Page 62 of The Stolen Heir

I discover one a few yards away that seems as though it could be partially rotted, but I drag it back anyway. Oak has caused another to bend helpfully, through some magic. I begin to tear the skirt of my dress into strips, trying not to think of how much I liked it. “Tie with this,” I say, going to work on the other end.

Once they’re in place, I use smaller sticks as ribs, stacking them to make a roof and then piling that with moss and leaves.

It is far from waterproof, but it’s something. He’s shivering by the time we crawl inside. Outside, the wind howls and thunder booms. I drag in a large log and start stripping away the bark to get at the drier wood within.

Seeing the slowness of my progress, he reaches into his boot and takes out a knife, then hands it over. “Don’t make me regret giving you this.”

“She wanted to delay you,” I say softly, aware that he probably doesn’t want to hear my justification.

“Queen Annet?” he asks. “I know.”

“And you think she almost managed it because of me?” I ask. The insides of the log are drier, and I arrange the pieces I chip off on the stones in a pyramid shape, trying to keep the worst of the water off them.

He pushes wet hair out of his eyes, which are that strange fox color. Like gold that has been cut with copper. “I think you could have told me what you intended to do.”

I give him a look of utter disbelief.

“Hyacinthe told you something about me, didn’t he?” Oak asks.

I shiver, despite not being affected by the cold. “He said that you had a kind of magic where you couldmakepeople like you.”

Oak makes an exasperated sound. “Is that what you believe?”

“That you inherited an uncanny ability to put people at ease, to convince them to go along with your desires? Should I not?”

His eyebrows go up. For a moment, he’s quiet. All around us the rain falls. The thunder seems to have moved off. “My first mother, Liriope, died before I was born. After she was poisoned—at Prince Dain’s orders—Oriana cut open her belly to save me. People do say that Liriope was a gancanagh, and her love-talking was how she caught the eye of the High King and his son, but it’s not as though that power was much use to her. She paid for that charm with her life.”

At my silence, he answers the question I did not ask. “Blusher mushroom. You remain conscious the whole time as your body slows and then stops. I was born with it in my veins, if you can call being torn out of your dead mother a birth.”

“And Liriope and Prince Dain—”

“Were my dam and sire,” he agrees. I knew that he was some part of the Greenbriar line, but I hadn’t known the details. With that horrifying legacy, I suppose I can understand how Madoc would seem an admirable father, how he would adore the mother who rescued and raised him. “Whatever power I have of Liriope’s, I don’t use it.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Maybe you can’t help it. Maybe you do it without knowing.”

He gives me a slow smile, as though I’ve just confessed to something. “I suppose you want to believe I charmed you into kissing me?”

I turn away, shame heating my face. “I could have done it to distract you.”

“So long as you know thatyoudid it,” he says.

I frown at the mud, wondering how far he would have gone had I not pulled away. Would he have taken me to bed, loathing in his heart? Could I even tell? “You also—”

The sound of footsteps stops me. Tiernan stands in front of our lean-to, blinking at us in the downpour. “You’re alive.”

The knight staggers into the shelter, collapsing onto the ground. His cloak is singed.

“What happened?” Oak asks, checking his arm. I can see where the skin is red, but no worse.

“Lightning, very close to where I was waiting.” Tiernan shivers. “That storm isn’t natural.”

“No,” agrees Oak.

I think on Bogdana’s final words.I will come for you again. And when I do, you best not run.

“If we make it to the market tomorrow and get our ship,” Tiernan tells Oak, “we can seek the Undersea’s aid to take us through the Labrador Sea swiftly and without incident.”

“The merrow told me—” I begin, and then stop, because both of them are staring at me.