One of the knights pushes aside the Rap of a heavy cream-and-gold tent.
Inside, two thrones sit, although neither is occupied. Jude and Cardan stand with Taryn and Madoc. Cardan has changed into clothes of white and gold while Madoc is in deep red, as though they were opposing suits in a deck of cards. Taryn still wears her hunting clothes, her eyes red and swollen, as though she hasn’t stopped crying until just before this moment. Oriana sits in a corner, entertaining Leander. Oak thinks of his own childhood and how she pulled him away from so many dangerous conversations, hiding them in the back, distracting him with a toy or a sweet.
It was a kindness, he knew. But it made him vulnerable as well.
Three members of the Living Council are in attendance. Fala, the fool; Randalin; and Nihuar, representative of the Seelie Courts. All three of them look grim. Hyacinthe is there, too, sitting on a chair, stony-faced and defiant. Oak can sense the panic he is trying to hide.
Ringed around the tent are guards, none of whom Oak knows. All of whom wear the expressions of people expecting an execution.
“Oak,” Jude says. “Good. Are you ready to talk?”
“Where’s Wren?” he asks.
“What an excellent question,” she says. “I thought perhaps you knew.”
They stare at each other.
“She’s gone?” he asks.
“And Tiernan with her.” Jude nods. “You can see why we have a lot to discuss. Did you arrange her freedom?”
Oak takes a deep breath. There are so many things he should have told her over the years. To tell her now is going to feel like peeling off his own skin. “You may have heard some things about me and the company I was keeping before I went north with Wren. Lady Elaine, for example. My reasons were not what you might suppose. I’m not—”
Outside, there’s a crash and a howl of wind.
“What’s that?” Taryn demands.
Cardan narrows his eyes. “A storm,” he says.
“Brother,” Jude says. “Why did you bring her here? What did she promise you?”
Oak remembers being caught in the rain and thunder of Bogdana’s power, remembers his ragwort steed being torn out from beneath him. This portends disaster.
“When we were on our quest, I tricked Wren,” Oak says. “I kept back information that wasn’t mine to keep.” He cannot help hearing the echo of his own complaint in those words. His family hid things from him the same way he hid things from her.
“And?” Jude frowns.
Oak tries to find the right words. “And she was angry, so she threw me in prison. Which seems extreme, but I was handling it. And then you . . . overreacted.”
“Overreacted?” Jude echoes, clearly incensed.
“I was handling it!” Oak repeats, louder.
There’s movement out of the corner of his eye, and then two bolts fly across the tent toward Jude. Oak hits the floor, pulling his sword from its sheath.
Cardan whips up his cloak in front of Jude—the cloak made by Mother Marrow, the one that was enchanted to turn the blades of weapons. The arrows fall to the ground as though they’ve struck a wall instead of cloth.
A moment later, the High King staggers back, bleeding. A knife juts out from his chest. Falling to his knees, he covers the wound with his hands, as though the blood seeping through his fingers is an embarrassment.
Randalin steps back, smug and satisfied. It’s his dagger in the High King’s chest.
“Put down your weapons,” a soldier shouts unsteadily, taking a step forward. For a moment, Oak isn’t sure whose side they’re on. Then he sees the way they’re standing. Seven soldiers moving closer to the Minister of Keys, two of them the knights who came to Oak’s tent.
Finally, the unfamiliarity of them makes horrible sense. This is a trap.
This is the conspiracy he hoped Lady Elaine would reveal. Had Oak not missed their meeting in the gardens, had he not been so willing to believe that it was over when Lady Elaine herself gave it up, had he not departed on the quest to save his father in the first place, perhaps he could have discovered this. Discovered it and foiled it.
Oak recalls the councilor extolling the wisdom of his betrothal to Wren, recalls his pushing the royal family to come immediately to Insear after the hunt. Remembers how Randalin maneuvered a conference alone with Bogdana and Wren.
The Minister of Keys was laying the groundwork while acting so pompous and irritating that he couldn’t be taken seriously. And Oak fell for it. Oak underestimated Randalin in the most foolish way possible— by falling for the same trick he played on others.
Jude eases Cardan to the ground and kneels beside him, sword in her hand. “I will cut your throat,” she promises Randalin.
“Stabbity stab, knife wife,” says Fala, with feeling. “Traitor’s blood is hot, but it still spills.”
Taryn has a dagger out. Madoc, dangerous enough with just his claw-tipped hands, has moved into a fighting stance. Oak rises and moves to his side.
“You should have listened to me,” Randalin tells Jude from the safe distance he has put between them, behind one of his soldiers. “Mortals are not meant to sit on our thrones. And Cardan, the least of the Greenbriar princes, pathetic. But all that will be remedied. We will have a new king and queen in your place. You see, none of your own knights are here to save you. Nor can they cross to this isle while the storm rages. And it will rage until you’re dead.”
Oak blinks. “You made a deal with Bogdana. That’s what the Ghost was getting proof of, that’s the thing he thought I wouldn’t like.”
Because of Wren. That’s why the Ghost thought Oak wouldn’t like it.
“You should be grateful,” Randalin tells the prince. “I persuaded Bogdana to spare you, though you are of the Greenbriar line and her enemy. Because of me, you will sit on the throne with a powerful faerie queen by your side.”
“Wren would never . . . ,” Oak begins, but he’s not sure how to finish. Would she agree to the murder of his family? Did she want to be the High Queen?
You can’t trust me.
I’m not the one who needs saving.
Randalin laughs. “She didn’t object. And neither did you, as I recall. Didn’t you tell Lady Elaine of your resentment of the High King? Didn’t you encourage her plot to get you on the throne?”
Oak’s stomach hurts, hearing those words. Knowing a storm is raging outside because of someone he brought here. Seeing Cardan’s body lying in a pool of red, no longer conscious and maybe no longer alive. Thinking of the Ghost’s open, staring eyes. Seeing the way Oak’s sisters are looking at him now and how his mother is looking away.
“You poisoned Garrett,” Oak says.
Randalin laughs. “I gave him the wine. He didn’t have to drink it. But he got too close to uncovering our plans.”
“And Elaine?” he asks.
“What could I do?” Randalin says. “She wanted out.” And pouring her wine from the same urn as the spy’s convinced him it was safe to drink.
Expressing the desire to get out was how Oak planned on getting Elaine and her friends to turn on him. The same way he’d defeated other conspiracies—courting an attempted murder and exposing them for that instead of as traitors. But she hadn’t known it would doom her. He should have given her a warning.
And now his family thinks he was part of this. He can see it in their faces. And worse, in bringing Wren here, maybe he was.
Maybe this is what Wren wanted when she agreed to come to Elfhame. Revenge on him. Revenge on the High King and Queen, who stripped her of her kingdom and sent her away with no help and no hope. The crown that Mellith was promised.
Wren, whom he believed he loved. Whom he believed he knew.
He sees now that she learned the lessons of betrayal, learned them down to the marrow of her bones.
There is no apology Oak can give that could be believed, no way to explain. Not anymore.
Oak feels something snap inside him. He draws his sword.
“Don’t be foolish,” Randalin says with a frown. “This is all for you.”