Page 45 of The Stolen Heir

I shake my head. “I said I wasn’t coming. I’ll keep the guards busy. Can you find your way out from here?”

He nods, briefly. He’s a soldier, hopefully trained for situations not totally unlike this. Then he frowns. “If you stay behind, you will be in great danger,” he tells me.

“I’m not going,” I say.

“He won’t forgive you for this.”

If Oak discovers what I’ve done, Hyacinthe is probably right. But I still have to face Lady Nore or she will hunt me down. Nothing about this changes that.

“You swore to me,” I remind him, although his words echo my fears. “Moments ago. What I ask is for you to get yourself and Gwen out of the Court of Moths alive. And get the merrow to the sea cave. It’s on the way.”

“Send me north, to Lady Nore, then,” Hyacinthe tells me, almost whispering. “Should you make it there, at least you’ll have an ally.”

“And that is why you ought not dramatically vow to obey someone,” I say, a growl in my voice. “They seldom ask for what you hope they will.”

“I know about faeries and bargains,” Gwen says to me, foolishly. “You’re going to ask something from me, too, right?”

I look her over. I hadn’t planned on asking for anything, but that was unwise. She probably has little on her, but her clothes and sneakers would allow me to pass into the mortal world more easily, if I had to do so. And there are other things. “Do you have a phone?”

Gwen appears surprised. “I thought you would ask for a year of my life, or a cherished memory, or my voice.”

What would I do with any of that? “Would you prefer to give me a year of your life?”

“I guess not.” Gwen reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone, along with a plug-in charger she detaches from a key chain. “There’s no reception here.”

“When you and Hyacinthe get to safety, let me know,” I say, taking it. The metal-and-glass object is light in my hand. I haven’t held one in a long time.

“I was going to call my boyfriend,” she tells me. “Once, he picked up, and I could hear their music in the background. If he calls—”

“I’ll tell him to get out,” I say. “Now hide, and when they come in, you leave.”

Hyacinthe gives me a speaking look as he guides the mortal toward the darkness.

It is the merrow that takes my hand. “Lady of the land,” he says, voice even raspier than mine, skin chilly. “The only gift I have to give you is knowledge. There is a war coming in the waves. The Queen of the Undersea has grown weak, and her child is weaker. When there comes blood in the water, the land would be well served to stay away. Cirien-Cròin is coming.”

Then he lurches toward the water barrel.

And at his warning, I walk to the copper-banded door and turn the knob. I still feel wobbly and breathless, as though I have cast off a long fever. No breaking of a curse ever felt like this before, and it frightens me.

But the bauchan and the rose-haired knight on the other side scare me even more. At the sight of me, she reaches for her sword, which I note she retrieved. I hope that means that Jack of the Lakes dropped it and not that he was caught.

“How did you—” the bauchan begins.

I cut them off with the firmest voice I can summon. “The cursed soldier—the prince’s prisoner—he’s not in his cell!” Which is true enough, since I let him out.

“That doesn’t explain whatyou’redoing where you’re not supposed to be,” the rose-haired knight says.

“When I came, there was no one guarding the entrance,” I say, letting that accusation hang in the air.

The rose-haired knight strides past me impatiently, a blush coloring her cheeks. She stalks to the end of the prison where Hyacinthe ought to be. I follow, carefully keeping my gaze from the shadows.

“Well?” I say, hand on my hip.

The panic in their eyes tells me that Queen Annet has earned her reputation for brutality honestly.

“The girl,” the rose-haired knight says, realizing the human is gone, too.

“And thespyfrom the Undersea.” The bauchan speaks a word to open the merrow’s cell, then walks around it. Letting all the prisoners out has confused their suppositions about what happened, at least.

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