Page 53 of The Stolen Heir
Queen Annet snorts. “Brave little traitor.”
“How did you persuade Jack to help you?” Oak asks, voice soft. “Did he truly do it for the game piece? I would have paid him more silver than that to tell me what you intended.”
“For his pride,” I say.
Oak nods. “All my mistakes are coming home to me.”
“And the mortal girl?” asks Queen Annet. “Why interfere with her fate? Why the merrow?”
“He was dying without water. And Gwen was only trying to save her lover.” I may be in the wrong by the rules of Faerie, but when it comes to Gwen, at least, I am right by any other measure.
“Mortals are liars,” the Unseelie queen says with a snort.
“That doesn’t mean everything they say is a lie,” I return. My voice shakes, but I force myself to keep speaking. “Do you have a boy here, a musician, who has not returned to the mortal world in days, and yet through enchantment believes far less time has passed?”
“And if I have?” Queen Annet says, as close to an admission as I am likely to get. “Liar or no, you will take her place. You have wronged the Court of Moths, and we will have it out of your skin.”
I shiver all over, unable to stop myself.
Oak’s gaze goes to the Unseelie queen, his jaw set. Still, when he speaks, his voice is light. “I’m afraid you can’t have her.”
“Oh, can’t I?” asks Queen Annet in the tone of someone who has murdered most of her past lovers and is prepared to murder again if provoked.
His grin broadens, that charming smile, with which he could coax ducks to bring their own eggs to him for his breakfast. With which he could make delicate negotiations over a prisoner seem like nothing more than a game. “As annoyed as you may be over the loss of Hyacinthe, it is I who will be inconvenienced by it. Wren may have stolen him from your prisons, but he was stillmyprisoner. Not to say that you weren’t a wronged party.” He shrugs apologetically. “But surely we could get you another mortal or merrow, if not something better.”
Honey-mouthed. I think of how he’d spoken to that ogre in the brugh, how he could have used this tone on him but didn’t. It appears to work on the Unseelie queen. She looks mollified, her mouth losing some of its angry stiffness.
It’s a frightening power to have a voice like that.
She smiles. “Let us have a contest. If you win, I return herandthe kelpie. If you fail, I keep them both, andyouas well, until such time as Elfhame ransoms you.”
“What sort of contest?” he asks, intrigued.
“I present you with a choice,” she tells him. “We can play a game of chance in which we have equal odds. Or you can duel my chosen champion and bet on your own skill.”
A strange gleam comes into his fox eyes. “I choose the duel.”
“And I shall fight in your stead,” Tiernan says.
Queen Annet opens her mouth to object, but Oak speaks first. “No. I’ll do it. That’s what she wants.”
I take a half step toward him. She must have heard of his poor performance the night before. He’s still got the bruise as evidence. “A duel isn’t a contest,” I say, cautioning. “It’s not a game.”
“Of course it is,” Oak replies, and I am reminded once again that he is used to being the beloved prince, for whom everything is easy. I don’t think he realizes this won’t be the polite sort of duel they fought in Elfhame, with plenty of time for crying off and lots of deference given. No one here will feign being overcome. “To first blood?”
“Hardly.” Queen Annet laughs, proving all I feared. “We are Unseelie. We want a bit more fun than that.”
“To thedeath, then?” he asks, sounding as though the idea is ridiculous.
“Your sister would have my head if you lost yours,” says Queen Annet. “But I think we can agree that you shall duel until one of you cries off. What weapon will you have?”
The prince’s hand goes to his side, where his needle of a sword rests. He puts his hand on the ornate hilt. “Rapier.”
“A pretty little thing,” she says, as though he proposed dueling with a hairpin.
“Are you certain it’s a fight you want?” Oak asks, giving Queen Annet a searching look. “We could play a different sort of game of skill—a riddle contest, a kissing contest? My father used to tell me that once begun, a battle was a living thing and no one could control it.”
Tiernan presses his mouth into a thin line.