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

by Holly Black

It will hurt. Pain makes you strong.

Jude, darling, are you even an existing being at this point

She liked it when she was angry, too. Angry was better than scared.

AND YOU CERTAINLY TRIED DIDN’T YOU YOU HEATHEN

“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.”

YOU WOULD KNOW WOULDN’T YOU MADOC

No matter how much he disliked me when we were in school, that was a guttering candle to the steady flame of his hatred now.

This makes me so sad bro

She played me for a fool with Locke. I still feel stupid when I look at them. If she won’t apologize, then at least she should be the one to pretend there’s nothing to apologize for.

Taryn. When I catch you Taryn.

He gives me a look of such condescension that it makes my cheeks heat. The look lingers. His mouth twists, curving. “I suppose I shall,” he says finally. “It amuses her to keep me out of trouble.”

… oop

“They’re all going to want to marry you, you know,” Locke drawls.

and everyone in the room groaned

“Spoken like a man about to enter wedlock,” Cardan reminds him.

Locke is like that friend who purposely drops an off handed comment about someone’s relationship in a group message and watches the chat blow up

I would like to say that he always hated me, but for a brief, strange time it felt as though we understood each other, maybe even liked each other. Altogether an unlikely alliance, begun with my blade to his throat, it resulted in his trusting me enough to put himself in my power. A trust that I betrayed.

I spot Madoc across the room,

Why is this man not in a jail cell

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.

To wind up here, one has to have really pissed off someone important.

ole Balekale pissed off the dagger happy human embodiment of f around and find out

I stab him in the arm with a little pin I keep hidden in the

ah yes my lucky stabbing pin ofc

lining of my doublet. “I lied.”

You’re styling yourself as a spymaster,” the Roach says, looking over me and then my prisoner. “That ought to include being shrewd. Relying only on yourself is a good way to get got. Next time, take a member of the royal guard. Take one of us. Take a cloud of sprites or a drunken spriggan. Just take someone.”

We love the Roach being a dad

Watching his fear ripen fills me with an almost voluptuous satisfaction. I, who have had little power in my life, must be on guard against that feeling. Power goes to my head too quickly, like faerie wine.

“Come spar,” he says, taking a piece of apple off my plate. “Burn off some of that simmering rage.”

I love this mysterious man and I’m suspicious about it

“Nor so high,” he returns, watching me carefully with hazel eyes.

I’m sighing dreamily

That’s the problem with a puppet government: It’s not going to run itself. Adrenaline may turn out not to be a replacement for experience.

He dances over the grass lightly,

I imagined this way wrong and laughed out loud bro skeddadled across the grass

“Were you a happy child?” “I was magic. How could I fail to be?”

There is only now. There is only tomorrow and tonight and

now and soon and never.

My twin sister, Taryn.

GO AWAY

“You’ve got a bruise coming up on your cheek,”

I prefer it coming up on the jaw from a certain prince thank you

Once she’s gone, I take my stuffed animals and seat them next to me on the rug. Once, they were a reminder that there was a time before Faerieland, when things were normal. Once, they were a comfort to me. I take a long last look, and then, one by one, I feed them to the fire. I’m no longer a child, and I don’t need comfort.

girl I get you’re the king’s advisor now and whatnot but THEY ARE YOUR STUFFED ANIMALS DON’T PUNISH THEM FOR YOUR CHOICES

“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.”

CARDAN boy you’re so kissable rn

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”

I VOLUNTEER I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE

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.”

damn.