From within, a new Wren emerges. Her skin the same cerulean blue, her eyes the same soft green. Even her teeth are the same, sharp as ever when she parts her lips to take a breath of air. But on her back are two feathered wings, light blue gray at the tips, with darker feathers closer to her body, and when they unfurl, they are large enough to canopy him, Bex, and Wren.
She stands, naked and reborn, looking around the room with the sharp gaze of a goddess, deciding whom to bless and whom to smite.
Her eyes settle on the prince.
“You have wings,” he says, awestruck and foolish. He sounds as though he took a hard blow to the head. That isn’t far from how he feels.
Astonished joy has robbed him of all cleverness.
“Wren?” Bex whispers.
Wren’s attention swings to her, and he can see the mortal girl flinch a little under the weight of it.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Wren says, although she looks positively terrifying right then. Even Oak is a little frightened of her.
Bex draws in a breath and pushes herself off the floor. Picking up a fallen blanket, she hands it to her sister, then gives Oak a pointed look. “You should probably stop staring at her like you never saw a naked girl with wings before.”
Oak blinks and turns away, shamefaced. “Right,” he says, heading for the door. “I’ll leave you both.”
He looks back once, but all he sees are feathers.
In the hall, a guard comes immediately to attention.
“Your Highness,” he says. “Tiernan went to rest a few hours ago. Shall I send for him?”
“No need,” says Oak. “Let him be.”
The prince moves through the palace like a stunned sleepwalker, desperately happy that Wren is alive. So happy that when he finds Madoc in the game room, he can’t contain his smile.
His father stands from behind a chess table. “You look pleased. Does that mean—”
Time—never particularly well calculated by the Folk—has blurred at the edges. He’s not sure how long he’s been in that room. “Awake. Alive.”
“Come sit,” Madoc says. “You can finish Val Moren’s game.”
Oak slips into the chair and frowns at the table. “What happened?”
In front of Madoc are several captured pawns, a bishop, and a knight. On Oak’s side, only a single pawn.
“He wandered off when he realized he was going to lose,” says the redcap.
Oak blinks at the game, too exhausted to have any move in mind, no less a good move.
“Your mother isn’t particularly happy with me right now,” Madoc says. “Your sisters, either.”
“Because of me?” It was perhaps inevitable, but he felt guilty to hasten it along.
Madoc shakes his head. “Maybe they’re right.”
That’s alarming. “Everything okay, Dad?”
Unlike Oriana, Madoc smiles at his use of the human term. Dad. Perhaps he likes it better because when Jude and Taryn used it, it meant they cared about him in a way he might not have thought they ever would.
“That mortal girl being around made me think.”
It has to be strange for him to be back in Elfhame, and yet no longer the grand general. To be back in his old house, without his kids there. And to be away from Insear when the rest of them were in danger. “About my sisters?”
“About their mother,” Madoc says.
Oak is surprised. Madoc doesn’t usually speak of his mortal wife, Eva. Possibly because he murdered her.
“Oh?”
“It’s not easy for mortals to live in this place. It’s not easy for us to live in their world, either, but it’s easier. I shouldn’t have left her so much alone. I shouldn’t have forgotten that she could lie, or that she thought of her life as brief, and would risk much for happiness.”
Oak nods, sensing there’s more, and advances his pawn out of the range of being taken by another.
“And I shouldn’t have told myself that cultivating a killing instinct I couldn’t control had no chance of bringing me tragedy. I shouldn’t have been so eager to teach the same to you.”
Oak thinks of the fear he’d felt when his father struck him to the ground all those years ago, of the hard kernel of shame he carried at that terror and his own softness, at how his sisters and mother protected him. “No,” Oak says. “Probably not.”
Madoc grins. “And yet, there are few things I would change. For without all my mistakes, I would not have the family I do.” He moves his queen, sweeping across the board to rest in a place that doesn’t seem imminently threatening.
Since Madoc would almost certainly have the crown if not for one of Eva’s mortal daughters, that was quite an admission.
Oak moves his knight to take one of his father’s undefended bishops. “I’m glad you’re home. Try not to get banished again.”
Madoc shifts his castle. “Checkmate,” he says with a grin, leaning back in his chair.
On his way back to his rooms, Oak stops at Tiernan’s. He taps lightly enough that if Tiernan is really asleep, the sound won’t rouse him.
“Yes?” comes a voice. Hyacinthe.
Oak opens the door.
Tiernan and Hyacinthe are in bed together. Tiernan’s hair is rumpled, and Hyacinthe is looking quite pleased with himself.
Oak smirks and comes to sit at the foot. “This won’t take long.”
Hyacinthe shifts so he’s leaning against the headboard. His chest is bare. Tiernan shifts up, too, keeping a blanket over himself.
“Tiernan, I am formally dismissing you from my service,” Oak says.
“Why? What did I do?” Tiernan leans forward, not worrying about the blanket anymore.
“Protected me,” Oak says with great sincerity. “Including from myself. For many years.”
Hyacinthe’s looks outraged. “Is this because of me?”
“Not entirely,” says Oak.
“That’s not fair,” Hyacinthe says. “I fought back-to-back with you. I got you out of Mother Marrow’s. I practically got you out of the Citadel. I even let you persuade me to be half-drowned by Jack of the Lakes. You can’t still think I would betray you.”
“I don’t,” Oak says.
Tiernan frowns in confusion. “Why are you sending me away?”
“Guarding a member of the royal family isn’t a position one is supposed to quit,” Oak says. “But you should. I have been throwing myself at things and not caring what happens. I didn’t see how destructive it was until Wren did it.”
“You need someone—”
“I did need you when I was a child,” Oak says. “Although I wouldn’t admit it. You kept me safe, and trying not to put you in danger made me a little more cautious—although not nearly cautious enough—but more, you were my friend. Now both of us need to make decisions about our future, and those might not follow the same paths.”
Tiernan takes a deep breath, letting those words sink in.
Hyacinthe gapes a little. Of all the things he has resented Oak for, what he seemed to feel most keenly was the fear that Tiernan was being taken from him. The idea that Oak might not actually want that clearly never occurred to him.
“I hope you’ll always be my friend, but we can’t really be friends if you’re obliged to throw away your life for my bad decisions.”
“I’ll always be your friend,” Tiernan says staunchly.
“Good,” Oak says, standing up. “And now I will get out of here so Hyacinthe doesn’t have a new reason to be angry with me and you can both—eventually—sleep.”
The prince heads for the door. One of them throws a pillow at his back on his way out.
At the door to his rooms, Oak knocks. When neither Wren nor Bex answers, he goes in.
It takes him a few turns through the sitting area, the bedroom, and the library to realize she’s not there. He calls her name and then, feeling foolish, sits on the edge of the bed.
A sheet of paper rests on his pillow, one ripped out of an old school notebook. On it in an unsteady hand is a letter addressed to him.
Oak,
I have always been your opposite, shy and wild where you are all courtly charm. And yet you are the one who pulled me out of my forest and forced me to stop denying all the parts of me I tried to hide.
Including the part of me that wanted you.