The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3)

by Holly Black

“Jude, you can’t really think I don’t know it’s you. I knew you from the moment you walked into the brugh.”

“She is my wife,” Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd. “The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.”

“It was terrifying,” he says, “watching you fall. I mean, you’re generally terrifying, but I am unused to fearing for you. And then I was furious. I am not sure I have ever been that angry before.” “Mortals are fragile,” I say. “Not you,” he says in a way that sounds a little like a lament. “You never break.”

“Unlike Locke, I never thought love was a game,” he says. “You may accuse me of much, but not that.”

“By you, I am forever undone.”

I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.

“I knew little else, but I always knew you.”