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

by Holly Black

But it would be better for both of us to stop fighting each other and focus on our common interest: power.”

“But now, come back to my side. Come back before I move against you in earnest.”

All I ask from you tonight is that you use your power as seneschal to block any alliance with the Undersea.” “Yes,” I say, thinking of Nicasia and Oak and all my plans. “That I can guarantee.”

“The way it was delivered, I am not sure how he could marry the girl without seeming as though the land feared the sea and capitulated to its demands.”

“Time for us to prepare,” Madoc says. “If it’s war she wants, it is war we will give her. I will pull the salt from the sea before I let Elfhame tremble over Orlagh’s wrath.”

“I want to hear from Jude,” Madoc says,

“Whatever for?” Randalin wants to know. “Because we didn’t heed her before. She told us that the Queen of the Undersea was going to move against the land. Had we attended her, we might not now be scrambling for strategy.”

“As I said, Orlagh has been communicating with Balekin. I don’t know what information he’s passed on to her, but the sea sends Folk to the land with gifts and messages for him.”

“Prince of the land, prince under the waves,” says Fala. “Prince of prisons, prince of knaves.”

Sus

“Balekin’s no strategist,” Madoc says, which is as close to admitting he was behind Eldred’s execution as he’s ever done. “He’s ambitious, though. And proud.”

“Safer for there to be only two in the bloodline, when one is needed to crown the other. Three is superfluous. Three is dangerous.” Which is a roundabout way of saying somebody should kill Balekin before he tries to assassinate Cardan.

“Tell the Queen of the Undersea that if she threatens me again, she will find her daughter my prisoner instead of my bride.”

“There aren’t that many Folk in the Tower,” the Bomb explains. “The woman you’re describing…”

“Do you know her?” I ask. “I’ve never spoken a word to her,” the Bomb says. “But I know who she is—or who she was: one of Eldred’s lovers who begot him a son. That’s Cardan’s mother.”

all I have discovered is that it concerned the death of another lover of the High King’s and, somehow, Cardan’s involvement.

“Very well. There was a hag who came across Madoc’s land when your mother was pregnant with Vivienne. The hag was given to prophecy and divined futures in eggshells. And do you know what the hag said? That Eva’s child was destined to be a greater weapon than Justin could ever forge.”

“Vivi?” I demand. “Her child,” says Asha. “Although she must have thought of the one in her belly right then. Perhaps that’s why she left. To protect the child from fate. But no one can escape fate.” I

“I asked her some questions on the way here. It sounds as though she was entranced by palace life, besotted with the High King’s regard, glorying in the dancing and the singing and the wine. Cardan was left to be suckled by a little black cat whose kittens came stillborn.”

“After she was sent to the Tower, Cardan was sent to Balekin,” he says.

“You like it, don’t you? Playing games with us? Pulling our strings and seeing how we dance?” “The Folk, you mean?” “I imagine you’d like it as well with mortals, but we’re what you’re practiced in.” He doesn’t sound disapproving, but it still feels like being skewered on a pin. “And perhaps some of us offer a particular savor.”

“Is that meant to be a compliment?” At that, his smile blooms. “It’s no insult.”

“I see a new monarch coming, but whether that’s a sign of Cardan deposed or Orlagh overturned or Nicasia made queen, I cannot say.”

“It’s easy to put your own life on the line, isn’t it? To make peace with danger. But a strategist must sometimes risk others, even those we love.”

Madoc wants the lower Courts to send more than their usual allotment of troops.

Hmmm weird

“The seneschal isn’t just the voice of the king,” he says. “You’re his hands as well. If you don’t like working with General Madoc, find a new Grand General, one who hasn’t previously committed treason.”

“Nicasia knows more than she’s saying. Make her say the rest of it, and then use that against Balekin.”

“She thought to surprise you in your bed. Give her what she wants, and get the information we need to avoid a war.”

“You just think I ought to. That I can. That I’d be good at it. Very well, Jude. Tell me how it’s done. Do you think she’d like it if I came to her like this, if I looked deeply into her eyes?”

His beringed fingers trace over my cheek, trace the line of my lip and down my throat. I feel dizzy and overwhelmed. “Should I touch her like this?” he asks, lashes lowered. The shadows limn his face, casting his cheekbones into stark relief. “I don’t know,” I say, but my voice betrays me. It’s all wrong, high and breathless. He presses his mouth to my ear, kissing me there. His hands skim over my shoulders, making me shiver. “And then like this? Is this how I ought to seduce her?” I can feel his mouth shape the light words against my skin. “Do you think it would work?” I dig my fingernails into the meat of my palm to keep from moving against him. My whole body is trembling with tension. “Yes.”

Then his mouth is against mine, and my lips part. I close my eyes against what I’m about to do. My fingers reach up to tangle in the black curls of his hair. He doesn’t kiss me as though he’s angry; his kiss is soft, yearning.

I’ve wanted this and feared it, and now that it’s happening, I don’t know how I will...

“I hate you,” I breathe into his mouth. “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”

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 gather up my things and go. But I don’t. He shucks his cuffed white shirt over his head in a single elegant gesture, revealing bare skin and scars. My hands are shaking. He captures them and kisses my knuckles with a kind of reverence. “I want to tell you so many lies,” he says. I shudder, and my heart hammers as his hands skim over my skin, one sliding between my thighs. I mirror him, fumbling with the buttons of his breeches. He helps me push them down, his tail curling against his leg then twisting to coil against mine, soft as a whisper. I reach over to slide my hand over the flat plane of his stomach. I don’t let myself hesitate, but my inexperience is obvious. His skin is hot under my palm, against my calluses. His fingers are too clever by half. I feel as though I am drowning in sensation. His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarrassing noises. It’s more intimate than the way he’s touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate b...

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.

One of the hardest things to do as a spy, as a strategist, or even just as a person, is wait.

I concentrate on what I am going to say to Vivi, instead of thinking of Cardan. I do not want to consider what happened between us. I do not want to think about the way his muscles moved or how his skin felt or the soft gasping sounds he made or the slide of his mouth against mine.

I definitely don’t want to think about how hard I had to bite my own lip to keep quiet. Or how obvious it was that I’d never done any of the things we did, no less the things we didn’t do.

After an astonished moment, I realize that he thinks I am Taryn. Can he really not tell the difference between us?

For five months I have tried to use every bit of restraint I learned over a lifetime of keeping my head down. I have tried to behave as though I had only dribs and drabs of power, an important servant’s power, and still keep in my head that I was in charge. A balancing act

“I am done with being polite. We’re not going to play word games or make up riddles. Humiliating the High King is a bad idea. Humiliating me is a terrible idea. Running around on my sister is just dumb. Maybe you thought I was too busy to take my revenge? Well, Locke, I want you to understand that for you, I will make time.”

“You once accused me of playing the great game. What was it you called it: ‘the game of kings and princes, of queens and crowns’? But to play it well, I must be pitiless.”

“You said you wanted to create the sparks of stories. Well, the tale of a twin who murders her sister’s betrothed is a good one, don’t you think?”

“Peace, Jude. Perhaps I overplayed my hand. But I cannot believe you want to murder me for it. Your sister would be devastated.”

“Better she never be a bride than win...

“You’re right,” I continue. “I don’t want to harm you. We are to be family. You will be my brother and I your sister. Let us make friends. But to do that, I need you to do some things for me.

“First, stop trying to make me uncomfortable. Stop trying to turn me into a character in one of your dramas. Pick another target to weave stories around. “Second, whatever your issue is with Cardan, whatever pushed you to make such a meal of toying with him, whatever made you think it was fun to steal his lover and then throw her over for a mortal girl—as though you wanted him to know the thing dearest to him was worth nothing to you—let it go. Whatever made you decide to make me Queen of Mirth to torment him with the feelings you suspected he had, leave off. He’s the High King, and it’s too dangerous.”

“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.

You can’t fight the sea, Locke said. I hope he’s wrong.

I judge you by three things and three things only—how square you are with us, how capable, and what you want for the world.”

“Cardan is part of the Court of Shadows. We may play the world, but we don’t play one another. Hiding messages from Balekin is one thing. But his mother—does he even know she’s not dead?”