He wants to object and insist that he helped her. He interceded with his sister. He hid her from the Court of Teeth. But though he did those things, he didn’t keep doing them. He helped a little, and then having done so, assumed he did enough.
“It never occurred to me that you didn’t have a home to go back to.” He didn’t understand. He didn’t ask.
“You were bored with me,” she accuses, but there isn’t much heat in her voice. He can tell that she believes it and that she has believed it for a long time. Maybe she doesn’t even condemn him for it.
“I would have hidden you in my rooms forever if I thought that’s what you wanted,” he vows. “I thought about you a lot ever since. Which you must know, since I showed up in your forest a few years later.”
She clearly wants to object.
“Whereupon you sent me away,” he concludes, and watches her expression change to one of exasperation.
“You think I did that because I didn’t like you?”
He gives her a steady look.
“I did it to help you! If you stayed in the forest with me, the best thing that could ever have happened was that your family came and dragged you back to Elfhame. I’d lose you again, and you’d gain nothing.”
“So you thought—” he starts, but she cuts him off.
“And the worst thing, the more likely thing, was that one of the enemies you were telling me about would find you. And then you’d be dead.”
Her logic is alarmingly sound, although he doesn’t like to admit it. He must have seemed very dramatic, showing up in her woods like that. Very dramatic and very, very, very foolish. The typical spoiled, naive royal. “And you couldn’t tell me that?”
“What if you didn’t listen?” she shouts. There’s a desperation in her voice that’s out of step with the conversation they’re having.
“I’m listening,” he says, puzzled.
“It’s not safe,” she says. “Not then and not now.”
“I know that,” he tells her.
“I’m not safe,” she says. “You can’t trust me. I—”
“I don’t need safe,” he says, and leans down, putting his hands in her hair. She doesn’t move, looking up at him with lips that are slightly parted, as though she can’t quite believe what he’s doing.
Then he kisses her. Kisses her like he’s wanted to for days and weeks and what feels like forever.
It isn’t a careful kiss. He can feel her teeth against his tongue, her dry lips. He can feel the sharp edges of her nails as they dig into his neck. He shivers with sensation. He doesn’t want careful any more than he wants safe.
He wants her.
Wren pulls him down, lower, until they are kneeling in the gardens. Oak feels dizzy with desire. All around them, the petals of night-blooming flowers have opened, and their thick perfume scents the air.
“Do you want—?” he starts, but she is already pushing up her dress.
“I want,” she says. “That’s my problem. I want and I want and I want.”
“What do you want?” he asks, voice soft.
“Everything. Charm me. Rip me open. Ruin me. Go too far.”
He shudders at her words, shaking his head against them.
She goes on, whispering against his skin. “You cannot understand. I am a chasm that will never be full. I am hunger. I am need. I cannot be sated. If you try, I will swallow you up. I will take all of you and want more. I will use you. I will drain you until you are nothing more than a husk.”
“Use me, then,” he whispers, mouth on her throat.
Then her lips are against his, and there is no more talking for a long time.
Wren is lying against him, her head pillowed against his shoulder, when the shifting branches alert him.
“Someone’s coming,” Oak says, grabbing for his trousers and also his knife.
Wren springs to her feet, pulling on her gown, trying to make herself look less like she’s been rolling around in the dirt.
For a moment, their gazes meet, and they both grin helplessly. There’s something so silly about this moment, scrambling to get dressed before they’re caught. Neither of them can pretend to anything but merriment.
“Your Highness,” says Lady Elaine, taking in the situation with a frown as she steps into the clearing. “I see you had a surfeit of trysts planned for this evening.”
Her words wipe the smile from Oak’s face. He was supposed to meet her, and he didn’t pay attention to the zenith of the moon. Didn’t pay attention to anything but Wren. Didn’t care about conspirators or schemes or even his family’s lies.
After years of bending his whole self to be a lure for the worst of Elfhame, he simply forgot to be that person.
“Moonrise, sunrise, dawn, dusk, zeniths,” he says as flippantly as he can manage. If anything can make this moment worse, it would be his acting as though he feels caught. “Regrettably, I can be imprecise about imprecise times. My apologies. I hope you didn’t wait long.”
Wren looks between Lady Elaine and Oak, no doubt coming to her own conclusions.
“You’re the girl from the Court of Teeth,” Lady Elaine says, the gossamer of her wings apparent in the moonlight.
“I am the queen of what was once the Court of Teeth.” Wren’s expression is stony, and despite her dress gaping open in the back and the leaves tangled in her hair, she looks quite fearsome. “Betrothed to the Prince of Elfhame. And you are?”
Lady Elaine looks as astonished as if she bit into a pear and found it full of ants. She walks to Oak and puts her arm around his. “I am Elaine. Lady Elaine, a courtier from the Court of Moss in the west and an old friend of the prince’s. Isn’t that right?”
“Despite my being a trial to her,” agrees Oak, avoiding giving any real confirmation.
Wren offers up a chilly smile. “I will go back to the feast, I think. Might you do up the back of my dress?”
Lady Elaine gives her a scathing look.
“Of course.” Oak has to hide his smile at that as he walks behind Wren and does up the laces of her gown.
As she makes ready to go, she looks back at Lady Elaine. “I hope he will give you half the delight he’s given me.”
Oak has to swallow a laugh.
As Wren leaves, Lady Elaine turns to Oak, hands on her hips. “Prince,” she says, sterner than any instructor in the palace school.
He is so tired of being treated as though he is a fool, as though he is in need of—what did Randalin say about Wren—a little guidance. Maybe he is a fool, but he is a fool of a different sort.
“There was little I could do,” he protests with a shrug, choosing his words carefully. “She is my betrothed, after all. It’s not the easiest thing to get rid of someone.”
Lady Elaine’s mouth relaxes a little, although she’s not going to let him out of this that easily. “You expect me to believe you wanted to be rid of her?”
Well, it would be convenient if she thought that. “I mean her no insult,” Oak says, deliberately misunderstanding. “But you were going to introduce me to your friends—and, well, I haven’t seen you in a long while.”
“Perhaps it’s time you explained this betrothal,” she says.
“Not here.” It’s too strange to stand in the place he was with Wren and attempt to deceive Lady Elaine about her. “Where was it you were going to take me?”
“We were to meet at the edge of the Crooked Forest,” she tells him, walking with him as he makes his way down one of the paths. “But they will be long gone. This is dangerous, Oak. They are putting themselves at great risk for your benefit.”
He notes that she didn’t say for your sake, although he’s sure that’s how she wants him to take her words. “Wren is powerful,” Oak says, hating himself. “And would be useful.”
“That point has been made to me before,” Lady Elaine says bitterly, and to his surprise. “That you were clever to make this alliance, and having the storm hag with her puts us all in a better position.”
For a moment, he is tempted to explain that Bogdana is never going to be on the side of anyone with his bloodline, but what would be the point? Let her believe anything that will have her accepting Wren and taking him to the rest of the conspirators.
“She will make you unhappy,” Lady Elaine tells him.