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

by Holly Black

Pain makes you strong.

“We get power by taking it.”

You’ve got to choose which hill to die on,

“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,”

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

It was thrilling to trick Cardan into promising to serve me for a year and a day, exhilarating when my plan came together.

But now I must figure out how to keep him in my power—and out of trouble—for longer than that. Long enough to give Oak a chance to have what I didn’t: a childhood.

“Look at them all, your subjects. A shame not a one knows who their true ruler is.”

I can spot my twin sister, Taryn, dancing with Locke, her betrothed. Locke, who I once thought might love me. Locke, whom I once thought I could love. It’s Taryn I miss, though. Nights like tonight, I imagine hopping down from the dais and going to her, trying to explain my choices.

Her marriage is only three weeks away, and still we haven’t spoken.

I keep telling myself I need her to come to me first. 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. I might ac...

he hadn’t mentioned Grimsen. I’ve heard of him, of course. He’s the blacksmith who made the Blood Crown for Mab and wove enchantments into it. It’s said he can make anything from metal, even living things—metal birds that fly, metal snakes that slither and strike. He made the twin swords, Heartseeker and Heartsworn, one that never misses and the other that can cut through anything. Unfortunately, he made them for the Alderking.

“Very well,” Cardan says, looking pleased to be asked for something easy to give. “Your exile is over. Give me your oath, and the High Court will welcome you.”

Grimsen bows low, his expression theatrically troubled. “Noble king, you ask for the smallest and most reasonable thing from your servant, but I, who have suffered for such vows, am loath to make them again. Allow me this—grant that I may show you my loyalty in my deeds, rather than binding myself with my words.”

I put my hand on Cardan’s arm, but he shrugs off my cautioning squeeze. I could say something, and he would be forced—by prior command—to at least not contradict me, but I don’t know what to say. Having the smith here, forging for Elfham...

And yet, something in Grimsen’s gaze looks a little too self-satisfied, a little too sure of ...

Cardan speaks before I can puzzle anything more out. “I accept your condition. Indeed, I will give you a boon. An old building with a forge sits on the edge of the palace grounds. You shall have it for your own and as much metal as yo...

“Your kindness shall not be ...

I mislike this, but perhaps I’m being overcautious. Perhaps it’s only that I don’t like the smith himself. There’s little time to consider it ...

Should Cardan marry, I wouldn’t just have to get him off the throne to get Oak on it. I’d have to remove his bride as well.

“May you grow into the wisdom of your counselors.” “The fervent prayer of many,” he says.

I wish I didn’t remember standing at the very top of the highest tower on his estate, his body warm against mine. I wish he hadn’t used me to test my sister’s love for him. I wish she hadn’t let him.

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.

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

Pride is for knights, I remind myself, not for spies.

Beside me is the thin face of a faerie woman. Her tail curls around one of the bars. Short horns sweep back from her brow. “I knew your Eva,” she says to me, eyes glittering in the gloom. “I knew your mother. Knew so many of her little secrets.”

“That horse has only a bit and bridle,” Vulciber says, frowning at the black steed tied to the wall. “But you said—” I stab him in the arm with a little pin I keep hidden in the lining of my doublet. “I lied.”

It takes some doing to haul him up and sling him over the back of the horse. She is trained with familiar military commands, including kneeling, which helps. I move as quickly as I can, for fear that one of the guards will come to check on us, but I am lucky. No one comes before we are up and moving.

Power goes to my head too quickly, like faerie wine.

“But I know a secret. It’s worth more than my life, more than whatever Balekin wanted with Cardan.

“The Queen of the Undersea,” Vulciber says, eager to speak now. “Her people crawl up the rocks at night and whisper to Balekin. They slip into the Tower, although we don’t know how, and leave him shells and shark teeth. Messages are being exchanged, but we can’t decipher them. There are whispers Orlagh intends to break her treaty with the land and use the information Balekin is giving her to ruin Cardan.”

I’m playing the High King in her little pageant, Cardan said once in my hearing. The Roach and the Bomb laughed; the Ghost didn’t.

Watch the blade, not the soldier, Madoc told me many times. Steel never deceives.

“When the king returns,” the Ghost says, quoting from a ballad, “rose petals will scatter across his path, and his footfalls will bring an end to wrath. But how will your Oak rule if he has as few memories of Faerie as we have of the mortal world?”

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

Vivienne is coming from the mortal world. She’s bringing Oak. Madoc promises he won’t argue with you. Please say you’ll come.”

Ughhh bad idea.

I think of his horror at his own desire when I brought my mouth to his, the dagger in my hand, edge against his skin. The toe-curling, corrosive pleasure of that kiss. It felt as though I was punishing him—punishing him and myself at the same time.

Little does she know how much more presumptuous I have been.

I stole the crown of Faerie, I want to tell her. The High King, Cardan, our old enemy, is mine to command.

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.

Mithridatism, it is called, the process by which one takes a little bit of poison to inoculate oneself against a full dose of it. I started a year ago, another way for me to correct my defects.

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. Is that right?

“They told me a story,” Cardan says. “Would you like to hear it? Once upon a time, there was a human girl stolen away by faeries, and because of that, she swore to destroy them.”

“That really is a testament to how much you suck as a king, to believe your reign is capable of destroying Faerie.”

What happened?” “This,” he says, and staggers into the room with a bed in it. There, embedded deeply in the splintered wood of the headboard, are two black bolts. “You’re mad that one of your guests shot your bed?” I guess. He laughs. “They weren’t aiming for the bed.” He pulls aside his shirt, and I see the hole in the cloth and a stripe of raw skin along his side.

I know of only a few ways into Cardan’s rooms—a single, large, thick-glassed window enchanted never to break, a pair of double doors, and, apparently, a secret passage.

“I saw a blur of black. And as to why I didn’t correct the guards—I was protecting you and the Court of Shadows. I didn’t think you would want the whole royal guard in your secret passageways!”

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

The tunnel is dim, lit throughout with golden hands holding torches that burn with a smokeless green flame. The stone floor is covered in a threadbare carpet, a strangely decorative detail for a secret passageway.