Oak Quotes

“I am ready to eat out of the prince's hand as tamely as a dove.

It's too easy. I'm hungry for kindness. Hungry for attention. I want and want and want.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“I lean toward him, expecting him to unconsciously move away. To be repulsed. But he only watches me curiously.

As I draw closer, his eyes widen a little.

'Wren,' he whispers. I am not sure if it's a warning or not. I hate that I don't know.

At every moment, I expect him to flinch or pull back as I put one hand on his shoulder, then go up on my toes, and kiss him.

This is ridiculous. Kissing him is profane. It gives me all the horrible satisfaction of smashing a crystal goblet.

It's quick. Just the quick press of my dry mouth against his lips. A brief senses of softness, the warmth of breath, and then I pull away, my heart thrumming with fear, with the expectation that he will be disgusted.

With the certainty that I have well and truly punished him for trying to flirt with me.

The angry, feral part of me feels so close to the surface that I can almost scent its blood-clotted fur. I want to lick the scratches I made.

He doesn't look alarmed, though. He's studying my face, as though he's trying to work something out.

After a moment, his eyes close, pale lashes against his cheek, and he dips foward to press his mouth to mine again. He goes slower, one of his hands cupping my head. A shivery feeling courses down my spine, a flush coming up on my skin.

When he draws back, he is not wearing his usual complicated smile. Instead, he looks as though someone just slapped him. I wonder if a kiss from me is like being clawed on the cheek.

Did he force himself to go through with it? For the sake of keeping me on this quest? For the sake of his father and his plans?

I thought to punish him, but all I have succeeded in doing is punishing myself.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Someone tried to kill me. Again. Poison. Again. Someone else tried to recruit me into a scheme where we would kill my sister and Cardan, so I could rule in their place. When I told them no, they tried to kill me. With a knife, that time.'

'A poisoned knife?'

He laughed. 'No, just a regular one. But it hurt.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“So I am going to run away from Faerie. Like you.'

That's not how I'd thought of myself, as a runaway. I was someone with nowhere to go. Waiting until I was older. Or less afraid. Or more powerful. 'The Prince of Elfhame can't up and disappear.'

'They'd probably be happier if I did,' he told me. 'I'm the reason my father is in exile. The reason my mother married him in the first place. My one sister and her girlfriend had to take care of me when I was little, even though they were barely more than kids themselves. My other sister almost got killed lots of times to keep me safe. Things will be easier without me around. They'll see that.'

'They won't,' I told him, trying to ignore the intense surge of envy that came with knowing he would be missed.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“And while I didn't think he was my friend, it didn't mean I couldn't be his.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Will you tell me about the constellations?' I asked him.

'I thought you didn't like me,' he said.

'I can pretend,' I told him. 'For one night.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“We don't need her!' Oak shouts, the first time I have really seen his emotions out of his control. 'And I don't want her.'

The words hurt, the more because he cannot lie.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“He touches my cheek lightly with his fingers. 'You- I thought-'

I stare up into his eyes, puzzled by his expression.

'Are you hurt?' he asks.

I shake my head.

The prince turns away from me abruptly.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Wren, you have plenty of reasons not to trust me right now, but I do intend to stop Lady Nore. And I believe we can. Though I plan on bringing back Madoc, we will still have gone a deed no one can deny was of service to Elfhame. Whatever trouble I will be in, you'll be a hero.'

I am not sure anyone has considered me that, not even the people I've saved. 'And if I decide to part ways? Are you going to tie my hands and drag me along with you?'

He looks at me with trickster eyes beneath arched golden brows. 'Not unless you scratch me again.'

'Why do you want to help him?' I ask. Madoc had been willing to use Oak as a path to power, at the least.

'He's my father,' he says, as though that should be enough.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Then he gives me his quicksilver smile, the kind that makes me feel as though we are friends conspiring together. 'Since you're in a benevolent mood, perhaps you'll also dance with me.'

My surprise must be evident. 'Why?'

He grins. 'To celebrate you continuing with this quest. Because we're at a party. So that Queen Annet believes we've got nothing to hide.'

'Do we have something to hide?' I ask.

He smiles wider, giving me a tug toward the revellers. 'Always.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Will you tell me how you came to be living...' He stops, as if trying to find the words. 'As you were.'

I remember the care I'd given that he not know. How could I explain the way time seemed to slip from my fingers, the way I became incrementally more detached, more unable to reach out a hand to take something I wanted? I will not allow him to pity me any more than he does.

'You could have come to see me,' he says. 'If you need something.'

I laugh at that. 'You?'

He frowns down at me with his amber eyes. 'Why not?'

The enormity of the reasons catches in my mouth. He's a prince of Elfhame, and I am the disgraced child of traitors. He befriends everyone, from the troll guard at the entrance to all those Tiernan mentioned back in the High Court, while I have spent years alone in the woods. But most of all, because he could have asked his sister to allow me to stay on the Shifting Isles and didn't.

'Perhaps I wanted to save that favour you still owe me,' I say.

He laughs at that. Oak liking me is as silly as the sun liking a storm, but that doesn't stop my desire for it.

Me, with my sharp teeth and chilly skin. It's absurd. It's grotesque.

And yet, the way he looks at me, it almost seems possible.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Only to see Oak, the heir to Elfhame, standing in a clearing. All my memories of him were of a merry young boy. But he'd become tall and rawboned, in the manner of children who have grown suddenly and too fast. When he moved, it was with coltish uncertainty, as though not used to his body. He would be thirteen. And he had no reason to be in my woods.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“When he lay down in a pile of rushes and closed his eyes, I crept up to him and carefully covered him in dry leaves so that he would be warm.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“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.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Oak was never taught to fight any way but to kill. He doesn't know any elegant parries. He cannot show off. All he can do is deal death. And once he starts, he doesn't stop. I'm not sure he can.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“I know you're angry with me...' I begin.

'Am I?' he asks, looking up at me as though there is a bitter taste in his mouth. 'Maybe I'm glad that you gave me an opportunity to be my worst self.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“They say that he can talk flowers into opening their petals at night, as though his face were that of the sun. He'll steal your heart.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“It's supposed to be very beautiful, the Citadel,' Oak says. 'It is beautiful, Wren?'

When the light went through the ice of the castle, it made rainbows that danced along its cold halls. You could almost see through the walls, as though the whole place was one large, cloudy window. When I was brought to it for the first time, I thought it was like living inside a sparkling diamond.

'It's not,' I say. 'It's an ugly place.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“He gives me a smile, a strange light in his eyes. 'If we were capable of putting mistrust aside, we might be a formidable pair.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“However secretive his nature, however foolish his reasons for loving his father, I like that he does.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“He wants me to be charmed by him so that I will stay by his side and do what he asks of me. No doubt he believes that a little attention and a few smiles will be all it requires of him. He expects me to be as malleable as one of the ladies of the Court.

So much of me wants to give in and pretend with him that it makes me hot with rage.

If he wants to charm me, the least I can do is make it cost him. I won't settle for smiles and a dance. I am going to call his bluff, I am going to prove to myself- prove to us both- that his flirtation isn't sincere.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“You will never know what the prince is thinking behind his smiles,' Hyacinthe says. 'You are a coin to be spent, and he is a royal, used to throwing around gold.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“You think because you've got that good royal blood in you, you're better than us,' says the ogre, pressing one long fingernail against the prince's shoulder. 'Maybe you are. Only way to be sure is to have a taste.'

There's a drunken wobble to Oak's movements as he pushes off the ogre's hand and obvious contempt in his voice. 'The difference in flavour would be too subtle for your palate.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Shall we put our dance practice to some purpose?' he asks.

'Dance?' I ask, my voice coming out a little high.

His gaze goes to the circles of leaping and cavorting Folk. I wonder if he is in shock.

I have just come from betraying him. I feel rather shocked about it.

I put my hand in his as if mesmerised. There is only the warmth of his fingers against my chilly skin. His amber fox eyes, pupils wide and dark. His teeth catch his lip, as though he's nervous. I reach up and touch his cheek. Blood and freckles.

He's shaking a little. I guess if I'd done what he did, I'd still be shaking, too.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“We're here to take Suren,' Revindra goes on. 'And we will take it ill if you attempt to prevent us.'

The gaze that Oak slants towards me is as cold as the one he bestowed the ogres.

'Oh,' he says. 'I wouldn't dream of stopping you.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Butter-blond hair threaded with gold blew around his face.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“You ran away,' he said. 'I want to run away.'

I shifted into a more comfortable position. It wasn't that I'd run. I hadn't had anywhere else but here to go. My fingers plucked at a piece of grass. He had everything, didn't he? 'Why?' I asked again.

'Because I am tired of people trying to assassinate me.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Let me stay in the woods with you,' he said with a huff of breath.

I imagined it. Having him share tea with me and Mr. Fox. I could show him the places to pick the sweetest blackberries. We could eat burdock and red clover and parasol mushrooms. At night we would lie on our backs and whisper together. He would tell me about the constellations, about theories of magic, and the plots of television shows he'd seen while in the mortal world. I would tell him all the secret thoughts of my heart.

For a moment, it seemed possible.

But eventually they would come for him, the way that Lady Nore and Lord Jarel came for me. If he was lucky, it would be his sister's guards dragging him back to Elfhame. If he wasn't, it would be a knife in the dark from one of his enemies.

He did not belong here, sleeping in dirt. Scrabbling out an existence at the very edges of things.

'No,' I made myself tell him. 'Go home.'

I could see the hurt in his face. The honest confusion that came with unexpected pain.

'Why?' he asked, sounding so lost that I wanted to snatch back my words.

'When you found me tied to that stake, I thought about hurting you,' I told him, hating myself. 'You are not my friend.'

I do not want you here. Those are the words I ought to have said, but couldn't because they would be a lie.

'Ah,' he said. 'Well.'

I let out a breath. 'You can stay the night,' I blurted out, unable to resist the temptation. 'Tomorrow, you go home. If you don't, I'll use the last favour you owe me from our game to force you.

'What if I go and come back again? he asked, trying to mask his hurt.

'You won't.' When he got home, his sisters and his mother would be waiting. They would have worried when they couldn't find him. They'd make him promise never to do anything like that again. 'You have too much honour.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“It would be safer if I hated him. Since I cannot, perhaps it is good that he now hates me.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“How will they sell rubies?' I ask him. 'Why not leave them something more practical?'

'As a prince of Faerie, I flatly refuse to leave cash. It's inelegant.'

Tiernan shakes his head at both of us, then pokes at the foodstuffs selecting a handful of nuts.

'Gift cards are worse,' Oak says when I do not respond. 'I would bring shame to the entire Greenbriar line if I left a gift card.'

At that, I can't help smiling a little, despite my heavy heart. 'You're ridiculous.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir