The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

Tiernan’s gaze strays to the bridled soldier. It rests there a long moment before he turns to me. “Hungry, little queen?”

“Don’t call me that,” I rasp.

“Grouchy, are we?” Tiernan asks. “How would you like this poor servant to address you?”

“Wren,” I say, ignoring the taunt.

Oak watches the interaction with half-lidded eyes. I cannot guess at his thoughts. “And do you desire repast?”

I shake my head. The knight raises his eyebrows skeptically. After a moment, he turns away and takes out a kettle, already blackened by fire, and fills it from the tap in the bathroom sink. Then he hangs it on a prop stick they must have rigged up. No electricity, but the house still has running water.

For the first time in a very long while, I think about a shower. About how my hair felt when it was combed and detangled, my scalp spared from the itch of drying mud.

Oak walks to where I am sitting, my tied wrists forcing my shoulders back.

“Lady Wren,” he says, amber eyes like those of a fox meeting mine directly. “If I undo your bindings, may I rely upon you to neither attempt escape nor attack one of us for the duration of our time in this house?”

I nod once.

The prince gives me a quick, conspiratorial grin. My mouth betrays me into returning the smile. It makes me recall how charming he was, even as a child.

I wonder if somehow I have misread this situation, if somehow we could be on the same side.

Oak takes a knife from a wrist guard hidden beneath his white linen shirt and applies it to the rope behind me.

“Don’t cut it,” the knight warns. “Or we’ll have to get new rope, and we may have to restrain her again.”

I tense, expecting Oak to be angry at being told what to do. As royalty, it is out of order for him to be directed by someone of lower status, but the prince only shakes his head. “Worry no more. I’m only using the point of my blade to help me pry apart your too-clever knots.”

I study Tiernan in the half light of the fire. It is hard to gauge age among the Folk, but he looks to be only a little older than Oak. His blackberry hair is mussed; one of his pointed ears has a single piercing through it, a silver hoop.

I bring my hands to my lap, rubbing my fingers over the indentations the rope left in my skin. Had I not been straining so hard against the bindings, they wouldn’t be half so deep.

Oak puts the knife away and then says with great formality, “My lady, Elfhame requires your assistance.”

Tiernan looks up from the fire but does not speak.

I don’t know how to reply. I am unused to attention and find myself flustered to be the focus of his. “I have already sworn fealty to your sister,” I manage to croak out. I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t. “I am hers to command.”

He frowns. “Let me try to explain. Months before the Battle of the Serpent, Lady Nore managed to cause an explosion underneath the castle.”

I glance over at the former falcon, wondering if he was part of it. Wondering if I should remember him. Some of my memories of that time are terribly vivid, while others are blotted out like ink running over paper.

“At the time, it was thought to be an attack on Elfhame’s spies and a coincidence that Queen Mab’s resting place was disturbed.” Oak pauses, watching me as though he’s trying to determine if I am following along. “Most faerie bodies break down into roots and flowers, but Mab’s did not. Her remains, from her ribs to her finger bones, were imbued with a power that kept them from crumbling—a power to bring things to life. That’s what Lady Nore stole, and that’s what she’s drawing her new power from.”

The prince gestures toward the bridled soldier. “Lady Nore has attempted to recruit more Folk to her cause. For those who were cursed to be falcons, if they come to her Citadel, she offers to feed them from her own hand for the year and a day during which they are forbidden from hunting. And when they return to their original form, she demands their loyalty. Between them, her own Folk who remained loyal to her, and the monsters she’s making, her plans for revenge on Elfhame seem well under way.”

I look at the prisoner. The High Queen granted clemency to any soldier who repudiated what they’d done and swore fealty to her. Anyone who repented. But he’d refused.

I recall standing before the High Queen myself the night Oak spoke on my behalf. Remember when you said we couldn’t help her. We can help her now. Pity in his voice.

I’d bragged to the High Queen that I knew all Lady Nore and Lord Jarel’s secrets, hoping to be useful, thinking that since they spoke in front of me heedlessly, treating me as a dumb animal instead of a little girl, they’d kept nothing back. Still, they’d never spoken of this. “I can’t recall any mention of Mab’s bones.”

Oak gives me a long look. “You lived in the Ice Needle Citadel for more than a year, so you must know its layout, and you can command Lady Nore. You’re her greatest vulnerability. No matter her other plans, she has good reason to want to eliminate you.”

I shudder at that thought because it should have occurred to me before now. I remember Bogdana’s long nails, the panic of her chasing me through the streets.

“We need you to stop her,” Oak says. “And you need our help to fend off whomever she sends to kill you.”