The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air 1)

Oriana reaches for him and then stops herself. Nothing bad is actually happening. And yet I see the gleam in Vivi’s cat eyes, and I’m not sure Oriana’s wrong to be nervous.

Vivi would like to punish Madoc, but her only power is to be a thorn in his side. Which means occasionally tormenting Oriana through Oak. I know Vivi loves Oak—he’s our brother, after all—but that doesn’t mean she’s above teaching him bad things.

Madoc smiles at all of us, now the picture of contentment. I used to think he didn’t notice all the currents of tension that ran through the family, but as I get older, I see that barely suppressed conflict doesn’t bother him in the least. He likes it just as well as open war. “Perhaps none of our enemies are particularly good strategists.”

“Let’s hope not,” Oriana says distractedly, her eyes on Oak, lifting her glass of canary wine.

“Indeed,” says Madoc. “Let’s have a toast. To the incompetence of our enemies.”

I pick up my glass and knock it into Taryn’s, then drain it to the very dregs.

There’s always something left to lose.

I think about that all through the dawn, turning it over in my head. Finally, when I can toss and turn no more, I pull on a robe over my nightgown and go outside into the late-morning sun. Bright as hammered gold, it hurts my eyes when I sit down on a patch of clover near the stables, looking back at the house.

All of this was my mother’s before it was Oriana’s. Mom must have been young and in love with Madoc back then. I wonder what it was like for her. I wonder if she thought she was going to be happy here.

I wonder when she realized she wasn’t.

I have heard the rumors. It is no small thing to confound the High King’s general, to sneak out of Faerie with his baby in your belly and hide for almost ten years. She left behind the burned remains of another woman in the blackened husk of his estate. No one can say she didn’t prove her toughness. If she’d just been a little luckier, Madoc would have never realized she was still alive.

She had a lot to lose, I guess.

I’ve got a lot to lose, too.

But so what?

“Skip our lessons today,” I tell Taryn that afternoon. I am dressed and ready early. Though I have not slept, I do not feel at all tired. “Stay home.”

She gives me a look of deep concern as a pixie boy, newly indebted to Madoc, braids her chestnut hair into a crown. She is sitting primly at her dressing table, clad all in brown and gold. “Telling me not to go means I should. Whatever you’re thinking, stop. I know you’re disappointed about the tournament—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, although, of course, it does. It matters so much that, now, without hope of knighthood, I feel like a hole has opened up under me and I am falling through it.

“Madoc might change his mind.” She follows me down the stairs, grabbing up our baskets before I can. “And at least now you won’t have to defy Cardan.”

I turn on her, even though none of this is her fault. “Do you know why Madoc won’t let me try for knighthood? Because he thinks I’m weak.”

“Jude,” she cautions.

“I thought I was supposed to be good and follow the rules,” I say. “But I am done with being weak. I am done with being good. I think I am going to be something else.”

“Only idiots aren’t scared of things that are scary,” Taryn says, which is undoubtedly true, but still fails to dissuade me.

“Skip lessons today,” I tell her again, but she won’t, so we go to school together.

Taryn watches me warily as I talk with the leader of the mock war, Fand, a pixie girl with skin the blue of flower petals. She reminds me that there’s a run-through tomorrow in preparation for the tournament.

I nod, biting the inside of my cheek. No one needs to know that my hopes were dashed. No one needs to know I ever had any hope at all.

Later, when Cardan, Locke, Nicasia, and Valerian sit down to their lunch, they have to spit out their food in choking horror. All around them are the less awful children of faerie nobles, eating their bread and honey, their cakes and roasted pigeons, their elderflower jam with biscuits and cheese and the fat globes of grapes. But every single morsel in each of my enemies’ baskets has been well and thoroughly salted.

Cardan’s gaze catches mine, and I can’t help the evil smile that pulls up the corners of my mouth. His eyes are bright as coals, his hatred a living thing, shimmering in the air between us like the air above black rocks on a blazing summer day.

“Have you lost your wits?” Taryn demands, shaking my shoulder so that I have to turn to her. “You’re making everything worse. There’s a reason no one stands up to them.”

“I know,” I say softly, unable to keep the smile off my lips. “A lot of reasons.”

She’s right to be worried. I just declared war.

I’ve told this story all wrong. There are things I really ought to have said about growing up in Faerie. I left them out of the story, mostly because I am a coward. I don’t even like to let myself think about them. But maybe knowing a few relevant details about my past will make more sense of why I’m the way I am. How fear seeped into my marrow. How I learned to pretend it away.

So here are three things I should have told you about myself before, but didn’t:

1.When I was nine, one of Madoc’s guards bit off the very top of the ring finger on my left hand. We were outside, and when I screamed, he pushed me hard enough that my head smacked into a wooden post in the stables. Then he made me stand there while he chewed the piece he’d bitten off. He told me exactly how much he hated mortals. I bled so much—you wouldn’t think that much blood could come out of a finger. When it was over, he explained that I better keep what happened secret, because if I didn’t, he’d eat the rest of me. So, obviously, I didn’t tell anyone. Until now, when I am telling you.

2.When I was eleven, I was spotted hiding under the banquet table at one of the revels by a particularly bored member of the Gentry. He dragged me out by one foot, kicking and squirming. I don’t think he knew who I was—at least, I tell myself he didn’t. But he compelled me to drink, and so I drank; the grass-green faerie wine slipping down my throat like nectar. He danced me around the hill. It was fun at first, the kind of terrifying fun that makes you screech to be put down half the time and feel dizzy and sick the rest. But when the fun wore off and I still couldn’t stop, it was just terrifying. It turned out that my fear was equally amusing to him, though. Princess Elowyn found me at the end of the revel, puking and crying. She didn’t ask me a single thing about how I got that way, she just handed me over to Oriana like I was a misplaced jacket. We never told Madoc about it. What would have been the point? Everyone who saw me probably thought I was having a grand old time.

3.When I was fourteen and Oak was four, he glamoured me. He didn’t mean to—well, at least he didn’t really understand why he shouldn’t. I wasn’t wearing any protective charms because I’d just come out of a bath. Oak didn’t want to go to bed. He told me to play dolls with him, so we played. He commanded me to chase him, so we played chase through the halls. Then he figured out he could make me slap myself, which was very funny. Tatterfell came upon us hours later, took a good look at my reddened cheeks and the tears in my eyes, and then ran for Oriana. For weeks, a giggling Oak tried to glamour me into getting him sweets or lifting him above my head or spitting at the dinner table. Even though it never worked, even though I wore a strand of rowan berries everywhere after that, it was all I could do for months not to strike him to the floor. Oriana has never forgiven me for that restraint—she believes my not revenging myself on him then means I plan to revenge myself in the future.

Here’s why I don’t like these stories: They highlight that I am vulnerable. No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.

I hate that most of all.

Even if, by some miracle, I could be better than them, I will never be one of them.

They don’t wait long to retaliate.

For the rest of the afternoon and early evening, we receive lessons in history. A cat-headed goblin named Yarrow recites ballads and asks us questions. The more correct answers I give, the angrier Cardan grows. He makes no secret of his displeasure, drawling to Locke about how boring these lessons are and sneering at the lecturer.

For once, we’re done before dark has fully fallen. Taryn and I start for home, with her giving me concerned glances. The light of sunset filters through the trees, and I take a deep breath, drinking in the scent of pine needles. I feel a kind of weird calm, despite the stupidity of what I’ve done.

“This isn’t like you,” Taryn says finally. “You don’t pick fights with people.”

“Appeasing them won’t help.” I toe a stone with a slipper-covered foot. “The more they get away with, the more they believe they’re entitled to have.”

“So you’re going to, what—teach them manners?” Taryn sighs. “Even if someone should do it, that someone doesn’t have to be you.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. The giddy fury of this afternoon will fade, and I will regret what I’ve done. Probably after a good, long sleep, I’ll be as horrified as Taryn is. All I have bought myself is worse problems, no matter how good it felt to salve my pride.

You’re no killer.

What you lack is nothing to do with experience.

And yet, I don’t regret it now. Having stepped off the edge, what I want to do is fall.

I begin to speak when a hand claps down over my mouth. Fingers sink into the skin around my lips. I strike out, swinging my body around, and see Locke grabbing Taryn’s waist. Someone has my wrists. I wrench my mouth free and scream, but screams in Faerie are like birdsong, too common to attract much attention.

They push us through the woods, laughing. I hear a whoop from one of the boys. I think I hear Locke say something about larks being over quickly, but it’s swallowed up in the merriment.