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

by Holly Black

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.

she didn’t know how to glide silently, to disturb no leaf or branch. He felt smug to see how bad she was at even such an easy thing. 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.

“Ah, but without the terror, surely it had not half the savor,”

A heart of stone can still be broken.”

Cardan had trusted Nicasia not to hurt him, which was ridiculous, since he well knew that everyone hurts one another and that the people you loved hurt you the most grievously.

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.

“But a prince like yourself, what possible reason would you have to learn a rogue’s trick?” “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.”

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

“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.”

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.”