The Prisoner’s Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2)

by Holly Black

She wore no blade at her waist, but her hair was done up in her familiar horns. Oak was almost certain she hid a small knife in one of them.

If one of them asked for the sun, he’d better figure out how to pluck it from the sky without getting burned.

Oak knew what wanting the throne did to people. He would never be like that.

It’s been what? Eight years? Nine? Truly, the celebratory air about the whole business has been excessive. You’d think I never did a more popular thing than sit in the dark on a throne and bite people who annoyed me. I could have always done that. I could do that now.”

That must be what you like about me.” “That you’re terrifying?” he asked, his drawl becoming exaggeratedly languorous, almost a purr. “I adore it.”

You want me to tell you that in a duel, she turns her front foot inward while lunging, giving you an opening? I don’t think you’ll ever get close enough to find that information useful.” Straun’s eyes narrow in calculation. “She turns her front foot?” Oak smiles up at him. “Never.”

He wanted people to love him a normal amount. But it was true that he wanted everyone to love him.

And we don’t always do the thing we were born for.”

“No vengeance will ever be enough, because you want to punish his murderer, but he died by his own hand. You refuse to hate him, so you hate everyone else, including yourself.”

“We do not love because people deserve it—nor would I want to be loved because I was the most deserving of some list of candidates. I want to be loved for my worst self as well as my best. I want to be forgiven my flaws.”

Oak sets his jaw and reminds himself that nothing good will come of punching the councilor in his smug little horned face.

What matters is that this betrothal cannot continue too long or we shall be wed and you, tied to me forever.” “A terrible fate?” Oak inquires.

Drown whatever lingering feelings you have for me in a new love, or ten.”

“No,” she says. “Nothing I have would I ever want to give away.”

Will waiting to drown make the experience better?”

“You can’t mean to go with them,” Randalin says, because Randalin is an idiot.

“Being kind to me. I can’t bear it.” He tenses.

“I’m not… I am not good at pretending. Not like you.”

“Is it exhausting to be charming all the time? Or is it just the way you’re made?”

“I could have loved him better,” Hyacinthe says. “And I could have better believed in his love.”

Oak snorts. “I am not planning on leading anyone.” The Ghost nods toward Wren. “If she’s a queen and you marry her, then you’d be a king.” Oak stares at him in horror

“Oh, very well, I will be the one to ask the obvious question—what have you there?”

Not now, imp. We have many dull adult things to do.”

“I want to take a bath and put on my own clothes and sleep in my own bed before you all start yelling at me.” Jude snorts. “Pick two.”

“You mean Suren?” Jude demands. “The former child-queen of the Court of Teeth? Whom you call by a cute nickname.”

“You understand the part where I might have had to kill a lot of people, but you think I chose the wrong girl to kiss?”

“You fall in love with the ease of someone slipping into a bath,” she tells him. “And I imagine you extricate yourself with somewhat more drama, but no less ease.”

“Love,” Cardan goes on. “That force that compels us to be sometimes better and often worse. That power by which we can all be bound. That which we ought to fear and yet most desire. That which unites us this evening—and shall unite the both of you soon enough.”

“Everything. Charm me. Rip me open. Ruin me. Go too far.”

“I am losing patience almost as fast as I am losing blood,”

“You would have done the same for me,” he says airily. “I would not,” Jude snaps. “Liar,” Cardan says fondly.