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.”
