He smiles. “It’s hardly a surprise that a young man would want to spend time with his betrothed.”
“Ah, so this is more playacting.” She moves across the floor gracefully, the pitch and roll of the ship not causing her a single stumble. Finding her way to the upholstered settee, she takes a seat, indicating with a gesture that he should take the chair across from her. A reversal of their positions the last time he visited this room.
“Idowish to spend time with my betrothed,” he says, going to sit.
She gives him a look of disdain, but her cheeks have a flush of pink on them. “My magic might be like the matches in the story, but I think it burns me, too. I just don’t know how much yet.”
He appreciates her admitting that to him. “She’s going to want you to keep using it. If there’s one thing I took away from her story, it’s that.”
“I do not plan on dancing to her tune,” Wren says. “Not ever again.”
His father has managed to manipulate him cannily, without Oak ever once agreeing to a single thing that Madoc proposed out loud. “And yet you haven’t ordered her to go home.”
“We’re far from shore,” Wren says with a sigh. “And she promised to be on her best behavior. Now, to be fair, since I told you about my magic, tell me about yours.”
Oak raises his brows in surprise. “What do you want to know?”
“Persuade me of something,” she says. “I want to understand how your power works. I want to know what it feels like.”
“You want me to charm you?” This seems like a terrible idea. “That suggests a great deal more trust on your part than you’ve indicated you’re willing to extend to me.”
She leans back on her cushions. “I want to see if I can break the spell.”
He thinks of all the matches set ablaze. “Won’t it hurt you to do that?”
“It should be a small thing,” she says. “And in return, you can obey an order.”
“But I’m not wearing the bridle,” he protests, hoping that she isn’t going to ask him to put it on. He won’t, and if it’s a test, it’s one he’s going to fail.
“No,” she says. “You’re not.”
Willingly following a command seems interesting and nottoodangerous. But he doesn’t know how to make his gancanagh magic tame. If he tells her what she most wants to hear and it is a distortion of the truth, what then? And if the words are ones he means, how will they ever seem true when they’ve first come from his mouth as persuasion?
“Are you doing it?” Her body is slightly hunched as though against some kind of attack.
“No, not yet,” he says with a surprised laugh. “I have to actuallysaysomething.”
“You justdid,” she protests, but she’s laughing a little, too. Her eyes glitter with mischief. She was right when she said they both loved games. “Just do it. I’m getting nervous.”
“I’m going to try to persuade you to pick up that teacup,” he says, waving toward a clay vessel with a wide base and a little bit of liquid still at the bottom. It’s resting on the marble-topped table, and with all the rocking the boat has done as it goes over swells, he’s surprised it hasn’t slid to the Boor already.
“You’re not supposed to tell me,” she says, smiling. “Now you’ll never manage it.”
He finds himself filled with a strange glee at the challenge. At the idea he could share this with her and it could be fun instead of awful.
When he opens his mouth again, he allows the honey-tongued words to spill out.
“When you came to Elfhame as a child,” he says, his voice going strange, “you never got to see the beauty of it. I will show you the silvery white trees of the Milkwood. We can splash in the Lake of Masks and see the reBections of those who have looked into it before us. I will take you to Mandrake Market, where you can buy eggs that will hatch pearls that shine like moonlight.”
He can see that she’s relaxed, sinking back onto the cushions, eyes half-closed as though in a daydream. And although he wouldn’t choose those words, he does plan to take her to all those places.
“I look forward to introducing you to each of my sisters and reminding them that you helped our father. I will tell the story of how you single-handedly defeated Lady Nore and bravely took an arrow in the side.” He’s not sure what he expects from his magic, but it isn’t this rush of words. Not a single thing he said is anything other than true. “And I will tell them the story of Mellith, and how wronged she was by Mab, how wronged you were and how much I want—”
Wren’s eyes open, wet with unshed tears. She sits up. “How dare you say those things? How dare you throw everything I cannot have in my face?”
“I didn’t—” he starts, and for a moment, he isn’t sure if he’s speaking as himself. If he’s using his power or not.
“Get out,” she growls, standing.
