The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air 2)

“They told me a story,” Cardan says. “Would you like to hear it? Once upon a time, there was a human girl stolen away by faeries, and because of that, she swore to destroy them.”

“Wow,” I say. “That really is a testament to how much you suck as a king, to believe your reign is capable of destroying Faerie.”

Still, the words unnerve. I don’t want my motives to be considered. I ought not to be thought of as influential. I ought not to be thought of at all.

The Ghost returns from the hall, leaning the door against the frame, closing it as much as is possible. His hazel eyes are shadowed.

I turn back to Cardan. “That little story is not why I was sent for. What happened?”

“This,” he says, and staggers into the room with a bed in it. There, embedded deeply in the splintered wood of the headboard are two black bolts.

“You’re mad that one of your guests shot your bed?” I guess.

He laughs. “They weren’t aiming for the bed.” He pulls aside his shirt, and I see the hole in the cloth and a stripe of raw skin along his side.

My breath catches.

“Who did this?” the Ghost demands. And then, looking more closely at Cardan: “And why aren’t the guards outside more upset? They don’t behave as though they failed to prevent an assassination attempt.”

Cardan shrugs. “I believe the guards think I was taking aim at my guests.”

I take a step closer and notice a few drops of blood on one of the disarranged pillows. There are a few scattered white flowers, too, seeming to grow out of the fabric. “Did someone else get hit?”

He nods. “The bolt hit her leg, and she was screaming and not making very much in the way of sense. So you see how someone might conclude that I shot her when no one else was around. The actual shooter went back into the walls.” He narrows his eyes at the Ghost and me, tilting his head, accusation burning in his gaze. “There seems to be some sort of secret passageway.”

The Palace of Elfhame is built into a hill, with High King Eldred’s old apartments at the very center, their walls crawling with roots and blooming vines. The whole Court assumed that Cardan would take those, but he moved to the farthest place possible from them, at the very peak of the hill, with crystal panes set into the earth like windows. Before his coronation, they had belonged to the least favored of the royal household. Now the residents of the palace scramble to rearrange themselves so they can be closer to the new High King. And Eldred’s rooms—abandoned and too grand for anyone else to rightfully claim—remain empty.

I know of only a few ways into Cardan’s rooms—a single, large, thick-glassed window enchanted never to break, a pair of double doors, and apparently, a secret passage.

“It’s not on the map of tunnels we have,” I tell him.

“Ah,” he says. I am not sure he believes me.

“Did you see who shot at you? And why didn’t you tell your own guards what really happened?” I demand.

He gives me an exasperated look. “I saw a blur of black. And as to why I didn’t correct the guards—I was protecting you and the Court of Shadows. I didn’t think you would want the whole royal guard in your secret passageways!”

To that, I have no answer. The disturbing thing about Cardan is how well he plays the fool to disguise his own cleverness.

Opposite the bed is a cabinet built into the wall, taking the whole length of it. It has a painted clock face on the front, with constellations instead of numbers. The arms of the clock are pointed toward a configuration of stars prophesying a particularly amorous lover.

Inside, it appears merely a wardrobe overstuffed with Cardan’s clothing. I pull them out, letting them fall to the floor in a pile of velvet cuffs, satin, and leather. From the bed, Cardan makes a sound of mock distress.

I press my ear to the wood backing, listening for the whistle of wind and feeling for a draft. The Ghost does the same on the other side. His fingers find a latch, and a thin door springs open.

Although I knew the palace was riddled with passageways, I never would have dreamed one was in Cardan’s very bedroom. And yet… I should have combed over every inch of wall. I could have, at the least, asked one of the other spies to do so. But I avoided it, because I avoided being alone with Cardan.

“Stay with the king,” I tell the Ghost and, picking up a candle, head into the darkness beyond the wall, avoiding being alone with him again.

The tunnel is dim, lit throughout with golden hands holding torches that burn with a smokeless green flame. The stone floor is covered in a threadbare carpet, a strangely decorative detail for a secret passageway.

A few feet in, I find the crossbow. It is not the compact thing that I have carried. It’s massive, more than half my size, obviously dragged here—I can see the way the carpet is rucked up in the direction whence it came.

Whoever shot it, shot it from here.

I jump over and keep going. I would expect a passageway like this to have many branches, but this one has none. It dips down at intervals, like a ramp, and turns in on itself, but it runs in only one direction—straight ahead. I hurry, faster and faster, my hand cupped around my candle flame to keep it from going out.

Then I come to a heavy wooden slab carved with the royal crest, the same one stamped in Cardan’s signet ring.

I give it a push, and it shifts, clearly on a track. There’s a bookshelf on the other side.

Until now, I have only heard stories of the great majesty of High King Eldred’s rooms in the very heart of the palace, just above the brugh, the great branches of the throne itself snaking through his walls. Although I’ve never seen them before, the descriptions make it impossible to think I am anywhere else.

I walk through the enormous, cavernous rooms of Eldred’s apartments, candle in one hand, a knife in the other.

And there, sitting on the High King’s bed, her face stained with tears, is Nicasia.

Orlagh’s daughter, Princess of the Undersea, fostered in the High King’s Court as part of the decades-ago treaty of peace between Orlagh and Eldred, Nicasia was once part of the foursome made up of Cardan and his closest, most awful friends. She was also his beloved, until she betrayed him for Locke. I haven’t seen her by Cardan’s side as often since he ascended to the throne, but ignoring her hardly seems like a killing offense.

Is this what Balekin was whispering about with the Undersea? Is this the way Cardan was to be ruined?

“You?” I shout. “You shot Cardan?”

“Don’t tell him!” She glares at me furiously, wiping wet eyes. “And put away that knife.”

Nicasia wears a robe, heavily embroidered with phoenixes and wrapped tightly around herself. Three earrings shine along her lobes, snaking up the ear all the way to their bluish webbed points. Her hair has gotten darker since I saw it last. It was always the many colors of the sea, but now it is the sea in a storm—a deep greenish black.

“Are you out of your mind?” I yell. “You tried to assassinate the High King of Faerie.”

“I didn’t,” she says. “I swear. I only meant to kill the girl he was with.”

For a moment, I am too stunned by the cruelty and indifference to speak.

I take another look at her, at the robe she’s clutching so tightly. With her words echoing in my head, I suddenly have a clear idea of what happened. “You thought to surprise him in his rooms.”

“Yes,” she says.

“But he wasn’t alone.…” I continue, hoping she will take up the tale.

“When I saw the crossbow on the wall, it didn’t seem it would be so difficult to aim,” she says, forgetting the part about dragging it up through the passageway, though it’s heavy and awkward and that couldn’t have been easy. I wonder how angry she was, how unthinking in her rage.

Of course, perhaps she was thinking entirely clearly.

“It’s treason, you know,” I say aloud. I am shaking, I realize. The aftereffects of believing someone tried to assassinate Cardan, of realizing he could have died. “They’ll execute you. They’ll make you dance yourself to death in iron shoes heated hot as pokers. You’ll be lucky if they put you in the Tower of Forgetting.”

“I am a Princess of the Undersea,” she says haughtily, but I can see the shock on her face as my words register. “Exempt from the laws of the land. Besides, I told you I wasn’t aiming for him.”

Now I understand the worst of her behavior in school: She thought she could never be punished.

“Have you ever used a crossbow before?” I ask. “You put his life at risk. He could have died. You idiot, he could have died.”

“I told you—” she starts to repeat herself.

“Yes, yes, the compact between the sea and the land,” I interrupt her, still furious. “But it just so happens I know that your mother is intent on breaking the treaty. You see, she will say it was between Queen Orlagh and High King Eldred, not Queen Orlagh and High King Cardan. It doesn’t apply any longer. Which means it won’t protect you.”

At that, Nicasia gapes at me, afraid for the first time. “How did you know that?”

I wasn’t sure, I think but do not say. Now I am.

“Let’s assume I know everything,” I tell her instead. “Everything. Always. Yet I’m willing to make a deal with you. I’ll tell Cardan and the guard and the rest of them that the shooter got away, if you do something for me.”

“Yes,” she says before I even lay out the conditions, making the depth of her desperation clear. For a moment, a desire for vengeance rises in me. Once, she laughed at my humiliation. Now I could gloat before hers.

This is what power feels like, pure unfettered power. It’s great.

“Tell me what Orlagh is planning,” I say, pushing those thoughts away.

“I thought you knew everything already,” she returns sulkily, shifting so she can rise from the bed, one hand still clutching her robe. I guess she is wearing very little, if anything, underneath.