The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

That explained nothing about his reasons for coming here, but his words gave me a strange, sharp pain in my chest. After a moment, I recognized it as envy. For having sisters. For having stories.

“Do you talk?” he asked, and I realized how long I’d been silent. I had been a shy child in the mortal world, and in Faerie nothing good had ever come from my speaking.

“Not much,” I admitted, and when he smiled, I smiled back.

“Do you want to play a game?” He shuffled closer, eyes bright. Reaching into his pocket, he produced some little metal figures. Three silver foxes resting in the middle of his callused palm. Inset chips of peridot sparkled in their eyes.

I stared at him in confusion. Had he really come all this way to sit in the dirt and show me his toys? Maybe he hadn’t seen another kid in a while, either.

I picked up one of the foxes to examine it. The detail work was very fine. “How do we play?”

“You throw them.” He formed a cage of his hands with the foxes inside, shook it up, and then tossed them into the grass. “If they land standing, you get ten points. If they land on their backs, you get five points. If they land on their side, no points.”

His landed: two lying on their sides, and one on its back.

I reached out eagerly. I wanted to hold those foxes, feel them fall from my fingers.

When they did and two landed on their backs, I gasped in delight.

Over and over, we played the game. We made tally marks in the dirt.

For a while, there was only the joy of escaping from where I was and who I was. But then I remembered that as little as he might want from me, there was plenty I needed.

“Let’s play for stakes,” I proposed.

He looked intrigued. “What will you bet?”

I was not so foolish as to ask for anything much that first time. “If you lose, you tell me a secret. Any secret. And I will do the same for you.”

We played, and I lost.

He leaned in, close enough for me to smell the sage and rosemary his clothes had been wrapped with before he wore them, close enough to bite out a chunk of flesh from his throat.

“I grew up in the mortal lands,” I said.

“I’ve been there.” He seemed amused to discover we had something in common. “And eaten pizza.”

It was hard to imagine a prince of Faerie journeying to the human world for anything but a sinister reason, but eating pizza didn’t seem that sinister.

We played again, and this time he lost. His smile dimmed, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “This is a real secret. You can’t tell anyone. When I was little, I glamoured my mortal sister. I made her hit herself, a lot of times, over and over, and I laughed while she did. It was awful of me, and I never told her that I regretted it. I am afraid of making her remember. She might get really mad.”

I wondered which sister he’d glamoured. I hoped not the one who sat on a throne now, his life in her hands.

His words stood as a reminder, though, that no matter how soft he seemed or how young, he was as capable of cruelty as the rest. But cruel or not, his help could still be won. My gaze went to the stake to which I was bound. “This time, if my score is better, you cut the rope and free me. If your score is better, you can . . . ask me to do something, anything, and I will.”

A desperate bargain for me, but hope had made me reckless.

He frowned. “If I free you,” he said, “what happens then?”

He must have wondered if I had been tied here because I was dangerous. Maybe he wondered if, once free, I would run at him and hurt him. I supposed he was not so stupid after all. But if he wanted me to swear myself into his service, I could not.

All Courts pledge fealty to their ruler and that ruler pledges fealty to the High Court. When High King Cardan came to power, because I was hidden, and Queen of the Court of Teeth, my failure to give him an oath of loyalty was the reason Lady Nore and Lord Jarel were able to betray him. They would kill me on the spot if I pledged myself to anyone, because I would have become useless to them.

“We can go to the palace, and you can show me your other games,” I told him. I would hide there for as long as I could, perhaps long enough to get away from Lady Nore and Lord Jarel.

He nodded. “You toss first.”

I cupped the foxes in my hand and whispered to them softly. “Please.”

They fell, one on its back, one standing, and one on its side. A total of fifteen points. Good, but not great.

Oak picked them up, shook, and tossed. They all fell on their feet. Thirty points.

He laughed and clapped his hands. “Now you have to do whatever I want!”

I thought of what he’d made his sister do for his amusement and shuddered. At that moment the secret he’d told me seemed less a confession and more a warning.

“Well?” I growled.

Oak frowned, clearly trying to think of something. Then his brow cleared, and I dreaded what was to come next.

“Sing a song,” he said with a wicked smile.

I glanced over at the camp in panic. “They’ll hear,” I protested.

He shook his head, still grinning. “You can sing quietly. And we’ve been talking all this time. It doesn’t have to be any louder than that.”

My mind went blank. Only perhaps a year before, my unsister and I were dancing around the house to songs from movies with brave princesses, but at that moment I could think of none of their words. All I could recall were bloodthirsty ballads from the Court of Teeth. But when I opened my mouth, the tune was from a song my unmother had sung when she was putting me to bed. And the lyrics were a mishmash of the two.