Page 49 of The Stolen Heir

He turned toward my voice. “Suren?” he called again. “Is that you?”

Oak wore a blue vest with silver frogging in place of buttons. Beneath was a fine linen shirt. His hooves had silver caps that matched two silver hoops at the very top of one pointed ear. Butter-blond hair threaded with dark gold blew around his face.

I glanced down at myself. My feet were bare and dark with filth. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I washed my dress. A bloodstain marred the cloth near my waist, from where I’d snagged my arm on a thorn. Grass stains on the skirt, near my knees. I recalled him finding me staked to a post, tied like an animal outside the camp of the Court of Teeth. I could not bear more of his pity.

“It’s me,” I called. “Now go away.”

“But I’ve only just found you. And I want to talk.” He sounded as though he meant it. As though he considered us friends, even after all this time.

“What will you give me if I do, Prince of Elfhame?”

He flinched at the title. “The pleasure of my company?”

“Why?” Though it was not a friendly question, I was honestly puzzled.

He was a long time in answering. “Because you’re the only person I know who was ever a royal, like me.”

“Not like you,” I called.

“You ran away,” he said. “I want to run away.”

I shifted into a more comfortable position. It wasn’t that I’d run. I hadn’t had anywhere else but here to go. My fingers plucked at a piece of grass. He had everything, didn’t he? “Why?” I asked again.

“Because I am tired of people trying to assassinate me.”

“I would have thought they’d prefer you on the throne to your sister.” Killing him didn’t seem as though it would accomplish anything useful to anyone. He was replaceable. If Jude wanted another heir, she could have a baby. She was human; she could probably have a lot of babies.

He pressed the toe of his hoof into the dirt, digging restlessly at the edge of a root. “Well, some people want to protect Cardan because they believe that Jude means to murder him and think my not being around would discourage it. Others believe that eliminating me is a good first step to eliminating her.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“Can’t you just come out so we can talk?” The prince turned, frowning, looking for me in the trees and shrubs.

“You don’t need to see me for that,” I told him.

“Fine.”He sat among the leaves and moss, balancing his cheek on a bent knee. “Someone tried to kill me. Again. Poison. Again. Someone else tried to recruit me into a scheme where we would kill my sister and Cardan, so I could rule in their place. When I told them no,theytried to kill me. With a knife, that time.”

“A poisoned knife?”

He laughed. “No, just a regular one. But it hurt.”

I sucked in a breath. When he said there had been attempts, I assumed that meant they’d been prevented in some way, not that he merelyhadn’t died.

He went on. “So I am going to run away from Faerie. Like you.”

That’s not how I’d thought of myself, as a runaway. I was someone with nowhere to go. Waiting until I was older. Or less afraid. Or more powerful. “The Prince of Elfhame can’t up anddisappear.”

“They’d probably be happier if he did,” he told me. “I’m the reason my father is in exile. The reason my mother married him in the first place. My one sister and her girlfriend had to take care of me when I was little, even though they were barely more than kids themselves. My other sister almost got killed lots of times to keep me safe. Things will be easier without me around. They’ll see that.”

“Theywon’t,” I told him, trying to ignore the intense surge of envy that came with knowing he would be missed.

“Let me stay in your woods with you,” he said with a huff of breath.

I imagined it. Having him share tea with me and Mr. Fox. I could show him the places to pick the sweetest blackberries. We would eat burdock and red clover and parasol mushrooms. At night we would lie on our backs and whisper together. He would tell me about the constellations, about theories of magic, and the plots of television shows he’d seen while in the mortal world. I would tell him all the secret thoughts of my heart.

For a moment, it seemed possible.

But eventually they would come for him, the way that Lady Nore and Lord Jarel came for me. If he was lucky, it would be his sister’s guards dragging him back to Elfhame. If he wasn’t, it would be a knife in the dark from one of his enemies.