The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

The storm hag grabs my chin in her long fingers, pressing the back of my head against the forest floor. “It ought to sicken you to travel with the Prince of Elfhame.” Her face is very close to mine, her breath hot. “Oak, whom you might have forced to cower at your side. To have to take orders from him is an affront. And yet, if he does disgust you, you have done well hiding it.”

I struggle, kicking. Trying to pull away. Her nails scratch my throat, leaving a trail of burning lines on my flesh.

“But maybe he doesn’t disgust you,” Bogdana says, peering into my eyes like she sees something more there than her reflection. “They say that he can talk flowers into opening their petals at night, as though his face were that of the sun. He’ll steal your heart.”

“I doubt he would have the least interest in anything like that,” I tell her, flinching away from her fingers.

This time she lets me go, grabbing one of my braids instead. She hauls me to my feet, using it like a leash.

I reach into my pockets and find the knife that Oak lent me to strip the log and pull it from its sheath.

The hag’s eyes flare with anger at the sight of me with a weapon pointed at her. “The prince is your enemy.”

“I don’t believe you,” I shout, slashing through the braid she’s holding me by. Then I take off through the woods again.

And again, she gives chase.

“Halt,” she calls to me, but I don’t even slow. We crash through the brush. I have lost track, but I think I am headed in the direction of the lean-to. I hope I am headed toward the mortal town.

“Halt,” she calls. “Hear me out, and when I am done, you may choose to stay or go.”

Twice before she has nearly had me. I slow my step and turn, knife still gripped in my palm. “And no harm will come to me or my companions by your hand?”

She gives a wicked smile. “Not this day.”

I nod but still make sure to leave plenty of space between us.

“You’d be well served to listen, child,” she says. “Before it’s too late.”

“I’m listening,” I say.

The hag’s smile grows. “I’ll wager your prince never told you the bargain Lady Nore offered. That she would trade Madoc to the prince in exchange for the very thing he is bringing north. A foolish girl. You.”

I shake my head. That can’t be true.

No, Lady Nore must have asked for Mellith’s heart. That was why he went to the Thistlewitch to find it. What use would Lady Nore have for me, who could command her? But then I recall Oak’s words in the abandoned human house: You’re her greatest vulnerability. No matter her other plans, she has good reason to want to eliminate you.

If Lady Nore wants me, she wants me dead.

And hadn’t I wondered if it was me she asked for, when I was in the prisons with Hyacinthe? Suspected and then dismissed the idea. I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

But the more I think on it, the more that I realize Oak never said that Lady Nore had asked for Mellith’s heart. Only that he hoped to use her need for it against her. That he planned to trick her.

If it were me that Lady Nore wanted, I can see why he would have hidden so much of his plan. Why he was willing to risk his own neck to keep me out of Queen Annet’s hands. Maybe even why he’d gone looking for Mellith’s heart, if he thought that was something he could give to Lady Nore instead.

He must have wavered between wanting to save his father and knowing that turning me over to Lady Nore was monstrous.

At Undry Market, we can decide Wren’s fate. That was what he said. And now I know what decision he will come to.

“Do not forget your place.” She pokes me in the side. “You’re not his servant. You’re a queen.”

“No longer,” I remind her.

“Always,” she says.

But my thoughts are on Oak, on the power I have over Lady Nore, and on how my death might be worth Madoc’s life.

“I don’t understand—why did she send those creatures against us if Oak was doing as she asked?”

Bogdana grins. “The message was sent to the High Queen, not to Oak. By the time the prince began his quest, Lady Nore had become frustrated, waiting. You need to wake up to the danger you’re in.”

“You mean from someone other than you?” I ask.

“I am going to tell you a story,” Bogdana says, ignoring my words. “Would that I could say more, but certain constraints on me prevent it.”

I blink at her, but I find it hard to concentrate on what she’s saying, when her accusations toward Oak hang heavily in the air.

“It’s a fairy tale of sorts,” the storm hag begins. “Once upon a time, there was a queen who desperately wanted a child. She was the third bride of a king who’d murdered the two before her when they failed to conceive, so she knew her fate if she could not give him an heir. His need for a child was different than that of most monarchs in fairy tales—he planned for his issue to be his means of betraying the High Court—but his desire was as acute as any stemming from family feeling. And so the queen consulted alchemists, diviners, and witches. Being magical herself, she wove spells and brought she and her husband together on propitious nights, on a bed spread with herbs. And yet no child quickened in the queen’s womb.”

No one had ever spoken to me of my birth before, nor of the danger Lady Nore had been in from Lord Jarel. I had heard none of this, and my skin prickles all over with the premonition that whatever comes next, I won’t like it.