“What have you done?” Orlagh cries as the bark moves higher, as branches unfold, budding with leaves and fragrant blossoms. Petals blow out onto the waves.
“Will you flood the land now?” Cardan asks Orlagh with perfect calm, as though he didn’t just cause a fourth island to rise from the sea. “Send salt water to corrupt the roots of our trees and make our streams and lakes brackish? Will you drown our berries and send your merfolk to slit our throats and steal our roses? Will you do it if it means your daughter will suffer the same? Come, I dare you.”
“Release Nicasia,” says Orlagh, defeat heavy in her voice.
“I am the High King of Elfhame,” Cardan reminds her. “And I mislike being given orders. You attacked the land. You stole my seneschal and freed my brother, who was imprisoned for the murder of our father, Eldred, with whom you had an alliance. Once, we respected each other’s territory.
“I have allowed you too much disrespect, and you have overplayed your hand.
“Now, Queen of the Undersea, we will have a truce as you had with Eldred, as you had with Mab. We will have a truce or we will have a war, and if we fight, I will be unsparing. Nothing and no one you love will be safe.”
“Very well, High King,” Orlagh says, and I suck in my breath, not at all sure what will come next. “Let us have an alliance and no longer be at one another’s throats. Give me my daughter, and we will go.”
I let out a breath. He was wise to push her, even though it was terrifying. After all, once she found out about Madoc, she might press her advantage. Better to bring this moment to its crisis.
And it worked. I look down to hide my smile.
“Let Nicasia stay here and be your ambassador in Balekin’s stead,” Cardan says. “She has grown up on these islands, and many who love her are here.”
That wipes the smile off my face. On the new island, the bark is pulling away from Nicasia’s skin. I wonder what he’s playing at, bringing her back to Elfhame. With her will inevitably come trouble.
And yet, maybe it’s the sort of trouble he wants.
“If she wishes to stay, she may. Are you satisfied?” Orlagh asks.
Cardan inclines his head. “I am. I will not be led by the sea, no matter how great its queen. As the High King, I must lead. But I must also be just.”
Here he pauses. And then he turns to me. “And today I will dispense justice. Jude Duarte, do you deny you murdered Prince Balekin, Ambassador of the Undersea and brother to the High King?”
I am not sure what he wants me to say. Would it help to deny it? If so, surely he would not put it to me in such a way—a way that makes it clear he believes I did kill Balekin. Cardan has had a plan all along. All I can do is trust that he has a plan now.
“I do not deny that we had a duel and that I won it,” I say, my voice coming out more uncertain than I’d like.
All the eyes of the Folk are on me, and for a moment, as I look out at their pitiless faces, I feel Madoc’s absence keenly. Orlagh’s smile is full of sharp teeth.
“Hear my judgment,” Cardan says, authority ringing in his voice. “I hereafter exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world until such time as she is pardoned by the crown. Until then, let her not step one foot in Faerie or forfeit her life.”
I gasp. “But you can’t do that!”
He looks at me for a long moment, but his gaze is mild, as though he’s expecting me to be fine with exile. As though I am nothing more than one of his petitioners. As though I am nothing at all. “Of course I can,” he replies.
“But I’m the Queen of Faerie,” I shout, and for a moment, there is silence. Then everyone around me begins to laugh.
I can feel my cheeks heat. Tears of frustration and fury prick my eyes as, a beat too late, Cardan laughs with them.
At that moment, knights clap their hands on my wrists. Sir Rannoch pulls me down from the horse. For a mad moment I consider fighting him as though two dozen knights aren’t around us.
“Deny it then,” I yell. “Deny me!”
He cannot, of course, so he does not. Our eyes meet, and the odd smile on his face is clearly meant for me. I remember what it was to hate him with the whole of my heart, but I’ve remembered too late.
“Come with me, my lady,” Sir Rannoch says, and there is nothing I can do but go.
Still, I cannot resist looking back. When I do, Cardan is taking the first step onto the new island. He looks every bit the ruler his father was, every bit the monster his brother wanted to become. Crow-black hair blown back from his face, scarlet cape swirling around him, eyes reflecting the flat gray emptiness of the sky.
“If Insweal is the Isle of Woe, Insmire, the Isle of Might, and Insmoor the Isle of Stone,” he says, his voice carrying across the newly formed land. “Then let this be Insear, Isle of Ash.”
I lie on the couch in front of the television. In front of me a plate of microwaved fish sticks grows cold. On the screen in front of me, a cartoon ice-skater is sulking. He is not a very good skater, I think. Or maybe he’s a great skater. I keep forgetting to read the subtitles.
It’s hard to concentrate on pretty much anything these days.
Vivi comes into the room and flops down on the couch. “Heather won’t text me back,” she says.
I turned up on Vivi’s doorstep a week before, exhausted, my eyes red with weeping. Rannoch and his coterie had carried me across the sky on one of their horses and dumped me on a random street in a random town. I’d walked and walked until I had blisters on my feet, and I began to doubt my ability to navigate by the stars. Finally, I stumbled into a gas station with a taxi refueling and was startled to remember taxis existed. By then, I didn’t care that I had no money with me and that Vivi was probably going to pay him with a handful of glamoured leaves.
But I didn’t expect to arrive and find Heather gone.
When she and Vivi came back from Faerie, I guess she had a lot of questions. And then she’d had more questions, and finally, Vivi admitted glamouring her. That’s when everything totally unraveled.
Vivi removed the glamour, Heather got her memories back. Heather moved out.
She’s sleeping at her parents’ house, so Vivi keeps hoping she might still come back. Some of her stuff is still here. Clothes. Her drafting table. A set of unused oil paints.
“She’ll text you when she’s ready,” I say, although I am not sure I believe it. “She’s just trying to get her head straight.” Just because I am bitter about romance doesn’t mean everyone else needs to be.
For a while, we just sit on the couch together, watching the cartoon skater fail to land jumps and fall in helpless and probably unrequited love with his coach.
Soon, Oak will come home from school, and we will pretend that things are normal. I will take him into the wooded part of the apartment complex and drill him on the sword. He doesn’t mind, but to him it’s only messing around, and I don’t have the heart to scare him into seeing swordplay differently.
Vivi takes a fish stick off my plate and dredges it through the ketchup. “How long you going to keep sulking? You were exhausted from being locked up in the Undersea. You were off your game. He got one over on you. It happens.”
“Whatever,” I say as she eats my food.
“If you hadn’t gotten captured, you would have mopped the floor with him.”
I am not even sure what that means, but it’s nice to hear.
“I’m glad you’re here.” She turns to me with her cat eyes, eyes just like her father. “I wanted you to come to the mortal world and stay. Maybe you will. Maybe you’ll love it. I want you to give it a chance.”
I nod noncommittally.
“And if you don’t love it,” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “You can always join Madoc.”
“I can’t,” I say. “He tried and tried to recruit me, but I kept turning him down. That ship sailed.”
She shrugs. “He wouldn’t—okay, he would care. He’d make you grovel a lot, and he’d bring it up awkwardly in war councils for the next couple of decades. But he’d take you.”
I give her a stern look. “And what? Work to put Oak on the throne?”
“Who cares about that? Work to hurt Cardan,” Vivi says, with a fierce light in her eyes. She has never been particularly forgiving.
Right now, I am glad of it.
“How?” I say, but the strategic part of my brain is grinding slowly back into action. Grimsen is still in play. If he could make a crown for Balekin, what could he do for me?
“I don’t know, but don’t worry about it yet,” Vivi says, getting up. “Revenge is sweet, but ice cream is sweeter.” She goes to the freezer and removes a tub of mint chocolate chip. She brings that and two spoons back to the sofa. “For now, accept this delight, unworthy though it is for the Queen of Faerie in exile.”
I know she doesn’t mean to mock me, but the title stings anyway. I pick up my spoon.
You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring. The first lesson is to make yourself that strong.
We eat bathed in the flickering light of the screen. Vivi’s phone is silent on the coffee table. My mind is whirling.