The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

“Wren ought to stay behind with the heart,” Tiernan says. “If you’re not planning on confronting Lady Nore, then it doesn’t matter if Wren can command her, and Wren’s no use to you in a fight.”

“I could be useful in avoiding one,” I remind him.

Oak does not seem moved by Tiernan’s argument. “If she’s willing to come, then she’s coming.”

Tiernan throws up his hands and storms off through the snow, obviously angry with both of us.

“I do think I may need you inside the Citadel,” Oak tells me. “Although I wish that wasn’t the case.”

I am glad he wants me there, though I am no knight or spy. “Perhaps all three of us could go in,” I venture.

“He needs to stay here, lest we get caught,” Oak says. “He’ll keep the heart with him and bargain for our return with it.”

A moment later, Tiernan ducks his head back inside, the owl-faced hob on his shoulder. “You two can climb the side to the birdie entrance. Titch has been watching the patrol shifts, and they’re sloppy. Makes it hard to know when they are going to happen, but there’s a window of opportunity when they do.”

Oak nods and pushes himself to his feet. “Very well, then,” he says. “No time like the present.”

“One more thing,” Tiernan says. “There are trolls on the battlements, along with those stick creatures and some falcon soldiers.”

“But I thought the trolls were trapped . . . ,” I begin, but trail off because there are so many possibilities. They could be trolls that do not come from the Stone Forest and are therefore not subject to its curse. But when I think about the heaps of clothing, and the mounted heads, I wonder if what we witnessed were the remains of sacrifices meant to appease the ancient troll kings to open the way from the forest.

My blood was spilled for the glory of the Kings of Stone who rule from beneath the world, but my body belongs to the Queen of Snow.

At that unsettling thought, I follow Tiernan and Oak out of our snow tunnel and into the frigid air.

We stay as low to the ground as we are able. In the dark, it’s easier to approach the Citadel without drawing much attention to ourselves. At least until we see a great and horrible spiderlike construction of ice and stone, flesh and twig, lumbering through the night.

We hear a piercing scream, and I see that the spider has a huldu woman in its pincers. They are too far away for us to help her. A moment later, her screams cease and the stick-spider begins to feed.

“If that thing can eat,” Oak says, “then it’s truly alive. Not like one of Grimsen’s ornamental creations with fluttering wings that move like clockwork. Not like that head on a spike, repeating the same message over and over. It hungers and thirsts and wants.”

Like me.

Oh, I do not want to be here. I hate this place. I hate everything about it and everything it might teach me about myself.

Enormous braziers burn on either side of the Citadel gate. We wait in the snow until there is movement on the battlements.

Tiernan flips a knife in his hand. “I’ll create a distraction at the garrison while you and the prince go up that wall.”

This is my last chance to avoid returning to the place of my nightmares. All I have to do is tell Oak I changed my mind. Tiernan would be thrilled.

I think of Bogdana’s words to me in the woods. The prince is your enemy.

I think about the feeling of Oak’s breath against my neck, the way his fox eyes looked with the pupils gone wide and black. I think about how desperate he must be, to come all this way for his father, to gulp down poison, to risk his life on an uncertain scheme.

I think about the bridle wrapped around my waist, the one I tried to steal. The one he gave me to keep.

I have to trust him. Without me, we cannot command Lady Nore.

“We should go straight to the prisons,” Oak says. “Get Madoc. Go from there.”

“Better not,” I tell him. “We don’t know how hurt he’s going to be, and we can move faster without him. If we get the reliquary, then we can free him and move him to the sled directly.”

Oak hesitates. I can see the conflict between getting what he came here for and getting everything. “All right,” he says finally.

“If you’re not back by dawn,” Tiernan says, “then you know where I will be with the reliquary.” With that, he heads off through the snow.

“How exactly is he going to create a distraction?” I ask, attempting to walk with my head down, as though I am a servant who belongs to the Citadel and am returning from a dull errand—perhaps gathering crowberries. Attempting to behave as though Oak is a soldier walking me inside.

“Better not to ask,” the prince says with a slight smile.

Up close, the outside of the Citadel is not a single piece of cloudy ice, but one composed of blocks, which have been melted smooth. Oak sticks his hand into his pack, and I recognize the grappling hook and rope from Undry Market.

He’s eyeballing the spires, looking for the correct one.

“There,” I whisper, pointing up.

The entrance, three stories above us, isn’t visible when standing beneath it, as we are. It looks like an arch, the mirror of those that surround it.

“You ready?” he asks.

I’m not. When I think of Lady Nore, it’s as though my mind becomes full of scribbles, blotchy and looping, scratching through all my other thoughts. I nod in answer, because I don’t trust myself to speak when I have no ability to tell anything but the truth.