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

by Holly Black

It was only later that it disturbed him to think back on the shape of her boot in the soil, as though she was the only real thing in a land of ghosts.

“Boys change,” she told him. “And so do stories.”

No matter what happened, he could never find happiness. And perhaps it was no good thing that he couldn’t feel fear.

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.

And doomed as she was, he envied her whatever conviction made her stand there and defy him.

Choose a future, Balekin had commanded him when he’d first brought Cardan to Hollow Hall. But no one chooses a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads.

“Everyone finds different lessons in stories, I suppose, but here’s one. Having a heart is terrible, but you need one anyway.

You didn’t get what you deserved, but you don’t have to live inside that one story forever. No one’s heart has to remain stone.”

“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.”

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.