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

by Holly Black

“Prince Cardan will be your last born child,” the Royal Astrologer said. “He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.”

“I don’t care,” Oak says. “I don’t care about that stuff. I don’t want to be king. I never want to be king.”

Knowing that in the great game of princes and queens, I have been swept off the board.

“He doesn’t want to be High King,” I tell her. “Oh. That.” Vivi glances toward his bedroom. “I thought it was something important.”

He gives me an annoyed look. “Just because you’ve lived in the High Court, you need not put on airs. You’re no one special now.” I am the High Queen of Elfhame. The thought comes to me unbidden, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from saying those ridiculous words. He’s right: I am no one special now.

It feels good to be fighting someone other than myself.

“Come fight me again,” she calls after me as I head for the stairs. “I have secrets aplenty. There are so many things you don’t know, daughter of Madoc. And I think you crave a little violence yourself.”

In Faerie, staggering home at dawn is the equivalent of staggering home at midnight for mortals.

“I thought we were nothing alike, you and I. But it turns out we’re just the same.”

“Greetings, Your Majesty, you betraying toad.” No, that wouldn’t work, no matter how good it felt.

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

I am the Queen of Elfhame. Even though I am the queen in exile, I am still the queen. And that means Madoc isn’t just trying to take Cardan’s throne. He’s trying to take mine.

“If you’re looking for reasons why he disappointed you,” Oriana says, “by all accounts, Prince Cardan was a disappointment from the beginning.”

“Good-bye, then, daughter,” Madoc says. “You would have made a good redcap.”

“It’s ridiculous the way everyone acts like killing a king is going to make someone better at being one,” Vivi says. “Imagine if, in the mortal world, a lawyer passed the bar by killing another lawyer.”

“Thank you,” I say, reaching out my hands. Vivi takes one, and then Taryn clasps the other. I squeeze.

“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.”

Think of it: I exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world. Until and unless she is pardoned by the crown.” He pauses. “Pardoned by the crown. Meaning by the King of Faerie. Or its queen. You could have returned anytime you wanted.”

“You’ve always scared me. You gave me every reason to fear your capriciousness and your cruelty. I was afraid of you even when you were tied to that chair in the Court of Shadows. I was afraid of you when I had a knife to your throat. And I am scared of you now.”

For all our conflicts, there are moments when we understand each other entirely too well.

“He was trying to impress you, you know. Talking to me.”

“The High King and High Queen of Elfhame.”

Now they see me as the murderess queen. I am not sure how I feel about it, but seeing the intensity of interest in their gazes now, I cannot deny it’s effective. I raise my glass high and drink. And by the time the party ebbs, when I pass courtiers, they all bow to me. Every last one.

“You were very formidable tonight, my queen,” Cardan says, crossing the floor to me.

Now this is a game I don’t mind playing.

“Is this what you imagined I’d be like, back in your rooms at Hollow Hall, when you thought of me and hated it? Is this how you pictured my eventual surrender?”

“By you, I am forever undone.”

“We have lived in our armor for so long, you and I. And now I am not sure if either of us knows how to remove it.”

“In the mortal world, when I thought you were my enemy, I still missed you.” “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 can’t believe he said that and then just walked out, leaving me reeling. I am going to strangle him.

You love him, too, I think. You’ve loved him since before you were a prisoner of the Undersea. You loved him when you agreed to marry him. Once this is over, I will find the bravery to tell him.

“This is your last chance to surrender,” I say. “Bend the knee, Father.”

“That’s what mortal means,” I say with a sigh that I don’t have to fake. “We die. Think of us like shooting stars, brief but bright.”

I didn’t understand the horror of being so powerful and so utterly powerless all at the same time.

But like so many imaginings, it was absent all the horror.

“I do love you,” I whisper. “I will always love you.”

And then, through that, Cardan steps out. Cardan, naked and covered in blood. Alive. Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.

But he holds me as though I am the only solid thing in the world.

“I always supposed I would be delicious,” I hear him say, although I note that he does not take any of the meat for himself.

“I love you,” I say, the words coming out in an unintelligible rush.

And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.

“I told you once that I am what you made me, but I am not only that. You raised me to be uncompromising, yet I learned mercy. And I will give you something like mercy if you can show me that you deserve it.”

When we return to the apartment with our stack of steaming cardboard boxes, Heather and Vivi have tied up a silvery banner that reads CONGRATULATIONS, NEWLYWEDS! in bright colors. Under it, on the kitchen table, is an ice-cream cake with scattered gummy snakes on it and several bottles of wine.

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