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

by Holly Black

This?” he demands, looking down at the waves far beneath them. “This is how you traveled? What if the enchantment ended while Vivi wasn’t with you?” “I suppose I would have plummeted out of the air,” Jude tells him with troubling equanimity,

Lol

It’s not as though he doesn’t enjoy a little danger, just that he doesn’t gorge himself on it, unlike some people. 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.

aw that's actually cute of him to think

Cardan knows Madoc isn’t the only one who made her the way she is. He had a hand in it as well. 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.

“That’s a terrible story,” Cardan said, outraged. “He would have been better off if he’d never left home. Or if he’d said something cruel to the tavernkeeper. There is no point to your tale, unless it is that nothing has any meaning at all.” The troll woman peered down at him. “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.

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.

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

“Humans are disgusting,” he said primly. Rhyia looked amused. “Are they?” There was absolutely no reason to think of Jude in that moment. She was utterly insignificant.

“Once, there was a boy with a wicked heart,” the troll woman said. “No, that’s not right,” Cardan interrupted. “That’s not how it goes. He had a wicked tongue.” “Boys change,” she told him. “And so do stories.”

“Even though he was terrible?” Cardan said. “Because they were both terrible? Don’t ask me the lesson, because I don’t know it and I can’t imagine there is one.” “No?” Aslog inquired. “It’s simply this. A heart of stone can still be broken.”

“Create some tale about this,” Cardan shouted, adrenaline still fizzing through his bloodstream. “Fine,” Locke finally managed, his voice strange. “Fine, you mad, hedge-born coxcomb. But you were only together out of habit; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so easy to make her love me.”

Damn

“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.”

Jude looked up at him, and in her eyes, he recognized a hate big enough and wide enough and deep enough to match his own. A hate you could drown in like a vat of wine.

Cardan raised his eyebrows. “Ah, you didn’t make the choice to leave him, did you?” “It’s more complicated than that,” she told him. “And it affects you as well.” “Does it?” he inquired. “You must listen! Locke’s taken one of the mortal girls as his lover,” Nicasia said, obviously attempting to keep her voice from shaking. Cardan was silent, his thoughts thrown into confusion. One of the mortal girls.

“Which one?” Cardan asked. “Which mortal girl?” “Does it matter?” Nicasia was clearly exasperated. “Either. Both.” It shouldn’t matter. The human girls were insignificant, nothing.

And doomed as she was, he envied her whatever conviction made her stand there and defy him. She ought to be nothing. She ought to be insignificant. She ought not to matter. He had to make her not matter.

Heather glares at Cardan as though he bit the head off a sprite in the middle of a banquet. “You can’t eat some of a dumpling and put it back,” Oak insists. “That’s revolting.”

Lol

Cardan lies on the rug with one arm propping up his head and the other slung across Jude’s waist.

Oak gave up his room so they could sleep there, and although the bed is small, Cardan cannot mind when he takes Jude in his arms.

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

And somehow he finds that to be the thing that annoys him most of all, that they thought he wouldn’t be bothered to come, that he would leave this to Jude.

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. If she isn’t doing that now, there’s a reason.

“Let me guess,” the troll woman says. “The third night goes swimmingly, too. His curse is broken and so is hers. They marry and live happily ever after, and the meaning of the tale is that love redeems us.” “You don’t think monster girls and wicked boys deserve love?”

“You think you’ve made your story long enough for the sun to rise and catch me unawares, but you’re wrong. And it will take only a few moments to kill you, kingling.” “And you think it was sunrise I was waiting for and not my queen. Do you not hear her footfalls? She has never quite managed the trick of hiding them as well as one of the Folk. Surely you’ve heard of her, Jude Duarte, who defeated the redcap Grima Mog, who brought the Court of Teeth to their knees? She’s forever getting me out of scrapes. Truly, I don’t know what I would do without her.”

“You told me not to come alone, and yet here you are—” “I knew Aslog,” he says. “We were friends. Well, not precisely friends. But something. We were something. And I decided to play the hero. See how it felt. To try.” “And?” she asks. “I didn’t like it,” he admits. “Henceforth, I think we should consider our roles as monarchs to be largely decorative. It would be better for the low Courts and the solitary Folk to work things out on their own.”

“If you’re angry with me, it’s only that I executed your mad plan before you got a chance,” he points out. “That’s absolutely untrue.” Jude helps him stand, propping herself under his good shoulder. “I am not so arrogant as to have begun my fight with a troll in the middle of the night. And I definitely wouldn’t have managed to talk her to death.”

“You didn’t hear the story I told,” he goes on. “A shame. It featured a handsome boy with a heart of stone and a natural aptitude for villainy. Everything you could like.” She laughs. “You really are terrible, you know that? I don’t even understand why the things you say make me smile.” He lets himself lean against her, lets himself hear the warmth in her voice. “There is one thing I did like about playing the hero. The only good bit. And that was not having to be terrified for you.”

“The next time you want to make a point,” Jude says, “I beg you not to make it so dramatically.”

“So long as you’re begging,” he says.