When I wake, I am in woods I don’t recognize. I don’t smell the ubiquitous salt of the sea, and I don’t hear the crash of the waves. Everything is ferns, leaf mold, the crackle of a fire, and the hum of distant voices. I sit up. I am lying on heavy blankets, with more on top of me—horse blankets, albeit elegant ones. I see a solidly built carriage nearby, the door hanging open.
I am still in Taryn’s dress, still wearing her gloves.
“Don’t mind the dizziness,” says a kind voice. Oriana. She is sitting nearby, dressed in a gown of what appears to be felted wool over several layers of skirts. Her hair is pulled back into a green cap. She looks nothing like the diaphanous courtier she’s been the whole time I’ve known her. “It will pass.”
I run a hand through my hair, come loose now, the pins still in it. “Where are we? What happened?”
“Your father didn’t like the thought of your staying on the isles to begin with, but without Locke’s protection, it was only a matter of time before the High King came up with an excuse to make you his hostage.”
I rub a hand over my face. By the fire, a spindly, insectile faerie stirs a big pot. “You want soup, mortal?”
I shake my head.
“You want to be soup?” it asks hopefully. Oriana waves it off and takes a kettle from the ground beside the fire. She pours the steaming contents into a wooden cup. The liquid is redolent of bark and mushrooms.
I take a sip and abruptly feel less dizzy.
“Was the High King captured?” I ask, recalling when I was taken. “Is he alive?”
“Madoc was unable to get to him,” she says, as though his being alive is a disappointment.
I hate how relieved I feel.
“But—” I start, meaning to ask how the battle ended. I remember myself in time to bite my tongue. Over the years, Taryn and I have occasionally pretended to be each other at home. We mostly got away with it, so long as it didn’t go on for too long or we weren’t too obvious about it. If I don’t do anything stupid, I have a good chance of pulling this off until I can escape.
And then what?
Cardan was so disarmingly casual, as though sentencing me to death was some shared joke between us. And talking of messages, messages I never got. What could they have said? Could he have intended to pardon me? Could he have offered me some kind of bargain?
I cannot imagine a letter from Cardan. Would it have been short and formal? Full of gossip? Wine-stained? Another trick?
Of course it was a trick.
Whatever he intended, he must believe I am working with Madoc now. And though it shouldn’t bother me, it does.
“Your father’s priority was to get you out,” Oriana reminds me.
“Not just that, right?” I say. “He can’t have attacked the Palace of Elfhame for me alone.” My thoughts are unruly, chasing one another around. I am no longer sure of anything.
“I don’t question Madoc’s plans,” she says neutrally. “Nor should you.”
I forgot how it felt to be bossed around by Oriana, always treated as though my curiosity would immediately create some scandal for our family. It’s especially galling to be treated this way now, when her husband stole half an army from the High King and is planning a coup against him.
Grima Mog’s words echo in my mind. The Court of Teeth have thrown in their lot with the old Grand General—your father—and a whole host of other traitors. I have it on good authority that your High King is to be dethroned before the next full moon.
That seems a lot more pressing now.
But since I am supposed to be Taryn, I don’t respond. After a moment, she looks repentant. “The important thing is for you to rest. I am sure being dragged out here is a lot to take in on top of losing Locke.”
“Yes,” I say. “It is a lot. I think I do want to rest awhile, if that’s all right.”
Oriana reaches over and smooths my hair back from my brow, a fond gesture that I am sure she wouldn’t have made if she knew it was me, Jude, that she was touching. Taryn admires Oriana, and they’re close in a way that she and I are not—for many reasons, not the least of which is that I helped hide Oak in the mortal world, away from the crown. Since then, Oriana has been both grateful and resentful. But in Taryn, I think, Oriana sees someone she understands. And maybe Taryn is like Oriana, although the murder of Locke has called that and everything else I thought I knew about my twin sister into question.
I close my eyes. Although I mean to puzzle through how to get away, instead I sleep.
The next time I wake, I am in a carriage, and we are on the move. Madoc and Oriana sit on the opposite bench. The curtains are drawn, but I hear the sounds of a traveling camp, of mounts and soldiers. I hear the distinctive growl of goblins calling to one another.
I look over at the redcap who raised me, my father and the murderer of my father. I take in the whiskers from a few days of not shaving. His familiar, inhuman face. He looks exhausted.
“Finally up?” he says with a smile that shows too many teeth. I am uncomfortably reminded of Grima Mog.
I try to smile back as I straighten. I don’t know whether something in the soup knocked me out or the deathsweet Madoc made me inhale isn’t out of my system, but I don’t remember being loaded into the carriage. “How long was I asleep?”
Madoc makes a negligent gesture. “The High King’s trumped-up inquest is three days past.”
I feel fuzzy-headed, afraid I will say the wrong thing and be discovered. At least my easy slide into unconsciousness must have made me seem to be my sister. Before I became a captive of the Undersea, I’d trained my body to be immune to poisons. But now I am exactly as vulnerable as Taryn.
If I keep my wits about me, I can get away without either of them knowing. I consider what part of Madoc’s conversation Taryn would focus on. Probably the matter of Locke. I take a deep breath. “I told them I hadn’t done it. Even glamoured, I insisted.”
Madoc doesn’t look as though he sees through my disguise, but he does look as though he thinks I am being an idiot. “I doubt that boy king ever intended to let you walk out of the Palace of Elfhame alive. He fought hard to keep you.”
“Cardan?” That doesn’t sound like him.
“Half my knights never made it out,” he informs me grimly. “We got in easily enough, but the brugh itself closed around us. Doorways cracked and shrank. Vines and roots and leaves obstructed our way, closed like vises on our necks, crushed and strangled us.”
I stare at him for a long moment. “And the High King caused that?” I can’t believe it of Cardan, whom I left in his chambers, as though he was the one in need of protecting.
“His guard were neither poorly trained nor poorly chosen, and he knows his power. I am glad to have tested him before going against him in earnest.”
“Are you sure it’s wise to go against him at all, then?” I ask carefully. It is perhaps not exactly what Taryn would say, but it’s not exactly what I would say, either.
“Wisdom is for the meek,” he returns. “And it seldom helps them as much as they believe it will. After all, as wise as you are, you still married Locke. Of course, perhaps you are wiser than even that—perhaps you’re so wise you made yourself a widow, too.”
Oriana puts her hand on his knee, a cautioning gesture.
He gives a great laugh. “What? I made no secret of how little I liked the boy. You can hardly expect me to mourn him.”
I wonder if he would laugh so hard if he knew Taryn had actually done it. Who am I kidding? He would probably laugh even harder. He would probably laugh himself sick.