“Get away from her!” a voice comes from one of the tents, and Bex steps into view. She’s soaked through and shivering, and when she sees them, her eyes go wide. “Wren?”
Horror clouds Wren’s expression as Bex steps out of the shelter of the canvas into the rain. One hand goes to cover her mouth automatically, to hide her sharp teeth. Wren never wanted her family to look at her and see a monster.
Oak notes her swaying a little with nothing nearby to grasp to keep her upright. Wren has been drinking up far too much magic. She must feel as though she is fraying at the edges. She may be fraying at the edges.
“Bex,” Wren says so quietly that he doubts the girl can hear the words over the storm.
The mortal takes a step toward her.
“She’s actually here,” Wren says, sounding awed. “She’s okay.”
“Oh no,” says Bogdana. “That girl isn’t your kin. You’re my child. Mine. And you, boy—”
Lightning arcs down out of the sky, toward Oak. He steps back, lifting his sword automatically, as though he could block it like a blow. For a moment, everything around him goes white. And then he sees Wren lunge in front of him, her hair wild and wind-tossed around her head, electricity flashing inside her as though fireflies are trapped beneath her skin.
She caught the bolt.
Her lips curve, and she gives an odd, uncharacteristic laugh.
Bogdana’s lips pull back in a hiss of astonishment. But she’s accomplished this—Oak no longer has his sword to her throat, and even Jude has taken a step back.
The storm hag shakes her head. “You imprisoned the prince. You threw him into your dungeon. He tricked you. You can’t trust him.”
Wren slumps to her knees, as though her legs collapsed beneath her.
“This is done,” Oak warns Bogdana. “You’re done.”
“Do not think to choose him over me,” Bogdana snaps, ignoring him. “Your sister is a game piece. He’ll use that mortal girl to manipulate you to do exactly what he wants, rather than use her, as I did, to help you take what is yours. And she is in more danger from him than she could ever be from me.”
Wren’s hands still spark with the aftereffects of the bolt. “You keep telling me that others will do to me what you have already done. I know what it is to want something so much that you would rather have the shadow of it than nothing, even if that means you will never have the real thing. And love is not that.
“You could have trusted me to choose my allies. Could have trusted how I would decide to use my powers. But no, you had to bring my unsis—my sister here and show her all the things I was afraid she would see. Show her the me that I was afraid for her to know. And if she spurns me, I am certain you will glory in it, the proof that I have no one but you.”
Wren looks across the mud at Bex. “Prince Oak will make sure you get home.”
“But—” the girl begins.
“You can trust him,” Wren says.
“No, child,” Bogdana snaps. Thunder rumbles. Dust devils begin to swirl around her, sucking up sand. “We have come too far. It’s too late. They will never forgive you. He will never forgive you.”
Oak shakes his head. “There is nothing to forgive. Wren tried to warn me. She would have given up her life to keep from being your pawn.”
Bogdana remains focused on Wren. “Do you really think you’re a match for my power? You caught one bolt of lightning, and you’re already coming apart.”
The falcons move toward their queen, turning their weapons on the storm hag for the first time.
Wren gives a wan smile. “I was never meant to survive. If we went through with this battle and the one that would inevitably come next, if you forced me to annihilate all the magic thrown at us, there would be nothing left of me. The magic that knits me together would have been eaten away.”
“No—” Bogdana begins, but she can’t say the rest. Can’t, because it would have been a lie.
“You’re right about one thing, though. It’s too late.” Wren opens her arms, as though to embrace the night. As she does, it seems that the whole storm—the spiraling wind, the lightning—recognizes her as its center.
Oak realizes what she’s doing, but he has no idea how to stop her. And he understands now the despair that others have felt at the sight of him throwing himself at something, not caring for the consequences. “Wren, please, no!”
She takes the storm into herself, drinking down the rain that pelts her, letting it be absorbed into her skin. Wind whips her hair, then stills. Dark clouds dissipate, blowing away on her breath until they are no more.
The pale moon shines down on Elfhame again. The wind is still. The waves crash no more against the shores.
With the last of her might, Bogdana sweeps her hand at Wren.
A bolt of lightning cracks through the sky to strike her in the chest.
Wren staggers back, bending over with the pain of it. And when she looks up, her eyes are alight.
She glows with power. Her body rises into the air, hair floating around her. Her eyes open wide. Hovering in the sky, she’s lit from within. Her body is radiant, so bright that Oak can see the woven sticks where bones ought to be, the stones of her eyes, the jagged pieces of shell used to make her teeth. And her black heart, dense with raw power.
He can feel it like a gravitational force, pulling him toward her. And he can feel when it stops.
CHAPTER
24
W
ren collapses, her skin bruised and pale, her hair plastered across her face. Her eyes closed. The stillness of her is too profound for sleep.
Oak cannot seem to do anything but look at her. He cannot move. He cannot think.
Bex kneels beside Wren, pressing on her chest, counting under her breath. “Come on,” she mutters between compressions.
Bogdana leans down to place her overlong fingers on Wren’s cheek. Without her power, she looks old. Even her long nails look brittle. “Get away from her, human girl.”
“I’m trying to save my sister,” Bex snaps.
Jude stands behind the mortal. “Is she breathing?”
“You destroyed her,” Oak snarls at Bogdana, holding his sword pommel so hard that he feels the edge of the hilt dig into his hand. “You had a chance to undo what you did, to save your only daughter. No one tricked you this time. You did the very thing you knew would kill her.”
“She betrayed me,” Bogdana says, but there is a hitch in her voice.
“You cared nothing for her,” Oak shouts. “You terrorized her so that she would come into a power that you could use. You let those monsters in the Court of Teeth hurt her. And now she’s dead.”
The hag narrows her eyes. “And you, boy? Are you so much better? You’re the one who brought her here. What would you do to save her?”
“Anything!” he shouts.
“No!” Jude says, nearly as quickly, putting her body between his and the storm hag’s. “No, he would not.” She takes Oak by the shoulders and shakes him. “You can’t just keep throwing yourself at things as though you don’t matter.”
“She matters more,” he says.
“It’s possible that Wren can be woken,” says Bogdana.
“Deceive me in this, and I will bury you, so do I vow,” Oak says.
“Her heart is stopped,” says Bogdana. “But hag children don’t need beating hearts. Just magical ones.”
Oak recalls the Ghost giving him a warning when they were aboard the ship. It is said that a hag’s power comes from the part of them that’s missing. Each one has a cold stone or wisp of cloud or ever-burning flame where their hearts ought to be.
He’d dismissed it as a piece of superstition. Even Faerie found hags and their powers troubling enough to make up legends about them. And the Ghost had clearly been worried over Oak’s plan to marry one.
The prince lowers himself back to the ground. He kneels in the wet sand on the other side of where Bex is working. She scowls at him as she counts. He puts his hand on Wren’s chest. Desperately hoping the storm hag is right. But he feels not a single thrum of a pulse nor the movement of breath in her lungs. What he does feel is magic. There’s a deep well of it, curled up inside her body.