The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

And yet, these stick creatures seem like living puppets and little else. They stay in their neat rows, and when she orders them inside, they go obediently, as though they’d never had any other thought. But I do not understand why, if the magic of Mab’s bones is animating these creatures, they are not conscious in the way that I am.

Although I may have been made from snow and sticks and blood, there is some difference that allows me to behave like a disobedient faerie daughter, when these creatures seem to make no choices at all.

But then I recall the spider hunting the servant and don’t know what to suppose.

The sound of footsteps is the only warning before two guards turn the corner.

Oak puts his hands on my shoulders, pushing my back to the wall.

“Pretend with me,” he whispers. And then he presses his mouth to mine.

A soldier kissing one of the serving girls. A bored ex-falcon attempting to amuse himself. Oak hiding our faces, giving us a reason to be overlooked. I understand the game.

This is no declaration of desire. And yet, I am rooted in place by the shocking heat of his mouth, the softness of his lips, the way one of his hands goes to the ice wall to brace himself and the other to my waist, and then to the hilt of my knife as they draw closer.

He doesn’t want me. This doesn’t mean he wants me. I repeat that over and over as I let him part my lips with his tongue. I run my hands up his back under his shirt, letting my nails trail over his skin.

I have been trained in all the arts of a courtier. Dancing and dueling, kissing and deceiving.

Still, I am gratified when he shudders, when the hand he was bracing with lifts to thread through my hair, to cup my head. My mouth slides over his jaw to his throat, then against his shoulder, where I press the points of my teeth. His body stiffens, his fingers gripping me harder, pulling me closer to him. When I bite down, he gasps.

“You there,” says one of the soldiers, a troll. “Get to your post. If the lady hears of this—”

When Oak draws back, his lips are flushed red. His eyes look black beneath golden lashes. I see the marks from my teeth on his shoulder. He turns and drives a knife into the troll’s stomach. The troll falls soundlessly as Oak turns to slash the other’s throat.

Hot blood spatters the ice. Where it lands, steam rises and a constellation of pockmarks appear.

“Is there a room nearby?” the prince asks in a voice that shakes only a little. “For the bodies.”

For a moment, I stare at him stupidly. I am reeling from the kiss, from the swiftness of the violence. I am not yet used to Oak’s ability to kill without hesitation and then look chagrined about it, as though he did something in slightly poor taste. Spilled a rare vintage of wine, perhaps. Mismatched his trousers to his shirt.

Although I cannot be anything other than glad he killed them swiftly and soundlessly.

I lead him across the hall, into a strange little chamber for keeping supplies to clean and polish and provide for the needs of the Gentry in this part of the castle.

Inside, the frozen carcass of an elk hangs in one corner, slivers of meat cut off. On the opposite wall are wooden shelves, packed with linens, cups, glasses, and trays, as well as dried herbs that hang in bundles. Two barrels of wine sit on the ground, one opened, a ladle resting on the lip.

Oak drags both guards in. I grab up one of their cloaks and a tablecloth from the shelves to go back and mop up the blood.

As I do, I check to see if there are any translucent parts of ice through which anyone could have witnessed what happened. If they did, it would have appeared like a violent shadow play, and therefore not entirely unusual in the Citadel. Still, if someone was searching for us, it might be a problem.

I notice nothing to give us away, so I stash the soiled fabric back in the room. Oak has pushed the bodies into a corner and covered them with a cloth.

“Is there any blood on me?” he asks, patting down the front of his woolen shirt.

It was a fine spatter, and though it struck his clothes, the pattern is nearly invisible in the dark fabric. I find a little in his hair and wipe it off. Rub his cheek and just above the corner of his mouth.

He gives me a guilty smile, as though expecting me to take him to task for the kiss or the murders. I cannot guess which.

“We’re almost to the stairs,” I tell him.

On the landing, we spot two more guards on the opposite end of a long hall. They are too far to make out our faces, and I hope too far off to see anything inauthentic in our costumes. I keep my gaze straight ahead. Oak nods to one, and the guard nods in return.

“Brazen,” I mutter under my breath, and the prince grins.

My hands are shaking.

We pass the library and the war room, then walk up another set of stairs. These spiral steeply for two floors until we come to Lady Nore’s bedroom, at the very top of the leftmost tower.

Her door is tall and pointed at its apex. It is made of some black metal, frosted over with cold. The handle is a deer hoof.

I reach out my fingers, turn it. The door opens.

Lady Nore’s bedroom is entirely new, the room washed in red. It takes me a moment to realize where the color is coming from. Viscera. The flayed-open bodies of Lady Nore’s victims on display all around her, frozen inside the walls so that light could filter through them and give the room its odd, ruddy tint.

Oak sees it, too, eyes wide as he takes in the awful space. “Well, a reliquary full of bones can’t be out of place among all this grotesque art.”