The Lost Sisters (The Folk of the Air 1.5)

Cardan leaned in close, close enough that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “It’s much too late for that.”

Then you came out of nowhere and grabbed his shoulder. Before I could even speak, you’d spun him around and slammed his back against a tree. Your hand went to his throat. Cardan’s eyes went wide with shock. All around us, the children of the Gentry stared, agog.

Cardan was a Prince of Elfhame. And you were putting your hands on him—there, in front of everyone. Hands he was likely to order cut off.

Shock pinned me in place. I barely recognized you with your teeth bared like that. This new you, who wouldn’t surrender in the river, a Jude I am not sure I know. A Jude I was not sure would like me. Right then you looked as though you wanted to bite out the prince’s throat and he looked thrilled to have an excuse to do whatever awful thing he was planning.

I was terrified for you and scared for myself, too. Everything was just getting worse and worse and I didn’t know how to stop any of it. It felt like being trapped in one of those circle dances. Mortal feet won’t stop moving, no matter how tired you get. We’ll dance until our feet bleed. Until we collapse. We can’t do anything else until the music ends.

But that night, at last, Locke came to my window.

A stone struck the glass pane and I was out of bed in an instant, fumbling for a robe. I came out onto the balcony and looked down at him, my heart racing. His hair was bright in the moonlight, his face as handsome as heartbreak.

I took a breath and steeled myself. It was so tempting to push away all my doubts and fears and to rush into his arms.

But I couldn’t let myself forget how hurt I had been, night after night, not knowing whether he’d ever come again, not knowing what I’d meant to him, if I’d meant anything at all.

And something else bothered me. Something about the freshness of Nicasia’s anger and her possessiveness made me wonder if Locke and she were together still. If, when he wasn’t visiting me at night, he was visiting her.

Locke and I stared at each other as the cool night air blew my robe, ruffled his hair.

“Come down, my beauty, my darling, my dove,” he urged, but not loudly. He must have been a little worried, with the general sleeping so near. If Locke woke Madoc up, who knew how he’d have reacted? For a moment, I pictured Locke’s heart shot through with an arrow and then shook my head to get rid of the image. It wasn’t like me to think things like that.

It especially wasn’t like me to have a brief jolt of satisfaction from it.

Guilt over my thoughts, more than anything else, made me lasso a thin rope from my balcony and slither down it. My bare feet landed on the grass.

Locke took both my hands and looked me over with a smile that managed to be complimentary and slightly, amusingly lewd. I giggled, despite myself.

“It was hard to stay away from you,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have.” It was part of his charm, somehow, to get me to say the things I meant.

“We—the Folk—don’t love like you do,” Locke said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t trust me with your heart. I might break it.”

I didn’t like that. “Cardan knows it was me you were meeting. He told me as much.”

“Ah,” he said. Just that.

I took a few steps from him and crossed my arms over my chest. “Leave Jude out of this.”

He gave me a fox’s grin. “Cardan certainly does seem to enjoy hurting her, doesn’t he?”

It was true, and awful. Even if I could persuade you to stop reacting—impossible enough—the prince had to be angry about being slammed into a tree. “She can’t win.”

“Can’t she?” he asked.

I hated the way he questioned me, as though you were so much more interesting than I was. I was the good sister, the one who kept faith and stuck to the rules. You were the angry one, the one who didn’t know how far was far enough, the one who courted disaster. It wasn’t fair. “You won’t even go against him. How could she have any chance?”

Locke laughed at that. “There it is. That temper you try to hide. You know what fascinates me about you? You’re a hungry person sitting in front of a banquet, refusing to eat.”

I thought of the banquets of Faerie, of everapple, the fruit that makes mortals give in to abandon. I thought of the banquets I’d only heard of, where the Folk enchant humans and serve up garbage glamoured to look like delicacies, where they crown one of them the Queen of Mirth, a title that comes with robes of filth and horrible mockery.

How could he doubt why I would hesitate to eat at such a banquet?

“Aren’t you ever careless?” he asked.

“Always, with you.”

“I want to show you something,” Locke said, taking my hand. “Come with me.”

“I’m not wearing—” I began, but he led me toward the woods.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “No one will mind.”

I stopped moving, horrified. “Who is going to be there? I don’t think this is a good idea.” I didn’t even have shoes.

“Will you trust me?” Locke asked. There was so much in that question. When I thought back to the time before that first note, my life seemed to have been dry paper waiting for him to kindle it.

No, not him. Love.

“Yes,” I said, taking his hand. “For tonight.”

There was a revel near the Lake of Masks. A few Folk cavorted under the stars and stretched out on carpets. I didn’t recognize any of them; they didn’t attend the palace school, and if I’d seen them before, it had only been in passing. They seemed to know Locke, though, and called out to him. One played a fiddle and when he saw us, he began playing a song I’d heard before in the mortal world.

Locke twirled me in his arms and for those moments, everything was perfect. We danced three dances like that, my body becoming looser, my steps less formal. Then we rested on the grass, sharing a glass of spiced wine from a borrowed wooden cup.

Then Locke pointed to a boy with hair the impossibly bright green of new leaves. “He keeps looking at you.”

“Because I’m in a nightgown,” I said.

“Go speak with him,” Locke said cryptically.

I gave him an incredulous look, but he only raised his brows and smiled. “It will be easy once it’s begun.”

“What will?” I asked.

“Go,” he urged, looking impish.

And so I forced myself to stand and to make my way over the grass.

The boy looked surprised as I drew closer, then stood up, dusting off his homespun tunic. Reed pipes hung from a leather cord around his neck.

“The general’s daughter,” he said, and bowed. “Sometimes, when the leaves are thin, we can see the lights of your stronghold from here.”

“And sometimes I can hear music from my balcony. Were you the player?”

He blushed. He must have been green-blooded, because his cheeks and neck were abruptly suffused with that color. “If it pleased you, then I’d like to claim it was me.”

“And to what name ought I direct my praise?” Locke was right about one thing. It was easy. The boy was nice. But I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be doing.

“Edir,” he said. “But you can call me whatever you want if you will consent to dance with me.”

So we danced, his shy hand on my hip. Locke watched. The fiddler pranced around as he played. Revelers in rags, leaves in their hair, whirled and jumped.

I laughed.

This was just the sort of thing that Oriana would hate. She wouldn’t like me venturing out alone, my pockets empty of salt. She wouldn’t like me dancing, especially with Folk who were not courtiers. But despite that, despite the strangeness of the situation, I was having fun.

“I hope you didn’t get bored without me,” Locke interrupted, surprising me. I hadn’t noticed when he got up.

A moment later, he was pulling me into his arms for a kiss. Then he turned to Edir. “He looks amusing enough. Was he?”

Hurt flashed across the boy’s face. His mouth crumpled.

“Very amusing,” I said. Only after the words left my mouth did I realize how dismissive they sounded, like Nicasia or Prince Cardan himself. But for a moment it felt good to be awful, like looking down on the world from some great height.

“I will take my leave,” Edir said, drawing himself up. “Perhaps some night you will cast open your window and hear my song and recall tonight.” He went back to his friends and I felt terrible for hurting him.

“He will want you all the more for not getting you,” Locke whispered in my ear, pressing his lips against my throat.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m going home.”

“I will escort you,” he said. “If you like.”

“Yes.” I gathered my robe around me and began to walk, not waiting for him to lead the way. I felt—I don’t know how I felt. I could barely describe it.

“Why did you want me to do that?” I asked finally. The woods were so quiet. And all I could think was that Locke had shown himself to me. That’s who he was, the person who engineered Edir’s pain. Friend to Cardan and Nicasia and Valerian. Peas in a pod. I had been a fool to love him.

“To show you what you would not otherwise believe,” Locke said. “Envy. Fear. Anger. Jealousy. They’re all spices.” He laughed at my expression. “What is bread without salt? Desire can grow just as plain.”

“I don’t understan—”

He put a finger against my mouth. “Not every lover can appreciate such spices. But I think you can.”

He meant it to be flattering, but I wasn’t so sure that it was. I ducked my head, twisted away from him.

He didn’t look upset. “I can show you a version of yourself, Taryn. One you’ve never imagined. It’s terrible to be a girl trapped in a story. But you can be more than that. You can be the teller. You can shape the story. You can make all of Faerie love you.”