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

by Holly Black

He gives me a nod when he departs, the nod of someone acknowledging an opponent.

When I confronted him in Hollow Hall after poisoning his cup, I thought I had made us enemies. But this is far worse. He knows I stand between him and the crown, and it matters little whether he loves or hates me—he will do whatever it takes to wrest that power from my hands.

In a land where there are no lies, promises need not be public to be binding.

“She admired my ears,” the boy says. “I was only giving her what she desired. A party favor.”

“That’s what I am going to say after I gut you and use your entrails as streamers,” I tell him. “I was only giving him what he wanted. After all, if he didn’t want to be eviscerated, he would have honored my very reasonable request.”

Vivi should have prepared her better, should have made sure she always wore a charm—or better yet, two. She should never have let Heather wander off alone.

“The Undersea made its move.”

“The Tower of Forgetting. Vulciber insists you ought to see it,”

Dangling from her lobes are a moon and a star. The same ones I bargained for from Grimsen. The ones I lost in the wood. She wasn’t wearing them when we got in the carriage, so she must have got them…

Beside her, Locke is smiling his fox smile, and when he walks, he has a slight limp.

For a moment, I just stare, my mind refusing to acknowledge what I’m seeing. Locke. It was Locke with the riders, Locke and his friends on the night before he was to be married. A bachelor party of sorts. I guess he decided to pay me back for threatening him. That, or perhaps he knew he cou...

I see the bodies. Knights, lying pale and still. The few on their backs have water filling their mouths as though their lips were the edges of cups. Others lie on their sides. All their eyes have been replaced with pearls.

“For Cardan,” I say. I leave unsaid the second part: Because his mother is still alive and mine is not, because even if he hates you, at least he should get a chance to tell you about it.

I find Balekin’s cell is empty, the bars bent and broken, his opulent rugs wet and covered in sand.

Orlagh took Balekin. Stole a prince of Faerie from right under my nose.

And I didn’t think that when she threatened to take blood, she meant Balekin.

The Ghost shouts my name again, from closer by than I expect. I turn as he steps into view on the other side of the room. Beside him are three of the sea Folk, watching me with pale eyes. It takes me a moment to put the image together, to realize the Ghost is not restrained nor even menaced. To realize this is a betrayal.

“Why?” I ask, hearing Nicasia’s words pounding in my ears like the surf: Someone you trust has already betrayed you.

“I served Prince Dain,” the Ghost says. “Not you.”

I am so very angry—angry at the Ghost for betraying me, angry at Nicasia and at myself, myself, always myself, more than anyone else. Furious at myself for winding up in this position. “What happened to the Ghost?” I spit out. “Where is he?”

“You think I performed a trick because Cardan likes me better than you,” I say. “But you shot at him with a crossbow bolt. Of course he likes me better.”

Time when Madoc is free to scheme toward war with his new knowledge of my influence over the crown, when Cardan is entirely free to do whatever his chaotic heart desires, when Locke may make a mockery of everyone he can and draw them into his dramatics, when the Council may push for capitulation to the sea, and I can do nothing to stop any of it.

She means me to be more afraid, but I feel a little relief. They don’t think I have any special power. They think I have a special vulnerability. They think they can control me as they would any mortal.

“Yeah, Cardan should definitely trust you more. You seem really trustworthy. It’s not like you’re actually currently betraying him.”

“Want me to show you where to put the point?” I ask. “It’s delicate work, causing pain without doing permanent damage.”

“Oh, I’m scared,” I tell her. “Just not of you. Whoever brought me here—your mother, I presume, and Balekin—has a use for me. I am afraid of what that is, but not of you, an inept torturer who is irrelevant to everyone’s plans.”

I wish I’d kissed Taryn’s cheek before I left. I wish I’d made sure Vivi understood that if she loved a mortal, she had to be more careful with her. I wish I’d told Madoc that I always intended for Oak to have the throne.

I wish I’d planned more plans. I wish I’d left more instructions. I wish I had never trusted the Ghost.

I hope Cardan mi...

“Jude Duarte,” he says. “Now you know how it feels to be a prisoner. How is it to rot in a cell? To think you will die there?” “I don’t know,” I tell him. “I always knew I was getting out.”

suppose you have, in a manner of speaking. Come to me.” I hear the glamour in her voice and remember what Nicasia said about my not remembering whatever she did to me. Truly, I should be glad she didn’t do worse.

My flimsy gown makes it clear I am not wearing any charms. They do not know the geas Dain put on me. They believe I am...

I can pretend. I can...

“You love us very much, but you must never tell anyone how much outside this room. You are loyal to us and would do absolutely anything for us. Isn’t that right, Jude Duarte?”

“Yes,” I say readily.

“If Oak was High King, then it would really be Madoc who ruled Elfhame,” I say, because it’s nothing that they don’t know.

“And would you take us to Oak’s door?” Balekin asks. “Take us to the mortal world and take him from your big sister, carry him back to us?”

Balekin shoots a look toward Orlagh. If they took Oak, they could foster him under the sea, they could marry him to Nicasia, they could have a Greenbriar line of their own, loyal to the Undersea. They would have options beyond Balekin for access to the throne, which cannot please him.

“This Grimsen creature,” Orlagh asks her daughter. “You really believe he can make a new crown?”

“He made the Blood Crown,” says Balekin. “If he made that, surely he can make another.”

If they don’t need the Blood Crown, then they don’t need Oak. They don’t need to foster him, don’t need him to place the crown on Balekin’s head, don’t need him alive at all.

“He cannot forge beneath the sea, so he will always favor the land. But with the death of the Alderking, he craves glory. He wishes to have a High King who will give him that.” This is their plan, I tell myself to try to stifle the panic I feel. I know their plan. If I can escape, then I can stop it.

I sometimes doubt my effectiveness as a seneschal, but never as a killer.

“Tell me what Cardan promised you to help him.” “But she—” Nicasia begins, but Or...

“Daughter,” says the Queen of the Undersea, “you do not see what is right beneath your nose. Cardan got a throne from this girl. Stop searching for what she has over hi...

“You’ve said that Cardan didn’t much care for her. And yet she made him High King. Consider that perhaps he realized she’d be useful and exploited that usefulness, through kisses and flattery, much as you’ve cultivated the little smith.”

“I always wanted a place in Faerie. He told me he would make me his seneschal and put me at his right hand, like Val Moren in Eldred’s Court. He’d make sure I was respected and even feared.” It’s a lie, of course. He never promised me anything, and Dain promised far less than that. But, oh, if someone had—if Madoc had—it would have been very hard to turn down.

“You’re telling me that you betrayed your father and put that fool on the throne in exchange for a job?” Balekin demands incredulously.

“Being the High King of Elfhame is also a job,” I return. “And look at what has been sacrificed to get that.” For a moment, I pause, wondering if I have spoken too harshly for them to be...

“And aren’t we putting our faith in Grimsen, even as we offer him a not particul...