Tiernan snorts. “Pine, I suppose.”
“Aren’t you tired of that?” Hyacinthe could have said the words like a tease, but instead he sounds exhausted. A man offering a truce after a long battle.
“What else is there?” Tiernan’s voice is harsh.
“What if I said you could have me? Have me and keep me.”
“I could never compete with your rage toward Elfhame,” Tiernan says.
“Eavesdropping, prince?” asks the Ghost, taking the seat on the other side of Leander.
Oak turns toward him guiltily. He would really like to have heard what Hyacinthe said next.
“I am behaving just as you wished,” Oak says. “No going off on my own. No heroics. Even a little spy work.”
Garrett rolls his eyes. “It’s been a mere handful of hours—barely that. Manage to last the night, and I will actually be impressed.”
Since Oak didn’t plan on lasting the night without sneaking out, he says nothing.
“Show me the trick,” Leander says to the Ghost, interrupting them.
“Which trick?” Garrett’s smile is indulgent. It’s surprising to see the shift in his behavior. But then he’s known Leander since the child was born. Garrett and Taryn became close before the Battle of the Serpent, possibly even before Locke’s death. Vivi and Heather—and Oak himself—have long believed they’re lovers, but after Taryn’s disastrous first marriage, Taryn hadn’t admitted it out loud.
“The one with the coins.”
Oak grins. He knows a few of those. The Roach taught them to him when he was only a little older than Leander.
Garrett reaches into his pocket and comes out with a silver coin. Before he can demonstrate, though, Madoc walks up, leaning heavily on his twisted black cane.
“My lads,” the redcap says, putting a hand on Leander’s head. The boy turns to smile up at him.
The Ghost sets the coin before Leander. “Why don’t you practice and show me what you learned,” he instructs, then rises.
“But . . . ,” the boy protests, a whine coming into his voice.
“I will show you the trick again tomorrow.” With a sharp look at Madoc, he leaves the table.
Oak frowns. He had no idea how uncomfortable the Ghost was around Madoc, but of course the redcap was in exile for years. Oak never saw them together before. Leander picks up the coin but does nothing more with it.
“So you’re really going through with this marriage?” Madoc asks the prince.
“We’ll all find out the answer to that tomorrow.” And Oak will look more like the fickle and flighty courtier than ever when he asks Wren a question she can’t answer and postpones their engagement.
The redcap raises his eyebrows. “And have you asked yourself why the storm hag is in favor of your union?”
Truly, his father takes him for a fool. “If you know, perhaps you ought to tell me.”
Madoc looks in the direction where the Ghost went. “Hopefully, your sister’s spies will turn up something. There are worse things, though, than to learn how to rule in the harsh north.”
Oak doesn’t argue with him. He’s tired of arguing with his father.
When Madoc wanders off, though, he shows Leander all the coin tricks he knows. He runs the silver disc over his knuckles, makes it disappear behind the child’s ear, makes it reappear in his glass of nectar.
“Did it seem to you that Garrett doesn’t like your grandfather?” Oak says, handing back the coin.
Leander tries to roll the disc over his knuckles, but it slides off and onto the floor. He jumps down to scrounge for it. “He knows his name,” the boy says.
For a moment, Oak isn’t sure he heard right. “His name?”
“Garrett’s secret name,” Leander says.
“How do you know that?” Oak must have spoken too harshly, because Leander looks startled. The prince gentles his voice. “No, no one’s in trouble. I was just surprised.”
“I heard Mom and him talking,” Leander says.
“Is the Ghost his secret name?” Oak asks, just to be sure.
Leander shakes his head. “That’s just his code name.”
Oak nods and shows Leander the trick again, his mind running in circles. There was absolutely no reason for Garrett to give his true name to Madoc.
But then the Ghost’s words from the ship come back to the prince: Locke had the answer you seek. He knew the name of the poisoner, much good it did him.
Had Locke told Taryn during their disastrous marriage? Had she told Madoc? But no—surely the Ghost wouldn’t have forgiven that. Maybe Locke gave Madoc the name directly—but why?
Oak looks across the table at Taryn, deep in conversation with Jude. How it happened didn’t matter. What mattered was what it meant.
They knew Garrett was the one who murdered his mother. Who fed her blusher mushroom. He feels hot and cold all over, rage making him tremble.
Did they think he didn’t deserve this answer? That he was too much a child?
Or did they not tell him because they didn’t think there was anything wrong with what Garrett had done?
At midnight, the gardens are full of night-blooming plants, limned in moonlight. Wren’s blue skin is the same color as the petals of a flower, and as she enters the clearing, she seems as remote as a star in the sky.
He is still reeling from what he has learned. From the idea that someone he knows—someone he likes—tried to kill him. From the betrayal of his family.
“You wanted to see me?” he asks Wren, and wonders if, in the state he’s in, he should have come at all.
“I did,” she says with a sly smile. “I do.”
He remembers what it was like to be a child with her. He is half-tempted to propose a game. He wonders if he can get her to run wild through the grass with him.
“It was wrong to lock you away in my prisons,” she says.
That’s so unexpected that he laughs.
She makes a face. “Very well, I concede that’s obvious.”
“I am not sitting in judgment of you,” he says. Not with all the blood on his hands. “Does this mean you forgive me?”
She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t deny it.
“Shall I say instead that there’s peace between us at last?”
At that, he does get a smile. “Peace?”
“Not even that?” Oak puts a hand to his chest, as if wounded. Under his fingers, he can feel the thrum of his heart.
“I am not a peaceful person,” she says. “And neither are you.”
He loves that she knows he’s not peaceful. Loves that she doesn’t think him kind. He doesn’t know how, but from the first she seemed to recognize something in him that no one else does—that inner kernel of hardness, of coldness.
He never convinced her that he was a hero. He perhaps half-convinced her he was a fool, but never for long. She saw through his playacting and his smiles. Heard the riddles and schemes his charmed tongue tried to obscure.
And so, when she kissed him, it felt as though he was being kissed. Perhaps for the first time.
And he loves the way she’s watching him now, as though he fascinates her. As though she’s drawn to him. As though he’s got a chance.
Even if she doesn’t want to marry him. Even if she doesn’t love him.
Wren draws in a deep breath. “It’s beautiful here.”
Oak looks around the gardens, full of flowers. Golden evening primrose, carpets of night phlox with tiny white buds, pale moonflowers, the purple night-scented stock, and the large silvery flowers of the cereus. He cups one. “Did you know this is called Queen of the Night?”
Wren shakes her head, smiling. “I dreamed about this place sometimes.”
He thinks about her comment that she would make new nightmares and is silent. When she looks at him, there is something vulnerable in her face, though her voice is sharp with sudden anger.
“You could have kept me here, in Elfhame, but you let your sister send me away.” Wren turns her gaze to the flower, speaking to it instead of him. “You gave me the first safe place—the only safe place I had after I was stolen from my unfamily—and then you took it from me.”