The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air 2)

Then Taryn finally comes down. She’s been bathed in lilac dew and wears a gown of incredibly fine layers of cloth on top of one another, herbs and flowers trapped between them to give the impression that she’s this beautiful, floating figure and a living bouquet at the same time.

Her hair is braided into a crown with green blooms all through it.

She looks beautiful and painfully human. In all that pale fabric, she looks like a sacrifice instead of a bride. She smiles at all of us, shy and glowingly happy.

We all rise and tell her how beautiful she looks. Madoc takes her hands and kisses them, looking at her like any proud father. Even though he thinks she’s making a mistake.

We get into the carriage, along with the small hob who is going to be Oak’s double, who switches jackets once we’re inside, and then sits worriedly in a corner.

On our way to Locke’s estate, Taryn leans forward and catches my hand. “Once I am married, things will be different.”

“Some things,” I say, not entirely sure what she’s talking about.

“Dad has promised to keep him in line,” she whispers.

I recall Taryn’s appeal to me to have Locke dismissed from his position as Master of Revels. Curbing Locke’s indulgences is likely to keep Madoc busy, which seems like no bad thing.

“Are you happy for me?” she asks. “Truly?”

Taryn has been closer to me than any other person in the world. She has known the tide and undertow of my feelings, my hurts, both small and large, for most of my life. It would be stupid to let anything interfere with that.

“I want you to be happy,” I say. “Today and always.”

She gives me a nervous smile, and her fingers tighten on mine.

I am still holding her hand when the hedge maze comes into view. I see three pixie girls in diaphanous gowns fly over the greenery, giggling together, and beyond them other Folk already beginning to mill. As Master of Revels, Locke has organized a wedding worthy of the title.

The first trap goes unsprung. The decoy climbs out with my family while Oak and I duck down in the carriage. He grins at me at first, when we huddle down in the space between the cushioned benches, but the grin slips off his face a moment later, replaced by worry.

I take his hand and squeeze it. “Ready to climb through a window?”

That delights him anew. “From the carriage?”

“Yes,” I say, and wait for it to pull around. When it does, there’s a knock. I peek out and see the Bomb inside the estate. She winks at me, and then I lift up Oak and feed him, hooves first, through the carriage window and into her arms.

I climb after, inelegantly. My dress is ridiculously revealing, and my leg is still stiff, still hurting, when I fall onto Locke’s stone floor.

“Anything?” I ask, looking up at the Bomb.

She shakes her head, extending a hand to me. “That was always the long shot. My bet is on the maze.”

Oak frowns, and I rub his shoulders. “You don’t have to do this,” I tell him, although I am not sure what we do if he says he won’t.

“I’m okay,” he says without looking into my eyes. “Where’s my mom?”

“I’ll find her for you, twigling,” says the Bomb, and puts her arm over his thin shoulder to lead him out. At the doorway, she looks back at me and fishes something out of her pocket. “You seem to have hurt yourself. Good thing I don’t just cook up explosives.”

With that, she tosses me something. I catch it without knowing what it is, and then turn it over in my hand. A pot of ointment. I look back up to thank her, but she’s already gone.

Unstoppering the little pot, I breath in the scent of strong herbs. Still, once I spread it over my skin, my pain diminishes. The ointment cools the heat of what was probably imminent infection. The leg is still sore, but nothing as it was.

“My seneschal,” Cardan says, and I nearly drop the ointment. I tug down my dress, turning. “Are you ready to welcome Locke into your family?”

The last time we were in this house, in the maze of the gardens, his mouth was streaked with golden nevermore, and he watched me kiss Locke with a simmering intensity that I thought was hatred.

Now, he studies me with a not dissimilar look, and all I want to do is walk into his arms. I want to drown my worries in his embrace. I want him to say something totally unlike himself, about things being okay.

“Nice dress,” he says instead.

I know the Court must already think I am besotted with the High King to endure being crowned Queen of Mirth and still serve as his seneschal. Everyone must think, as Madoc does, that I am his creature. Even after he humiliated me, I came crawling back.

But what if I actually am becoming besotted with him?

Cardan is more knowledgeable than I am at love. He could use that against me, just as I asked him to use it against Nicasia. Perhaps he found a way to turn the tables after all.

Kill him, a part of me says, a part I remember from the night I took him captive. Kill him before he makes you love him.

“You shouldn’t be alone,” I say, because if the Undersea is going to strike then, we must not give it any easy targets. “Not tonight.”

Cardan grins. “I hadn’t planned on it.”

The offhand implication that he’s not alone most nights bothers me, and I hate that it does. “Good,” I say, swallowing that feeling, though it feels like swallowing bile. “But if you’re planning on taking someone to bed—or better yet, several someones—choose guards. And then have yourselves guarded by more guards.”

“A veritable orgy.” He seems delighted by the idea.

I keep thinking of the steady way he looked at me when we were both naked, before he pulled on his shirt and fastened those elegant cuffs. We should have called truce, he’d said, brushing back his ink-black hair impatiently. We should have called truce long before this.

But neither of us called it, not then, not after.

Jude, he’d said, running a hand up my calf, are you afraid of me?

I clear my throat, forcing the memories away. “I command you not to allow yourself to be alone from tonight’s sundown to tomorrow’s sunup.”

He draws back, as though bitten. He no longer expects me to deliver orders in this high-handed way, as though I don’t trust him.

The High King of Elfhame makes a shallow bow. “Your wish—no, strike that. Your command is my command,” he says.

I cannot look at him as he goes out. I am a coward. Maybe it’s the pain in my leg, maybe it’s worry over my brother, but a part of me wants to call after him, wants to apologize. Finally, when I am sure he’s gone, I head toward the party. A few steps and I am in the hallway.

Madoc looks at me from where he leans against the wall. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he shakes his head at me. “It never made sense to me. Until now.”

I stop. “What?”

“I was coming in to get Oak when I heard you speaking with the High King. Forgive me for eavesdropping.”

I can barely think through the thundering in my ears. “It’s not what you thin—”

“If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t know what I thought,” Madoc counters. “Very clever, daughter. No wonder you weren’t tempted by anything I offered you. I said I wouldn’t underestimate you, and yet I did. I underestimated you, and I underestimated both your ambition and your arrogance.”

“No,” I say. “You don’t understand—”

“Oh, I think I do,” he says, not waiting for me to explain about Oak’s not being ready for the throne, about my desire to avoid bloodshed, about how I don’t even know if I can hang on to what I have for longer than a year and a day. He’s too angry for any of that. “At last, I finally understand. Orlagh and the Undersea we will vanquish together. But when they are gone, it will be us staring across a chessboard at each other. And when I best you, I will make sure I do it as thoroughly as I would any opponent who has shown themselves to be my equal.”

Before I can think of what to say to that, he grabs hold of my arm, marching us together onto the green. “Come,” he says. “We have roles yet to play.”

Outside, blinking in the late afternoon sun, Madoc leaves me to go speak with a few knights standing in a tight knot near an ornamental pool. He gives me a nod when he departs, the nod of someone acknowledging an opponent.

A shiver goes through me. When I confronted him in Hollow Hall after poisoning his cup, I thought I had made us enemies. But this is far worse. He knows I stand between him and the crown, and it matters little whether he loves or hates me—he will do whatever it takes to wrest that power from my hands.

With no other options, I head into the maze, toward the celebration at its center.

Three turns and it seems that the partygoers are farther away. Sounds grow muffled, and it seems to me that laughter comes from every direction. The boxwoods are high enough to be disorienting.

Seven turns and I am truly lost. I start to turn back, only to find the maze has changed itself around. The paths are not where they were before.

Of course. It can’t just be a normal maze. No, it’s got to be out to get me.

I remember that among this foliage are the treefolk, waiting to keep Oak safe. Whether they’re the ones messing with me now, I do not know, but at least I can be sure something is listening when I speak.

“I will slice my way clean through you,” I say to the leafy walls. “Let’s start playing fair.”

Branches rustle behind me. When I turn, there’s a new path.

“This better be the way to the party,” I grumble, starting on it. I hope this doesn’t lead to the secret oubliette reserved for people who threaten the maze.

Another turn and I come to a stretch of little white flowers and a stone tower built in miniature. From inside, I hear a strange sound, half growl and half cry.

I draw Nightfell. Not many things weep in Faerie. And the weeping things that are more common here—like banshees—are very dangerous.