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.”

“This is my room,” he points out, affronted. “And that’s my wife.”

“Mock me all you like. Whatever I imagined then, now it is I who would beg and grovel for a kind word from your lips.” His eyes are black with desire. “By you, I am forever undone.”

“My sweet nemesis, how glad I am that you returned.”

“It’s you I love,” he says. “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.” He walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. “You probably guessed as much,” he says. “But just in case you didn’t.”

“I tried to kill you,” she reminds me. “You’ve described pretty much every important relationship in my life,” I return, taking slow, shallow breaths. “I like you fine.” That makes her grin toothily. “Then I ought to get to work.”

Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.

Well, I told Vee she has to go on a quest. She has to meet me all over again and do it right this time. Tell me the truth from the start. And convince me to love her.”

“And you.” He looks at me, his lips curving in something that’s not quite a smile; it’s more and less than that. “I knew little else, but I always knew you.”

“I sentence you to live out the rest of your days in the mortal world and to never put your hand on a weapon again.”

“I bet Cardan has never even tried pizza.”

To family and Faerieland and pizza and stories and new beginnings and scheming great schemes. I can toast to that.