Page 22 of The Prisoner's Throne
“I’m not dying,” the prince snaps, but the fox scampers off, sliding between the trees. At first his bright coat gives him away, but then the leaves become scarlet and gold and withered brown. They fall in a great gust that seems to whirl around the prince. And in the shiver of the boughs, Oak hears laughter.
CHAPTER
6
Oak isn’t sure how long he has lain on the cold stone tiles, dropping in and out of consciousness. He dreams of hunting snakes that glisten with gems as they whip through the night, of girls made of ice whose kisses cool his burns. Several times, he thinks he ought to crawl toward his blanket, but just contemplating the idea of moving hurts his head.
Whatever the prince thought of himself before, however skilled he claimed to be at evading traps and laughing in the face of danger, he isn’t laughing now. He’d have been better off sitting in his cell and waiting. He’d have been better off if he ran out into the snow. He took a chance and lost, lostspectacularly, which is just about all he can say to his credit—at least it was spectacular.
It is the shift of shadows that causes him to realize someone is standing outside his cell. Feverishly, he looks up. For a moment, her face swims in front of him, and he thinks she must be part of another nightmare.
Bogdana.
The storm hag looms tall, her hair a wild mane around her head. She peers at him with black eyes that shine like chips of wet onyx.
“Prince Oak, our most honored guest. I was afraid you might have died in there,” she says, kicking a tray beneath the door of his cell with her foot. On it rests a bowl of watery soup with scales Boating on top, beside a carafe of sour-smelling wine. He has no doubt she selected the food personally.
“Well, hello,” Oak says. “What an unexpected visit.”
She smiles down in malicious glee. “You seem unwell. I thought a simple meal might be to your liking.”
He pushes himself into a sitting position, ignoring how it makes his head pound. “How long was I out?” He isn’t even sure how he got to the prisons. Had Straun been forced to carry him here, once Valen realized he wasn’t going to wake anytime soon? Had Valen brought him back, in case he never woke?
“Somewhere you need to be, Prince of Elfhame?” Bogdana asks him.
“Of course not.” Oak’s hand goes to his chest. The burn by his throat is scabbed over. He can feel the wild beat of his heart beneath his palm. He couldn’t have been unconscious long since Wren hadn’t sent anyone to drag him before her Court for a whipping.
Bogdana’s smile widens. “Good. Because I came to tell you that I will gut every servant you conscript, should you try to use one to escape your cell again.”
“I didn’t—” he begins.
She gives a harsh laugh, something that is half a snarl. “The huldu girl? You cannot truly expect me to believe you don’t have her eating out of your hand. That you didn’t put her under your spell?”
“You think Fernwaif helped me escape?” he snaps, incredulous.
“Feeling remorseful now, when it’s too late?” The storm hag’s lip curls. “You knew the risk when you used her.”
“The girl did nothing.” Fernwaif, who believed in romance, despite living in Lady Nore’s Citadel. Who he hoped was still alive. “I got the key from Straun, and that’s because he’s a fool, not because I conscripted him.”
Bogdana watches Oak’s expression, drawing out the moment. “Suren interceded on Fernwaif’s behalf. She’s safe from me, for the moment.”
Oak lets out a breath. “I shall be as unpleasant to the servants of the Citadel as you like hereafter. Now I hope our business is concluded.”
Bogdana frowns down at him. “Our business won’t be concluded until the Greenbriars have repaid their debt to me.”
“With our lives, blah, blah, I know.” Pain and despair have made the prince reckless.
The storm hag’s eyes are bright with reflected light. Her nails tap against the iron of the bars as though contemplating shoving her hand inside and slashing him with them. “You desire something from Suren, don’t you, prince? Perhaps it’s that you aren’t used to being rejected and it’s not sitting well with you. Perhaps you see the greatness in her and want to ruin it. Perhaps you truly are drawn to her. Any which way, it will make the moment she bites out your throat all the sweeter.”
Oak cannot help thinking of his dream and the fox walking beside him, prophesying his doom. Cannot help thinking of other things. “She’s bitten me before, you know,” he says with a grin. “It wasn’t so bad.”
Bogdana looks satisfyingly infuriated by the comment. “I am glad you’re still locked up tight, little bait,” she tells him, eyes flashing. “Were you less useful, I would flay your skin from your bones. I would hurt you in ways you cannot imagine.” There is a hunger in her words that unnerves him.
“Someone beat you to that.” Oak leans back onto the pillow of his own arm.
“You’re still breathing,” says the storm hag.
“If you were actually worried I was dead,” he says, recalling the first thing she said to him when she came to his cell, “I must have looked pretty bad.”
