The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

He gives me a slow smile, as though I’ve just confessed to something. “I suppose you want to believe I charmed you into kissing me?”

I turn away, shame heating my face. “I could have done it to distract you.”

“So long as you know that you did it,” he says.

I frown at the mud, wondering how far he would have gone had I not pulled away. Would he have taken me to bed, loathing in his heart? Could I even tell? “You also—”

The sound of footsteps stops me. Tiernan stands in front of our lean-to, blinking at us in the downpour. “You’re alive.”

The knight staggers into the shelter, collapsing onto the ground. His cloak is singed.

“What happened?” Oak asks, checking his arm. I can see where the skin is red, but no worse.

“Lightning, very close to where I was waiting.” Tiernan shivers. “That storm isn’t natural.”

“No,” agrees Oak.

I think on Bogdana’s final words. I will come for you again. And when I do, you best not run.

“If we make it to the market tomorrow and get our ship,” Tiernan tells Oak, “we can seek the Undersea’s aid to take us through the Labrador Sea swiftly and without incident.”

“The merrow told me—” I begin, and then stop, because both of them are staring at me.

“Go on,” Oak says.

I try to recall his exact words, but I cannot. “That there’s trouble in the sea, with the queen and her daughter. And warned me about someone, a name I didn’t know.”

Oak frowns, glancing at Tiernan. “So perhaps we take our chances and do not seek the Undersea’s aid.”

“I am not sure I trust Wren’s informant,” Tiernan says. “Either way, once we land, we ought to be able to travel from there on foot. The Citadel is perhaps thirty miles inland.”

“Lady Nore will have those stick creatures patrolling everywhere but the Stone Forest,” Oak says.

The knight shakes his head. “Going through those woods is a bad plan. It’s cursed, and the troll king is mad.”

“That’s why no one will look for us there,” says Oak, as though this was part of an ongoing game in which he’d made an excellent move.

The knight makes a gesture of exasperation. “Fine. We go through the Stone Forest. And when we’re all about to die, I look forward to your apology.”

Oak stands. “As I have not yet sealed our doom, I am going for supplies. It’s hard to imagine I could feel any colder or wetter, and I saw the outskirts of a mortal town while we were in the air.”

“Maybe the gale-force winds will clear your head,” says the knight, wrapping his wet cloak more tightly around himself and appearing not even to consider volunteering to go along.

Oak makes an elaborate bow, then turns to me. “He’s unlikely to make you any promises like Hyacinthe did, but if you get that fire going, he just might.”

“Unfair,” Tiernan growls.

Oak laughs as he tromps off through the wet forest.

I clear off some space on the ground to make a fire, piling up the dry bits of wood I stripped out of the center of the log. I fish in my pockets until I find the matchbook I took from the motel. I strike one against the strip of phosphorus, hoping it isn’t too wet to work. When it flares to life, I cup my hand over it and try to set the small, dry pieces aflame.

Tiernan observes all this with a small frown.

“You’re friends,” I say, looking in the direction the prince went. “You and him.”

He watches as the fire catches, smoke curling. “I suppose we are.”

“But you’re his guard, too, aren’t you?” I am not sure if he’s going to be offended by the question, or by my talking to him in general, but I am curious and tired of not knowing things.

Tiernan reaches out a hand to test the heat of the flames. “There were three before me. Two got killed protecting him. The third turned on him for a bribe. That’s how Oak got the scar on his throat. At fourteen, he decided he didn’t want any more guards. But his sister sent me anyway.

“First, he dragged me along to absurd parties, like he was going to embarrass me out of the job. Then I think he tried to bore me out of it by not going anywhere at all for weeks at a time. But I stayed. I was proud of being chosen for the position. And I thought he was nothing more than spoiled.”

“That’s what he wanted you to think,” I say, having recently fallen for the same trick.

He nods to me in acknowledgment. “I didn’t know that then, though. I just turned twenty myself and was more foolish than I like to remember. But it hardly matters, because a year later things went sideways. A mortal tried to stab Oak. I grabbed the guy, but he was meant to be a distraction. To my shame, it worked. A half dozen redcaps and goblins flooded the alley from the other direction, all well-armed. I told the prince to run.

“He stayed and fought like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Swift. Efficient. Brutal. He still wound up stabbed twice in the stomach and once in the thigh before the battle was over. I had failed him, and I knew it.

“He could have gotten rid of me after that, easily. All he would have had to do was tell anyone the truth of what happened that night. But he didn’t. Got healing ointment in Mandrake Market so they wouldn’t guess. I don’t know when he would say I was his friend, but he was mine after that.”