Dressed in mouse gray, with Tatterfell taking his evening clothes on to Insear, Oak heads to the stables. From there, he will ride out to the Milkwood, where he intends to determine the actual reason Wren wants Oak in particular to break off their betrothal.
As he heads toward Damsel Fly, he finds Jack of the Lakes waiting for him. The kelpie is in his person form, dressed all in brown and black, bits of seaweed hanging out of his breast pockets. A rough-beaten gold hoop hangs from one ear.
“Hullo,” Jack says, brushing the hair back from his eyes.
“My apologies,” Oak says, resting one hand on the needle of a sword he insisted on strapping to his belt. “I haven’t yet managed to speak with my sister on your behalf.”
He shrugs. “My obligation to you is greater than yours to me, prince. I’ve come to dismiss some of it, if I can.”
“Observe another clandestine meeting?” Oak asks.
“I am a steed. Get on my back, and we’ll ride to the hunt together.”
Oak frowns, considering. Jack is capricious and a gossip. But the vow he once gave Oak was sincere, and at the moment, Oak is feeling short on allies. Someone he can even mostly trust seems a boon. “Concerned about something?”
“I mislike this place,” Jack says.
“Viper nest,” Oak agrees.
“It seems quite the trick to tell the friendly snakes from the other ones.”
“Ah,” Oak says. “They’re all friendly snakes until they bite you.”
“Perhaps you’ll have no need of me today,” the kelpie tells him. “But if you do, I will be there.”
Oak nods. Jack’s concern makes his own worries all the more real. He reaches for a saddle. “You really don’t mind?”
“So long as there’s no bit between my teeth,” Jack says, transforming shape on the last word. Where once there was a boy, there is a sharptoothed black horse. The sheen on his coat is murky green, and his mane ripples like water.
Oak swings up on his back and rides out. Tiernan is waiting for him outside the palace stables on a white steed of his own. He takes one look at Jack and raises both his brows. “Have you run mad, trusting him again?”
Oak thinks of what he promised Hyacinthe in the Citadel—the hand of the person responsible for Liriope’s death. And the prince considers Tiernan, whose happiness he will rob if he gives that to Hyacinthe—even supposing he could. He considers how awful it would be and all the consequences that would follow.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Oak says. “I’m not sure I trust anyone anymore. Not even myself.”
They arrive at the Milkwood, riding beneath pale, silvery boughs covered with bleached leaves. There, the gentry of the Court are assembling in their riding garb. Cardan sits atop a black steed with flowers braided into its mane. He himself is wearing a doublet with a high collar and a crisscrossing pattern sewn into the dark fabric. Aside from shining buttons in the shape of beetles, he looks positively staid.
Taryn is all in lilac—a jacket with long tulip sleeves, breeches, and boots—and astride a dappled pony. The Ghost is beside her in dark gray, and somehow seems more knight, clad in her livery, than partner.
Oak feels a spike of rage at the sight of him. Rage that he swallows. For now.
Beside the High King, Jude is mounted on a riding toad, wearing a dress the color of unskimmed cream with billowing sleeves. Over that, a thin vest, embroidered with gold, laces over her chest. Calf-high brown boots dig into the stirrups. No crown sits on her head, and her hair is pulled simply back.
He tries to judge from her expression, from her body language, if she is working against him. If she has gone around his back and threatened Wren. But Jude is a consummate liar. There’s no way he can tell, and asking would be worse than useless. All that would happen is that she’d know Wren gave something away.
On that thought, he notes Cardan watching him. He cannot, in this moment, bring himself to explain his true role in this or the other conspiracies. He cannot bring himself to be vulnerable in front of either of them. And if he begins to tell the story, Lady Elaine will face the very fate she would have if she hadn’t renounced her treachery the night before. She will certainly be interrogated.
He thinks of the cold stone slab and Valen standing over him and shudders.
He wishes he could trust his sister as he once did. He wishes that he could be sure she trusted him.
The prince turns away, his gaze going to the servants loading baskets and blankets onto ponies for the picnic the courtiers will have once the hunt grows dull.
“We cannot possibly catch the silver stag,” says a man in a hat with a plume sticking out of it and a longbow. He rides a chestnut steed with dainty hooves. “Nor anything much with two mortals among us. They will frighten off the beasts with their noise.”
He means for Jude to hear, and she has. She gives him a lethal smile. “Well,” she says, “there are always birds in the trees to hunt. Even a few falcons.”
The reference to Wren’s soldiers is not missed. Some of the gathered Folk appear uncomfortable. Others seem eager.
“Or we could draw lots to play the fox,” she continues with a grin. “That’s a fine sport, and one I’ve played before.”
She’s been the fox, but they don’t know that. The man with the plumed hat looks nervous. “A ride through the Milkwood is its own delight.”
“I could not agree more,” she tells him.
Randalin blows a horn, calling for them to all assemble.
Oak spots Lady Elaine, whispering something to Lady Asha, Cardan’s mother. When she notices him, she turns away without meeting his gaze.
The attention of the crowd shifts, and voices still. He turns to see Wren and Bogdana ride in, not on steeds, but on creatures enchanted from sticks and twigs and brambles. They move like horses but remind Oak of ragwort ponies in their uncanniness.
Unconsciously, he leans back, urging Jack away. Their presence bothers Oak, not just because he fought creatures like them, not just because they were Lady Nore’s beasts and conjured from Mab’s bones, but because he was aboard the Moonskimmer and did not see them there.
Another secret.
Wren is in a dress of pale gold. A chain veil is on her head, set with shimmering aquamarines. It contains her hair and falls down over her cheeks and chin, almost to her waist. She holds the reins of a bridle made from a thin chain that wraps around the horse’s mouth. Though she looks majestic and even bridal, she frowns at her hands, shoulders hunched. She looks haunted.
By contrast, Bogdana is in another dark shroud, tattered in places and flying behind her in the breeze. Her expression is the picture of satisfaction.
Their arrival is greeted with murmurs of admiration. Courtiers ooh and aah over the bramble beasts, running hands over twiggy flanks.
He may not get answers out of his sister, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get answers. Pressing his knee gently against the kelpie’s flank, he guides him toward Wren.
“Is that . . . ?” Wren frowns.
“Jack of the Lakes,” Oak says, patting the kelpie’s neck. “A merry wight.”
Wren’s lip lifts in something that could have become a smile but doesn’t stay long enough.
“Tonight I must ask you a question,” Oak says. “What if it’s impossible to respond to what I ask incorrectly?”
“You would bind me to marriage unwilling?” Nothing in her tone acknowledges the night before, their tangled limbs and ragged breaths. Her eloquent, whispered wants.
He feels guilty that he’s not telling her the truth—he won’t make her do anything she doesn’t wish. But he needs to know if something is actually wrong.
“Am I supposed to declare that I was swept away first by one whim and then another?” he asks, blithe as ever. If her shield is coldness, his is mirth.
“Would they not believe it? Besides, you could tell the Court we had an argument.” Wren glances over her shoulder, as though afraid someone can hear her. “I would be more than willing to have one right now. A spectacular fight.”
He raises his brows. “And what might this argument be about?”
“Lady Elaine, perhaps,” Wren offers. “Your fickle nature. I could tell you about it, loudly.”
He winces. “I needed information from her.”