“You’re very like Dain in some ways,” says the Ghost.
Oak frowns. Being compared to Dain can be no good thing. “Ah yes, my father who tried to kill me.”
“He did terrible things, brutal things, but he had the potential in him to be a great leader. To be a great king. Like you.” Garrett’s gaze is steady.
Oak snorts. “I am not planning on leading anyone.”
The Ghost nods toward Wren. “If she’s a queen and you marry her, then you’d be a king.”
Oak stares at him in horror because he’s right. And Oak didn’t really consider that. Possibly because he still thinks it’s unlikely that Wren will go through with it. Possibly also because Oak is a fool.
Across the ship, Hyacinthe is leading Tiernan toward a cabin. Hyacinthe, who hasn’t really let Oak off the hook. “Since you knew Dain so well, can you tell me who really poisoned Liriope?”
The Ghost’s brows rise. “I thought you believedhedid?”
“Possibly there was someone else who helped him,” Oak presses. “Someone who actually slipped the blusher mushroom into her cup.”
Garrett looks genuinely uncomfortable. “He was a prince of Elfhame, and his father’s heir. He had many servants. Plenty of help with whatever he attempted.”
Oak doesn’t like how many of those words also apply to him. “Have you heard there was someone else involved?”
Garrett is silent. Since he cannot lie, the prince assumes he has.
“Tell me,” Oak says. “You owe me that.”
The line of the Ghost’s mouth is grim. “I owe many people many things. But I know this. Locke had the answer you seek. He knew the name of the poisoner, much good it did him.”
“I am cleverer than Locke.” But what Oak thinks of is his dream and the fox’s laughter.
The Ghost stands and dusts off his hands on his pants. “That doesn’t take much.”
Oak can’t tell if Garrett knows the name or only knows that Locke did. Taryn may have told him any secrets that Locke told her. “Does my sister know?”
“You should ask her,” says the Ghost. “She’s probably waiting for you on the shore.”
The prince lifts his eyes and sees the Shifting Isles of Elfhame in the distance, breaking through the mist shrouding them.
The Tower of Forgetting rises like a black and forbidding obelisk from the cliffs of Insweal, and beyond it he can make out the green hill of the palace on Insmire, the blaze of the sunset making it look as though it caught fire.
CHAPTER
13
Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so beautiful that none could resist her.
That was how Oriana told the story of Liriope to Oak once he crowned Cardan as the new High King. It sounded like a fairy tale. The kind with princes and princesses that mortals told to one another. But this fairy tale was about how Oak had been told a lie, and that lie was the story of his life.
Oriana was and wasn’t his mother. Madoc was and wasn’t his father.
Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so beautiful that none could resist her. When she spoke, it seemed that the hearts of those who listened beat for her alone. In time, she caught the eye of the king, who made her the first among his consorts. But the king’s son loved her, too, and wanted her for his own.
Oak hadn’t known what consorts were, and because it was Faerie and sex didn’t embarrass them, Oriana explained that a consort was someone the king wanted to take to bed. And if they were boys like Val Moren, it was for delight; if they were girls like herself, then it was for delight, but also might yield babies; and if the lover were of some other gender, that was for delight and the part about the babies could be a surprise.
“But you didn’t have the king’s baby,” he said. “You only have me.”
Oriana smiled and tickled him in the crook of his arm, making him shriek and pull away.
“Only you,” she agreed. “And Liriope wasn’t going to have the king’s child, either. The baby in her belly was sired by his son, Prince Dain.”
