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

by Holly Black

“I foretold you wouldn’t take my advice,” he calls after me.

A king is a living symbol, a beating heart, a star upon which Elfhame’s future is written. Surely you have noticed that since his reign began, the isles are different. Storms come in faster. Colors are a bit more vivid, smells are sharper…. When he becomes drunk, his subjects become tipsy without knowing why. When his blood falls, things grow.

A new ring glimmers on his pinkie finger, red stone catching the flames of the bonfire. A very familiar ring. My ring.

He stole my ring. He stole it and I didn’t notice. The Roach taught him how to do that.

“I am the Corn King, after all, to be sacrificed so little Oak can take my place in the spring.”

His hand slides to my hip, as though he might pull me closer. For a dizzy, stupid moment, something seems to shimmer in the air between us. Kiss me until I am sick of it.

“You ought not to be here tonight, little ant,” he says, letting go of me. “Go back to the palace.”

I still feel the warm pressure of his fingers against my skin. Something is really wrong with me, to want what I hate, to want someone who despises me, even if he wants me, too. My only comfort is that he doesn’t know what I feel.

“Lord Roiben wants you to know that even in the low Courts, we hear things.”

I still owe a debt to the Court of Termites, and I still have no way to extend my power over Cardan. I still have no idea who might have betrayed me or what to do about Nicasia.

I have heard of the game, although I have never seen it played. It is simple enough: Steal away a mortal girl, make her drunk on faerie wine and faerie flattery and faerie kisses, then convince her she is being honored with a crown—all the time heaping insults on her oblivious head.

“Haven’t you guessed? There is only one mortal among our company,” Locke says. “Why, our Queen of Mirth is none other than Jude Duarte.”

“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.

I pull out of his grip, but not before I see his expression. He looks as he did when he was forced to answer my questions, when he admitted his desire for me. He looks as though he’s confessing. A flush goes through me, confusing because I am both furious and shamed. I turn my head.

I try to pull against the compulsion of the music, try to break away from the dance, but I cannot. When I try to drag my feet, hands haul me along until the music catches me up again. Everything becomes a wild blur of sound and flying cloth, of shiny inkdrop eyes and too-sharp teeth. I am lost to it, out of my own control, as though I were a child again, as though I hadn’t bargained with Dain and poisoned myself and stolen the throne. This is not glamour. I cannot stop myself from dancing, cannot stop my body from moving even as my terror grows. I will not stop. I will dance through the leather of my shoes, dance until my feet are bloody, dance until I collapse.

“Cease playing!” I shout as loudly as I can, panic giving my voice the edge of a scream. “As your Queen of Mirth, as the seneschal of the High King, you will allow me to choose the dance!”

“Let’s have a reel,”

“And I will dance it with my king, who has showered me with so many compliments and gifts tonight.”

“Will you dance with me?” I ask Cardan, sinking into a curtsy, acid in my voice. “For I find you every bit as beautiful as you find me.”

We danced once before, at the coronation of Prince Dain. Before the murdering began. Before I took Cardan prisoner at knifepoint. I wonder if he is thinking of it when he spins me around the Milkwood.

I let him steer me through steps I doubtlessly would have fumbled on my own.

“Whatever you do to me,” I say, too angry to stay quiet, “I can do worse to you.” “Oh,” he says, fingers tight on mine. “Do not think I forget that for a moment.”

“You believe I planned your humiliation?” He laughs. “Me? That sounds like work.” “I don’t care if you did or not,” I tell him, too angry to make sense of my feelings. “I just care that you enjoyed it.”

“And why shouldn’t I delight to see you squirm? You tricked me,” Cardan says. “You played me for a fool, a...

Our gazes meet, and there’s a shock of mutual understanding that our bodies are pressed too closely.

other. I am aware of the warmth of his neck beneath my twined fingers, of the prickly brush of his hair and how I want to sink my hands into it. I inhale the scent of him—moss and oakwood and leather. I stare at his treacherous mouth and imagine it on me.

Go back to the palace, Cardan said, and I ignored the warning.

I think of Locke’s expression while Cardan spoke, the eagerness in his face. It wasn’t me he was watching. I wonder for the first time if my humiliation was incidental, the bait to his hook.

“I am overcome, Your Majesty. I would like your permission to withdraw.”

“You are free to depart or stay, as you like,” Cardan says magnanimously. “The Queen of Mirth is welcome wheresoever she goes.”

At the edge of the Milkwood, I watch waves beating against the black rocks. After a moment, I notice shapes on the sand, as though shadows were moving on their own. I blink again. Not shadows. Selkies, rising from the sea. A score, at least. They cast off their sleek sealskins and raise silver blades.

The Undersea has come to the Hunter’s Moon revel.

“Orlagh, Queen of the Undersea, sends us with a message for the High King. Grant us permission to speak.”

The Sea needs a bridegroom, The Land needs a bride. Cleave together lest You face the rising tide. Spurn the Sea once, We will have your blood. Spurn the Sea twice, We will have your clay. Spurn the Sea thrice, Your crown will away.

“Is that a proposal?” Locke asks.

“A threat, I’m afraid,” Cardan returns. He glares at the girl, at the gray-skinned man, at everyone. “You’ve delivered your message. I have no bit of doggerel to send back—my own fault for having a seneschal who cannot double as my Court Poet—but I will be sure to crumple up some paper and drop it into the water when I do.”

His voice rings with authority. He no longer just looks like the High King of Elfhame; he sounds like the High King.

“Assemble the Living Council in my rooms in the palace,” he tells me, voice cold and remote and royal. “I will join you as soon as I can get away.”

I nod and am halfway through the crowd when I realize two things: One, he gave me an order; and two, I obeyed it.

I send Snapdragon with a message for my spies to discover where Nicasia has gone. I would have thought that she’d make herself available to hear Cardan’s answer, but given that she was uncertain enough about Cardan’s feelings to shoot a rival lover, maybe she’s reluctant to hear it.

And sitting on my desk, a note addressed to me: From the Grand General of the High King’s Army to His Majesty’s Seneschal.

Come to the war room immediately. Do not wait for the Council.

The Folk cannot tell lies, as you know, not with our tongues. But we can deceive. And we are as capable of self-deceit as any mortal.”

Hmmm idk sounds sus

Yet so long as Cardan wears the Blood Crown, I am sworn to him as surely as I was to his father, as surely as I would have been to Dain or even Balekin. The opportunity that presented itself at the coronation—the opportunity to change the course of destiny—is lost to me.”

Don’t believe it bitch

“who are not bound by your words. Whose promises can be forsworn…”

No oath binds you. If you regret your move, make another. There are games yet to play.

“When Orlagh came into power, she hunted down each of the smaller rulers and murdered them, so the whole Undersea would answer only to her. There are yet a few rulers of the sea she hasn’t brought beneath her thumb, a few too powerful and a few more too remote. But if she marries her daughter to Cardan, you can be sure she will push Nicasia to do the same on land.”

“Murder the heads of the smaller Courts?”

“Of all the Courts. Perhaps at first it will seem like a series of accidents—or a few foolish orders. Or mayb...

“She believes in the forced peace of absolute rule.”