“You thought I was foolish for going after the High King,” Hyacinthe says.
“I still do,” Oak confirms.
Hyacinthe gives him a frustrated look. “I admit that I’m impulsive. When the curse started again, when I could feel myself becoming a falcon again—I thought if Cardan were dead, it would end the curse. I blamed him.”
Oak bites his tongue. Hyacinthe has not yet come to the favor part.
“There’s something I want to know, but I am not crafty enough to discover it. Nor am I so well connected.” Hyacinthe looks as though he hates admitting this. “But you—you deceive as easily as you breathe and with as little thought.”
“And you want . . .”
“Revenge. I thought it was impossible, but Madoc told me something different,” Hyacinthe says. “You should care, you know? You owe her a blood debt as well.”
Oak frowns. “Prince Dain killed Liriope, and he’s dead himself. I know you want to punish someone—”
“No, heorderedher killed,” Hyacinthe says. “But he wasn’t the one to administer the poison. Not the one to sneak past my father as he guarded her. Not the one to leave you both for dead. That is the person I can still kill for my father’s sake.”
Oak assumed that Dain administered the poison. Slipped it into a drink. Poured it over her lips while she slept beside him. He never imagined that her murderer was still alive.
“So I find the person who gave her the poison. Or try, at least—and you remove the bridle,” Oak says. “I agree.”
“Bring me the hand of the person responsible for her death,” Hyacinthe says.
“You want ahand?” Oak raises both brows.
“That hand, I do.”
Oak doesn’t have time to negotiate. “Fine.”
Hyacinthe gives a strange smile, and Oak worries that he’s made the wrong decision, but it’s too late to question it.
“In Grimsen’s name,” Hyacinthe begins, and Oak jams his hand into the pocket of the cloak for the knife he found. His skin is clammy despite the cold. He cannot be sure that Hyacinthe won’t use the command to do something other than unbind him. If so, Oak is going to try to cut the falcon’s throat before he finishes speaking.
Probably there wouldn’t even be time. Oak’s fingers twitch.
“In Grimsen’s name, let the bridle no longer bind you,” Hyacinthe says.
Oak takes his blade to the strap, but it doesn’t cut. He nicks his own cheek for the effort. A moment later, though, he has unhooked the bridle with shaking hands. He pulls it off his face, throwing it to the ground. He can feel the indentations where the straps pressed into his cheek. Not sunken so deeply to scar, but tight enough to mark.
“A monstrous object,” Hyacinthe says as he bends to pick up the bridle. He wore it long enough to hate it, perhaps even more than Oak. “Now what?”
“We go to the Great Hall to meet the riders.” Oak traces his fingers over his cheeks, the cold of them a relief. He doesn’t like the idea that Hyacinthe has the bridle, but even if the prince could wrest it from him, he dreads so much as touching it.
Hyacinthe frowns. “And . . . ?”
“Attempt to seem convincingly happy to be Wren’s guest,” Oak says. “Then figure out how to send the army of Elfhame on its way.”
“That’s what you’re calling a plan?” Hyacinthe snorts. “We can’t be seen together, so give me a head start. I don’t want anyone to guess what I’ve done, in case it doesn’t work.”
“It would be a lot easier to get into the Great Hall with your help,” Oak points out.
“I’m sure it would be,” says Hyacinthe.
The falcon stalks off, leaving Oak to wait. To pace the Hall of Queens some more. Count off the minutes. Trace his fingers over his cheek to feel for any trace of the straps. There’s something there, but light, like the creases left from a pillow in the morning. He hopes these marks will disappear soon. Finally, he can bear to bide his time no longer. He pushes back the hood of his cloak and, head held high, walks toward the Great Hall.
If there is one thing he has learned from Cardan, it is that royalty inspires awe and awe can be cultivated easily into menace. It is with that in mind that he strides toward the guards.
Startled, they raise their spears. Two falcons, neither of whom he recognizes.
