The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air, #2)

by Holly Black

“You can take a thing when no one’s looking. But defending it, even with all the advantage on your side, is no easy task,” Madoc told her with a laugh. She looked up to find him offering her a hand. “Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.”

“I have heard that for mortals, the feeling of falling in love is very like the feeling of fear. Your heart beats fast. Your senses are heightened. You grow light-headed, maybe even dizzy.” He looks at me. “Is that right? It would explain much about your kind if it’s possible to mistake the two.”

There is only now. There is only tomorrow and tonight and now and soon and never.

The disturbing thing about Cardan is how well he plays the fool to disguise his own cleverness.

“Go ahead and tell them if you want, but you should know this—someone you trust has already betrayed you.”

“For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.” I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?” He grins up at me. “They missed.”

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.” I feel those words, feel them like a kick to the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can’t tell which of us he’s laughing at. He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you. Maybe he hates you the more for it. After a moment, his eyes flutter closed. His voice falls to a whisper, as though he’s talking to himself. “If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.”

Cardan gives me a look up through his lashes that I find hard to interpret and then rises, too. He takes my hand. “Nothing is sweeter,” he says, kissing the back of it, “but that which is scarce.”

“I hate you,” I whisper before he can speak. He tilts my face to his. “Say it again,” he says as the imps comb my hair and place the ugly, stinking crown on my head. His voice is low. The words are for me alone.

“That you hate me,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Tell me that you hate me.” “I hate you,” I say, the words coming out like a caress. I say it again, over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” He kisses me harder. “I hate you,” I breathe into his mouth. “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.” At that, he makes a harsh, low sound. One of his hands slides over my stomach, tracing the shape of my skin. He kisses me again, and it’s like falling off a cliff. Like a mountain slide, building momentum with every touch, until there is only crashing destruction ahead. I have never felt anything like this. He begins to unbutton my doublet, and I try not to freeze, try not to show my inexperience. I don’t want him to stop. It feels like a geas. It has all the sinister pleasure of sneaking out of the house, all the revolting satisfaction of stealing. It reminds me of the moment before I slammed a blade through my hand, amazed at my own capacity for self-betrayal. He leans up to pull off his own jacket, and I try to wriggle out of mine. He looks at me and blinks, as through a fog. “This is an absolutely terrible idea,” he says with a kind of amazement in his voice. “Yes,” I tell him, kicking off my boots. I am wearing hose, and I don’t think there’s an elegant way to strip them off. Certainly, I don’t find it. Tangled in the fabric, feeling foolish, I realize I could stop this now. I could g...

that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.

“Your ridiculous family might be surprised to find that not everything is solved by murder,” Locke calls after me. “We would be surprised to find that,” I call back.

I have a tendency these days to put off eating until I am ravenous. I feel a little like a snake, either starved or swallowing a mouse whole.

“Now kiss me as though I were Cardan.”

*violent vomiting*

“The Folk of the Air.

“I remember you,” says the door. “My prince’s lady.” “You’re mistaken,” I say. “Seldom.”

“I wasn’t kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn’t sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before.”

“The three of you have one solution to every problem. Murder. No key fits every lock.” Cardan gives us all a stern look, holding up a long-fingered hand with my stolen ruby ring still on one finger. “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.

“Yes, my sweet villain, my darling god.

“Sweet Jude. You are my dearest punishment.”

“She didn’t have to command me, Jude. She didn’t have to use any magic. I trust you. I trusted you.”

“Marry me,” he says. “Become the Queen of Elfhame.”

“You look as if you’ve barely rested.” I rise to be sure that if he falls over, I can grab for him before he hits the floor, although I am not so sure of myself, either. “I will lie down,” he says, letting me guide him toward his enormous bed. Once there, he does not let go of my hand. “If you lie with me.”

“Well, wife,” he says to me, a chill in his voice. “It seems you have kept at least one secret from your dowry. Come, we must dress for our first audience together.”