by Holly Black
You didn’t disappoint. You hit Cardan so hard that I thought you cracked his ribs, but it was your practice sword that broke. You knocked his friend Valerian into the dirt. It was like some madness took hold of you. I thought you were unrestrained before, but it was nothing to this.
Vivi cheered wildly. Princess Rhyia, one of Cardan’s sisters and a friend of Vivi’s, looked on with the delight of a hunter watching the dance of predator and prey. I clutched my hands together in dread.
After the tournament, I rushed from the stands, sick with worry.
But Prince Cardan had already found you. He’d grabbed you by your hair and was snarling into your face.
You’d been too good out there. Anyone could see that. Just like anyone could see why he hadn’t wanted you to compete in the first place. You were mortal. You weren’t supposed to best the children of the High Court, no less make it look easy.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Locke said, coming up behind me.
“He is going to hurt her,” I said, glancing back at Princess Rhyia, hoping she might intercede. But we were far from the stands and she was in deep conversation with my sister anyway, barely glancing in our direction.
“He’s a prince of Faerie,” Locke reminded me. “And Jude—well, let’s watch and see what she is.”
“Beg,” Prince Cardan ordered you. “Make it pretty. Flowery. Worthy of me.”
For a moment, you looked like you might.
Locke’s eyes were alive with interest.
“Why are you looking at Jude like that?” I asked.
“I can’t help it,” he said, never taking his gaze from you. “I’m drawn to trouble.”
I recalled what he’d said about jealousy being a spice, about giving up mortal ways and qualms.
Locke left me there. He left me and walked over to you. My sister. My impulsive twin who seemed to be willing to make every stupid choice in the world.
The one with the tale that was still unfolding.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is supposed to be an apology. I made a lot of bad choices. I know that.
You were tired of being picked on, tired of bowing your head to them. You were probably tired of being tired. I get that. But it made it extra hard to keep on bowing my head when I was the only one.
And Locke. Locke saw me differently than anyone had seen me before. He’d given me a taste of what it was to love, to want, to desire. And it made me hungry for more. I didn’t want to give it up.
That doesn’t justify what I did, though.
“Come riding with us,” Vivi said, indicating Princess Rhyia. Even though she was royalty, her chief joy was riding out in the forest, hunting with her companions. I believe Vivi and Rhyia were drawn together by a mutual lack of interest in propriety.
“Yes, come,” said Princess Rhyia. “Are you any good with a bow?”
“Middling,” I returned, unable to turn down the invitation of a princess, even though I knew I couldn’t sulk the way I would have liked. And oh, I wanted to sulk and feel sorry for myself and cry. I hated the way he looked at you. I wanted to eat all the clotted cream and jam in Madoc’s kitchen.
The Folk don’t love like you do.
I thought of my mother, wandering through the rooms of Madoc’s stronghold, slowly coming to realize that she couldn’t bear being there. How she made a plan to escape him.
I thought about how good it must have felt when you hit Prince Cardan with your practice blade.
“So tell me about this Heather,” Rhyia said to my sister as we rode. “Is she really worth living in their world of filth and iron?”
Vivi laughed. “You know I like it there.”
Rhyia’s lip curled slightly. “Well enough. But the girl?”
“The first thing I noticed about her was that she had a smear of blue ink on her nose,” Vivi said. “The second thing I noticed were her eyes, the color of darkest amber. When she spoke, I was afraid she was talking to someone else.”
Rhyia snorted. “What did she say?”
Vivi smiled with the memory. “‘I want to draw you.’”
“Ah,” said Rhyia. “An artist.”
“You should bring her here,” I said, although I was only making trouble. “Artists are beloved of Faerie.”
“Ah, what a fine suggestion!” said Rhyia with a big laugh. “How happy I am you’ve come riding with us.”
Vivi looked less pleased. “I think I will keep Heather to myself for now.”
“Love is greedy,” Rhyia said, drawing her bow. She’d spotted a bird high in the trees and chosen it to be her quarry.
Her words bothered me, although I suppose my love for Locke was greedy, too. But love was also transforming. I knew that from fairy tales. It could turn you back from a cat or a frog or a beast. Probably it could turn you into those things, too.
You can make all of Faerie love you, Locke had said.
Vivi fell back to ride with me as the princess set off on the hunt. Our horses drew side by side.
“Why are you angry with Jude?” Vivi asked.
I suppose there was no hiding the way I had looked when we watched the tournament. And—I mean, you know how I felt. “She’s the one who’s angry,” I said. “She’s angry all the time. And she makes everyone angry at both of us.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to be mad at the people close to us,” Vivi said, “than to be mad at the people who deserve it.”
Princess Rhyia shot three small birds and cooked them over the fire. We ate them with soft cheese and a bottle of wine. I was so hungry I licked my fingers afterward, chewed on the bones. Vivi noticed and gave me half her bird. When I demurred, she rolled her eyes at me.
It still wasn’t enough.
That night Locke came to my window and called for me, but I pretended to be asleep. I was too hurt, too raw. I didn’t want to hear whatever he would say to me if I asked about you.
He called and called, but I wouldn’t go down. Finally he gave up.
And yet, it was impossible for me to rest. After an hour of tossing and turning, I threw on a cloak and sat on my balcony. I listened to the night owls calling to one another.
Then music started up near the Lake of Masks. I heard a singer begin a tune I hadn’t heard before, a song of heartbreak. Of a girl who walked the earth by starlight. Whose aspect was mortal but with beauty divine. Her cruelty had pierced his heart.
I was listening to Edir singing about me.
Locke had been as good as his word. He had shown me how to make Faerie love me. He had shown me how to be the shaper of a story. He had done more than that, even. He had shown me how to achieve something like immortality.
I sat there in the dark for a long time, listening. And then I turned around and walked to Locke’s estate.
You’ve been there, I know, so you’ve seen it, like a fairy-tale castle with a tower of the sort Rapunzel might have been imprisoned in. During the day it’s pretty, but in the dark, it was intimidating.
Be bold, be bold.
With a shudder, I drew myself up, wrapped my cloak more tightly around myself, and knocked on the heavy front door with all my strength.
I saw a light blaze in one of the high rooms and I knocked again.
The door opened and a thin, tall creature—a servant of the house, I presumed—opened the door.
“I would see Locke,” I told him with as much haughtiness as I could bring to bear.
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.
He gave me a steady look and I stared back, trying not to notice how pale and sunken-eyed he looked, like one of the dead. But then he swept a bow and indicated without speaking that I ought to come inside.
I was brought to a little parlor that was shabbier and dustier than I’d expected. Another servant, this one small and round, brought a decanter of some purple liquid and a small glass.
When Locke finally came into the room, I was coughing because it turned out the purple stuff was very strong. His hair was mussed from sleep an
d he wore a thin shirt and soft-looking pants beneath a dressing gown. His feet were bare on the stone floor.
“You came here,” he said, as though it had never occurred to him I could do that. I suppose that’s one good thing about being obedient and faithful and good. People think you will never surprise them.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I understand now. What you meant when you said I had to give up my mortal qualms. And I am willing to do that. But I want you to marry me.”
“Ah.” He sat down on the couch, looking stunned with lack of sleep. “And so you came here in the middle of the night?”
“I hope that you love me.” I tried to sound the way Oriana did when she forbade us to do things—stern, but not unkind. “And I will try to live as the Folk do. But you ought to marry me even if neither of those things were true, because otherwise I might ruin your fun.”
“My fun?” he echoed. Then he sounded worried. Then he sounded awake.
“Whatever game you are playing with Nicasia and Cardan,” I said. “And with me. Tell Madoc we’re to be wed and tell Jude about your real intentions or I will start shaping stories of my own.”
I thought of the brothers in the story of Mr. Fox, cutting the villain to pieces. It came to me, standing on my balcony, that with their inclination to violence, my family would need a lot less provocation to turn on Locke. As Edir’s song drifted through the air, I realized that Locke might teach me lessons, but he wasn’t going to like what I did once I learned them.
“You promised—” he began, but I cut him off.
“Not a marriage of a year and a day, either,” I said. “I want you to love me until you die.”
He blinked. “Don’t you mean until you die? Because you’re sure to.”
I shook my head. “You’re going to live forever. If you love me, I will become a part of your story. I will live on in that.”
He looked at me in a way he’d never done before, as though evaluating me all over again. Then he nodded. “We will marry,” he said, holding up his hand. “On three conditions. The first is that you will tell no one about us until the coronation of Prince Dain.”
That seemed like a small thing, the waiting.
“And during that time, you must not renounce me, no matter what I say or do.”
I know the nature of faerie bargains. I should have heard this as the warning that it was. Instead, I was only glad that two of his conditions seemed simple enough to fulfill. “What else?”
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.
“Only this,” Locke said. “Remember, we don’t love the way that you do.”
I know that I should have been a better sister, that I should have given you some warning, but some part of you must understand.
All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and put up with anything he did, until Prince Dain’s coronation. Then he had to tell you the truth. Then he would be with me forever.
And love me until he died.
So you see, I am sorry. I really am. I didn’t think he could win your heart. If it makes you feel any better, it was agony to watch you with him, to see you laughing as the three of us sat on the blanket at the palace school, your hand in his. I was anguished seeing your blushes and shining eyes. Jealousy wasn’t a spice to me then. It was the whole meal and I was gagging it down.
But I am not our mother and I am not going to make her mistakes. I won’t turn back. I know what I want. I want Locke. I’m not afraid of his secrets.
And you’re going to forgive me. You have to. You’re my sister, my twin. You’ve got to understand. If I just explain it right, I know you’re going to understand.
And I am going to keep standing here and practicing it in the mirror until you stop looking at me that way when I finish.
Continue reading for a sneak peek of Holly Black’s The Wicked King.
The new High King of Faerie lounges on his throne, his crown resting at an insouciant angle, his long, villainously scarlet cloak pinned at his shoulders and sweeping the floor. An earring shines from the peak of one pointed ear. Heavy rings glitter along his knuckles. His most ostentatious decoration, however, is his soft, sullen mouth.
It makes him look every bit the jerk that he is.
I stand to one side of him, in the honored position of seneschal. I am supposed to be High King Cardan’s most trusted advisor, and so I play that part, rather than my real role—the hand behind the throne, with the power to compel him to obey should he try to cross me.
Scanning the crowd, I look for a spy from the Court of Shadows. They intercepted a communication from the Tower of Forgetting, where Cardan’s brother is jailed, and are bringing it to me instead of to its intended recipient.
And that’s only the latest crisis.
It’s been five months since I forced Cardan onto the throne of Elfhame as my puppet king, five months since I betrayed my family, since my sister carried my little brother to the mortal realm and away from the crown that he might have worn, since I crossed swords with Madoc.
Five months since I’ve slept for more than a few hours at a stretch.
It seemed like a good trade—a very faerie trade, even: put someone who despised me on the throne so that Oak would be out of danger. It was thrilling to trick Cardan into promising to serve me for a year and a day, exhilarating when my plan came together. Then, a year and a day seemed like forever. But now I must figure out how to keep him in my power—and out of trouble—for longer than that. Long enough to give Oak a chance to have what I didn’t: a childhood.
Now a year and a day seems like no time at all.
And despite having put Cardan on the throne through my own machinations, despite scheming to keep him there, I cannot help being unnerved by how comfortable he looks.
Faerie rulers are tied to the land. They are the lifeblood and the beating heart of their realm in some mystical way that I don’t fully understand. But surely Cardan isn’t that, not with his commitment to being a layabout who does none of the real work of governance.
Mostly, his obligations appear to be allowing his ring-covered hands to be kissed and accepting the blandishments of the Folk. I’m sure he enjoys that part of it—the kisses, the bowing and scraping. He’s certainly enjoying the wine. He calls again and again for his cabochon-encrusted goblet to be refilled with a pale green liquor. The very smell of it makes my head spin.
During a lull, he glances up at me, raising one black brow. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Not as much as you are,” I tell him.
No matter how much he disliked me when we were in school, that was a guttering candle to the steady flame of his hatred now. His mouth curls into a smile. His eyes shine with wicked intent. “Look at them all, your subjects. A shame not a one knows who their true ruler is.”
My face heats a little at his words. His gift is to take a compliment and turn it into an insult, a jab that hurts more for the temptation to take it at face value.
I spent so many revels avoiding notice. Now everyone sees me, bathed in candlelight, in one of the three nearly identical black doublets I wear each evening, my sword Nightfell at my hip. They twirl in their circle dances and play their songs, they drink their golden wine and compose their riddles and their curses while I look down on them from the royal dais. They are beautiful and terrible, and they might despise my mortality, might mock it, but I am up here and they are not.
Of course, perhaps that isn’t so different from hiding. Perhaps it is just hiding in plain sight. But I cannot deny that the power I hold gives me a kick, a jolt of pleasure whenever I think on it. I just wish Cardan couldn’t tell.
If I look carefully, I can spot my twin sister, Taryn, dancing with Locke, her betrothed. Locke, who I once thought might love me. Locke, whom I once thought I could love. It’s Taryn I miss, though. Nights like tonight, I imagine hopping down from the dais and going to her, trying to explain my choices.
Her marriage is only three weeks away, and s
till we haven’t spoken.
I keep telling myself I need her to come to me first. She played me for a fool with Locke. I still feel stupid when I look at them. If she won’t apologize, then at least she should be the one to pretend there’s nothing to apologize for. I might accept that, even. But I will not be the one to go to Taryn, to beg.
My eyes follow her as she dances.
I don’t bother to look for Madoc. His love is part of the price I paid for this position.
A short, wizened faerie with a cloud of silver hair and a coat of scarlet kneels below the dais, waiting to be recognized. His cuffs are jeweled, and the moth pin that holds his cloak in place has wings that move on their own. Despite his posture of subservience, his gaze is greedy.
Beside him stand two pale hill Folk with long limbs and hair that blows behind them, though there is no breeze.
Drunk or sober, now that Cardan is the High King, he must listen to those subjects who would have him rule on a problem, no matter how small, or grant a boon. I cannot imagine why anyone would put their fate in his hands, but Faerie is full of caprice.
Luckily, I’m there to whisper my counsel in his ear, as any seneschal might. The difference is that he must listen to me. And if he whispers back a few horrific insults, well, at least he’s forced to whisper.
Of course, then the question becomes whether I deserve to have all this power. I won’t be horrible for the sake of my own amusement, I tell myself. That’s got to be worth something.
“Ah,” Cardan says, leaning forward on the throne, causing his crown to tip lower on his brow. He takes a deep swallow of the wine and smiles down at the trio. “This must be a grave concern, to bring it before the High King.”
“You may already have heard tales of me,” says the small faerie. “I made the crown that sits upon your head. I am called Grimsen the Smith, long in exile with the Alderking. His bones are now at rest, and there is a new Alderking in Fairfold, as there is a new High King here.”