Chapter 12: The Stolen Heir: Chapter 11

Tiernan looks across the clearing at me, his sword drawn. I take a step back, unsure if I ought to race off into the night.

Bogdana has disappeared into the woods, leaving behind only the distant hiss of rain.

I shake my head vehemently, holding up my hands in warding. “You’re wrong. Bogdana surprised me. I ran from her again, but she said she wanted to talk ”

He peers into the forest, as if expecting to find the storm hag still lurking there. “It seems obvious you were conspiring with her.”

My mind is reeling, thinking of how puzzled Tiernan was when Oak suggested we part ways. Thinking of how clever it was to let me believe I was on this quest of my own free will.

I recall Tiernan tethering me in the motel. Barely speaking with me. Now I can guess the reason. He’d always considered me a sacrifice, something to look away from, something to which one ought not become attached. I shake my head. What defense can I give, when telling the truth would expose their deception?

“She warned me about continuing north,” I say. “And she thought I should help her instead of Oak. But I never agreed to it.”

He frowns, perhaps realizing all the things he would be unable to deny. Together we walk back to the camp. I pick up new wood as I go.

And as awful as it is to think about Oak handing me over, everything in me shies away from the story of my making. Am I no more than the sticks I carry and a little magic? Am I like a ragwort steed, something with only the appearance of life?

I feel sick and scared.

When we arrive back at the camp, Tiernan sets about moving the fire out from beneath the lean-to so it doesn’t set the whole thing ablaze once the sticks dry out. To keep my hands busy, I weave branches together and knot them with more pieces of my dress to create a mat for our dwelling. Everything is still wet, droplets falling from trees with every gust of wind, causing the fire to smoke and sputter. I try not to think about anything but what I am doing.

Eventually, the heat dries things out enough for Tiernan to stretch out on my dampish mat, kick off his soaked and muddy boots, and warm his wet feet by the fire. “What did she offer you for your help?”

I reach out my hand to the fire. Since I was formed of snow, I wonder if I will melt. I hold my fingers close enough to burn, but all that happens when I snatch them back is that the tips are reddened and they sting.

“Stop that,” Tiernan says.

I look over at him. “Bogdana’s offer was to not murder me and my family.”

“That had to be tempting,” he says.

“I’d prefer greater politeness than I’ve gotten from anyone who wants to use me for my power,” I tell him, knowing that what he wants to use me for is very different.

I think Tiernan hears a secret in my voice. But he cannot possibly guess what I have to hide. He cannot know what I am, nor why the storm hag believes I owe her. And if he wonders whether she told me that I am meant to be Madoc’s ransom, he will try to convince himself otherwise. If he didn’t like looking into my face knowing I was a sacrifice, how much worse would it be to look at me if I knew as well?

I am under no illusions that Bogdana would make for an easy ally, either. Too easily I can picture Bex confronting the storm hag, standing on her lawn in the moonlight. She must have felt dizzy with terror, the way I did when I first saw one of the Folk.

And yet Bex would not have been nearly afraid enough. I think about the phone in my pocket, now wishing that I could steal away and charge it, call her, warn her.

I stand and reach for Tiernan’s cloak. He gives me a sharp look.

“You should hang it to dry,” I say.

He undoes the clasp and lets me take it. I walk a short way to drape it over a branch, my fingers skirting over the cloth, looking for the strands of my hair he took. Such fine things, so easy to hide. Easy to lose, too, I hope, but I do not find them.

Oak’s whistling alerts us to his return. His hair is dry, and he’s wearing fresh clothes—jeans that are a little too short in the ankle, along with a cable-knit sweater the color of clotted cream. Over one shoulder he has the straps of a hiker’s backpack. Perching on the other is the owl-faced hob.

The creature eyes me with evident dislike and makes a low, whistling animal noise, then flies off to a high branch.

Oak dumps the pack beside the fire. “The town would be lovely during the day, I think, although it lacked something by night. There was a vegetarian place called the Church of Seitan and a farm stand that sold peaches by the bushel. Both closed. A nearby bus station, where various entertainments could be gotten in trade. Sadly, nothing I was in the market for.”

I glance up at the moon, visible since the storm cleared off. We began flying on the ragwort horses at dusk, so it must be well past mid-night now.

Oak unpacks, taking out and unfolding two tarps. On them, he places an assortment of groceries and a pile of mortal clothes. Nothing has tags, and one of the tarps has a small tear in it. He’s brought back a half-eaten rotisserie chicken in a plastic container. Peaches, despite his saying the stand was closed. Bread, nuts, and figs packed in a crumpled plastic bag from a hardware store. A gallon of fresh water, too, which he offers first to Tiernan. The knight takes a grateful swig from what ought to have been a milk jug, according to the sticker on the side.

“Where did you get all this?” I ask, because it obviously wasn’t from the shelves of any store. My voice comes out with more edge than I intended.

Oak gives me a mischievous smile. “I met the family at the farm stand, and they were enormously generous to a stranger caught in a storm on a windy night. Let me take a shower. Even blow-dry my hair.”

“You vain devil,” Tiernan says with a snort.

“That’s me,” Oak affirmed. He slides the strap of his own bag over his head and sets it down not too far from the fire. But not with the communal offerings from the backpack, either. That bag is where he must keep the bridle. “I persuaded the family to let me have a few things from their garage and refrigerator. Nothing they’ll miss.”

A shiver goes through me at the thought of him glamouring that family, or making them love him. I imagine a mother and father and child in the kitchen of their home, caught in a dream. A chubby toddler crying in a high chair while they brought the prince food and clothes, the baby’s cries seeming to come from farther and farther away.

“Did you hurt them?” I ask.

He looks at me, surprised. “Of course not.”

But then, he might have a very limited idea of what meant. I shake my head to clear it of my own imaginings. I have no reason to think he did anything to them, just because he is planning to do something to me.

Oak reaches into the pile and pushes a black sweater, leggings, and new socks toward me. “Hopefully they’ll fit well enough for travel.”

Oak must see the suspicion I feel writ in my features.

“When we return from the north,” he promises, hand to his heart in an exaggerated way that lets me know he considers this a silly vow rather than a solemn one, “they will wake to find their shoes filled with fine, fat rubies. They can use them to buy new leggings and another roast chicken.”

“How will they sell ?” I ask him. “Why not leave them something more practical?”

He rolls his eyes. “As a prince of Faerie, I flatly refuse to leave cash. It’s inelegant.”

Tiernan shakes his head at both of us, then pokes at the foodstuffs, selecting a handful of nuts.

“Gift cards are worse,” Oak says when I do not respond. “I would bring shame on the entire Greenbriar line if I left a gift card.”

At that, I can’t help smiling a little, despite my heavy heart. “You’re ridiculous.”

Hours ago, I would have thought he was generous, to joke with me after what happened at the Court of Moths. But that was before I knew he was going to trade me for his father, as though I were one of those gift cards.

I pick at a wing of the chicken, pulling off the skin, then meat, then crunching the bird’s bones. A jagged bit cuts the inside of my mouth, but I keep eating. If my mouth is full, I will not speak.

When I am done, I take the clothes that Oak brought back for me and duck behind a tree to change. My beautiful new dress is coated in mud, not to mention ripped up all along the hem. Already well on its way to being worse than my last one. My skin feels clammy as I pull it off.

It has been many years since I wore mortal clothes like these. As a child, I was often in leggings and shirts, with sparkly sneakers and rainbow laces. My younger self would have delighted in having naturally colorful hair.

As I pull the sweater over my head, I hear Tiernan speaking quickly under his breath to Oak. He must be telling him about spotting Bogdana with me.

As I return to our lean-to with the weight of suspicion on my shoulders, with the schemes of Lady Nore and Bogdana and Oak winding around me, I realize that I cannot wait for fate to come to me.

I must leave them now, before they discover what I know. Before the moment when Oak admits to himself that he plans to give me to Lady Nore. Before he realizes that everything will be easier if I am bridled. Before I go mad, waiting for the inevitable blow to fall and hoping that I find a way to avoid it when it does.

Better to go north on my own from here and kill my mother, the one who shaped me from snow and filled my heart with hate. Only then will I be safe from her and all those who would use my power over her, no matter their reasons. I am a solitary creature, fated to be one and better as one. Forgetting that is what got me into trouble.

Once I realize the path I must take, I feel lighter than I have since Bogdana caught me in the woods. I can enjoy the sweet stickiness of the peach nectar, the slight plastic flavor of the water.

Tiernan gives a sigh. “Suppose we go through the Stone Forest,” he says. “Despite the deep pits that lead to oubliettes, the trees that move to make you lose your way, the ice spiders that wrap their prey in frozen gossamer, the mad king, and the curse. Then what? We don’t have Hyacinthe to get us inside the Ice Needle Citadel.”

“It’s supposed to be very beautiful, the Citadel,” Oak says. “Is it beautiful, Wren?”

When the light went through the ice of the castle, it made rainbows that danced along its cold halls. You could almost see through the walls, as though the whole place was one large, cloudy window. When I was brought to it for the first time, I thought it was like living inside a sparkling diamond.

“It’s not,” I say. “It’s an ugly place.”

Tiernan looks surprised. I am sure he is, since, if he stole Hyacinthe from Lady Nore, he knows exactly what the Citadel looks like.

But when I think of it, what I recall is grotesque. Making people betray themselves was Lady Nore’s favorite sport, and one in which she was very skilled. Tricking her supplicants and prisoners into sacrificing that which they cared most about. Breaking their own instruments. Their own fingers. The necks of those they loved best.

Everything died in the Ice Citadel, but hope died first.

, Lady Nore commanded, not long before our trip to Elfhame. I do not remember what she wanted me to laugh at, although I am sure it was something awful.

But by then I had retreated so far inside myself that I don’t think she was certain I’d even heard her. She slapped me and I bit her, ripping open the skin of her hand. That was the first moment I thought I saw a flicker of fear in her face.

That is the place I need to return to, that cold place where nothing can reach me. Where I can do anything.

“For now,” Oak says, “let’s concern ourselves with getting to Undry Market. I don’t think we can risk ragwort again, even if we could find another patch. We’re going to have to go on foot.”

“I’ll leave first,” the knight says. “And start arranging for the boat. You take a different route to confuse our trail.”

Somewhere on Tiernan’s person—or in his pack—are strands of my hair. But even if I found them, can I be sure they don’t have more? Can I be certain there isn’t one stuck on the cloak Oak draped over my shoulders? Can I be sure Oak didn’t pilfer another when he was brushing my hair?

My gaze goes to the prince’s bag. I wouldn’t need to care about the strands of hair if there was nothing that could be done with them.

If I snatched the bridle and ran, when I got to Lady Nore, I could be the one to make her wear it.

Oak sits by the fire, singing a song to himself that I catch only snatches of. Something about a pendulum and fabric that’s starting to fray. The firelight limns his hair, turning the gold dark, the shadows making his features sharp and harsh.

He’s the kind of beautiful that makes people want to smash things.

Tonight, while they sleep, I will steal the bridle. Hadn’t Oak talked about a bus station, one that appeared to be open, no matter the hour? I will go there and begin my journey as a mortal might. I have Gwen’s phone. I can use it to warn my unfamily of what’s coming.

While I am thinking through this plan, Oak is telling Tiernan about a mermaid he knows, with hair the silver of the shine on waves. He thinks that if he could speak to her, she might be able to tell him more about what’s going on in the Undersea.

Eventually, I curl up in my blanket, watching Tiernan cover the lean-to with Oak’s burgled tarps. Then he climbs a tree, settling himself in its branches like a cradle.

“I’ll take first watch,” he volunteers gruffly.

“Titch can guard us for a few hours,” says Oak, nodding to the owl-faced hob in the tree. It nods, its head rotating uncannily. “We could all use the rest.”

I try to tamp down my rising panic. Surely Titch will be easier to get past than Tiernan would have been. But I had not counted on standing watch. An oversight that makes me wonder what other obvious thing I have overlooked. What other foolish mistake is there to make?

Oak rolls himself up in his damp cloak. He looks at me as though he wants to say something, but when I refuse to meet his gaze, he settles down to sleep. I am glad. I am not as skilled at hiding my feelings as I would like.

At first, I count the stars, starting in the east and then moving west. It isn’t easy, because I can’t tell if I’ve counted some already and keep going back and starting again. But it does while away time.

At last, I close my eyes, counting again, this time to a thousand.

When I get to 999, I sit up. The others appear asleep, the gentle susurrations of their breaths even and deep. Above me, Titch’s golden eyes blink, staring into the dark.

I creep over to Oak’s bag, lying beside his sword. The fire has burned down to embers. Starlight shines on his features, smoothed out in slumber.

Kneeling, I slide my finger into the sack, past a paperback book, granola bars, candles, a scroll, and several more knives, until I feel the smooth strap. My fingers tremble at the touch of the leather. The enchantment on it seems to spark.

I tug the bridle out as gently and slowly as I am able.

Nearby, a fox calls. Frogs bellow at one another from the ferns.

I risk a look at the owl-faced hob, but it is still watching for danger outside the camp. There is no reason, I tell myself, for it to believe that I am doing anything more than rooting for a snack. I am no threat.

I don’t have a bag like Oak’s to hide the bridle in, but I do have a scarf, and I wind it up in that and then tie it around my waist like a belt. My heart is beating so fast that it seems as though it’s skipping, like stones across a pond.

I stand and take a step, so certain I am about to be caught that the anticipation makes me dizzy.

Two more steps, and the tree line is in sight.

That’s when I hear Oak’s voice behind me, thick with sleep. “Wren?”

I turn back, attempting not to panic, not to snarl and run. I can’t let him see how afraid I am that he’s caught me.

“You’re awake,” he says, sitting up.

“My mind keeps going around in loops,” I say, keeping my voice low. That much is certainly true.

He beckons to me. Reluctantly, I come over and sit beside him. Leaning forward, he pokes the fire with a stick.

I can’t help but see his face, soft from slumber, and remember what it was like to kiss him. When I recall the curve of Oak’s mouth, I must force myself to think of the way it looks pulled into a sneer.

. I remind myself of his words. And if there’s any part of him that does, it’s because I am, as Hyacinthe said, .

I take a deep breath. “You’re not really going to send me away, are you?”

“I should,” he says. “This is a grievously foolhardy scheme.”

I wonder if he believes the thought of being parted from him is what kept me awake. “I knew that from the first.”

“I should never have gotten you into this,” he says, self-loathing in his voice. Perhaps he is slipping a little, tired as he is. He cannot like what he plans to do. He is not that much of a monster.

“I can stop Lady Nore,” I remind him.

He gives me a smile, a strange light in his eyes. “If we were capable of putting mistrust aside, we might be a formidable pair.”

“We might,” I say. “Were we sure of each other.”

His hand touches my back lightly, making me shiver. “Do you know what I admire about you?”

Truly, I cannot imagine what he will say next.

“That you never stopped being angry,” he tells me. “It can be brave to hate. Sometimes it’s like hope.”

I hadn’t felt brave in the Court of Teeth. Or hopeful. I had felt only a clawing desperation, as though I was forever drowning in some vast sea, gulping seawater as I sank, and then just when I felt I was going to let myself drop beneath the waves, something would make me kick one more time. Maybe that thing was hate. Hating requires going on, even when you can no longer believe in any better future. But I am shocked that Oak, of all people, would know that.

“You will make an interesting High King,” I tell him.

He looks alarmed. “I most definitely will . The Folk adore Cardan, and they’re terrified of my sister, two excellent things. I hope they rule Elfhame for a thousand years and then pass it down to one of a dozen offspring. No need for me to be involved.”

“Honestly, you want to be the High King?” I ask, puzzled. It was all Lord Jarel and Lady Nore wanted, the entire focus of their ambition, the reason for my creation. It seemed almost an insult for him to shrink from it as though it was equivalent to eating an apple with a worm inside.

Even if I happened to agree with him.

“Cardan was smart not to want it before I slammed that crown on his head,” Oak says, his mouth quirking at the memory, then flattening out again. “The desire to rule Elfhame ruined so many lives. Just being the heir is bad enough.”

“What do you mean?” Watching him in the firelight, the sleepmussed fall of gold curls against his cheeks and the curious intensity of his expression, I could almost believe he’s telling me this because he wishes to be my friend, rather than knowing that the appearance of vulnerability is likely to make me drop my guard.

He stretches a little, like a cat. “Some people would prefer to see me on the throne, either because they think I’d be easier to manipulate or because they’d do anything not to be ruled by a mortal. They make no secret that were I to say the right word, they would pour poison in my ear and down my family’s throats. Meanwhile, my sister Jude—I suspect she isn’t having children to make it clear I will be next in line. She says not, but she’s too good of a liar for me to know.”

I picture the High Queen as she was in that final battle, blood flecked across her face. Chopping off the head of the serpent who’d once been her beloved, even if it doomed her side to failure, all to save a land that despised her.

Now, that was hate that was somehow also hope.

He laughs, surprising me. “I am grim tonight, am I not? Let me show you a trick.”

I eye him suspiciously. But he only takes a quarter out of his pocket, then spins it on the edge of his finger.

I snort despite myself.

He tosses the coin up and catches it in the other hand, then opens both his palms. The coin is gone.

“Do you know where it is?” he asks.

“Magicked away into Faerieland?” I guess, but I am smiling.

With a grin, Oak reaches behind my ear, and I can feel the metal, warmed by his skin, against the side of my neck.

I am foolish for my delight, but I am delighted all the same.

“The Roach taught me that,” he says, tucking the coin away. “I’m still practicing.”

“I remember him,” I say. “From your Court of Shadows.”

Oak nods. “And before that, from the Court of Teeth. He wasn’t just held there by himself, either.”

The Bomb. I remember her, too. Lady Nore had called her Liliver. Considering how much the Court of Teeth corrupted, I can only admire their loyalty to each other. “They must have truly suffered.”

Oak gives me an odd look. “As you did.”

“We should try to sleep,” I force myself to say. If I remain in his company any longer, I will if he intends to give me to Lady Nore. And then my plans will be discovered, and I, very likely, bridled.

He shakes his head, possibly at himself. “Of course. You’re right.”

I nod.

Though he means me harm, I will miss him. I will miss the way he moves through the world, as though nothing could be so terrible that he might not laugh at it.

I might even miss Tiernan’s grumpiness.

I go back on my blankets and wait, counting to a thousand again. When I am certain the prince is asleep, I push myself up and walk steadily into the tree line. I do not look back to see if the owl eyes of the hob are on me. I must behave as though I am doing nothing of note, nothing wrong.

Once I am away from the camp and the hob gives no cry of alarm, I leave off caution and rush through the woods, then through the town, until I come to the bus station.

It takes me a full three minutes before my glamour is nearly good enough to allow me to pass for human. I touch my face and my teeth to be sure.

Then, taking a deep breath, I walk into the brightly lit station. It smells like gasoline and disinfectant. A few humans are sitting on metal benches, one with a garbage bag that seems to be stuffed full of clothes. A young couple with a single suitcase between them, whispering together. An elderly gentleman with a cane who has fallen asleep and may have already missed his bus.

According to the schedule, the next one is passing north and west, up toward Michigan. It’s tricky to buy a ticket with glamoured money, because machines aren’t unaware that you’re feeding leaves into them, even if people are. Instead, I grab a receipt out of the trash and enchant it. It’s only a rough approximation of a ticket, and I will have to glamour the driver to let me pass, but the role will be more convincing with something in my hand. My magic is wobbly enough to need all the help it can get.

When I look up, I see a man with dirty pants and an unkempt beard watching me. My heart speeds. Was he only noting that I’d been rooting around in the trash, or am I so unlucky as to run into one of the humans with True Sight? Or is he something else, something more?

I smile at him, and he flinches as though he can see the sharpness of my teeth. After that, he stops looking at me.

I plug Gwen’s phone into the wall and wait.

I watch a girl kick a vending machine. A boy smokes a cigarette, pacing outside and talking to himself. An elderly man picks a penny off the floor.

Beside me, there is a sudden buzz. I look down and realize the screen of the phone has come back to life. I’ve missed ten calls while it was dead, none of them from numbers I know.

There are three texts from Gwen. The first reads: It’s fucked to text my own phone, and even more because everything that happened seems like it can’t be real, but I made it to my parents’ house. That hot elf guy was kind of a dick bt he told me about his ex & the prince, and it sounds like your in trouble. Let me know your OK.

Below that there’s a photo of her with the fiddler from the Court of Moths. They are draped over each other and smiling in the front seat of a car. The next message reads: MY BAE IS HERE. He says he woke up on the side of a hill. The last thing he remembers is someone who looked like a devil putting salt on his tongue. I don’t know what you did, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

And then: Are you OK? Please write to me so (a) I know you’re good and (b) I didn’t dream you.

I grin at the phone. Most of the people I broke curses for were as afraid of me as they were of the glaistig. It was strange to think that Gwen me. Fine, I had done something nice for her, but she still texted me as though we could be friends.

I text back: Hard to charge a phone in Faerieland. I made it to a bus station & am on my own. No princes. No knights. Glad you’re okay and your boy-friend, too.

Then the smile fades off my face. Because I have to call home. I have to warn Bex.

I punch in the sequence of numbers from memory.

A man’s voice picks up. My unfather. “Who is this?”

I watch the clock and the door, half-expecting Oak to come striding through and drag me back to the camp at sword’s point. I remind myself that I have the bridle, and that even if he was looking for me, he’d have no reason to look here.

“Can I speak with Bex, please?” I ask, keeping my voice steady.

For a long moment, my unfather is quiet, and I think he’s going to hang up. Then I hear him call for my unsister.

I bite my nails and watch the seconds tick by on the clock, watch the other people shuffle around the station.

She comes to the phone. “Yeah?”

“You have to listen to me,” I tell her, keeping my voice low so that the whole bus station doesn’t listen in. “You’re in trouble.”

She takes a sharp breath. “

” she yells, then she sounds muffled, like she has her hand over the speaker. “She called back. No, it’s .”

I panic, worried that she’s going to hang up. “Just hear me out. Before that monster comes for you.”

Listen to monster, not one.

“Mom wants to talk.”

I feel a little sick at the thought. “You. Just you. For now, at least. Please.”

Her voice goes distant, as though she’s speaking to someone other than me. “Wait. Yes, I’ll tell her.”

“Why did you go outside that night?” I ask.

There’s a pause, footsteps, then I hear a door close. “Okay, I’m away from them.”

I repeat my question, anxiety narrowing my focus to the gum on the floor, the smell of exhaust, the pinesap on my fingers, the sound of her sighs.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Bex says finally.

“You remember me?” I choke out.

“You lived with us for ,” she says, accusation creeping into her voice. “After you went back to your birth family, we hoped we’d hear . Mom used to cry on that made-up birthday she invented for you.”

I growl out the words. I know it wasn’t her fault, that she and Dad and Bex were glamoured. But how could I go back to them, make them face my monstrousness, allow them to reject me again?

I look at the clock. It’s nearly time for the bus to pull in.

Bex sounds angry. “That’s not true.”

I need to end this call. I pull the charging cord out of the wall and out of the base of the phone, then start to wind it up. Soon I will be on my way north. Soon I will be cold inside and out.

“You met the storm hag,” I say. “You know that whatever story you heard can’t be the whole of it. And you know that I was adopted, not a foster child any longer. I couldn’t just up and return to my birth parents, nor could they come and take me away. Think about it, and the story falls apart. Because it’s one that you were enchanted with to explain something unexplainable.”

There’s a silence from the other end, but I hear people in the background. I don’t think the door is closed anymore.

“I thought you were a ghost the first time I spotted you,” she says softly.

I feel foolish, thinking that no one saw me slipping in and out of the house. If you do anything for long enough, you’re bound to be caught. “When?”

“About six months ago. I was up late reading, and I saw something moving outside. When I looked, it was like seeing your spirit, back from the dead. But then I thought you were in some kind of trouble. And I started to wait for you.”

“And the milk,” I say. “You left out milk.”

“You aren’t human, are you?” She whispers the words, as though she’s embarrassed to say them aloud.

I think of my unmother’s surprise at hearing my voice. “Did you tell—”

“No!” she interrupts me. “How was I supposed to? I wasn’t even sure I saw. And they’re not happy with me right now.”

I look at the clock. The bus should be here. For a heart-stopping moment, I think that I’ve missed it, that time has jumped while I’ve been speaking with Bex. But a quick glance around shows me that none of the people waiting have moved from their seats.

, I tell myself.

But my heart keeps beating harder, and I shrink into myself, as though if I am still enough, anxiety will stop gnawing on my insides.

And if the bus is not the whole reason I feel the way that I do, it’s enough of it.

“Listen,” I say, my gaze going to the road, watching for headlights. “I don’t know how long I have, but if Bogdana knows where you are, it’s not safe. Fill your pockets with salt. Rowan berries will keep you from being glamoured by their magic. They hate cold-wrought iron. And they can’t lie.” I correct myself. “

We can’t lie.”

“What are—”

I hear cloth rustling and my unmother’s voice cutting off Bex. “Wren, I know you want to talk to your .” She emphasizes the word as though I am about to deny it. “But I have something quick to say. If you’re in some kind of trouble, we can help you. You just tell us what’s going on. Bex made it sound like you were living on the streets.”

I almost laugh at that. “I’m surviving.”

“That’s not enough.” She gives an enormous shaky sigh. “But even if it were, I’d like to see you. I’ve wondered how you were doing. What you were doing. If you had enough to eat. If you were warm.”

My eyes burn, but I can’t imagine being there, in their living room, wearing my true face. I would horrify them. Maybe they wouldn’t scream and shove me away at first, the way they did when they were enchanted, but it would quickly turn awful. I couldn’t be the child that they had loved.

Not after everything that happened to me. Not after learning that I am made of sticks and snow.

Headlights swing into view. I am already moving by the time I hear the squeal of brakes.

“I never needed to be warm,” I tell my unmother, my voice hard, full of the anger that has been gnawing at my insides for years.

“Wren,” she says, stung.

I feel as though I am about to weep, and I am not even sure why.

“Tell Bex to remember the salt, the rowan, and the iron,” I say, and hang up the phone, racing for the bus.

Only one person gets off, and then I get on, holding out my fake ticket to the driver and concentrating my magic on him.

, I plead with all the force I possess.

He nods in a distracted fashion, and I flee to the back of the bus, still holding the phone. A few more people board, including the man who was watching me so strangely. My feelings are too tangled up for me to pay any of them much attention.

Once Lady Nore is dead, or perhaps wearing the bridle, maybe I will speak with Bex and my unmother and unfather again. Maybe, if I knew I could keep them safe from Bogdana. If I knew I could keep them safe from me.

Leaning my cheek against the glass, I slip my hand into the folds of the scarf, just to have the reassuring feel of the bridle’s leather strap, to know I have a plan. I dig my fingers through the cloth, then reach around my body, scratching at my stomach, fresh panic flooding my chest.

The bridle isn’t there.

Outside the window, Titch sits on the gutter of the bus station, blinking at me with golden eyes.

The bus begins to roll forward. I try to tell myself that I can still get away. That perhaps the bus will drive faster than the creature can fly. That Oak and Tiernan will not be able to follow.

That’s when I hear a tire pop. The bus lurches to a stop, and I realize there is nowhere for me to go.