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

by Holly Black

No matter how hard she swung at him, it just made him laugh. He liked her anger. Fire, he called it. She liked it when she was angry, too. Angry was better than scared.

“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.”

“That wasn’t fair,” Taryn complained. Jude didn’t say anything. Nothing was fair in Faerie. She had learned to stop expecting it to be.

“Better to take consorts,” Locke says. “Lots and lots of consorts.” “Spoken like a man about to enter wedlock,” Cardan reminds him. “Oh, leave off. Like Mother Marrow, I have brought you a gift.” Locke takes a step toward the dais. “One with fewer barbs.” He doesn’t look in my direction. It’s as though he doesn’t see me or that I am as uninteresting as a piece of furniture. I wish it didn’t bother me. 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.

I spot Madoc across the room, half in shadow, watching me with his cat eyes. He isn’t close enough to speak, but if he were, I have no doubt what he would say. Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.

“You think me diminished,” Balekin says. “But I am still a prince of Faerie, even here. Vulciber, won’t you take my brother’s seneschal and give her a smack in her pretty little face?” The strike comes openhanded, faster than I would have guessed, the sound of the slap shockingly loud as his palm connects with my skin. It leaves my cheek stinging and me furious. My knife is back in my right hand, its twin in my left. Vulciber wears an eager expression. My pride urges me to fight, but he’s bigger than me and in a space familiar to him. This would be no mere sparring contest. Still, the urge to best him, the urge to wipe the expression from his smug face, is overwhelming. Almost overwhelming. Pride is for knights, I remind myself, not for spies. “My pretty face,” I murmur to Balekin, putting away my knives slowly. I stretch my fingers to touch my cheek. Vulciber hit me hard enough for my own teeth to have cut the inside of my mouth. I spit blood onto the stone floor. “Such flattery. I cheated you out of a crown, so I guess I can allow for some hard feelings. Especially when they come with a compliment. Just don’t try me again.”

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.” “Watching my back is the perfect opportunity to stick a knife in it,” I remind him.

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

By the time I get back to the palace, the sun is up and I want nothing more than sleep. But when I make it to my apartments, I find someone standing in front of the door. My twin sister, Taryn. “You’ve got a bruise coming up on your cheek,” she says, the first words she’s spoken to me in five months.

She waves off my stiff politeness. “Are we going to fight forever? I want you to wear a flower crown and dance at my wedding. Vivienne is coming from the mortal world. She’s bringing Oak. Madoc promises he won’t argue with you. Please say you’ll come.” Vivi is bringing Oak? I groan internally and wonder if there’s a chance of talking her out of it. Maybe it’s because she’s my elder sister, but sometimes it’s hard for her to take me particularly seriously. I sink down on the couch, and Taryn does the same. I consider again the puzzle of her being here. Of whether I should demand an apology or if I should let her skip past all that, the way she clearly wants. “Okay,” I tell her, giving in. I’ve missed her too much to risk losing her again. For the sake of us being sisters, I will try to forget what it felt like to kiss Locke. For my own sake, I will try to forget that she knew about the games he was playing with me during their courtship. I will dance at her wedding, though I am afraid it will feel like dancing on knives.

She reaches into the bag by her feet and pulls out my stuffed cat and snake. “Here,” she says. “I didn’t think you meant to leave them behind.” They’re relics of our old mortal life, talismans. I take them and press them to my chest, as I might a pillow. Right now, they feel like reminders of all my vulnerabilities. They make me feel like a child playing a grown-up game. I hate her a little for bringing them. They’re a reminder of our shared past—a deliberate reminder, as though she couldn’t trust me to remember on my own. They make me feel all my exposed nerves when I am trying so hard not to feel anything.

“Madoc misses you, too. You were always his favorite.” I snort. “Vivi is his heir. His firstborn. The one he came to the mortal world to find. She’s his favorite. Then there’s you—who lives at home and didn’t betray him.” “I’m not saying you’re still his favorite,” Taryn says with a laugh. “Although he was a little proud of you when you outmaneuvered him to get Cardan onto the throne. Even if it was stupid. I thought you hated Cardan. I thought we both hated him.”

I hate you

She gives me a strange look. “I thought you wanted to punish Cardan for everything he’s done.” 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. I hated him so much. Taryn is dredging up every feeling I want to ignore, everything I want to pretend away.

“We made an agreement,” I tell her, which is close to the truth. “Cardan lets me be his advisor. I have a position and power, and Oak is out of danger.” I want to tell her the rest, but I don’t dare. She might tell Madoc, might even tell Locke. I cannot share my secre...

She reaches out a finger to pet the plush body of my stuffed snake. “I love you, you know. Just like Mr. Hiss. And neither of us wants to be left behind.” “Good night,” I tell her, and when she kisses my bruised cheek, I hug her to me, brief and fierce. 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.

“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.”

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.” I feel those words, feel them like a kick to the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can’t tell which of us he’s laughing at. 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.”

“I lost Cardan’s love for Locke’s easy words and easier kisses, sugared like these flowers,” she says. “Your sister lost your love to get Locke’s, didn’t she? But we all know what you lost.” “Locke?” I laugh. “Good riddance.” Her brows knit together. “Surely it’s not the High King himself you were gazing at.” “Surely not,” I echo, but I don’t meet her eyes.

“Locke craves dramatic experiences. And as Master of Revels, he can create these—I don’t even know what to call them—stories. He doesn’t so much think of a party as food and drinks and music, but rather a dynamic that might create conflict.” “Okay…” I say, trying to imagine what that means for politics. Nothing good. “He wants to see how I’ll react to the things he does,” she says. That’s true. He wanted to know, for instance, if Taryn loved him enough to let him court me while she stood by, silent and suffering. I think he’d have been interested in finding out the same about me, but I turned out to be very prickly.

“The way he talks, for a moment, it all seems like it’s fun, even if it’s a terrible idea,” Taryn says. “His being Master of Revels is going to be awful. I don’t care about him taking lovers but I hate him being away from me. Jude, please. Do something. I know you want to say you told me so, but I don’t care.” I have bigger problems, I want to tell her. “Madoc would almost certainly say you don’t have to marry him. Vivi’d say that, too, I bet. In fact, I bet they have.” “But you know me too well to bother.” She shakes her head. “When I’m with him, I feel like the hero of a story. Of my story. It’s when he’s not there that things don’t feel right.” I don’t know what to say to that. I could point out that Taryn seems to be the one making up the story, casting Locke in the role of the protagonist and herself as the romantic interest who disappears when she’s not on the page.

I guess I could order Cardan to strip the title from Locke, but Cardan would resent my using my power for something so petty and personal. It would make me seem weak. And Locke would figure out that the stripping of his title was my fault, since I haven’t made my dislike a secret. He’d know that I had more power over Cardan than quite made sense. And everything Taryn is complaining about would still happen. Locke doesn’t need to be the High King’s Master of Revels to get into this kind of trouble; the title just allows him to manage it on a grander scale. “I’ll talk to Cardan about it,” I lie. Her gaze goes to where his clothes were scattered across my floor, and she smiles.

Despite knowing that Nicasia was trying to bait me, I go over the list of people who may have betrayed me. I fret over who and to what end, over the arrival of Lord Roiben’s ambassador, over how to extend my year-and-a-day lease on the throne. I wish I’d asked Cardan for his true name back when I had a crossbow trained on him. I study my moldering papers and drink my poisons and plan a thousand parries to blows that may never come.

“Would you like me to seduce her away from Locke? I could certainly try. I promise nothing in the way of results, but you might find amusement in the attempt.” “No, no, absolutely not, do not do that,” I say, and do not examine the hot spike of panic his words induce. “I just mean try to keep Locke from being his worst self when she’s around, that’s all.” He narrows his eyes. “Shouldn’t you encourage just the opposite?” Perhaps it would be better for Taryn to discover unhappiness with Locke as soon as possible. But she’s my sister, and I never want to be the cause of her pain. I shake my head.

Cardan gives me a look up through his lashes that I find hard to interpret and then rises, too. He takes my hand. “Nothing is sweeter,” he says, kissing the back of it, “but that which is scarce.”

“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.

Fishies. Fishies. Putting on their feet. Marry a fish and life will be sweet. Fry her in a pan and pick out her bones. Fishy blood is cold ’top a throne.

“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.” He gives me a significant look, perhaps to remind me that I once poisoned him. “For the good of Elfhame.”

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 recall the Ghost’s lessons, making me sit for hours with a crossbow in my hand without my mind wandering, waiting for the perfect shot. So much of winning is waiting. The other part, though, is taking the shot when it comes. Unleashing all that momentum.

When one of the residents comes in, my knife is at his throat faster than he can speak. “Locke,” I say sweetly. “Are you surprised?” He turns to me, dazzling smile faltering. “My blossom. What is this?” After an astonished moment, I realize that he thinks I am Taryn. Can he really not tell the difference between us? A bitter pit where my heart should be is pleased by the thought.

“If you think my sister would put a knife to your throat, perhaps you should delay your nuptials,” I tell him, taking a step back and indicating a chair with the point. “Go ahead. Sit.” He sits down just as I kick the chair, sending it backward and him sprawling to the floor. He rolls over, glaring at me with indignation. “Unchivalrous,” is all he says, but there’s something in his face that wasn’t there before. Fear.

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 that makes me think of Val Moren’s lesson in juggling. I have allowed the Locke situation to get out of hand. I place my foot on his chest, pressing down a little to remind him that if I kicked hard, it could shatter bone. “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 ide...

“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.” He begins to get up, but I press down harder with my foot and shift the grip on my knife. He stops moving. “You always liked stories,” I remind him. “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?”

“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.

I make my way to my sister’s apartment. Though in the past I’ve donned mortal clothing to walk around the mall and tried to behave in such a way as would be above suspicion, it turns out that arriving in Maine in a doublet and riding boots draws a few stares but no fear that I have come from another world. Perhaps I am part of a medieval festival, a girl suggests as I pass her. She went to one a few years ago and enjoyed the joust very much. She had a large turkey leg and tried mead for the first time. “It goes to your head,” I tell her. She agrees.

Awww ☺️

An elderly man with a newspaper remarks that I must be doing Shakespeare in the park. A few louts on some steps call out to me that Halloween is in October. The Folk doubtlessly learned this lesson long ago. They do not need to deceive humans. Humans will deceive themselves.

“Oh,” Vivi says, reaching into her suitcase again, coming up with another squishy-looking package wrapped with a black bow. “Can you take this to Cardan? It’s a ‘congratulations on being king’ present.” “He’s the High King of Elfhame,” Oriana says. “Whether or not you played together, you cannot call him as you did when you were children.” I stand there stupidly for a long moment, not reaching for the package. I knew Vivi and Cardan were friendly. After all, Vivi’s the one who told Taryn about his tail, having seen it while swimming together with one of his sisters. I just forgot.

I pass by the throne room where Cardan sits at one of the low tables, his head bent toward Nicasia’s. I cannot see his face, but I can see hers as she throws back her head with laughter, showing the long column of her throat. She looks incandescent with joy, his attention the light in which her beauty shines especially bright. She loves him, I realize uncomfortably. She loves him, and she betrayed him with Locke and is terrified he will never love her again. His fingers trace their way down her arm to the back of her wrist, and I remember vividly the feeling of those hands on me. My skin heats at the memory, a blush that starts at my throat and keeps going from there. Kiss me until I am sick of it, he said, and now he has most certainly gorged on my kisses. Now he is most certainly sick of them. I hate seeing him with Nicasia. I hate the thought of his touching her. I hate that this is my plan, that I have no one to be angry with but myself. I am an idiot.

Pain makes you strong, Madoc once told me, making me lift a sword again and again. Get used to the weight.

“Clever girl. They are not only beautiful, but they add to beauty. They make someone more lovely than they were, painfully lovely. Her husband will not leave her side for quite some time.” The look on his face is a challenge. He believes I am too vain to give such a gift to my sister. How well he knows the selfish human heart. Taryn will be a beautiful bride. How much more do I, her twin, want to put myself in her shadow? How lovely can I bear her to be? And yet, what better gift for a human girl wedded to the beauty of the Folk?

“Ominous,” I say. “It seems I have a singular taste for women who threaten me.”

“He wants me to have a war to restore him to his former glory?” Cardan asks. “Pretty much,” I say. “Now, that’s ambition,” Cardan says. “There might be only a floodplain and several pine trees still on fire remaining, but the four Folk huddling together in a damp cave would have heard the name Grimsen. One must admire the focus. I don’t suppose you told him that declaring war was your call, not mine.”

“Father,” I say. “I used to think I wanted you to call me that,” he says. “But it turns out that when you do, good things seldom come after.”

“Does he know?” Madoc asks, grinning in a slightly terrifying yet paternal fashion. “Does our High King have any idea how good you are at running his kingdom for him?” “Keep hoping he doesn’t,” I say, trying for a breezy confidence that I don’t feel when it comes to anything to do with Cardan or our arrangement. Madoc laughs. “Oh, I shall, daughter, much as I hope you will realize how much better it would be if you were running it for your own family.”

I think of Madoc and how around him, I am perpetually a child. It’s no small thing to pass judgment on the person who raised you, no matter what else they have done. This confrontation is less about this moment and more about the vast sweep of their past, the warp and weft of old resentments and alliances between them.

“Come down, human girl,” says one with silvery eyes. “We heard of your viciousness. We heard of your ferocity,” says another in a deep, melodious voice that might be female. “Do not disappoint us.”

Cardan is more knowledgeable than I am at love. He could use that against me, just as I asked him to use it against Nicasia. Perhaps he found a way to turn the tables after all. Kill him, a part of me says, a part I remember from the night I took him captive. Kill him before he makes you love him.

“You put a curse on that girl over there,” I tell him. “Fix her immediately.” “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.”

“I want to go,” she says finally in a quavering, wet voice. “I want to go home right now and never come back.” 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. I fear that, in some measure, this is my fault. Taryn and I hid from Vivi the worst of what it was to be human in Faerie. I think Vivi believed that because her sisters were fine, Heather would be, too. But we were never fine. “It’s going to be okay,” Vivi is saying, rubbing Heather’s back in soothing circles. “You’re okay. Just a little weirdness. Later, you’re going to think it was funny.” “She’s not going to think it was funny,” I say, and Vivi flashes me an angry look.

I should congratulate Taryn before I leave. Kiss her cheeks and say something nice, and then she’ll know I was here, even if I had to go. But as I look toward her, evaluating how swiftly I can do that, my gaze catches on her earrings. 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 could never stay faithful and decided to go after me before I came back for him.

Fuuuuuuuck