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Gwyn leaned back in the high-backed chair and smiled darkly. The Raven Prince looked around the room and blinked at the charms hanging from the ceilings, those hanging from the top of the window frame, yet more had been placed in tiny alcoves gouged out of the wood of the cabin. Little rainbows refracted through crystals dotted almost every piece of furniture in the room.
‘You’ve always done things to excess,’ the Raven Prince said, raising an eyebrow.
Gwyn looked at it all and shrugged. ‘Your excess is entirely conservative from my view. Now, my teacher, why are you here?’
‘You’re my student,’ the Raven Prince said, trailing his fingers along the velvety pelt of a seal resting on the back of a couch. ‘Tell me you have not hunted some selkie for this.’
‘Because you so hate bloodshed. I eat fae, my teacher, what did you expect? You may find it abhorrent, but then you can take language from the throats of many with a twist of your hand. And that, I think, is repulsive. So, you’re here because I’m your student? That seems tiresome. You don’t have to visit to remind yourself of that.’
‘I didn’t come here to have you give me this attitude,’ the Raven Prince said, staring at him, black eyes churning up sparks of outrage. ‘Remember that I have taken your language before, and that I could take it again, beast.’
Gwyn’s shoulders stiffened, he stood, used his size and lean wiry bulk to take up more of the space in the room. He knew it was as crass as any animal who raised their furs or feathers to look more threatening, but Gwyn could not help what he was.
The Raven Prince moved around the open room again. He walked over to a wall upon which giant maps were hung, his fingers tracing across the parchment. He looked in wonder, and Gwyn felt flush with pride. The Raven Prince was not one for praise or compliments, but he showed his pleasure with Gwyn’s work in other ways, and this was one of them.
‘I need a map,’ the Raven Prince said, his voice soft and almost dreamlike. ‘A map of a place I cannot reach. I cannot access it at all. I need to know what it is.’
‘There is a place you cannot reach? That I can?’
‘You are the forager, the explorer, and I have angered another Mage. I cannot tread upon his territory. But you can.’
‘I’m not sure I want to,’ Gwyn said. ‘Are you commanding me as my King? Or as my teacher? Or is this a request? I’m a fully-fledged Mage now, and though you know worlds more than I do in some arenas, you still could not tell me all the ingredients that went into those inks there, nor what all of these charms do.’
‘Living alone has turned you surly,’ the Raven Prince said.
‘I’m very sure that I was always surly,’ Gwyn laughed. ‘The only difference now is that you’re unused to it, as I am unused to appearing softer in your presence. But you know that I am this, and if you wanted me for the pleasure of my company, you’d frequent more often.’
‘Now, now,’ the Raven Prince mocked, ‘don’t be sour. It’s not my fault that I prefer refined company, and not the snuffling of shit-scenting hounds.’
Gwyn grimaced, said nothing at all. The Raven Prince had started comparing him to dogs the day that Gwyn had been adopted into the Unseelie Court as nothing more than a small child. Back then, he was the ‘unruly pup.’ Then he’d become the King’s guard dog. The mad shuck. Now, was he the lone wolf?
‘So you want me to risk myself, because you do not wish to risk yourself? Have I got the right of it?’
‘Yes,’ the Raven Prince said, his teeth white and his smile humourless. ‘That’s it exactly. I want to send my dog out coursing, and then I want you to tell me the lay of the land. It will be dangerous.’
‘What sort of map? Topographical?’ Gwyn said, baiting him.
‘You know what I want,’ the Raven Prince said, falling for it, and then making a sound of impatience. They had always been at odds. Both of them wild creatures, ruling entirely different areas of the world and its landscapes. But Gwyn benefitted from the Raven Prince’s cerebral and avid approach to magic, and the Raven Prince had once admitted that he benefitted from the raw, instinctive nature of Gwyn’s power. Their magic clashed side by side, but when combined, they had done such great things together.
‘How soon do you want this map?’
‘Would it anger you if I asked you why you were even still here? And not out there, doing my bidding?’
‘It would, except that you haven’t told me where I’m supposed to be going. So perhaps you’re just angering yourself now, my teacher.’
The Raven Prince raised his hand in a meaningful gesture and Gwyn grit his teeth in anger and fear both. He braced himself, watched the flick of fingers, and pressed a hand to his throat.
‘Oh no, no, I doubt you’ll realise what I’ve taken until you really need it,’ the Raven Prince said. ‘I trust you’ll have your wits about you? I want you to go to the Lightwash Delta. You’ve heard of it?’
‘Heard of it?’ Gwyn said, his hands clenching into fists. ‘That’s Taronis’ land, and he can use my light against me! You think I’m going to go into his personal realm, that he twisted up himself out of physics, and map it for you, perhaps you’ve gotten me confused with-’
‘You have ever been arrogant,’ the Raven Prince said, stalking towards him, poking a hard claw into his sternum and looking up at him. ‘I don’t care what you want, you’re going to do it. I command you as your King, demand it as your teacher, and request it as an afterthought. I didn’t take on a student so that they could treat me like this when I needed something.’
‘If you wanted an errand boy, you should have gotten one of those.’
‘Why bother, when I can just make you do it?’
Gwyn growled at him, and the Raven Prince laughed at him, which made Gwyn feel not so much ashamed, but impotent with fury.
‘What language have you taken from me?’ Gwyn snapped.
‘I think it’s quite telling that you actually can’t decipher it for yourself just yet. Now, I want this map, Gwyn. The sooner, the better. I see no reason why you can’t leave tonight.’
‘You wouldn’t, would you?’ Gwyn said, walking to the doorway and picking up his staff, where it leaned looking nothing more like a crude walking stick.
With that, he teleported away, leaving the Raven Prince in his home. He carried nothing more with him than the clothes on his back and his staff in his hand, bare-footed. He needed no more with which to cast his magic nor to explore the land.
He stood at the bounds of the Lightwash Delta and frowned at the coruscations of light shimmering in front of it, a veil that was as much an aurora, a place that shouldn’t exist. It jarred at him, needled at his own vicious light.
It didn’t matter. He had to do what the Raven Prince commanded him to do.
He took a deep breath and walked forwards.
*
During the first week of exploration, Gwyn was left alone. He wandered through forests made of trees with white trunks and golden leaves, a gleaming light turning everything mellifluous around him. Even the grass was creamy pale, and Gwyn had to wonder how much of Taronis’ magic went to simply keeping this place alive, given the perversions he’d committed upon nature to make it work.
As time passed, Gwyn could see that the magic was in the landscape itself, and no longer needed Taronis’ direct hand to survive.
Streamlets babbled and chuckled cheerfully on their way down to the delta, which was shored with white sands that squeaked underfoot, water that ran clear, giant oysters clinging to the base of granite outcrops, no doubt giant pearls inside each one. It was low tide then, and Gwyn’s mouth hungered to try one, to see if they would be fat and sweet and juicy. But it was one thing to simply walk across a landscape, quite another to take the food that belonged there.
He didn’t need to sleep, because he was Inner Court status, and even though the Raven Prince didn’t want him on his Inner Court or as part of his personal coterie, the Raven Prince still consulted with him from time to time. Besides, Gwyn preened to think that the Raven Prince wanted him to stay alive so much that he’d award him such a high status, knowing that he’d be almost impossible to kill.
He spent his nights and days prowling, mentally mapping out sites of significance and then murmuring them all into a tiny piece of white stone he’d picked up off the floor. His charms allowed him to preserve almost any object as a recording device, and he could keep it unobtrusively on his person. A handful of gravel in his pocket, and it only looked like the kind of grit one might pick up while travelling.
There were a few plinths and pillars scattered around the place that echoed of Taronis’ magical signature. Gwyn noted the location of each one, but never went onto the flat planes of marble or lapis lazuli, didn’t dare go any closer. He could feel them singing to his blood. At least one or two were designed for celestial matters of the constellations, and there was one sundial which exerted such a powerful force over him that he spent the rest of the afternoon feeling drunk on mead and stumbling through the forest until he could get away from its power. Whatever Taronis did there, it was immense and overwhelming and it made his light shriek beneath his skin.
He moved closer and closer to a tower that looked like an immense white tusk jutting from the land. As he wandered north, he felt its pull, felt a star of feeling inside of him expand and contract, expand and contract, even fiercer than his heart.
The Raven Prince had said it would be dangerous, and Gwyn knew that it was already. Now that he’d been here, he wasn’t sure that the rest of the fae world would ever feel the same. Would he ache for golden leaves and honeyed light when he left? Would the rest of the world seem dull and flat?
Flat slabs of pale, glittering stone began to appear, and as Gwyn walked across them, his spine tingled and shivered, his light fluttered through him like a gentle bird.
More and more slabs appeared as he approached the tusk tower, igniting his light, until finally Gwyn’s skin was glowing and he could see it himself. It was white-gold, and he could see the faintest outline of his bones and blood vessels, the former looking dark and the latter pale and pink.
He examined himself, his health, found nothing amiss, and kept forging forward, unable to disguise himself any longer.
It was a rose skied morning when the stone slabs resolved into a giant flat plateau circling the tusk tower, which jutted so high that Gwyn wasn’t sure he could make out the top. The shadow of it was sharp, a spine of darkness amongst the muted golden shadows. Up close, he could see that it did look like some kind of tusk, though it couldn’t have been, for no creature that large had ever existed. Vertical furrows were carved or worn naturally into the sides, and Gwyn could see no windows, no places that might let in light. He could see no doors. In fact, now that he stood before it, glowing, his light more activated than it ever had been in his life, he wasn’t sure it was a building so much as another sculpture.
He’d been sure it was a building, a place where Taronis resided.
His footsteps were silent as he walked to the tusk tower, his fingers tender as he touched it. The material felt sun warmed and porous, and he pressed his ear to it, sending out tendrils of magic. It was hollow on the inside, it was a building. He could feel Taronis’ magic everywhere, sharp and unpleasant, like burrs sticking to his clothing.
Taronis had been one of the Thirteen Mages – the Principal of Light – of the School of the Staff when Gwyn had apprenticed to the Raven Prince, and he was still one of the Thirteen now. Mercurial, mean-spirited, and extremely powerful. Gwyn had never had him as a teacher, because Taronis had refused to teach him, pettily deciding that Gwyn didn’t have the right to know the secrets of celestial light until Taronis himself deemed Gwyn worthy. But Taronis had never deemed him worthy, and the gleam in his eyes every time they saw each other suggested that Taronis enjoyed the game of withholding his wisdom and knowledge about Gwyn’s own light.
Gwyn’s skin now prickled unpleasantly and he backed away from the tower, and then crouched to the stone, staring at it warily. His nostrils flared, he snuffed at the air around him and crept further backwards, his hands poised on the floor, his legs tensed to spring. There was a growing magical signature, and Gwyn couldn’t hide in the bushes or shrubs or leaf litter while he glowed bright like this. Another Mage might have put their hand on their staff, but Gwyn preferred to keep his hands on the ground, ready to pounce or act if necessary.
A ball of light coalescing into form, and Taronis appeared in the shadow of the tusk tower in a long, floor-sweeping cloak of white, yellow and gold motley. His dark green eyes were amused and sharp as they found Gwyn crouched before him. His dark brown skin had a goldenness to it, suggesting centuries spent in the peak of health.
‘Greetings, friend Gwyn,’ Taronis said, his voice falsely warm even as he bowed slightly, his curled black hair falling around his face. When he straightened, he looked down his imperious nose at Gwyn as though he was a feral animal, his hand went to his staff.
Gwyn opened his mouth to greet Taronis, and the words wouldn’t come. He tried to say hello, or any kind of salutation, and none of the words were there.
He knew the Raven Prince had taken some of his language, and now he couldn’t say the words he was trying to call to mind. He couldn’t even sign them. Basic etiquette was beyond him. His eyes went wide and he crept backwards even further, aware that Taronis cared very much for fae and Mage etiquette, and that without acknowledging Taronis, Gwyn looked like nothing more than a disrespectful, hostile force.
‘It’s…a very nice realm you’ve made for yourself,’ Gwyn managed, the words feeling clunky on his tongue.
Damn you, Gwyn thought venomously towards the Raven Prince.
‘You’ll not even greet me?’ Taronis said, walking forwards and withdrawing his staff. ‘You could at the very least apologise, couldn’t you?’
Gwyn ducked his head, even as his own fingers slunk towards his staff. He tried even shaping the words ‘apologies’ or ‘sorry’ or ‘I beg your pardon’ and none of them seemed to exist beyond vague ideas in his own head. He made a sound of frustration. He looked up and tried to say: ‘the Raven Prince has’ taken my language, but his lips wouldn’t cooperate, and he looked gormless instead, the victim of his teacher.
‘If you won’t pay heed to fae etiquette, you know I’ll have no choice but to discipline you for this rudeness,’ Taronis said, spinning his polished, black wooden staff in his fingers. It was inlaid with gold and pearl, and flashed lines of light when wielded within Taronis’ hands.
Gwyn’s staff was nothing more than a strong stick that he’d picked up and polished, because he’d never been particularly attached to fancy ones. Not when the Raven Prince’s own staff was simply a splinter of wood beneath the index fingernail of his left hand. Gwyn hesitated in reaching for it. He was furious. This was clearly some kind of trick designed to amuse the Raven Prince, and Gwyn was tired of wearing these humiliations for him. He should have known.
He growled in the back of his throat, frustrated.
Taronis twitched his staff once and the tusk tower began to glow. It grew brighter and brighter until it felt as though it was as bright as the sun, and Gwyn could no longer even bear to have it in his peripheral vision. But if he turned away he’d put Taronis at his back, which was too dangerous.
Gwyn called forth his magic, bringing forth the illusion of a herd of deer stampeding over the slabs of light, the ground rumbling, hooves thudding. He called swarms and flocks of bats and birds that all flew straight towards Taronis, distracting him for enough moments that Gwyn was able to transmogrify some of the grass at the edge of the slabs into blinkers for his own face that would keep the worst of the light away. Then, he called forth the illusion of bees and wasps, a grey haze of mosquitoes and the crawling of thousands of spiders on their delicate, furred legs. Rumours of Taronis’ aversion to the world of small creatures was rife, and Gwyn played upon it, using the time he bought himself to run away from the tusk tower, Taronis, until he could safely teleport.
Taronis had made a sound of distress, of fear, and Gwyn hoped to escape, fleeing across the ground in fleet, broad strides.
Every stone slab around him blazed into light, and Gwyn cried out, his eyes unused to it. He didn’t know the secrets of light like Taronis did, and his physical body was still pained by these things. The blinkers weren’t enough, and he raised his hands as the light shimmered around him and ate into his vision. He closed his eyes, pressed his palms over them, still holding his staff in the circle of thumb and forefinger.
But his own skin was glowing brighter too, and he couldn’t escape the light. He cried out, his hand shook on his staff as he tried to call ever more illusions, unable to fight Taronis with his own innate power. At the last moment he used the remainder of his concentration to cast a charm of health over his body, starting at his feet.
Gwyn went still when his staff was plucked from his hands.
The light fell away. Gwyn was kneeling upon stone, could see and feel only echoes of light, a whiteness so caustic that he wondered if he was blind.
He lowered his hands, opened his eyes, saw the shape of Taronis before him, even as he could no longer make out the details of his face, his clothing.
‘I’m going to break your staff, now,’ Taronis said. ‘Though if you don’t want me to do that, perhaps you could just ask me nicely to not do it. Say please. At least tell me you can do that much.’
Gwyn couldn’t. Taronis must have seen the strain on his face, must have known exactly why Gwyn couldn’t shape any of these phrases, and he ignored the cause.
Gwyn had to close his eyes when his staff was snapped in two. He flinched and swallowed bile. The staffs were hard to make, and he felt cold in the centre of himself, severed from something important to him, even if it didn’t look special. He’d not be able to use his magic properly until he had another staff, and it would take another month before he had one. Longer, if he wanted one as good as that one.
Trembling overcame him, his fingers reached out for one of the broken halves.
Taronis knelt before him, smelling of the earthy, sharp karapincha he used in most of his potions work. He took both of Gwyn’s hands and held them in a cruel grip, and Gwyn bowed his head, shaking it, trying to blink curves and lines of light out of his eyes.
‘I didn’t mean for this,’ Gwyn said, the closest he could come to apologising. ‘I was sent.’
‘I know,’ Taronis said. ‘But I cannot send you back to him without making it clear that I will not tolerate his attempts at incursion on my territory. It’s not even really about you, which I’m sure you’d understand, if you didn’t think the entire world revolved around you. But you will not be sent back unpunished, and if you come here again, I will do this to all of you, and it will take you over a year to recover from it.’
Gwyn opened his mouth to express something like horror, tried to gather his magic to him to charm his flesh once more, tried to do anything that might protect him from the power he felt swelling in Taronis’ hands.
Screams spilled from his mouth when the skin burnt and then dissolved away from his fingers and palms. Then, the pain became so great that he could do no more than gasp and try and remember to breathe as his chest seized, as the light Taronis used glowed between them and burned his muscles and most of his tendons away, stripped blood vessels and nerves, until from the wrist to his fingertips it looked like Gwyn’s hands had rotted away to bone and bare tendon and very little else. Almost no blood spilled, all of it vaporising in the light.
He’d experienced pain during his initiations, during his training, but he’d never, ever felt anything like this, and he had no words for it. It was as though the Raven Prince had stolen some of his language, and then Taronis stole the rest. Gwyn made noises he’d never heard himself make; high, whistling keens, deep guttural sounds as he tried to reflexively pull away from what was happening. Taronis said nothing through all of it, and Gwyn felt as though he’d shamed himself and the Raven Prince for getting caught, even as he was furious. Furious. This should never have happened. It had all been a trap.
‘I’ll let you teleport back to the Unseelie Court from here,’ Taronis said, some time later, when Gwyn was conscious again. ‘I don’t want to ever see you again, unless it’s at the School of the Staff. You’d best remember this, but I think you will.’
Taronis’ sharp footsteps felt like blows, even as they fell quieter and quieter. Taronis was walking away.
Gwyn had his wrists and his flayed, lacerated hands – what was left of his hands – up against his chest protectively. He sobbed, but the sounds were weak.
Summoning his light was difficult, but he managed it. Then, he broke about a dozen rules when instead of teleporting into the Gwylwyr Du – the main pathway into the Unseelie Court – and walking in like he was supposed to, he teleported directly into the Unseelie throne room, still bent on his knees, unable to care who saw him.
He didn’t even know if the Raven Prince would be there.
Gwyn tipped sideways and curled onto the marble in the safety of the Unseelie Court, the zahakhar singing softly through him, an energy that reminded him that one day – if he pleased the Raven Prince – he might be made King. Not that he particularly wanted to be. His arms trembled and his hands went into spasm, unable to control the responses his body was giving to such severe injury.
A hand on his shoulder, voices around him, and then he smelled oil and feathers and musk and knew his King and his Prince, and he turned his head towards a boot and rested his forehead on the leathery toe of it, keening over and over again, the pain too great.
A hand came down and petted his sweaty, shaking head.
Like a dog, Gwyn thought. Like a dog.
He knew the moment his language was fully returned to him, because he couldn’t seem to stop saying sorry and please and all the words he should have been able to say to Taronis in the first place, to stop this from happening to him.
The words followed him all the way down into the dark.
*
He woke in the room that the Raven Prince kept for him when Gwyn was visiting the Court. All the décor was mostly what Gwyn had chosen for himself. Furs on the wall and floor and bed, which was a sturdy four poster of carved, unpolished golden wood.
The Raven Prince sat on a chair by his side, his feather cloak gone, his Mage cloak in its place. Gwyn was shocked to see it, the Raven Prince normally only wore it to the School of the Staff on special occasions. A motley of silver, violet and a shimmery black-blue. It was beautiful. Gwyn’s motley looked more like Taronis’, except instead of white and gold and yellow, Gwyn’s was white and gold and black, and he didn’t think it suited him. But then, the Mage didn’t get to choose the colours of their own motley, even though they had to cut every fabric diamond and make it with their own hands.
Gwyn’s hands were a constant throb, every pulse of pain felt like it started in his hands and ended somewhere in his gut, nauseating. He whined, pressed his head sideways into pillows and felt tears leak out of his eyes.
‘The nerves have been too compromised,’ the Raven Prince said calmly. ‘Fluri can only do so much.’
‘You tricked me,’ Gwyn said, and then laughed and hated the laughter, because it made everything hurt more. He sensed great puffy wet bandages around his hands, but he didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see that much of his own bone ever again.
‘I am a trickster,’ the Raven Prince said.
Gwyn’s eyes were closed, he flinched when he felt a hand petting his hair again, smoothing it like one might the pelt of an animal.
‘It was a trick,’ the Raven Prince said, ‘but it wasn’t only a trick for you. I’ll explain more when I return.’
‘I hate you,’ Gwyn said, risking the words, the venom of them, the broken pain in his chest as he uttered them.
The Raven Prince’s hand faltered, but then resumed petting him again. There was a reluctance in every touch, but Gwyn turned into it all the same, even as he disgusted his Prince.
‘I know,’ the Raven Prince said. ‘I know. You love me too.’
Gwyn’s face screwed up, he couldn’t think of anything to say then, couldn’t deny the truth of it.
‘I have to leave now,’ the Raven Prince said. ‘But I’ll return to you. Heal, my student. Fluri will do all she can for you. You need do no more than rest and recover.’
*
Fluri did all she could, but it wasn’t much against the damage that Taronis had inflicted on him. Gwyn was unable to feed himself, unable to dress himself, unable to use his hands for anything at all. He sunk into a deep sleep for a week, and when he roused, no one knew where the Raven Prince had gone, and the Kingdom was being managed instead by Fluri and the rest of his Inner Court.
Gwyn could do little more than heal, sleep, and experience strange nightmares where instead of running from dark, threatening creatures who called for his death, he ran instead from the light and sought caves and shadows in which to hide, looking for the monsters, for those who didn’t stand so boldly exposed by the light.
He knew the nightmares for what they were, and though they distressed him, he found some heart in knowing his mind was trying to process what had occurred, trying to find a place for it, so that it wouldn’t hurt him so much in the future.
And so, mind and body both began the slow and arduous march towards wholeness once more.
*
The Raven Prince returned at the end of the second week.
Gwyn stared at the blood on the Raven Prince’s scalp. It had trickled down his neck, and further still. He could smell it, oily and salty and strong. The Raven Prince’s eyes were wilder than normal, and there were singed sections of hair, even his clothing had been ripped and torn. He smelled of burnt feathers and harsh chemicals and a little of karapincha. He was shaking. Gwyn had never seen him so discomposed, and he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
His hands were still bandaged, but at least they now looked more like hands. His flesh was growing back, in some places his skin had returned. It made the pain worse, not better, as the nerves grew back properly. But he knew that in a month from now, this pain would be a memory, and in a year, the event would be nothing more than one of the many that had shaped him.
So it was easy to slide to his knees before the Raven Prince, and he felt only a shadow of fear from what Taronis had done to him when Gwyn had been on his knees, then, too.
‘You’re not well,’ Gwyn said, his voice softer than usual. ‘You should tend to yourself, before seeing me.’
‘Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. You are so incorrigible. Taronis couldn’t even flay it from you for longer than a fortnight.’
Gwyn couldn’t help but smile at the sharp words. For they hid a certain measure of the Raven Prince’s pride in him, even as the Raven Prince was annoyed.
Fingers slid into his hair and scratched at his scalp, and when the Raven Prince sat down on the chair, Gwyn pressed his head into the Raven Prince’s shin and didn’t care how he looked, or what the Raven Prince called him. He ached only to go back to his cabin, to live in the wild once more, to be the wolf that the Raven Prince mocked him for being.
‘I have something for you,’ the Raven Prince said. ‘Do you want it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gwyn said. ‘Do I?’
The Raven Prince laughed and then pulled Gwyn’s head up to face him, scrutinised him with an unreadable expression on his features, the one he often had when he was getting the measure of something.
With his other hand he produced a key and a scrap of fabric from the inside of his wizard’s motley. The key looked like it was made of bone, and the scrap was a ripped section of diamond shaped pieces of fabric in white, gold and yellow, burnt at the edges.
Gwyn stared at both and then felt the blood drain out of his face. He knelt in a more upright position and found he couldn’t stare away from the motley. A ripped motley… That, combined with the Raven Prince’s dishevelled appearance…
‘Tell me you didn’t,’ Gwyn breathed.
‘Taronis breached protocol. You never discipline the protégé of a Mage without approaching that Mage first. It seems that when you forgot your manners, he forgot his, too. Then again, he never actually liked you.’
‘You…’
‘He and I have never seen eye to eye on anything at all,’ the Raven Prince said. ‘But a member of the Thirteen cannot approach another member of the Thirteen to do them harm, without having great cause. I suppose a Thirteen no longer, more like a Twelve…’
‘He must have known what he was doing when he did this to me. He’s not stupid. He doesn’t lose his patience like that.’
‘No,’ the Raven Prince said. ‘He wanted the duel as much as I did. He just made the mistake of thinking he’d win.’
The Raven Prince leaned towards Gwyn and tucked the motley into the neckline of Gwyn’s shirt. He called a line of chain from the air itself and slid the key onto it, before affixing it around Gwyn’s neck.
‘There’s a realm of land,’ the Raven Prince said, ‘which I hope you’ve mapped well, because it would be shameful if you didn’t know the lay of your own territory.’
Gwyn blinked at him, felt the weight of the key against his chest and a shred of Taronis’ motley tucked into his shirt. The Raven Prince had already leaned back, his face dispassionate, his eyes moving around the room with something like disapproval.
‘Why do you have to live like this?’ the Raven Prince said. ‘You’re no more than an animal I dragged out of the forest. You, foundling, are less graceful than some of the hounds I’ve met.’
‘Yes,’ Gwyn said, feeling buoyant and frustrated and proud at the same time. ‘But I’m your graceless hound.’
‘Yes,’ the Raven Prince said, his eyes glittering black and possessive, his lips tightening on the beginnings of a smile. ‘Yes, you are.’