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.

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

Jude gives him a look. It is an expression that he never once saw her make when they attended the palace school together, yet from the first he saw it, he knew it to be her truest face. Conspiratorial. Daring. Bold.

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.

And if, as he had floated in the cold darkness, his thoughts turned to the curve of an ear, the weight of a step, a blow that was checked before it could land, that didn’t matter. It meant nothing, and he should forget it.

Playing the villain was the only thing he’d ever really excelled at.

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

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.

“I am nothing,” Cardan said, “if not dramatic.”

He had always been awful. Now he was just worse.

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.

“Who doesn’t want to control fate?” Cardan answered, setting his coin to spinning again. The Roach slammed his hand down on the table, breaking the pattern. “Remember, all you really get to control is yourself.”

He feels like a feral cat that might bite out of habit.

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

She gives him a look that Cardan would not enjoy having leveled in his direction.

If he gets himself killed like this, she is never going to let him live it down.

“Because stories tell a truth, if not precisely the truth.”

“You don’t think monster girls and wicked boys deserve love?”

“He explained his plan. She would marry him, and he would vow to never pass three nights without being a little afraid. And so the monster girl and the awful boy with the clever tongue marry, and she gets to stay powerful and monstrous and he gets his own heart back. All because he took a chance.”

“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 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.” His shoulder hurts, and she may be right about the iron poisoning. He certainly feels as though his head is swimming. But he smiles up at the trees, the looping electrical lines, the streaks of clouds. “So long as you’re begging,” he says.