“You’re not my enemy,” he says. “You were never my enemy.”
“Yet you’re standing there with a bare blade,” Wren reminds him.
Fair point. “I just figured it out. She has your sister, doesn’t she?”
Wren opens her mouth, then closes it. But the relief in her expression is answer enough.
“And you can’t tell me,” he guesses. “Bogdana made you vow all sorts of things to make sure you couldn’t give away her game. Made you vow to go through with the marriage, so the only way out was if I refused you. Hid Bex away, so you couldn’t simply unmake everyone and free her. Left word with someone to do away with Bex if the storm hag turns up dead. All you could do was try to stall. And try to warn me.”
All she could do was hope he was clever enough.
And perhaps, if he wasn’t, she hoped that at least he would stop her from having to do the worst of what Bogdana commanded. Even if the only way to stop her was with a blade.
She, who never wanted to trust him again, having to do exactly that.
Wren’s eyes are wet as she blinks, her lashes black and spiky. She reaches into a pocket of her dress and takes out the white walnut. “Tiernan is trapped in the cottage. Take it. This is all I can offer you.” Her fingers brush the palm of his hand. “I am not your enemy, but if you can’t help me, the next time we meet, I might be.”
It’s not a threat. He understands now. She’s telling him what she fears.
The prince practically runs into Jack and Hyacinthe as they’re coming off the beach. The kelpie yelps and glares at him accusatorily.
“I have Tiernan,” Oak says, out of breath.
Hyacinthe raises both eyebrows and looks at the prince as though he must have fallen on his head, hard.
“No, not with me,” he says. “He’s in my pocket.”
Inside of the cottage must have been how they brought the bramble horses without their being on the ship. And any other sinister supplies they may have needed. Arms and armor, certainly. And there was no reason for Wren to have even known.
“And your queen? Is she . . . ?” Jack makes a throat-slashing motion.
“Bogdana has her mortal sister,” Oak says. “She’s being blackmailed.”
“Has her where?” Hyacinthe asks. “And when is a single thing you are saying going to start making sense?”
The first is the important question. And Oak thinks he may have the answer.
As Oak approaches Mandrake Market, he has a startlingly good view of the storm lashing Insear. The lanes are empty. Merchants huddle in their homes, probably hoping the waves don’t rise too high, that lightning doesn’t strike too close. Hyacinthe follows the prince, carrying the walnut in his pocket, while Jack brings up the rear.
Together, they come to Mother Marrow’s cottage, the thatch roof overgrown with moss. Oak stands in front of the door while the other two go around the back. Looking inside, he can see her sitting on a stump before a fire, poking at a bucket hanging over the flames.
Oak pounds on the hag’s front door. Mother Marrow frowns and goes back to her fire. He bangs his fist again. This time she stands. Scowling, she waddles to the door on her bird talons.
“Prince.” She squints. “Aren’t you supposed to be at a party?”
“May I come in?”
She steps back so he can make his way into the room. “Quite a storm we’re having.”
Mother Marrow closes the door behind him and bolts it. He goes to the window, looking across at Insear while his fingers undo the latch. He can see nothing but rain and fog and hopes fervently that his family is no worse than he left them.
“You’re holding Wren’s sister for Bogdana, aren’t you?” he asks, turning and walking toward the back of her cottage. “Your friend with the gold skin picked her up, but you’re the one with the place here, so you’re the one who’s keeping her, right?”
Her eyebrows rise. “Beware, Prince of Elfhame, what you accuse Mother Marrow of doing. You want to keep her as your friend, don’t you?”
“I’d rather discover her treachery,” he says, pushing open the door to a back room.
“How dare you?” she says as he enters her bedroom. A canopied bed rests against one wall, bedsheets smoothed out over it. A few bones lie in a corner, old and dry. There’s a little desk with a skull resting on top of several tomes. A cup of tea sits beside her bed, old enough that a dead moth floats atop the liquid.
Ignoring her, he pushes past to open one of the two other doors. It’s a bathing chamber, with a large wooden tub in the middle of the room and a pump beside it. A drain rests off to one side. And a large trunk, like the one Jack described.
He flips it open. Empty.
Mother Marrow presses her lips together. “You are making a mistake, boy. Whatever you think I have, is it worth the curse I will put on you?”
As angry as he is, he doesn’t hesitate. “Have you not already betrayed me once, when you knew exactly where Mellith’s heart was and sent me on a fool’s errand anyway? I am Prince Oak of the Greenbriar line, kin to the High Queen and King, heir to Elfhame. Perhaps you should be afraid.”
Surprise flashes across her features. She stands in the hall, staring after him as he opens the final door. Another bed, this one piled with pillows in sloppy needlepoint, as though done by a child. Shelves on the wall, with books on them, a few that look as ancient as the tomes piled up in Mother Marrow’s room, a few that are newer and less dusty. There are even a few paperbacks that obviously came from the mortal world. This must be the daughter’s room.
But no Bex.
“Where is she?” he demands.
“Come,” Mother Marrow says. “Sit. You’re shivering. Some tea will cure that.”
Oak feels as though his blood is boiling. If he is shivering, it is not from cold. “We don’t have time for this.”
Nonetheless, she busies herself, fussing with the bucket over her fire. Something floats in the water that might be kelp. The hag dunks the wooden ladle and dishes up two servings of tea into ceramic mugs. His has a screaming face on it.
Mother Marrow sips at her tea. Oak’s nerves spark like live wires underneath his skin. Randalin is dead, and whatever signal he planned to give Bogdana that he murdered the royal family will never come. Eventually, Bogdana will realize that and execute the next stage of her plan. Wren will be helpless to stop her. She may have to help her. And he must find Bex before that happens.
The room is as it was before—stumps and a wooden chair before the fire and a threadbare chair off to one side. The same painted curio cabinet with its collection of beetle wings, potions, and poisons. The same nuts rattling in the bowl. The passageway to the rest of the empty cottage.
“What can you possibly offer Mother Marrow in exchange for what you seek?” the hag asks mildly.
Oak considers hags unfathomable beings, different from other Folk. Creators of objects, casters of curses. Part witch, part god. Solitary by nature, according to his instructors. But he heard the story of Bogdana and Mellith. And he remembers Mother Marrow’s desire for Cardan to wed her child.
Maybe not always so solitary. Maybe not entirely strange.
“I want to save Wren,” he says.
“A little bird,” she says. “Caught in a storm.”
Oak gives her a steady look. “You have a daughter. One you wanted to marry to the High King. You told me about her.”
Mother Marrow gives a small grunt. “That was some time ago.”
“Not so much time, I will wager, that you’ve forgotten the insult of the courtly Folk thinking that a hag’s daughter wasn’t fit for a throne.”
There’s a growl in her voice. “You best be careful if you expect to get something from me. And you best not try honey-mouthing me, either. I enjoy sweet words, but I will enjoy eating your tongue even more.”
He inclines his head in acknowledgment. “What is it you want in exchange for Bex?”
She snorts. “You found no girl. What if none is here?”