The Prisoner’s Throne: A Novel of Elfhame

They surface abruptly, leaving Oak choking and coughing. He can hear Hyacinthe hacking behind him. A swell comes along and slaps him in the face, sending seawater down his throat, making him cough worse.

Jack’s head is above the waves, his mane plastered to his neck. Some kind of membrane has closed over his eyes, causing them to appear pearlescent. A glance toward the shore reassures Oak they are more than halfway to Insmoor. He can’t even catch his breath, though, no less hold it again. His chest hurts and he’s still coughing and waves keep crashing over him.

“Oak,” Hyacinthe manages to wheeze. “This was a bad plan.”

“If we die, he’s going to eat you first,” Oak gets out. “So you better live.”

Too soon, the kelpie begins to descend, slowly enough for Oak to suck in a breath, at least. It’s a shallow one, and he is almost certain he can’t hold it until the shore. His lungs are burning already.

This is the only way across, he reminds himself, closing his eyes.

Jack surfaces once more, just long enough for Oak to gulp down another breath. Then they race for the shore, only to hit the crashing waves there.

The kelpie is hurled forward, thrown against the sandy bottom. Oak and Hyacinthe are dragged along. A sharp rock scrapes against Oak’s leg. He wriggles against the rope, but it is pulled tight.

Somehow Jack fights his way higher onto the beach. Another wave knocks against his flank, and he staggers, then transforms into a boy. The rope slackens. Oak slips down onto the sand. Hyacinthe falls, too, and the prince realizes he’s not conscious. Blood is seeping from a cut above his brow where he may have struck a rock.

Oak puts his shoulder under Hyacinthe’s arm and attempts to haul him away from the shoreline. Before he can get clear, a stray wave trips the prince, and he falls to his knees. He throws his body over Hyacinthe’s to keep him from being sucked back into the sea.

A moment later, Oak is up and dragging Hyacinthe behind him. Jack grabs Hyacinthe’s other arm, and together they pull the man up onto soft grass before collapsing beside him.

Oak starts coughing again, while Jack manages to turn Hyacinthe onto his side. The kelpie slaps him on the back, and he vomits up seawater.

“How—?” Hyacinthe manages, opening his eyes.

Jack makes a prim face. “You both get soggy rather fast.”

Above their heads the sky is a clear and steady blue, the clouds pale and puffy as lambs. It is only when Oak looks back at Insear that he sees the storm, a thick fog surrounding the isle, crackling with lightning and a sheet of rain that blurs everything beyond it.

After a few minutes of lying on the grass, convincing himself that he’s still alive, Oak pushes himself to his hooves. “I know this place. I am going to scout around and see if I can find them.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Hyacinthe asks, although he looks too half-drowned to do much of anything.

“Wait here,” says Oak. “I’ll tell you if I find Tiernan.”

Hyacinthe nods in what seems a lot like relief.

Insmoor is called the Isle of Stone because of how rock-covered and wild it becomes away from Mandrake Market. This is where treefolk wander among thick vines of ivy, their bark-covered bodies slow as sap. Birds cry from the trees. It is a good place for Wren and Bogdana to hide. Few soldiers and fewer courtiers are likely to stumble over them in this place. But Oak has lived in Elfhame much of his life, and he knows the paths. His hooves are soft on the moss and swift over the stone. He’s quiet as he moves through the shadows.

Some distance off, he sees falcons roosting on trees. He must be getting close. Sticking to shadows, he hopes he won’t be spotted.

A few steps more, he halts in surprise. Wren sits on a boulder, legs drawn up to her chest, arms encircling them. Her nails are digging into the skin of her calves, and her expression is anguished, as if, though she planned the royal family’s doom, she isn’t enjoying it. It’s nice, he supposes, that betraying him isn’t fun.

His honey-mouthed charm comes easily this time, the burr in his tone just right. “Wren,” he says softly. “I was looking for you.”

She looks up, startled. Her headpiece is gone; her hair loose down her back. “I thought you were—”

“On Insear, waiting for our wedding?”

Her expression turns puzzled for a moment, then clears. She slides down off the rock and takes a step toward him, as though in a trance.

He can’t make himself hate her, even now.

But he can make himself kill her.

“We can exchange our vows right here,” he says.

“We can?” There’s a strange wistfulness in her voice. But why wouldn’t there be? She needs to marry him if she intends to be the High Queen of Elfhame. He’s promising her exactly what she wants. That’s how his power works, after all.

He brings his hand to the side of her face, and she rubs her cheek against his palm as though she were a cat. The rough silk of her hair slides over his fingers. It is agony to touch her like this.

His sword is at his belt, still tied in its makeshift sheath. All he needs to do is slide it out and stab it through her ancient heart.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

She looks up at him with a bleakness that makes him catch his breath. Then she closes them.

Oak’s hand drops to the hilt of his needle blade. Curls around the cold, wet pommel. Draws.

He looks down at the shining steel, bright enough to see Wren’s face reflected in it.

He can’t help thinking of the Ghost’s words when they were aboard the Moonskimmer, flying above the sea. You’re very like Dain in some ways.

Nor can he forget that he once thought, If I love someone, I won’t kill them, a vow too obvious to need to be made aloud.

Oak doesn’t want to be like his father.

He wishes his hand was still trembling, but it is remarkably steady.

You’ve always been clever. Be clever now. That’s what Wren told him when she urged him to break off their betrothal. She needs their marriage if she intends to rule once Cardan and his sister are dead. And yet, if he’d ended the betrothal when she asked him to, there would be no way to accomplish that.

You can’t trust me.

Why warn him? To send him in circles? To set him to one puzzle so he didn’t notice another? That was a complicated and risky plan, while merely expecting him to do his duty and marry her the way he’d said he would was a shockingly simple plan, one with a high chance of success.

Oak remembers Wren standing in the Milkwood over the body of the Ghost. Taryn accused her of poisoning him. Why not deny it? Why make everyone suspicious of her? Randalin admitted to having done it, and he’d urged her to declare her innocence. And the storm hag sank her talons into Wren’s skin. All that it bought was a good excuse for the royal family to ask more questions.

I’m not the one who needs saving.

That had seemed the most damning statement, when bolts started flying on Insear. But if it wasn’t a taunt about the murder of his family that Randalin was planning, then someone else needed saving. Not Oak, who was a necessary cog. The Ghost? Lady Elaine?

He recalls something else, from the banquet. I should have understood better—what you did for your father and why. I wanted it to be simple. But my sis—Bex—

Wren didn’t finish speaking because of a coughing fit. Which could have been because she made herself sick using her magic. Or it could have been that she was trying to say something she made a vow not to say.

My sister. Bex.

I’m not the one who needs saving.

Maybe Oak has this all wrong. Maybe she’s not his enemy. Maybe she’s been given an impossible choice.

Wren loves her mortal family. She loves them so much she slept in the dirt near their house just to be close. Loves them so much that there might be nothing she wouldn’t do to save her mother or father or sister. No one she wouldn’t sacrifice, including herself.

He knows what love like that feels like.

Oak had wondered why Lady Nore and Lord Jarel left Wren’s mortal family alive, given what he knew of their cruelty. Wouldn’t it have been more to their taste to remove any chance at Wren’s happiness? To butcher her family members one by one in front of her and drink her tears?

But now he sees what use they could have been. How could Wren ever rebel when there was always something else to lose? A hatchet that never fell. A threat to be delivered over and over again.

How pleased Bogdana must have been to find Bex still alive and usable.

Wren opens her eyes and looks up at him. “At least it will be you,” she says. “But you better hurry up. Waiting is the worst part.”

“You’re not my enemy,” he says. “You were never my enemy.”

“Yet you’re standing there with a bare blade,” Wren reminds him.

Fair point. “I just figured it out. She has your sister, doesn’t she?”

Wren opens her mouth, then closes it. But the relief in her expression is answer enough.

“And you can’t tell me,” he guesses. “Bogdana made you vow all sorts of things to make sure you couldn’t give away her game. Made you vow to go through with the marriage, so the only way out was if I refused you. Hid Bex away, so you couldn’t simply unmake everyone and free her. Left word with someone to do away with Bex if the storm hag turns up dead. All you could do was try to stall. And try to warn me.”

All she could do was hope he was clever enough.

And perhaps, if he wasn’t, she hoped that at least he would stop her from having to do the worst of what Bogdana commanded. Even if the only way to stop her was with a blade.

She, who never wanted to trust him again, having to do exactly that.

Wren’s eyes are wet as she blinks, her lashes black and spiky. She reaches into a pocket of her dress and takes out the white walnut. “Tiernan is trapped in the cottage. Take it. This is all I can offer you.” Her fingers brush the palm of his hand. “I am not your enemy, but if you can’t help me, the next time we meet, I might be.”

It’s not a threat. He understands now. She’s telling him what she fears.

The prince practically runs into Jack and Hyacinthe as they’re coming off the beach. The kelpie yelps and glares at him accusatorily.

“I have Tiernan,” Oak says, out of breath.

Hyacinthe raises both eyebrows and looks at the prince as though he must have fallen on his head, hard.

“No, not with me,” he says. “He’s in my pocket.”

Inside of the cottage must have been how they brought the bramble horses without their being on the ship. And any other sinister supplies they may have needed. Arms and armor, certainly. And there was no reason for Wren to have even known.

“And your queen? Is she . . . ?” Jack makes a throat-slashing motion.

“Bogdana has her mortal sister,” Oak says. “She’s being blackmailed.”

“Has her where?” Hyacinthe asks. “And when is a single thing you are saying going to start making sense?”

The first is the important question. And Oak thinks he may have the answer.

As Oak approaches Mandrake Market, he has a startlingly good view of the storm lashing Insear. The lanes are empty. Merchants huddle in their homes, probably hoping the waves don’t rise too high, that lightning doesn’t strike too close. Hyacinthe follows the prince, carrying the walnut in his pocket, while Jack brings up the rear.

Together, they come to Mother Marrow’s cottage, the thatch roof overgrown with moss. Oak stands in front of the door while the other two go around the back. Looking inside, he can see her sitting on a stump before a fire, poking at a bucket hanging over the flames.

Oak pounds on the hag’s front door. Mother Marrow frowns and goes back to her fire. He bangs his fist again. This time she stands. Scowling, she waddles to the door on her bird talons.

“Prince.” She squints. “Aren’t you supposed to be at a party?”

“May I come in?”

She steps back so he can make his way into the room. “Quite a storm we’re having.”

Mother Marrow closes the door behind him and bolts it. He goes to the window, looking across at Insear while his fingers undo the latch. He can see nothing but rain and fog and hopes fervently that his family is no worse than he left them.

“You’re holding Wren’s sister for Bogdana, aren’t you?” he asks, turning and walking toward the back of her cottage. “Your friend with the gold skin picked her up, but you’re the one with the place here, so you’re the one who’s keeping her, right?”

Her eyebrows rise. “Beware, Prince of Elfhame, what you accuse Mother Marrow of doing. You want to keep her as your friend, don’t you?”

“I’d rather discover her treachery,” he says, pushing open the door to a back room.

“How dare you?” she says as he enters her bedroom. A canopied bed rests against one wall, bedsheets smoothed out over it. A few bones lie in a corner, old and dry. There’s a little desk with a skull resting on top of several tomes. A cup of tea sits beside her bed, old enough that a dead moth floats atop the liquid.

Ignoring her, he pushes past to open one of the two other doors. It’s a bathing chamber, with a large wooden tub in the middle of the room and a pump beside it. A drain rests off to one side. And a large trunk, like the one Jack described.

He flips it open. Empty.

Mother Marrow presses her lips together. “You are making a mistake, boy. Whatever you think I have, is it worth the curse I will put on you?”

As angry as he is, he doesn’t hesitate. “Have you not already betrayed me once, when you knew exactly where Mellith’s heart was and sent me on a fool’s errand anyway? I am Prince Oak of the Greenbriar line, kin to the High Queen and King, heir to Elfhame. Perhaps you should be afraid.”

Surprise flashes across her features. She stands in the hall, staring after him as he opens the final door. Another bed, this one piled with pillows in sloppy needlepoint, as though done by a child. Shelves on the wall, with books on them, a few that look as ancient as the tomes piled up in Mother Marrow’s room, a few that are newer and less dusty. There are even a few paperbacks that obviously came from the mortal world. This must be the daughter’s room.

But no Bex.

“Where is she?” he demands.

“Come,” Mother Marrow says. “Sit. You’re shivering. Some tea will cure that.”

Oak feels as though his blood is boiling. If he is shivering, it is not from cold. “We don’t have time for this.”

Nonetheless, she busies herself, fussing with the bucket over her fire. Something floats in the water that might be kelp. The hag dunks the wooden ladle and dishes up two servings of tea into ceramic mugs. His has a screaming face on it.

Mother Marrow sips at her tea. Oak’s nerves spark like live wires underneath his skin. Randalin is dead, and whatever signal he planned to give Bogdana that he murdered the royal family will never come. Eventually, Bogdana will realize that and execute the next stage of her plan. Wren will be helpless to stop her. She may have to help her. And he must find Bex before that happens.

The room is as it was before—stumps and a wooden chair before the fire and a threadbare chair off to one side. The same painted curio cabinet with its collection of beetle wings, potions, and poisons. The same nuts rattling in the bowl. The passageway to the rest of the empty cottage.

“What can you possibly offer Mother Marrow in exchange for what you seek?” the hag asks mildly.

Oak considers hags unfathomable beings, different from other Folk. Creators of objects, casters of curses. Part witch, part god. Solitary by nature, according to his instructors. But he heard the story of Bogdana and Mellith. And he remembers Mother Marrow’s desire for Cardan to wed her child.

Maybe not always so solitary. Maybe not entirely strange.

“I want to save Wren,” he says.

“A little bird,” she says. “Caught in a storm.”

Oak gives her a steady look. “You have a daughter. One you wanted to marry to the High King. You told me about her.”

Mother Marrow gives a small grunt. “That was some time ago.”

“Not so much time, I will wager, that you’ve forgotten the insult of the courtly Folk thinking that a hag’s daughter wasn’t fit for a throne.”

There’s a growl in her voice. “You best be careful if you expect to get something from me. And you best not try honey-mouthing me, either. I enjoy sweet words, but I will enjoy eating your tongue even more.”

He inclines his head in acknowledgment. “What is it you want in exchange for Bex?”

She snorts. “You found no girl. What if none is here?”

“Give me three guesses,” he says, though he is far from certain he can succeed at this. “Three guesses to where you put her, and if I’m right, you give her to me.”

“And if you fail?” Her eyes glitter. He knows she is intrigued.

“Then I will return here at the new moon and serve for a year and a day. I will wash your floors. I will scour your cauldron and trim your toenails. So long as it harms no one, I will do whatever you ask as a servant in your household.”

He can feel the air shift around him, feel the rightness of these words. He isn’t using his charm in the usual way, but he allows himself to feel the contortions that power urges on him, the way it wants him to reshape himself for Mother Marrow. The gancanagh part of him knows that she will believe herself to be more wily than he, that her pride will urge her to take the bet.

“Whatever I ask of you, Prince of Elfhame?” Her grin is wide and delighted at the anticipation of his humiliation.

“So long as I guess wrong three times,” he says.

“Then guess away,” she says. “For all you know, I’ve turned her into the lid on a pot.”

“I would feel very stupid if I didn’t guess that first, then,” Oak says.

Mother Marrow looks extremely pleased. “Wrong.”

Two guesses. He’s good at games, but it’s hard to think when it feels as though there’s no time left, when he can hear the storm in the background and the rattling of the . . .

He thinks of the white walnut cottage and Tiernan. And he recalls who gave Wren that gift. Getting to his feet, Oak walks to the cabinet. “She’s trapped in one of the nuts.”

Rage washes across Mother Marrow’s face briefly, only to be replaced by a smile. “Very good, prince,” she says. “Now tell me which one.”

There has to be a half dozen in the bowl. “I guessed correctly,” Oak protests. “I got the answer.”

“Did you?” she says. “That would be like saying I turned her into a flower and not being sure if it was a rose or a tulip. Choose. If you’re wrong, you lose.”

He opens the cabinet, takes out the bowl, then goes to her kitchen for a knife.

“What are you doing?” she shouts. “Stop that!”

He selects a filbert and jams the point of the blade into the seam. It bursts open, scattering an array of dresses around the room, each in a different diaphanous color. They drift gently to the floor.

“Put that one down,” she says as he reaches for a hazelnut. “Immediately.”

“Will you give me the girl?” Oak demands. “Because I don’t need you to get her out now. I will open every one of these and destroy them in the process.”

“Foolish boy!” Mother Marrow says, then intones:

Be trapped inside with no escape

Your fate is cast in acorn shape

In the shadows, you’ ll dwell and wait

The world seems to grow larger and smaller at the same time. Darkness rushes up and over him. He does, in fact, feel quite foolish. And very disoriented.

Inside of the nut are curved walls, polished to a high mahogany-like shine. The floor is covered in straw. Thin light seems to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once.

He hears a sharp gasp from behind him. His hand goes automatically to his sword as he turns, and he has to force himself not to draw it from the rag sheath.

A mortal girl stands among baskets and barrels and jars, against the curved wall of her prison. In the dim glow, her skin is the pale brown of early fall leaves, and she wears a white puffer coat, which swallows her up. Her arms are crossed over each other as though she’s holding herself for comfort or warmth or to keep herself from coming apart.

“Don’t scream,” Oak says, holding up his hands to show that they’re empty.

“Who are you, and why are you here?” the girl asks.

Oak takes a breath and tries to think of what he ought to say. He doesn’t want to frighten her, but he can see from the way she’s looking at his hooves and horns that it’s possible that ship has already sailed. “I’d like to believe that we’re going to be friends,” he says. “If you tell me who you are, I will do the same.”

The mortal girl hesitates. “There was a witch, and she brought me here to see my sister. But I haven’t seen her yet. The witch says she’s in trouble.”

“A witch . . . ,” he echoes. He wonders how aware the girl has been of the passage of time. “You’re Wren’s sister, Bex?”

“Bex, yes.” A small smile pulls at her mouth. “You know Wren?”

“Since we were quite young,” he says, and Bex relaxes a little. “Do you know what she is? What I am?”

“Faeries.” Monsters, her expression says. “I keep rowan on me at all times. And iron.”

When Oak was a child, living in the mortal world with his oldest sister, Vivi, he was super excited to show her girlfriend, Heather, magic. He took his glamour off and was crushed when she looked at him in horror, as though he wasn’t the same little boy she took to the park or tickled. He thought of the news as a surprise present, but it turned out to be a jump scare.

He didn’t realize then how vulnerable a mortal in Faerie can be. He should have, though, living with two mortal sisters. He should have, but he didn’t.

“That’s good,” he says, thinking of the burn of the iron bars in the Citadel. “Rowan to break spells, and iron to burn us.”

“Your turn,” Bex says. “Who are you?”

“Oak,” he says.

“The prince,” Bex says flatly, all the friendliness gone from her voice.

He nods.

She takes two steps forward and spits at his feet. “The witch told me about you,” Bex says. “That you steal hearts, and you were going to steal my sister’s. That if I ever saw you, I ought to run.”

Used to people liking him, or at least used to having to court dislike, Oak is a little stunned. “I would never—” he begins, but she’s already moving across the room, flattening herself against the curved wall as though he’s going to come after her.

There’s a sound in the distance, loud and sharp. The walls shake.

“What’s that?” she demands, stumbling.

“My friends,” Oak says. “I hope.”

Bright light flashes, and the prison tilts to one side. Bex is thrown against him, and then they’re both on the floor of Mother Marrow’s cottage.

Hyacinthe has a crossbow pointed at Mother Marrow. The window Oak unlatched is open, and Jack is inside. The kelpie stoops down to lift an acorn, unbroken.

Mother Marrow glowers. “A bad-mannered lot,” she grouses.

“You found her!” says Jack. “And what a toothsome morsel—I mean mortal.”

Bex jumps up and pulls an antique-looking wrench from her back pocket—that must be the iron to which she was referring. She appears to be considering hitting the kelpie over the head with it.

In two strides, Oak is across the room. He claps his hand against the girl’s mouth hard enough for her teeth to press against his palm.

“Listen to me,” he says, feeling like a bully almost certainly because he was behaving like one. “I am not going to hurt Wren. Or you. But I don’t have time to fight you, nor do I have time to chase you if you run.”

She struggles against him, kicking.

He leans down and whispers in her ear, “I am here for Wren’s sake, and I am going to take you to her. And if you try to get away again, remember this—the easiest way to make you behave would be to make you love me, and you don’t want that.”

She must really not, because she goes slack in his arms.

He takes his hand from her mouth, and she pulls away but doesn’t scream. Instead, she studies him, breathing hard.

“I should have known something was wrong when you knew my name,” Bex says. “Wren would have never told you that. She says that if you know my name, it would give you power over me.”

He gives a surprised laugh. “I wish,” he says, then winces. He should have found a better way to phrase that, one that didn’t make him sound quite so much like an actual monster. But there is little for him to do but forge on. “You need someone’s full name, their true name. Mortals don’t have those. Not in the way that we do.”

Bex’s gaze shifts to the door of the cottage and then back, calculation in her eyes.

“Wren is in trouble,” he says. “Some people are using your safety to make her do what they want. Which is going to mean killing a lot of my people.”

“And you want to use me to stop her,” Bex accuses.

That’s a harsh way of putting it, but true. “Yes,” he says. “I don’t want my own sisters hurt. I don’t want anyone hurt. Not Wren and not you.”

“And you’ll take me to her?” Bex asks.

He nods.

“Then I’ll go with you,” she says. “For now.”

Oak turns his gaze to Mother Marrow. “I am going to grant you this, for whatever I owe you. Should I survive, I will not tell the High King and Queen that you took Bogdana’s part against them. But now my debt is dismissed.”

“And if she wins, what then?” Mother Marrow says.

“Then I will be dead,” Oak tells her. “And you are more than welcome to spit on the moss and rocks where my body fell.”

It is at that moment that the front door cracks in two. The smell of ozone and burning wood fills the air. The storm hag stands there as though summoned by the speaking of her name.

Lightning crackles between her hands. Her eyes are wild. “You!” cries Bogdana as she spots Bex beside the prince.

“Take the mortal to Wren,” Oak shouts to Jack and Hyacinthe, drawing his sword. “Go!”

Then he rushes at the storm hag.

Electricity hits his blade, scorching his fingers. Despite the pain, he manages to swing, slashing through her cloak.

Out of the corner of his eye, Oak sees Jack lift Bex and push her feet through the window. From the other side, Hyacinthe grabs hold of her.

Bogdana reaches for Oak with her daggerlike fingers. “I am going to enjoy stripping the skin from your flesh.”

He swings, blocking her grab. Then he ducks to her left. She takes another step toward him.

By now, Hyacinthe and Jack are out of sight, Bex with them.

A move occurs to Oak—a risky move, but one that might work. One that might get him to Wren faster than anything else. “What if I surrender?” he asks.

He can see her slight hesitation. “Surrender?”

“I’ll sheathe my sword and go with you willingly.” He shrugs, lowering his blade a fraction. “If you promise to bring me straight to Wren with no tricks.”

“No tricks?” she echoes. “That’s a fine thing coming from you.”

“I want to see her,” he says, hoping he seems convincing. “I want to hear from her lips what she’s done and what she wants. And you don’t want to leave her alone too long.”

Bogdana regards him with a sly expression. “Very well, prince.” She reaches out and runs her long claws over his cheek so lightly that they only scrape his bruises. “If I can’t have the sister, then you’ll be my prize. And I’ll have you well-seasoned by the time I end you.”