The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

Tiernan’s horse has nearly caught up to ours when we gallop away. I feel Oak tense behind me and I turn, but he shakes his head, so I concentrate on holding on.

It was one thing to have Lady Nore’s power described, but seeing the stick creatures with their bits of flesh made me all too aware of how easy it would be to harvest human parts from cities like she might take rocks from quarries, and carve armies from forests. Elfhame should worry. The mortal world should fear. This is worse than I imagined.

The horses break free of the woods, and we find ourselves on suburban roads, then crossing a highway. It’s late enough that there’s little traffic. Tiernan’s glamour settles over us, not quite a disguise but a piece of misdirection. The mortals still observe something out of the corner of their eyes, just not us. A white stag, perhaps. Or a large dog. Something they expect and that fits into the world they can explain. The magic makes my shoulders itch.

We ride on for what feels like hours.

“Oak?” the knight calls as we come to a crossroads. His gaze goes to me. “When was the prince hit?”

I realize that the weight on my back has grown heavier, as though Oak slumped forward. His hand is still around me, but his grip on the reins has loosened. When I shift in the saddle, I see that his eyes are shut, lashes dusting his cheeks, limbs gone slack.

“I didn’t know—” I begin.

“You fool,” mutters Tiernan.

I try to turn in the saddle and grab for the prince’s body so it doesn’t fall. He slumps against me, large and warm in my arms, his armor making him heavier than I am sure I can manage. I dig in my fingers and hope I can hold him, although it is all too easy to imagine the prince’s body dropped in the dirt.

“Halt,” Tiernan says, slowing his horse. Damsel slows, too, keeping pace with the knight’s mount.

“Get down,” he tells Hyacinthe, then pokes him in the back.

The winged soldier slides off the horse with the sort of ease that suggests he’s ridden many times before.

“So this is who you follow?” he asks sullenly, with a glare in the prince’s direction.

Tiernan dismounts. “So you’re suggesting I throw in my lot with those things?”

Hyacinthe subsides, but he studies me as though he wonders if I might be on his side. I am not, and I hope my look tells him so.

Tiernan strides to Damsel. He reaches up, taking Oak’s weight in his arms and easing the prince onto the leaf-covered earth.

I slip off the saddle gracelessly, hitting the ground hard and staggering to one knee.

A bit of blood shows that one of the arrows struck Oak just above the shoulder blade. It was stopped by the scales of his golden armor, though; only the very tip punctured his flesh.

It must have been poisoned.

“Is he . . . ?” I can see the rise and fall of his chest. He’s not dead, but the poison could still be working its way through his system. He might be dying.

I don’t want to think of that. Don’t want to think that were he not behind me, I would have been the one struck.

Tiernan checks Oak’s pulse. Then he leans down and sniffs, as though trying to identify the scent. Takes a bit of blood on his finger and touches it to his tongue. “Deathsweet. That stuff can make you sleep for hundreds of years if you get enough in your system.”

“There can’t have been more than a little bit on the arrow,” I say, wanting him to tell me that couldn’t possibly have been enough.

Tiernan ignores me, though, and rummages in a bag at his belt. He takes out an herb, which he crushes under the prince’s nose and then presses onto his tongue. Oak has enough consciousness to jerk his head away when the knight’s fingers go into his mouth.

“Will that fix him?” I ask.

“We can hope,” Tiernan says, wiping his hand on his trousers. “We ought to find a place to shelter for the night. Among mortals, where Lady Nore’s stick things are unlikely to look.”

I give a quick nod.

“It shouldn’t be too long a walk.” He lifts the prince, draping Oak back over his steed. Then we proceed, with Tiernan leading Damsel Fly. Hyacinthe walks behind him, and I am left to lead the knight’s mount.

The bloodstain on her flank has grown, and her limp is noticeable. So, too, is the piece of an arrow still embedded in her side. “Was she poisoned, too?”

He gives a curt nod. “Not enough to bring this tough girl down yet, though.”

I reach into my backpack and take out the bruised apple I brought. I bite pieces off for both horses, who snuffle gently into my hands.

I stroke the hair over Rags’s nose. She doesn’t seem to be in too much pain from the arrow, so I choose to believe she’ll be okay.

“Maybe it would be better if he did sleep for a hundred years,” Tiernan says, although he seems to be talking more to himself. “Lady Nore is going to be hunting us as surely as we’re hunting her. Asleep is better than dead.”

“Why is Oak really doing this?” I ask.

The knight gives me a hard look. “Doing what?”

“This task is beneath him.” I don’t know how else to say it. In the Court of Teeth, Lady Nore made me understand that she might pierce my skin to make a leash of silver mesh run through it, might cause me agony so great that my thoughts shrunk to those of an animal, but any disrespect of me by a commoner was punished by death. Being royal mattered.