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

by Holly Black

“Power,” he said. “Power is the ability to get what you want. Power is the ability to be the one making the decisions. And how do we get power?”

“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 say, and do not examine the hot spike of panic his words induce.

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

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.

It looks like an earring—a single drop, which Cardan lifts to the light and admires. I guess he has made his first magical object in Elfhame’s service.

The High King’s expression stiffens, only to smooth out a moment later when he turns toward the Court. “I have too often been troubled by dreams of Jude,” he says, voice carrying. “Her face features prominently in my most frequent nightmare.”

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.

“You believe I planned your humiliation?” He laughs. “Me? That sounds like work.”

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

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

It’s more intimate than the way he’s touching me, to be looked at like that.

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.

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.

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

I cut him off. “I did it for the same reason that you did. To get it out of my system.” “And is it?” he asks. “Out of your system?” I look him in the face and lie. “Yes.”

It occurs to me that maybe desire isn’t something overindulging helps. Maybe it is not unlike mithridatism; maybe I took a killing dose when I should have been poisoning myself slowly, one kiss at a time.

When Oriana turns, a hint of a smile is on her face. “How unlike you, to say what you actually mean and have it be something other than hostile.”

lmao

Now he studies me with a not-dissimilar look, and all I want to do is walk into his arms. I want to drown my worries in his embrace. I want him to say something totally unlike himself, about things being okay.

Kill him before he makes you love him.

Murder is fine, but feelings are too much

I keep thinking of the steady way he looked at me when we were both naked, before he pulled on his shirt and fastened those elegant cuffs. We should have called truce, he’d said, brushing back his ink-black hair impatiently. We should have called truce long before this.

“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.”

we love a murderous icon

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.

god. I knew what was gonna happen and I still trusted this man 💀

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

💀💀💀💀💀

I hope Cardan misses me.

He grabs for my throat, and for a moment, I am scared that I’m not strong enough, that my training isn’t good enough. Then his body relaxes utterly, as though realizing who I am.

“I could have told my brother that,” he says, with a softness in his voice I am utterly unprepared for.

“I wasn’t kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn’t sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before.”

“The three of you have one solution to every problem. Murder. No key fits every lock.” Cardan gives us all a stern look, holding up a long-fingered hand with my stolen ruby ring still on one finger. “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.

He's so funny

He puts his head in his long-fingered hands. “She didn’t have to command me, Jude. She didn’t have to use any magic. I trust you. I trusted you.”

“Marry me,” he says. “Become the Queen of Elfhame.”

Cardan laughs with them.

I'll never forgive him for that