“If we die, he’s going to eat you first,” Oak gets out. “So you better live.”
Too soon, the kelpie begins to descend, slowly enough for Oak to suck in a breath, at least. It’s a shallow one, and he is almost certain he can’t hold it until the shore. His lungs are burning already.
This is the only way across, he reminds himself, closing his eyes.
Jack surfaces once more, just long enough for Oak to gulp down another breath. Then they race for the shore, only to hit the crashing waves there.
The kelpie is hurled forward, thrown against the sandy bottom. Oak and Hyacinthe are dragged along. A sharp rock scrapes against Oak’s leg. He wriggles against the rope, but it is pulled tight.
Somehow Jack fights his way higher onto the beach. Another wave knocks against his flank, and he staggers, then transforms into a boy. The rope slackens. Oak slips down onto the sand. Hyacinthe falls, too, and the prince realizes he’s not conscious. Blood is seeping from a cut above his brow where he may have struck a rock.
Oak puts his shoulder under Hyacinthe’s arm and attempts to haul him away from the shoreline. Before he can get clear, a stray wave trips the prince, and he falls to his knees. He throws his body over Hyacinthe’s to keep him from being sucked back into the sea.
A moment later, Oak is up and dragging Hyacinthe behind him. Jack grabs Hyacinthe’s other arm, and together they pull the man up onto soft grass before collapsing beside him.
Oak starts coughing again, while Jack manages to turn Hyacinthe onto his side. The kelpie slaps him on the back, and he vomits up seawater.
“How—?” Hyacinthe manages, opening his eyes.
Jack makes a prim face. “You both get soggy rather fast.”
Above their heads the sky is a clear and steady blue, the clouds pale and puffy as lambs. It is only when Oak looks back at Insear that he sees the storm, a thick fog surrounding the isle, crackling with lightning and a sheet of rain that blurs everything beyond it.
After a few minutes of lying on the grass, convincing himself that he’s still alive, Oak pushes himself to his hooves. “I know this place. I am going to scout around and see if I can find them.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Hyacinthe asks, although he looks too half-drowned to do much of anything.
“Wait here,” says Oak. “I’ll tell you if I find Tiernan.”
Hyacinthe nods in what seems a lot like relief.
Insmoor is called the Isle of Stone because of how rock-covered and wild it becomes away from Mandrake Market. This is where treefolk wander among thick vines of ivy, their bark-covered bodies slow as sap. Birds cry from the trees. It is a good place for Wren and Bogdana to hide. Few soldiers and fewer courtiers are likely to stumble over them in this place. But Oak has lived in Elfhame much of his life, and he knows the paths. His hooves are soft on the moss and swift over the stone. He’s quiet as he moves through the shadows.
Some distance off, he sees falcons roosting on trees. He must be getting close. Sticking to shadows, he hopes he won’t be spotted.
A few steps more, he halts in surprise. Wren sits on a boulder, legs drawn up to her chest, arms encircling them. Her nails are digging into the skin of her calves, and her expression is anguished, as if, though she planned the royal family’s doom, she isn’t enjoying it. It’s nice, he supposes, that betraying him isn’t fun.
His honey-mouthed charm comes easily this time, the burr in his tone just right. “Wren,” he says softly. “I was looking for you.”
She looks up, startled. Her headpiece is gone; her hair loose down her back. “I thought you were—”
“On Insear, waiting for our wedding?”
Her expression turns puzzled for a moment, then clears. She slides down off the rock and takes a step toward him, as though in a trance.
He can’t make himself hate her, even now.
But he can make himself kill her.
“We can exchange our vows right here,” he says.
“We can?” There’s a strange wistfulness in her voice. But why wouldn’t there be? She needs to marry him if she intends to be the High Queen of Elfhame. He’s promising her exactly what she wants. That’s how his power works, after all.
He brings his hand to the side of her face, and she rubs her cheek against his palm as though she were a cat. The rough silk of her hair slides over his fingers. It is agony to touch her like this.
His sword is at his belt, still tied in its makeshift sheath. All he needs to do is slide it out and stab it through her ancient heart.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
She looks up at him with a bleakness that makes him catch his breath. Then she closes them.
Oak’s hand drops to the hilt of his needle blade. Curls around the cold, wet pommel. Draws.
He looks down at the shining steel, bright enough to see Wren’s face reflected in it.
He can’t help thinking of the Ghost’s words when they were aboard the Moonskimmer, flying above the sea. You’re very like Dain in some ways.
Nor can he forget that he once thought, If I love someone, I won’t kill them, a vow too obvious to need to be made aloud.
Oak doesn’t want to be like his father.
He wishes his hand was still trembling, but it is remarkably steady.
You’ve always been clever. Be clever now. That’s what Wren told him when she urged him to break off their betrothal. She needs their marriage if she intends to rule once Cardan and his sister are dead. And yet, if he’d ended the betrothal when she asked him to, there would be no way to accomplish that.
You can’t trust me.
Why warn him? To send him in circles? To set him to one puzzle so he didn’t notice another? That was a complicated and risky plan, while merely expecting him to do his duty and marry her the way he’d said he would was a shockingly simple plan, one with a high chance of success.
Oak remembers Wren standing in the Milkwood over the body of the Ghost. Taryn accused her of poisoning him. Why not deny it? Why make everyone suspicious of her? Randalin admitted to having done it, and he’d urged her to declare her innocence. And the storm hag sank her talons into Wren’s skin. All that it bought was a good excuse for the royal family to ask more questions.
I’m not the one who needs saving.
That had seemed the most damning statement, when bolts started flying on Insear. But if it wasn’t a taunt about the murder of his family that Randalin was planning, then someone else needed saving. Not Oak, who was a necessary cog. The Ghost? Lady Elaine?
He recalls something else, from the banquet. I should have understood better—what you did for your father and why. I wanted it to be simple. But my sis—Bex—
Wren didn’t finish speaking because of a coughing fit. Which could have been because she made herself sick using her magic. Or it could have been that she was trying to say something she made a vow not to say.
My sister. Bex.
I’m not the one who needs saving.
Maybe Oak has this all wrong. Maybe she’s not his enemy. Maybe she’s been given an impossible choice.
Wren loves her mortal family. She loves them so much she slept in the dirt near their house just to be close. Loves them so much that there might be nothing she wouldn’t do to save her mother or father or sister. No one she wouldn’t sacrifice, including herself.
He knows what love like that feels like.
Oak had wondered why Lady Nore and Lord Jarel left Wren’s mortal family alive, given what he knew of their cruelty. Wouldn’t it have been more to their taste to remove any chance at Wren’s happiness? To butcher her family members one by one in front of her and drink her tears?
But now he sees what use they could have been. How could Wren ever rebel when there was always something else to lose? A hatchet that never fell. A threat to be delivered over and over again.
How pleased Bogdana must have been to find Bex still alive and usable.
Wren opens her eyes and looks up at him. “At least it will be you,” she says. “But you better hurry up. Waiting is the worst part.”