How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (The Folk of the Air, #3.5)

by Holly Black

Some might think of him as a strong draught, burning the back of one’s throat, but invigorating all the same. You might beg to differ. So long as you’re begging, he doesn’t mind a bit.

He cuts his gaze toward his unpredictable, mortal High Queen, whose wild brown hair is blowing around her face, whose amber eyes are alight when she looks at him. They are two people who ought to have, by all rights, remained enemies forever. He can’t believe his good fortune, can’t trace the path that got him here.

Of course she wants to fight it, whatever it is. She feels as though she has something to prove at all times. Feels as though she has to earn the crown on her head over and over again.

It’s absurd, sometimes, the thought that she loves him. He’s grateful, of course, but it feels as though it’s just another of the ridiculous, absurd, dangerous things she does. She wants to fight monsters, and she wants him for a lover, the same boy she fantasized about murdering. She likes nothing easy or safe or sure. Nothing good for her.

“Oh, I think there’s a lesson in it, princeling: A sharp tongue is no match for a sharp tooth.”

Hate that was so bright and hot that it was the first thing that truly warmed him. Hate that felt so good that he welcomed being consumed by it. Not a heart of stone, but a heart of fire.

A poisonous flower displays its bright colors, a cobra flares its hood; predators ought not to shrink from extravagance. And that was what he was being polished and punished into being.

For all the charm and distinction of his siblings, it was Cardan who won the Undersea’s favor. It was the first time he’d won anything.

Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted. And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming. But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.

“You made Balekin a promise, a foolish promise, but a promise all the same. You deserve—” He couldn’t get out the rest of the sentence. You deserved everything you got. That would have been a lie, and while the Folk could trick and deceive, no untruth could pass their lips.

I am not weak, he wanted to shout, but he wasn’t sure he could say that aloud, either.

He thought of one of those girls frowning over a book, pushing a lock of brown hair back over one oddly curved ear. He thought of the way she looked at him, brows narrowed in suspicion. Scornful, and alert. Awake. Alive. He imagined her as a mindless servant and felt a rush of something he couldn’t quite untangle—horror, and also a sort of terrible relief. No ensorcelled human could look at him as she did.

I am not weak, he wanted to shout after her. Do not dare to pity me. It is you who should be pitied, mortal. It is you who are nothing, while I am a prince of Faerie.

Jude, Cardan thought, hating even the shape of her name. Jude.

“It’s simply this. A heart of stone can still be broken.”

Revelry is inherently slippery; part of its munificence is an easing of boundaries.

“You have cast your lot with him,” he said. “There is nothing to forgive. But if you regret it, do not think that you will be able to call me back to your side like some forgotten plaything you mislaid for a while.”

“My prince?” The door’s wooden face was the picture of distress. “You’re not truly going out like that, are you?” “My door,” Cardan replied. “I most certainly am.” He promptly fell down the front steps.

What had she to be angry about, she who had been given everything he was denied?

“It is a mere nothing. No need for dramatics.” “I am nothing,” Cardan said, “if not dramatic.”

And if his cruelty had the sharp edge of despair, if slights and taunts were all that fell from his tongue now, what did it matter? He had always been awful. Now he was just worse.

And all through that night and for many nights after, he couldn’t rid his thoughts of her. Not the hatred in her eyes. That he understood. That he didn’t mind. It warmed him.

She ought to be nothing. She ought to be insignificant. She ought not to matter. He had to make her not matter. But every night, Jude haunted him. The coils of her hair. The calluses on her fingers. An absent bite of her lip. It was too much, the way he thought about her. He knew it was too much, but he couldn’t stop. It disgusted him that he couldn’t stop.

But no one chooses a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads. Choose one way and a monster rends your flesh. Choose another and your heart turns to stone, or fire, or glass.

“Why didn’t you hate everyone?” he asks. “Everyone, all the time.” “I hated you,” Jude reassures him, bringing her mouth to his.

Marriage means sharing each other’s interests, and since his wife’s run toward strategy and murder, he’s used to her throwing herself at absolutely everything that crosses her path.