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.”

“Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise, but not before what I have told you comes to pass.”

I have heard that for mortals, the feeling of falling in love is very like the feeling of fear.

She turns to me. “I thought we were nothing alike, you and I. But it turns out we’re just the same.” I don’t think she believes that to be a good thing.

“I knew you liked her,” says Locke. “That’s why I had to have her first. Do you remember the party in my maze garden? How I kissed her while you watched?” “I recall that your hands were on her, but her eyes were on me,” Cardan returns. “That’s not true!” I insist, but I remember Cardan on a blanket with a daffodil-haired faerie girl. She pressed her lips to the edge of his boot, and another girl kissed his throat. His gaze had turned to me when one of them began kissing his mouth. His eyes were coal-bright, as wet as tar.

she’s still my sister. My widowed, murderer sister with a baby on the way.

The whole place looks straight out of a fairy tale, the kind where love is a simple thing, never the cause of pain.

At night, the human world looks as though it’s full of fallen stars.

He is even more horrifically beautiful than I was able to recall.

“Jude never loved Locke.” My face feels hot, but my shame is an excellent cover to hide behind. “She loved someone else. He’s the one she’d want dead.” I am pleased to see Cardan flinch. “Enough,” he says before I can go on. “I have heard all I care to on this subject—”

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

“Wisdom is for the meek,” he returns. “And it seldom helps them as much as they believe it will.

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.

“It wasn’t as though she didn’t dress him in velvets or furs; it’s that she left them on until they grew ragged. Nor was it that she didn’t feed him the most delectable cuts of meat and cake; but she forgot him for long enough that he had to scavenge for food in between. I don’t think she loved him, but then I don’t think she loved anyone. He was petted and fed wine and adored, then forgotten. But for all that, if he was bad with her, he was worse without her. They are cut from the same cloth.” I shudder, imagining the loneliness of that life, the anger. That desire for love. There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man. “If you’re looking for reasons why he disappointed you,” Oriana says, “by all accounts, Prince Cardan was a disappointment from the beginning.”

I still promise to run, tail between my legs. And since I have a tail, that should be amusing for everyone. Are you satisfied?”

Grima Mog goes to one knee. “My queen,” she says. “Command me.” I can’t believe she is speaking those words to me. I can’t believe the land chose me. I had half-convinced myself I was faking being the High Queen, the way I faked my way through being the seneschal.

Cardan sweeps across the floor toward me, looking like a ridiculously magnificent fiend. The guards part to let him closer, but if I make a move, I have no doubt they’ll stab me through.

I feel a guard’s hand close on my arm. Then Cardan’s voice comes. “Do not touch her.” A terrible silence follows. I wait for him to pronounce judgment on me. Whatever he commands will be done. His power is absolute. I don’t even have the strength to fight back. “Whatever can you mean?” Randalin says. “She’s—”

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

The shocked roar of the crowd rolls around me, but none of them are more shocked than I am. I try to open my eyes, try to sit up, but darkness crowds in at...

“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.”

Which is ridiculous, as hurt as I am. I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness. Still, I like hearing it. I like everything he’s saying all too well. That boy is your weakness.

“Let me remind you that I didn’t know you’d murdered my brother, the ambassador to the Undersea, until that very morning,” he says. “My plans were made in haste. And perhaps I was a little annoyed. I thought it would pacify Queen Orlagh, at least until all promises were finalized in the treaty. By the time you guessed the answer, the negotiations would be over. 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.” Oh. Oh. It wasn’t an accident, his choice of words. It wasn’t infelicitous. It was deliberate. A riddle made just for me.

I haul around and slap him. It’s a stinging blow, smearing the gold on his cheekbone and causing his skin to redden. We stare at each other for long moments, breathing hard. His eyes are bright with something entirely different from anger. I am in over my head. I am drowning. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He grabs my hand, possibly to keep me from hitting him again. Our fingers lace together. “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.”

My head swims with everything we’ve talked about. My palm is smeared with gold. When I look at him, I see the remaining powder has been smudged over his cheekbone by the strike of my hand. I can’t stop staring at it, can’t stop thinking about the way he looked at me when he caught my fingers. That’s the only excuse I have for not noticing that he’s led me back to his rooms, which are, I suppose, also mine since we’re married.

“This is my room,” he points out, affronted. “And that’s my wife.” “So you keep telling everyone,” the Bomb says. “But I am going to take out her stitches, and I don’t think you want to watch that.” “Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe he’d like to hear me scream.” “I would,” Cardan says, standing. “And perhaps one day I will.” On the way out, his hand goes to my hair. A light touch, barely there, and then gone.

You’re already doomed, Queen of Elfhame. You already love him. You already loved him when you questioned me about him instead of your own mother. And you will still love him, mortal girl, long after his feelings evaporate like morning dew.” I can’t help thinking of Cardan’s silence when I asked if he liked that I was afraid. A part of him will always delight in cruelty. Even if he has changed, he could change again.

“I will accompany you,” Cardan says, rising. I open my mouth to explain all the reasons that he can’t go. The problem is that as I look up into his gold-rimmed eyes and he blinks mock-innocently down at me, I can’t think of a single one that will actually stop him.

The High King stands in the doorway. His eyebrows rise, and a malicious smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Many think that, but few are bold enough to say it to my face.”

“Seelie and Unseelie, Wild Folk and Shy Folk, I am glad to have you march under my banner, glad of your loyalty, grateful for your honor.” His gaze goes to me. “To you, I offer honey wine and the hospitality of my table. But to traitors and oath breakers, I offer my queen’s hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives.”

I strip off my dress, kick off my shoes. I even take down my hair, letting it fall over my shoulders. In the mirror, I catch sight of my curves—the muscles of my arms and chest, honed by swordplay; the heaviness of my pale breasts; and the swell of my hips. Naked, there is no disguise for my mortality. Naked, I return to the bedroom. Cardan is standing by the bed. When he turns, he looks so astonished that I almost laugh. I have seldom seen him unsure of himself, even when drunk, even when wounded; it is rare to see him overset. A wild heat leaps into his eyes, an expression not unlike fear. I feel a rush of power, heady as wine.

On my knees, it is a small thing to lie back on the cold stone. I reach up my hands, like a supplicant. “You may do with me whatever you like,” I say. “Please oh please. All I want is you.”

He sucks in a breath and gets down so we’re both on the floor and he’s on his hands and knees, making a cage of his body. He presses his mouth to the pulse point of my wrist, racing in time with my heart.

“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 wit...

It seems impossible that he’s saying those words and that they’re true. But when he leans down and kisses me again, that thought blurs into sensation. He arches against me, shuddering. I begin to undo th...

“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,” I whisper against his skin and feel dizzy with the intimacy of the admission, feel more naked than when he could see every inch of me. “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.”

“Madoc says you will duel for love,” I say. “Whose?” he asks, frowning. There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man. I shake my head.

“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.

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