The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air 3)

When I get back to the tent, the guard isn’t there. Feeling lucky, I slip under the flap, hoping to creep to my bed before Madoc gets home from whatever he’s plotting with his generals.

What I do not expect is for the candles to be lit and Oriana to be sitting at the table, entirely awake. I freeze.

She stands, folding her arms. “Where were you?”

“Uh,” I say, scrambling to figure out what she already knows—and what she’d believe. “There was a knight who asked me to meet him under the stars and—”

Oriana holds up her hand. “I covered for you. I dismissed the guard before he could carry tales. Do not insult me by lying anymore. You are not Taryn.”

The cold horror of discovery settles over me. I want to run back out the way I came, but I think of the Ghost. If I run now, my chances of getting the key are pitiful. He will not be saved. And I will have very little chance of saving myself.

“Don’t tell Madoc,” I say, hoping against hope I can persuade her to be on my side in this. “Please. I never planned on coming here. Madoc rendered me unconscious and dragged me to this camp. I only pretended to be Taryn because I was already pretending to be her in Elfhame.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” she demands, her unblinking pink eyes gazing at me warily. “How do I know you’re not here to murder him?”

“There’s no way I could have known Madoc would come for Taryn,” I insist. “The only reason I’m still here is that I don’t know how to leave—I tried tonight, but I couldn’t. Help me get away,” I say. “Help me, and you will never have to see me again.”

She looks as though that’s an enormously compelling promise. “If you’re gone, he will guess I had a hand in it.”

I shake my head, scrambling for a plan. “Write to Vivi. She can get me. I’ll leave a note that I went to visit her and Oak. He never needs to know Taryn wasn’t here.”

Oriana turns away, pouring a deep green herbal liquor into tiny glasses. “Oak. I do not like how different he is becoming in the mortal world.”

I want to scream in frustration at her abrupt subject change, but I force myself to be calm. I imagine him stirring his brightly colored cereal. “I don’t always like it, either.”

She passes me a delicate cup. “If Madoc can make himself High King, then Oak can come home. He won’t be between Madoc and the crown. He will be safe.”

“Remember your warning about how it was dangerous to be near a king?” I wait until she sips before I do. It is bitter and grassy and explodes on my tongue with the flavors of rosemary and nettle and thyme. I wince but don’t dislike it.

She gives me an annoyed look. “You certainly have not behaved as though you recalled it.”

“Fair,” I admit. “And I paid the price.”

“I will keep your secret, Jude. And I will send Vivi a message. But I won’t work against Madoc, and you shouldn’t, either. I want you to promise.”

As the Queen of Elfhame, I am the one Madoc is against. It would give me such satisfaction for Oriana to know, when she thinks so little of me. It’s a petty thought, followed by the realization that if Madoc found out, I would be in a whole different kind of trouble than I have been in before. He would use me. As frightened as I have been, here by his side, I ought to have been even more afraid.

I look Oriana in the eyes and lie as sincerely as I have ever done. “I promise.”

“Good,” she says. “Now, why were you sneaking around Elfhame, masquerading as Taryn?”

“She asked me to,” I say, raising my brows and waiting for her to understand.

“Why would she—” Oriana begins, and then stops herself. When she speaks, it seems as though she is talking mostly to herself. “For the inquest. Ah.”

I take another sip of the herbal liquor.

“I worried about your sister, alone in that Court,” Oriana says, her pale brows drawing together. “Her family reputation in tatters and Lady Asha back, no doubt seeing an opportunity to exert influence over the courtiers, now that her son was on the throne.”

“Lady Asha?” I echo, surprised that Oriana would think of her as a threat to Taryn, specifically.

Oriana rises and gathers writing materials. When she sits again, she begins penning a note to Vivi. After a few lines, she looks up. “I never supposed she would return.”

That’s what happens when people get tossed into the Tower of Forgetting. They get forgotten. “She was a courtier around the time that you were, right?” That’s the closest I can say to what I mean, that Oriana was also the High King’s lover. And while she never gave him a child, she has reason to know a lot of gossip. Something led her to make the comment she did.

“Your mother was once a friend to Lady Asha, you know. Eva had a great appreciation for wickedness. I do not say that to hurt you, Jude. It is a trait worthy of neither scorn nor pride.”

I knew your mother.That was the first thing Lady Asha ever said to me. Knew so many of her little secrets.

“I didn’t realize you knew my mom,” I say.

“Not well. And it’s hardly my place to talk about her,” Oriana says.

“Nor am I asking you to,” I return, although I wish that I could.

Ink drips from the tip of Oriana’s pen before she sets it down and seals up the letter to Vivienne. “Lady Asha was beautiful and eager for the High King’s favor. Their dalliance was brief, and I am sure Eldred thought bedding her would come to nothing. He rather too obviously regretted that she bore him a child—but that may have had something to do with the prophecy.”

“Prophecy?” I prompt. I have a memory of Madoc saying something similar regarding his fortune when he was trying to convince me that we should join forces.

She gives a minute shrug of her shoulders. “The youngest prince was born under an ill-favored star. But he was still a prince, and once Asha had him, her place in the Court was secure. She was a disruptive force. She craved admiration. She wanted experiences, sensations, triumphs, things that required conflict—and enemies. She would not have been kind to someone as friendless as your sister must have been.”

I wonder if she was unkind to Oriana, once. “I understand she didn’t take very good care of Prince Cardan.” I am thinking of the crystal globe in Eldred’s rooms and the memory trapped inside.

“It wasn’t as though she didn’t dress him in velvets or furs; it’s that she left them on until they grew ragged. Nor was it that she didn’t feed him the most delectable cuts of meat and cake; but she forgot him for long enough that he had to scavenge for food in between. I don’t think she loved him, but then I don’t think she loved anyone. He was petted and fed wine and adored, then forgotten. But for all that, if he was bad with her, he was worse without her. They are cut from the same cloth.”

I shudder, imagining the loneliness of that life, the anger. That desire for love.

There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man.

“If you’re looking for reasons why he disappointed you,” Oriana says, “by all accounts, Prince Cardan was a disappointment from the beginning.”