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

“You chose a wardrobe for me when I was seneschal, to make me seem the part. I saw Locke’s estate and how changed it was. Can you put together a throne room for me? And maybe find clothing from somewhere for the next few days. I don’t care where it comes from, so long as it makes me appear to be the Queen of Faerie.”

Taryn takes a big breath. “Okay. I’ve got this. I’ll make you look good.”

“I’m going to have to look really good,” I say.

At that, she gives me an actual smile. “I don’t understand how you do it,” she says. “I don’t understand how you can be so calm.”

I’m not sure what to say. I don’t feel calm at all. I am a maelstrom of emotions. All I want to do is scream.

There’s another knock. Fand opens the door. “Your pardon,” she says. “But Lord Baphen is here, and you said you wanted to see him immediately.”

“I’ll find a better place for you to receive people,” Taryn assures me, slipping past.

“The Council wants an audience, too,” Fand says. “They’d like to accompany Lord Baphen. They claim there’s nothing he knows that they ought not hear.”

“No,” I say. “Just him.”

A few moments later, Baphen enters. He is wearing a long blue robe, a shade lighter than his navy hair. A bronze cap sits atop his head. The Royal Astrologer was one of the few members of the Council that I liked and who I thought might like me, but right now, I regard him with dread.

“There really is nothing that—” he begins.

I cut him off. “I want to know everything about the prophecy you made when Cardan was born. I want you to tell me it exactly.”

He gives me a look of slight surprise. On the Council, as the High King’s seneschal, I was deferential. And as High Queen, I was in too much shock to make any shows of authority.

Lord Baphen grimaces. “Giving the High King unfortunate news is never a pleasure. But it was Lady Asha who frightened me. She gave me such a look of hatred that I felt it to the tips of my ears. I think she believed I exaggerated somehow, to advance my own plots.”

“It seems clear now that you did not,” I say, voice dry. “Tell it to me.”

He clears his throat. “There are two parts. He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne. Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.”

The second part is worse than the first. For a moment, the words just ring in my head.

“Did you give the prophecy to Prince Cardan?” I ask. “Does Madoc know it?”

“The High King may have been told by his mother,” Lord Baphen says. “I assumed—I thought Prince Cardan would never come to power. And then when he did, well, I supposed he would become a bad High King and be slain. I thought it was an unambiguous fate. As for Madoc, I do not know if he ever heard any part of it.”

“Is there a way to break the curse?” I ask in unsteady tones. “Before he died, Grimsen said: No true love’s kiss will stop it. No riddle will fix it. Only death. But that cannot be true. I thought the prophecy around his birth would provide an answer, but …” I cannot finish the sentence. There is an answer in it, but it’s one I don’t want to hear.

“If there is a way to reverse the, uh … transformation,” Baphen begins, “I do not know it.”

I clasp my hands together, sinking my nails into the skin, panic flooding me in a dizzy rush. “And there’s nothing else the stars foretold? No other detail you’re leaving out?”

“I am afraid not,” he says.

“Can you look at your star charts again?” I ask. “Go back to them and see if there’s something you overlooked the first time. Look at the sky, and see if there’s some new answer.”

He nods. “If that’s what you wish, Your Majesty.” His tone suggests that he’s agreed to many equally useless commands on the behalf of previous rulers.

I don’t care that I am unreasonable. “Yes. Do it.”

“Will you speak with the Council first?” he asks.

Even a short delay in Baphen’s attempting to find a solution sets my teeth on edge, but if I wish to be accepted as the rightful queen, I need the support of the Living Council. I cannot delay them forever.

Is this what it is to rule? To be far from the action, stuck on a throne or in a series of well-appointed rooms, reliant on information brought to you by others? Madoc would hate this.

“I will,” I say.

At the door, Fand tells me a room is ready for me to move to. I am impressed by the swiftness with which Taryn has arranged things.

“Is there anything else?” I ask.

“A runner came from Grima Mog,” she says. “The king—I mean, the serpent—is no longer in the throne room. It seems to have gotten out through the crack in the earth made by Madoc’s blade. And—and I am not sure what to make of this, but it’s snowing. Inside the brugh.”

Cold dread races through me. My hand goes to the hilt of Nightfell. I want to ride out. I want to find it, but if I do—what then? The answer is more than I can bear. I close my eyes against it. When I open them, I feel as though I am spinning. Then I ask to be conducted to my new throne room.