The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air 1)

I shudder.

We climb the steps together. I let him keep his possessive grip on my arm, guiding me. I let him open the doors with his own keys. I let him do whatever he wants. And then, once we’re in the empty hall in the upper level of the palace, I turn and press the point of my knife directly underneath his chin.

“Jude?” he asks, up against the wall, pronouncing my name carefully, as though to avoid slurring. I am not sure I have ever heard him use my actual name before.

“Surprised?” I ask, a fierce grin starting on my face. The most important boy in Faerie and my enemy, finally in my power. It feels even better than I thought it would. “You shouldn’t be.”

I press the tip of the knife against his skin so he can feel the bite. His black eyes focus on me with new intensity. “Why?” he asks. Just that.

Seldom have I felt such a rush of triumph. I have to concentrate on keeping it from going to my head, stronger than wine. “Because your luck is terrible and mine is great. Do what I say and I’ll delay the pleasure of hurting you.”

“Planning to spill a little more royal blood tonight?” He sneers, moving as if to shrug off the knife. I move with him, keeping it against his throat. He keeps talking. “Feeling left out of the slaughter?”

“You’re drunk,” I say.

“Oh, indeed.” He leans his head back against the stone, closing his eyes. Nearby torchlight turns his black hair to bronze. “But do you really believe I am going to let you parade me in front of the general, as though I am some lowly—”

I press the knife harder. He sucks in a breath and bites off the end of that sentence. “Of course,” he says, a moment later, with a laugh full of self-mockery. “I was passed out cold while my family was murdered; it’s hard to fall more lowly than that.”

“Stop talking,” I tell him, pushing aside any twinge of sympathy. He never had any for me. “Move.”

“Or what?” he asks, still not opening his eyes. “You’re not really going to stab me.”

“When was the last time you saw your dear friend Valerian?” I whisper. “Not today, despite the insult implied by his absence. Did you wonder at that?”

His eyes open. He looks as though I slapped him awake. “I did. Where is he?”

“Rotting near Madoc’s stables. I killed him, and then I buried him. So believe me when I threaten you. No matter how unlikely it seems, you are the most important person in all of Faerie. Whosoever has you, has power. And I want power.”

“I suppose you were right after all.” He studies my face, giving nothing away on his own. “I suppose I didn’t know the least of what you could do.”

I try not to let him know how much his calmness rattles me. It makes me feel as though the knife in my hand, which should lend me authority, isn’t enough. It makes me want to hurt him just to convince myself he can be frightened. He’s just lost his whole family; I shouldn’t be thinking like this.

But I can’t help thinking that he will exploit any pity on my part, any weakness.

“Time to move,” I say harshly. “Go to the first door and open it. When we’re inside, we’re going to the closet. There’s a passageway through there.”

“Yes, fine,” he says, annoyed, trying to push my blade away.

I hold it steady, so that the knife cuts into his skin. He swears and puts a bleeding finger in his mouth. “What was that for?”

“For fun,” I say, and then ease the blade from his throat, slowly and deliberately. My lip curls, but otherwise I keep my expression as masklike as I know how, as cruel and cold as the face that reoccurs in my nightmares. It is only as I do it that I realize who I am aping, whose face frightened me into wanting it for my own.

His.

My heart is hammering so hard I feel sick.

“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?” he asks as I shove him ahead of me with my free hand.

“No. Now move.” The growl in my voice is all mine.

Unbelievably, he does, swaying as he makes his way down the hall and then into the study I indicate. When we get to the hidden passageway, he crawls in with only a single inscrutable glance back at me. Maybe he’s even drunker than I thought.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll sober up soon enough.

The first thing I do when I get to the nest of the Court of Shadows is tie Prince Cardan to a chair with shredded pieces of my own dirty dress. Then I remove both of our masks. He lets me do it all, an odd look on his face. No one else is there, and I have no idea when anyone might come back, if they will at all.

It doesn’t matter. I can manage without them.

I have made it this far, after all. When Cardan found me, I knew that having control of him was the only path to having some control over the fate of my world.

I think of all the vows I made to Dain, including the one I never spoke out loud: Instead of being afraid, I will become something to fear. If Dain isn’t going to give me power, then I am going to take it for myself.

Not having spent much time in the Court of Shadows, I don’t know its secrets. I walk through rooms, opening heavy wooden doors, opening cabinets, taking inventory of my supplies. I discover a pantry that is as full of poisons as it is of cheeses and sausages; a training room with sawdust on the floor, weapons on the wall, and a new wooden dummy in the center, its face crudely painted with a disturbing grin. I go into the back room with four pallets on the ground and a few mugs and discarded clothing spread out near them. I touch none of it, until I come to the map room with a desk. Dain’s desk, stuffed with scrolls and pens and sealing wax.

For a moment, I am overwhelmed by the enormity of what has happened. Prince Dain is gone, gone forever. And his father and sisters are gone with him.

I go back to the main room and drag Cardan and the chair into Dain’s office, propping it against the open door so I can keep an eye on him. I take down a handheld crossbow from the wall in the training room, along with a few bolts. Weapon beside me, cocked and ready, I sit down in Dain’s chair and rest my head in my hands.

“Will you tell me where exactly we are, now that I am trussed up to your satisfaction?” I want to strike Cardan over and over until I slap that smugness off his face. But if I did, he’d know just how much he scares me.

“This is where Prince Dain’s spies meet,” I inform him, trying to shake off my fear. I need to concentrate. Cardan is nothing, an instrument, a gambling marker.

He fixes me with an odd, startled look. “How do you know that? What possessed you to bring me here?”

“I’m trying to figure out what to do next,” I say with uncomfortable honesty.

“And if one of the spies returns?” he asks me, rousing from his stupor enough to actually seem concerned. “They’re going to discover you in their lair and…”

He trails off at the smirk on my face and subsides into stunned silence. I can see the moment he arrives at the realization that I’m one of them. That I belong here.

Cardan lapses back into silence.

Finally. Finally, I’ve made him flinch.

I do something I would never dare to do before. I go through Prince Dain’s desk. There are mounds of correspondence. Lists. Notes neither to Dain nor from him, probably stolen. More in his hand—movements, riddles, proposals for laws. Formal invitations. Informal and innocuous letters, including a few from Madoc. I am not sure what I am looking for. I am just scanning everything as quickly as I can for something, anything, that might give me some idea of why he was betrayed.

All my life, I grew up thinking of the High King and Prince Dain as our unquestioned rulers. I believed Madoc to be entirely loyal to them; I was loyal, too. I knew Madoc was bloodthirsty. I guess I knew he wanted more conquest, more war, more battle. But I thought he considered wanting war to be part of his role as the general, while part of the High King’s role was to keep him in check. Madoc talked about honor, about obligation, about duty. He’d raised Taryn and me in the name of those things; it seemed logical he was willing to put up with other unpleasantness.

I didn’t think Madoc even liked Balekin.

I recall the dead messenger, shot by me, and the note in the scroll: KILL THE BEARER OF THIS MESSAGE. It was a piece of misdirection, all meant to keep Dain’s spies busy chasing our tails while Balekin and Madoc planned to strike in the one place no one looked—right out in the open.

“Did you know?” I ask Cardan. “Did you know what Balekin was going to do? Is that why you weren’t with the rest of your family?”

He barks out a laugh. “If you think that, why do you suppose I didn’t run straight into Balekin’s loving arms?”

“Tell me anyway,” I say.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “Did you? Madoc is your father, after all.”

I take out a long bar of wax from Dain’s desk, one end blackened. “What does it matter what I say? I could lie.”

“Tell me anyway,” he says, and yawns.

I really want to slap him.

“I didn’t know, either,” I admit, not looking at him. Instead, I am staring at the pile of notes, at the soft wax impressions, an intaglio in reverse. “And I should have.”

My gaze cuts toward Cardan. I walk over to him, squat down, and begin to prize off his royal ring. He tries to pull his hand out of my grasp, but he’s tied in such a way that he can’t. I yank it off his finger.

I hate how I feel around him, the irrational panic when I touch his skin.

“I’m just borrowing your stupid ring,” I say. The signet fits perfectly into the impression on the letter. All the rings of all the princes and princesses must be identical. That means a seal from one looks much like the seal of another. I pull out a fresh piece of paper and begin to write.

“I don’t suppose you have anything to drink around here?” Cardan asks. “I don’t imagine that whatever happens next is going to be particularly comfortable for me, and I would like to stay drunk in order to face it.”