Page 36 of The Stolen Heir

He looks at me with trickster eyes beneath arched golden brows. “Not unless you scratch me again.”

“Why do youwantto help him?” I ask. Madoc had been willing to use Oak as a path to power, at the least.

“He’s my father,” he says, as though that should be enough.

“I am going north for the sole purpose of destroying my parent, and you’ve never seemed to think I would so much as hesitate,” I remind him.

“Madoc is not the father of my blood,” he says. “He’s the person who raised me. He’s mydad. And yes, fine, he’s complicated. He always craved conquest. Not even power, really, but the fight itself. Maybe because he was a redcap, or maybe it’s just how he was, but it’s like a compulsion.”

I am not sure it makes it better, to think of it as a compulsion.

“Strategy was dinner-table conversation. It was game play. It was everything. From the minute he met my mother and learned who sired me, learned that I could be the heir to Elfhame, he couldn’t help scheming.

“After he got exiled to the mortal world, stuck with that geas that kept him from picking up a weapon, he was completely at a loss. Started working shifts at a slaughterhouse just for the smell of blood. Trained me in the combat he was barred from. Got involved in playing politics with the neighbors in his apartment building. Had them all at each other’s throats inside of a month. Last I heard, one of the old ladies stabbed a young guy in the neck with a pen.”

Oak shakes his head, but it’s clear he loves Madoc, even knowing he’s a monster. “It’s his nature. I can’t deny that he brought an army to Elfhame’s shores. He’s the reason Folk were killed. He made himself an enemy of the High Court. He would havemurderedCardan if he’d had a chance. And so, no matter how much my sister loves our dad, she can’t ask her sworn subjects to help him. It would look terrible, to ask Folk to risk their lives for his when he put them in danger. But someone has to do it or he’s going to die.”

Now I am paying attention to what he doesn’t say. “Did shetellyou she wanted to help him?”

“No,” he admits slowly.

“And does she wantyouto help him?”

He’s caught and knows it. “Jude didn’t know what I was planning, but if I were to guess how she’s feeling right now—I’d go with enraged. But Madoc would have come for us if we were the ones that were trapped.”

I’ve seen the High Queen angry, and no matter how she loves him, I am not sure she will forgive choosing their father over her. When she punishes the prince, though Oak believes otherwise, she will very probably punish those who helped him, too.

But when he reaches for my hand, I take it and feel the nervous, awful pleasure of his fingers threading through mine. “Trust me, Wren,” he says. “Help me.”

Love-talker.

Schemer.

My gaze goes to the scratches on his cheek, still raw-looking. My doing, for which he has not rebuked me. However secretive his nature, however foolish his reasons for loving his father, I like that he does. “I’ll come with you,” I say. “For now.”

“I’m glad.” The prince looks out at the hall, at the Gentry of the Court of Moths, at the dances and the revelry. Then he gives me his quicksilver smile, the kind that makes me feel as though we are friends conspiring together. “Since you’re in a benevolent mood, perhaps you’ll also dance with me.”

My surprise must be evident.“Why?”

He grins. “To celebrate you continuing with this quest. Because we’re at a party. So that Queen Annet believes we’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Do we have something to hide?” I ask.

He smiles wider, giving me a tug toward the revelers. “Always.”

I hesitate, but there is a part of me that wants to be convinced. “I don’t know how.”

“I have been trained in all the arts of the courtier,” he says. “Let me show you.”

I allow him to lead me into the crowd. Instead of going into one of the circle dances, though, he steers me to one side of them, so that we have room to practice. Turns me in his arms and shows me a movement, waiting for me to mirror it.

“Do you ever think about what it would be like to be a queen again?” he whispers against my cheek as we practice the steps.

I pull away to glare at him.

He holds up his hands in surrender. “It wasn’t meant to be a trick question.”

“You’re the one that’s going to rule,” I remind him.