Page 13 of The Stolen Heir

A woolen cloak of deep green was clasped at his throat, long enough to sit on. Underneath, he wore a brown tunic with golden buttons and knee-length trousers, stopping just above where his goat legs curved. I could not think of a single thing I had that he could want.

“It’s not poisoned,” he said, as though that was my worry.

Temptation won out. I grabbed a wing, tearing at the flesh. I ate it down to the bone, which I cracked so I could get at the marrow. He watched in fascination.

“My sisters were telling fairy tales,” Oak said. “They fell asleep, but I didn’t.”

That explainednothingabout his reasons for coming here, but his words gave me a strange, sharp pain in my chest. After a moment, I recognized it as envy. For having sisters. For having stories.

“Do you talk?” he asked, and I realized how long I’d been silent. I had been a shy child in the mortal world, and in Faerie nothing good had ever come from my speaking.

“Not much,” I admitted, and when he smiled, I smiled back.

“Do you want to play a game?” He shuffled closer, eyes bright. Reaching into his pocket, he produced some little metal figures. Three silver foxes resting in the middle of his callused palm. Inset chips of peridot sparkled in their eyes.

I stared at him in confusion. Had he really come all this way to sit in the dirt and show me his toys? Maybe he hadn’t seen another kid in a while, either.

I picked up one of the foxes to examine it. The detail work was very fine. “How do we play?”

“You throw them.” He formed a cage of his hands with the foxes inside, shook it up, and then tossed them into the grass. “If they land standing, you get ten points. If they land on their backs, you get five points. If they land on their side, no points.”

His landed: two lying on their sides, and one on its back.

I reached out eagerly. I wanted to hold those foxes, feel them fall from my fingers.

When they did and two landed on their backs, I gasped in delight.

Over and over, we played the game. We made tally marks in the dirt.

For a while, there was only the joy of escaping from where I was and who I was. But then I remembered that as little as he might want from me, there was plenty I needed.

“Let’s play for stakes,” I proposed.

He looked intrigued. “What will you bet?”

I was not so foolish as to ask for anything much that first time. “If you lose, you tell me a secret. Any secret. And I will do the same for you.”

We played, and I lost.

He leaned in, close enough for me to smell the sage and rosemary his clothes had been wrapped with before he wore them, close enough to bite out a chunk of flesh from his throat.

“I grew up in the mortal lands,” I said.

“I’ve been there.” He seemed amused to discover we had something in common. “And eaten pizza.”

It was hard to imagine a prince of Faerie journeying to the human world for anything but a sinister reason, but eating pizza didn’t seem that sinister.

We played again, and this time he lost. His smile dimmed, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “This is areal secret. You can’t tell anyone. When I was little, I glamoured my mortal sister. I made her hit herself, a lot of times, over and over, and I laughed while she did. It was awful of me, and I never told her that I regretted it. I am afraid of making her remember. She might get really mad.”

I wondered which sister he’d glamoured. I hoped not the one who sat on a throne now, his life in her hands.

His words stood as a reminder, though, that no matter how soft he seemed or how young, he was as capable of cruelty as the rest. But cruel or not, his help could still be won. My gaze went to the stake to which I was bound. “This time, if my score is better, you cut the rope and free me. Ifyourscore is better, you can . . . ask me to do something, anything, and I will.”

A desperate bargain for me, but hope had made me reckless.

He frowned. “If I free you,” he said, “what happens then?”

He must have wondered if I had been tied here because I wasdangerous. Maybe he wondered if, once free, I would run at him and hurt him. I supposed he was not so stupid after all. But if he wanted me to swear myself into his service, I could not.