His friend Vier spots him and raises a flagon. “A toast to you,” he cries, walking over to sling an arm over Oak’s shoulders. “I understand you’ve won yourself a northern princess.”
“Won is definitely overstating the case,” Oak says, sliding out from his friend’s arm. “But I ought to go to her.”
“Yes, don’t leave her waiting!”
The prince wades back into the crowd. He sees a flash of metal and spins, looking for a blade, but it is just a knight wearing a single sleeve of her armor over a frothy gown. Near her are several ladies of the Court with enormous, cloudlike clusters of baby’s breath for wigs. He passes faeries in mossy capelets and dresses that end in branches. Elegant gentlemen in embroidered robes and doublets of birch bark. One green-skinned girl with gills has a train on her gown long enough to catch occasionally on roots as she passes. As he’s looking, Oak realizes it isn’t a train at all but the spill of her hair.
By the time he makes it to the High Table, he sees Wren standing before his sister and Cardan. He really should have gotten here sooner.
Wren catches his gaze as he approaches. Though her expression does not alter, he thinks he sees relief in her eyes.
Jude watches them both, calculating. Still, after two months away and a long rest to clear his head, what he notices most is how young Jude looks. She is young, but he can see a difference between her and Taryn. Perhaps it is only that Taryn has been to the mortal world more recently and has caught up to her years. Or that having a young child is tiring, and she doesn’t look older so much as exhausted.
A moment later, he wonders if it was only the fancy of the moment that made him think that. But another part of him wonders if Jude is quite as mortal as she once was.
He bows to his sister and to Cardan.
“Wren was just telling us of her powers,” says Jude, voice hard. “And we asked for the return of the bridle you borrowed.”
He’s missed something and not something good. Did she refuse them?
“I have sent one of my soldiers for it,” Wren tells him, as though in answer to the question he did not ask.
Perhaps they are only annoyed at the reminder of how many traitors to Elfhame serve in the Court of Teeth. If so, they must be doubly annoyed when a falcon swoops into the room, becoming a man as he lands. Straun.
Oak’s former prison guard gives him a smug look as he holds out the bridle to Wren.
The prince can still conjure the feeling of the straps against his skin. Can still remember the helplessness he felt when she commanded him to crawl. How Straun watched him, how he laughed.
Wren takes it from the soldier, letting it lie across her palm. “It’s a cursed thing.”
“Like all Grimsen’s creations,” Jude says.
“I don’t want it,” Wren says. “But I won’t give it to you, either.”
Cardan raises his brows. “A bold statement to make to your rulers in the heart of their Court. So what do you propose?”
In her hands, the leather shreds and shrivels. The magic departs from it like a thunderclap. The buckles fall to the dirt floor.
Jude takes a step toward her. Everyone in the brugh is looking at them now. The sound the destruction made drew their attention as surely as a shout.
“You unmade it,” says Jude, staring at the remains.
“Since I have cheated you out of one gift, I will give you another. There’s a geas on the High Queen, one that would be easy enough for me to remove.” Wren’s smile is sharp-toothed. Oak isn’t sure what the nature of the geas is, but he is sure from the spark of panic in Jude’s face that she doesn’t want it gone.
The offer hangs in the air for a long moment.
“So many secrets, wife,” Cardan says mildly.
The look Jude gives him in return could have peeled paint.
“Not only the geas, but half a curse,” Wren tells his sister. “It winds around you but cannot quite tighten its grip. Gnaws at you.”
The shock on Jude’s face is obvious. “But he never finished speaking—”
Cardan holds up a hand to stop her. All teasing is gone from his voice. “What curse?”
Oak supposes the High King may well take a curse seriously, since he was once cursed into a giant, poisonous serpent.
“It happened a long time ago. When we went to the palace school,” Oak’s sister says.
“Who cursed you?” asks Cardan.
“Valerian,” Jude spits out. “Right before he died.”
“Right before you killed him, you mean,” Cardan says, his dark eyes glittering with something that looks a lot like fury. Although whether it is toward Jude or this long-dead person, Oak isn’t certain.
“No,” Jude says, not seeming in the least afraid. “I’d already killed him. He just didn’t know it yet.”
“I can remove that and leave the geas alone,” Wren says. “You see, I can be quite helpful.”
“One supposes so,” says the High King, his thoughts clearly on the curse and this Valerian. “A useful alliance.”
Oak supposes that means Wren is still pretending she’s willing to marry him.
Wren reaches her hand into the air, extending her fingers toward Jude and making a motion as though gripping something tightly. Then her hand fists.
His sister gasps. She touches her breastbone, and her head tips forward so that her face is hidden.
The High Queen’s knight, Fand, unsheathes her blade, the glint of the steel reflecting candlelight. All around, guards’ hands go to their hilts.
“Jude?” Oak whispers, taking a step toward her. “Wren, what did you—”
“If you’ve hurt her—” Cardan begins, his gaze on his wife.
“I removed the curse,” Wren says, her voice even.
“I’m fine,” Jude grates out, hand still pressing against her chest. She moves to a chair—not the one at the head of the table, not her own— and sits. “Wren has given me quite a gift. I will have to think long and hard about what to give her in return.”
There’s a threat in those words. And looking around, Oak realizes the reason for it.
It isn’t just that Wren took apart the bridle without permission and the curse without warning, nor that she exposed something that Jude may have wanted to stay hidden, but she made the High King and Queen look weak before their Court. It’s true they weren’t up on the dais for all to see, but enough courtiers were listening and watching for rumors to spread.
The High King and Queen were helpless in the face of Wren’s magic.
That Wren did them a service and put them in her debt.
She did to Jude what Bogdana had done to her in the Citadel—and did it more successfully.
But to what purpose?
“You bring an element of chaos to a party, don’t you?” Cardan says, his tone light, but his gaze fierce. He lifts a goblet from the table. “We obviously have many things to discuss regarding the future. But for now, we share a meal. Let us toast, to love.”
The High King’s voice has a ringing quality that enjoins people to pay attention. Nearby, many glasses are raised. Someone presses a silver-chased goblet into the prince’s hand. Wren is given one by a servant, already filled to the brim with a dark wine.
“Love,” Cardan goes on. “That force that compels us to be sometimes better and often worse. That power by which we can all be bound. That which we ought to fear and yet most desire. That which unites us this evening—and shall unite the both of you soon enough.”
Oak glances at Wren. Her face is like stone. She is clutching her own goblet so tightly that her knuckles are white.
There is a half smile on Cardan’s face, and when his gaze goes to Oak, he gives a small extra tip of his goblet. One that may be a challenge.
I do not want your throne, Oak wishes he could just say aloud and not care if anyone hears, not care if it makes the moment awkward. But the conspirators will reveal themselves just after midnight, and it’s worth waiting a single day.
The Ghost, standing near Randalin, raises his own glass in Oak’s direction. Not far from them, standing by Taryn and Leander, Oriana does not toast and, in fact, appears to be contemplating pouring her wine onto the dirt.
Well, this is going great.