The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1)

by Holly Black

Here, I am the strange one, with my blunt fingers, round ears, and mayfly life.

As dawn breaks, I open the windows to my bedroom and let the last of the cool night air flow in as I strip off my Court dress. I feel hot all over. My skin feels too tight, and my heart won’t stop racing.

Some afternoons we sit in groves carpeted with emerald moss, and other evenings we spend in high towers or up in trees.

Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest, with black hair as iridescent as a raven’s wing and cheekbones sharp enough to cut out a girl’s heart.

I try to imagine someone she might fall in love with. Maybe it will be a merrow, and he will give her the gift of breathing underwater and a crown of pearls and take her to his bed under the sea. Actually, that sounds amazing. Maybe I am making all the wrong choices. “How much do you like swimming?” I ask her. “What?” she asks. “Nothing,” I say.

The sprites had turned the matchbooks into beds and tables, shredded all the paper, and ripped out the centers of the books to nest inside. It was a full-on sprite infestation.

I try to breathe slowly, to concentrate on just one thing. The pomegranate seeds on my plate, shining like rubies, wet with venison blood.

I toe a stone with a slipper-covered foot.

My fine pen and nibs shimmer along the bottom. My inkpot shatters on the rocks, turning the river vermilion.

I don’t think about anything but lifting my wet boots, one step after another carrying me past the briars and fiddleheads and elms, past bushes of red-lipped cherries, barberries and damsons, past the wood sprites who nest in the rosebushes, home to a bath and a bed in a world that isn’t mine and might never be.

It turns out birds can’t really buy pizza, even if they’re enchanted.

Vivi loves this place. She loves to drink mango smoothies, try on hats, and buy whatever we want with acorns she enchants to pass as money.

I can smell spiced wine in the air, but not yet that other perfume of tournaments—fresh blood.

“Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.”

Only in Faerieland is a giant toad the less conspicuous choice.

He shakes his head and then smiles. “This is not how I meant to begin. I meant to give you wine and fruit and cheese. I meant to tell you how your hair is as beautiful as curling woodsmoke, your eyes the exact color of walnuts. I thought I could compose an ode about it, but I am not very good at odes.”

I feel dizzy. There are no doors and no landings. Just stone and steps and my heart beating loud in my chest. Just his slanted smiles and amber eyes.

“At night, the human world looks as though it’s full of fallen stars.”

He turns me toward him and then slowly brings his lips to mine. They’re soft, and his breath is warm. I feel as distant from my body as the lights of the faraway city.

He draws back. “You really are beautiful,” he says. I am never so glad to know they cannot lie.

She’s looking around the forest, as though if she can prove it isn’t magic, then nothing else is, either. Which is stupid. All forests are magic.

if I couldn’t sleep, then I ought to just close my eyes and lie still. That at least my body could rest, even if my mind wouldn’t.

Sprites glitter in air that stinks of freshly spilled blood. The revel will go on, I realize. Everything will go on. But I am not sure that I can.

Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.

It feels so surreal to be in my room, with my stuffed animals and my books and my collection of poisons.

Finally, Madoc enters the room, his shadow preceding him, spreading across the floor like a carpet.

“My people had wings once,” she says, the longing clear in her voice. “And though I’ve never had a pair of my own, sometimes I feel the lack of them.”

Oriana clasps her hands together and walks over to her dressing table. Her jewelry hangs there—slices of agate on long chains of raw crystal beads, collars set with moonstones, deep green bloodstones strung together, and an opal pendant, bright as fire in the sunlight.

Oriana claps a hand over my mouth. Her skin smells like the air after a snowfall.

“That’s not what I mean. You and Nicasia were …” I don’t know what to call them. Together isn’t quite the word for an evil and beautiful team, ruining people and enjoying it.

He leans in and closes his eyes. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”

I lean toward him, close enough for a kiss. His eyes widen. The look in his face is some commingling of panic and desire.

like the moment when you’ve swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head.

His eyes close, lashes brushing my cheek. I shudder, as you’re supposed to when someone walks over your grave.

I am spending them like enchanted gold, doomed to turn back into dried leaves in tills all over town.

Severin leads me to a low table surrounded by tufted stools and piled with refreshments—a silver carafe of water with a horn handle, a platter of grapes and apricots, and a dish of little honeyed pastries.

I think of Valerian’s words when he tried to glamour me into jumping out of the tower. Being born mortal is like being born already dead.

Above hangs a chandelier made from thin sheets of mica. Tiny glowing faeries are trapped inside for the purpose of adding a warm glow to the room. Occasionally, they fly, making shadows dance.