Page 23 of The Stolen Heir
I think of how my unparents were glamoured and hate this, even though he’s not asking her to do anything awful. Yet.
“Sure,” says the woman. “Not too many tourists this time of year; you’ll have most places to yourselves.”
The knight nods vaguely as the woman shoves a blank motel key into the machine.
She says something about how she still needs a card for incidentals, but a few words later, she’s forgotten all about that. Tiernan pays with bills that don’t have the suspiciously crisp look of glamoured leaves. I cut him a strange glance and pocket a matchbook.
Outside, our remaining horse stands on a patch of scrubby grass, glowing softly, eating a dandelion. No one seems inclined to tie Damsel up.
Oak sits on the bumper of a car, looking a bit better. Hyacinthe leans against a dirty stucco wall.
“That money,” I ask. “Was it real?”
“Oh, yes,” the prince confirms. “My sister would be wroth with us otherwise.”
“Wroth.” I echo the archaic word, although I know what it means. Pissed off.
“Superwroth,” he says with a grin.
To faeries, mortals are usually either irrelevant or entertainment. But I suppose his sister can be relegated to neither. Many of the Folk must hate her for that.
Tiernan leads us to our rooms—131 and 132. He opens the first and ushers us all inside. There are two twin beds, with scratchy-looking coverlets. A television sits on the wall over a saggy desk that’s been bolted to the floor, causing the carpet to be stained with small circles of rust around the screws. The heater is on, and the air smells vaguely of burning dust.
Hyacinthe stands beside the door, wing closed tight to his back. His gaze follows me, possibly to avoid resting on the knight.
Oak crawls onto the nearest bed but doesn’t shut his eyes. He smiles up at the ceiling instead. “We learned something of her capabilities.”
“And you want me to tell you that was worth you being poisoned?” the knight demands.
“I’m always being poisoned. Alas, that it wasn’t blusher mushroom,” the prince says nonsensically.
Tiernan nods his chin at me. “That girl thinks you’re a fool for even being here.”
I scowl, because that’s not what I meant.
“Ah, Lady Wren,” Oak says, a lazy smile on his mouth. Marigold hair brushing his forehead, half-hiding his horns. “You wound me.”
I doubt I hurt his feelings. His cheeks are still slashed from my nails, though. Three lines of dried blood, pink around the edges. Nothing he says is a lie, but all his words are riddles.
Tiernan kneels and starts to unbuckle the sides of Oak’s armor. “Give me a hand, will you?”
I squat on the other side of the prince, worried I am going to do something wrong. Oak’s gaze slants to me as, with fumbling fingers, I try to work off the scale mail where it has stuck to his wound. He makes a soft huff of pain, and I can see the way his lips are white at the edges, from being pressed together as he bites back whatever other sounds he wants to make.
Underneath, his stained linen shirt is pushed up over the flat plane of his stomach, the dip of his hip bones. His sweat carries the scent of crushed grass, but mostly he smells like blood. He watches me, lashes low over his eyes.
Without his golden armor, he almost looks like the boy I remember.
Tiernan gets up, gathering towels.
“How did Lady Nore know you were coming for me?” I ask, trying to distance myself from the strange intimacy of the moment, from the heat and nearness of his body.
If she’d sent both Bogdana and stick creatures, she must suddenly want me very much, after ignoring me for eight years.
Oak tries to sit up higher on the pillows and winces, a hectic flush on his cheeks. “She’s likely to have realized that asking you to come with me would be the clever thing to do,” he says. “Or she could have had spies that saw the direction in which we were headed when we left Elfhame.”
Tiernan nods toward Hyacinthe from the bathroom, where he’s soaking cloth under steaming water from the tap. “Spies like him, I imagine.”
I frown at the bridled former falcon.