Straun is grumbling to another guard about how the others are cheats, refusing to play any more dice games. Oak waits until one leaves to bring back more refreshments and listens hard to the retreating steps of boots.
After he’s sure there’s only one guard there, he tries the gate. It’s not even locked. He supposes there’s no reason for it to be when there’s only one prisoner, and he wears a bridle to keep him obedient.
Oak moves fast, jerking Straun backward and covering his nose and mouth with the cloth. The guard struggles, but inhaling blusher mushroom slows his movements. Oak presses him to the floor until he’s unconscious.
From there, it’s just a matter of arranging his body so that when the other guard returns, he might believe he’s dozed off. It’s hard for Oak to leave the guard’s sword at his hip, but its absence would almost certainly give him away. He does, however, snatch up the cloak he finds hanging on a hook beside the door.
CHAPTER
2
O
ak takes the stairs, careful now.
He has the surreal feeling of being in a video game. He played enough of them, sitting on Vivi’s couch. Creeping through pixelated rooms that had more of the appearance of Madoc’s stronghold where he grew up than anywhere they went in the mortal world. Leaning on Heather’s shoulder, controller in his hands. Killing people. Hiding the bodies.
This is a stupid, ugly, violent game, Vivi said. Life isn’t like that. And Jude, who was visiting, raised her eyebrows and said nothing.
He recalls following Wren through these icy halls. Killing people. Hiding the bodies.
There are more visitors to the Citadel now than there were then; ironically, that makes it easier to be overlooked. There are so many new faces, neighboring Folk arriving to discover the nature of the new lady and curry her favor. Well-dressed nisse and huldufólk courtiers gather in knots, passing gossip. Trolls size one another up, and a few selkies hang around at the edges, no doubt gathering news of a rising power to take back to the Undersea.
Oak cannot blend in, not in his worn and filthy clothes, not with the straps of Grimsen’s bridle tight to his cheeks. He sticks to the shadows, putting up the hood of the cloak and moving with slow deliberation.
After growing up with servants in his father’s stronghold in Faerie and then without any when he was in the mortal world, the prince is very aware of what it takes to keep a castle like this one running. As a small child, he was used to his dirty clothing disappearing from his floor and returning to his armoire, cleaned and hung. But after he and Vivi and Heather had to carry bags of laundry to the basement of their apartment building and feed quarters into a machine, along with detergent and fabric softener, he realized that someone must have been performing a related service for him in Faerie.
And someone is performing that service here in the Citadel, washing linens and uniforms. Oak heads in the direction of the kitchens, figuring the flames of the ovens are likely the same ones used to heat the tubs of water necessary to clean fabric. Real fire would be easier to keep confined to the stone basements and first floor of the Citadel.
Oak keeps his head down, although the servants barely spare him a glance. They rush through the halls. He’s sure the household is vastly understaffed.
It takes him a tense twenty minutes of creeping about before a change in the humidity of the air and the scent of soap reveal the laundry area. He pushes open the door to the room gingerly and is relieved to find no servant currently doing the wash. Three steaming vats rest on the black rock floor. Dirty bedding, tablecloths, and uniforms soak inside them. Clean linens hang from ropes strung overhead.
Oak pulls off his own filthy garments, dropping them into the water before stepping in, too.
He feels a bit foolish as he wades into a vat, naked. Should he be discovered, he will doubtless have to play the silly, carefree prince, so vain that he escaped his prison for a bath. It would be a crowning achievement of embarrassment.
The soapy water is merely warm, but it feels deliciously hot after being so chilled for so long. He shudders with the pleasure of it, the muscles in his limbs relaxing. He dunks himself, submerging his head and scrubbing at his skin with his fingernails until he feels clean. He wants to stay there, to Roat in water as it grows ever more tepid. For a moment, he allows himself to do just that. To stare at the ceiling of the room, which is black stone, too, although above this level, the walls, Roors, and ceilings are all of ice.
And Wren, somewhere inside them. If he could just speak to her, even for a moment . . .
Oak knows it’s ridiculous, and yet he can’t help feeling as though they have an understanding of each other, one that transcends this admittedly not-great moment. She will be angry when he talks with her, of course. He deserves her anger.
He has to tell her that he regrets what he did. He’s not sure what happens after that.
Nor is he sure what it means about him that he finds hope in the fact that Wren has kept him. Fine, not everyone would see being thrown into a dungeon as a romantic gesture, but he’s choosing to at least consider the possibility that she put him there because she wants something more from him.
Something beyond, say, skinning him and leaving his rotting corpse for ravens to pick over.
On that thought, he splashes his way out of the tub.
Among the drying uniforms, he finds one that seems as though it will fit him—certainly fit better than the bloodstained one he used to get into the palace weeks ago. It’s damp, but not so much as to draw notice, and only slightly too tight across his chest. Still, dressed this way and with the hood of the cloak pulled forward to hide his face, he might be able to walk straight out the door of the Citadel, as though he were going on patrol.
It would serve her right for never coming to see him, not even to use the bridle and command him to stay put.
He’s not sure how far he could get in the snow, but he still has three of the stones from the snake. He might be able to bribe someone to take him in their carriage. And even if he didn’t want to risk that, he might well find his own horse in the stables, since Hyacinthe was the one who stole Damsel Fly and Hyacinthe is now Wren’s second-in-command.
Either way, he’d be free. Free to not need rescuing. Free to attempt to talk his sister out of whatever homicidal plan she might foment against the Citadel. Free to return home and go back to performing fecklessness, back to sharing the bed of anyone he thought might be planning a political coup, back to being an heir who never wants to inherit.
And never seeing Wren again.
Of course, he might not make it to Jude in time for her to know he was free, to stop whatever plans she set in motion. Whatever murders her people would commit in his name. And then, of course, there would be the question of what Wren did in retaliation.
Not that he knows how to stop either of them if he remains here. He’s not sure anyone knows how to stop Jude. And Wren has the power of annihilation. She can break curses and tear spells to pieces with barely any effort. She took apart Lady Nore as though she were a stick creature and spread her insides over the snow.
Really, that memory alone should send the prince out of the Citadel as quickly as his legs could carry him.
He pulls the hood of the cloak down over his face and heads toward the Great Hall. Getting a glimpse of her feels more like a compulsion than a decision.
He can feel the gaze of courtiers drift toward him—covering one’s face in a hood is unusual, at the very least. He keeps his own eyes unfocused and his shoulders back, though his every instinct screams to meet their looks. But he is dressed like a soldier, and a soldier would not turn.
It is harder to pass falcons and to know they might spot his hooves and wonder. But he is hardly the only one to have hooves in Faerie. And everyone who knows that the Prince of Elfhame is in the Citadel believes him to be locked up tight.