with a glass orb. Inside it, something rolled restlessly. “The message speaks of Mellith’s heart. Some ancient artifact? I think she looks for an excuse to hold him.”
“If I didn’t know better, I might think this is your brother’s fault,” Cardan said in a teasing tone, and Oak almost banged his head against the wood frame of the table in surprise at hearing himself referenced. “First, he wanted you to be nice to that little queen with the sharp teeth and the crazy eyes. Then he wanted you to forgive that former falcon his bodyguard likes for trying to murder me. It seems too great a coincidence that Hyacinthe came from Lady Nore, spent time with Madoc, and had no hand in his abduction.”
Those words were laced with suspicion, although Cardan was smiling. His mistrust hardly mattered beside the danger their father was in, though.
“Oak got mixed up with the wrong people, that’s all,” Jude said wearily.
Cardan smiled, a curl of black hair falling in front of his face. “He’s more like you than you want to see. Clever. Ambitious.”
“If what’s happening is anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” Jude said with another sigh. “For not ordering Lady Nore’s execution when I had the chance.”
“All the obscene snake songs must have been greatly distracting,” Cardan said lightly, moving on from the discussion of Oak. “Generosity of spirit is so uncharacteristic in you.”
They were silent for a moment, and Oak saw his sister’s face. There was something private there, and painful. He hadn’t known, back then, how close she’d come to losing Cardan forever, and maybe losing herself, too.
Mind slowed by drink, Oak was still putting all this information together. Lady Nore, of the Court of Teeth, held Madoc. And Jude wasn’t going to try to get him back. Oak wanted to crawl out from beneath the table and plead with her. Jude, we can’t leave him there. We can’t let him die.
“Rumor has it that Lady Nore is creating an army of stick and stone and snow creatures,” Jude murmured.
Lady Nore was from the old Court of Teeth. After allying with Madoc and attempting to steal the crown of Elfhame, her entire Court had been disbanded. Their best warriors—including Tiernan’s beloved, Hyacinthe—were turned into birds. Madoc had been sent into exile. And Lady Nore had been made to swear fealty to the daughter she tormented: Suren. The little queen with the sharp teeth that Cardan mentioned.
Oak felt a flush of an unfamiliar emotion at the thought of her. Remembered running away to her woods and the rasp of her voice in the dark.
His sister went on. “Whether Lady Nore wishes to use them to attack us or the mortal world or just have them fight for her amusement, we ought to stop her. If we delay, she has time to build up her forces. But attacking her stronghold would mean my father’s death. If we move against her, he dies.”
“We can wait,” Cardan said. “But not long.”
Jude frowned. “If she steps from that Citadel, I will cut her throat from ear to ear.”
Cardan drew a dramatic line across his throat and then slumped exaggeratedly over, eyes closed, mouth open. Playing dead.
Jude scowled. “You need not make fun.”
“Have I ever told you how much you sound like Madoc when you talk about murder?” Cardan said, opening one eye. “Because you do.”
Oak expected his sister to be angry, but she only laughed. “That must be what you like about me.”
“That you’re terrifying?” he asked, his drawl becoming exaggeratedly languorous, almost a purr. “I adore it.”
She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes. The king’s arms came around her, and she shivered once, as though letting something fall away.
Watching her, Oak turned his thoughts to what he knew would happen. He, the useless youngest child, the heir, would be protected from the information that his father was in peril.