Pulling back his hand, he doesn’t know what to think.
Mother Marrow told him that Wren’s magic was turned inside out. A power meant to be used for creation, warped until all it could do was destroy, annihilate, and unmake. Twisted on itself, a snake eating its own tail. But perhaps taking apart the storm and being struck twice by lightning was more than even her magic could devour. Maybe some of it spilled over.
Though she set all her matches alight and burned up with them, maybe something new could emerge from the ashes.
How many girls like Wren can there be, made from sticks and imbued with a cursed heart? She’s made of magic, more than any of them.
“What will wake her?” he demands.
“That I do not know,” Bogdana says, not meeting his eyes.
Jude raises both brows. “Helpful.”
Oak remembers the story Oriana told him long ago about his mother. Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so beautiful that none could resist her. When she spoke, it seemed that the hearts of those who listened beat for her alone.
But how could he persuade someone who might not even be able to hear him?
“Wren,” Oak says, letting the burr come into his voice. “Open your eyes. Please.”
Nothing happens. Oak tries again, letting loose the full force of his honey-tongued charm. The nearby Folk watch him with a new, strange intensity. The air seems to ripple with power. Bex sucks in a breath, leaning toward him.
“Come back to me,” he says.
But Wren is silent and still.
Oak lets go of his power, cursing himself. He glances up helplessly at Jude, who looks back at him and shakes her head. “I’m sorry.” It is a very human thing for her to say.
He lets his head fall forward until his forehead is touching Wren’s.
Gathering her in his arms, he studies the hollowness of her cheeks and the thinness of her skin. Presses a finger to the edge of her mouth.
Oak thought his magic was just finding what people wanted to hear and saying it in the way they wanted, but since he’s let himself really use the power, he discovered that he can use it to find truth. And for once, he needs to tell her the truth. “I thought love was a fascination, or a desire to be around someone, or wanting to make them happy. I believed it just happened, like a slap to the face, and left the way the sting from such a blow fades. That’s why it was easy for me to believe it could be false or manipulated or influenced by magic.
“Until I met you, I didn’t understand to feel loved, one has to feel known. And that, outside of my family, I had never really loved because I hadn’t bothered to know the other person. But I know you. And you have to come back to me, Wren, because no one gets us but us. You know why you’re not a monster, but I might be. I know why throwing me in your dungeon meant there was still something between us. We are messes and we are messed up and I don’t want to go through this world without the one person I can’t hide from and who can’t hide from me.
“Come back,” he says again, tears burning the back of his throat. “You want and you want and you want, remember? Well, wake up and take what you want.”
He presses his mouth against her forehead.
And startles when he hears her draw in a breath. Her eyes open, and for a moment, she stares up at him.
“Wren?” Bex says, and smacks Oak on the shoulder. “What did you do?” Then she pulls the prince into her arms and hugs him hard.
Jude is staring, hand to her mouth.
Bogdana stays back, glowering, perhaps hoping that no one noticed she rent her garments with her nails as she watched and waited.
“I’m cold,” Wren whispers, and alarm rings through him like the sounding of a bell. She could walk barefoot through the snow and not have it hurt her. He never heard her complain of even the most frigid temperatures.
Oak stands, lifting Wren in his arms. She feels too light, but he is reassured by her breath ghosting across his skin, the rise and fall of her chest.
He still cannot, however, hear the beat of her heart.
With the storm stopped, it seems that all of Elfhame has forded the distance between Insear and Insmire. There are boats aplenty, and soldiers. Grima Mog’s second-in-command is barking orders.
Bex scavenges a blanket from one of the tents, and Oak manages to bundle Wren in it. Then he carries her to a boat and commandeers it to take him back across so he can bring her to the palace. The journey is a blur of panic, of frantic questions, plodding steps. Finally, he carries her into his rooms. By then, her body is shivering, and he tries not to let terror leak into his voice as he speaks to her softly, explaining where they are and how she will be safe.
He puts Wren in his bed, then pushes it close by the fire and piles blankets on top of her. It seems to make no difference to her shuddering.
Herbalists and bonesetters come and go. Like a banshee, one of them says. Like a sluagh, says another. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before, says a third.
Wren’s skin has become dry and oddly dull. Even her hair looks faded. It seems as though she is sinking so deeply into herself that he cannot follow.
Oak sits with her throughout that night and all through the next day, refusing to budge as people come in and out. Oriana tries to prize him from Wren’s side to eat something, but he won’t leave.
Bex comes and goes. That afternoon, she sits for a while, holding her sister’s hand and crying as though she were already gone.
Tiernan brings them both hard cheese, fennel tea, and some bread. He also brings news of Bogdana, who is being held in the prisons of Hollow Hall, soon to be moved into the Tower of Forgetting.
Bex makes up a bed for herself on the floor out of scavenged cushions. Oak gives her one of his robes, all of gold and spider silk, to wear.
As night comes on, Wren seems like a husk of herself. When he touches her arm, it feels papery under his fingers. A wasp’s nest instead of flesh. He draws his hand back and tries to convince himself of something other than the worst.
“She’s not getting better, is she?” the mortal girl says.
“I don’t know,” Oak says, the words hard to get out, so close to being a lie.
Bex frowns. “I think I met your, uh, father. He was telling me about the Court of Teeth.”
Well, he should know all about that place, Oak thinks but doesn’t say.
“I guess I can see why Wren thought she couldn’t come back to my family, and it wasn’t because—I don’t know, not because she didn’t want to see us.”
“She was willing to do a lot for your sake,” Oak says, thinking of all the ways Wren must have struggled to free them from Bogdana’s trap, how despair must have closed in around her when she realized she was going to have to choose between an agonizing death for her sister and the deaths of many others.
“I just wish—” Bex says. “I wish I’d talked to her when I first saw her sneaking into the house. I wish I’d followed her. I wish I’d done more, done something.”
Over the past few days, Oak has been making a comprehensive and damning list of all the better choices he could have made. He’s wondering whether he ought to admit them out loud when Bex screams.
He rockets to his feet, not sure what she’s seeing.
And then he does. Inside of the husk of Wren, something is moving. Shifting beneath her skin.
“What is that?” Bex says, scuttling back until she hits the wall.
Oak shakes his head. The dullness of Wren’s skin suddenly makes him think of the shed casings that spiders leave behind. He reaches out an unsteady hand—
Wren moves again, and this time, the papery flesh tears. Skin emerges, vibrant blue. Her body cracks open like a chrysalis.
Bex makes an alarmed sound from the floor.