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

by Holly Black

It feels good to be fighting someone other than myself.

“Do not touch her.”

“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.”

“Pleading, mostly.

“No, it’s not that, not exactly. I didn’t think I could hurt you. And I never thought you would be afraid of me.”

I trust you.”

On the way out, his hand goes to my hair. A light touch, barely there, and then gone.

“By you, I am forever undone.”

“I’m not mocking,”

“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.”

“I missed you,”

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

How do people like us take off our armor? One piece at a time.

“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.”

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.

I said that if I couldn’t be better than my enemies, then I would become worse. Much, much worse.

“I will bend my head to you,” Madoc says to me under his breath. “And only you.”

I run into his arms.