The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air Book 1)

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.”

“Do you really think I care if you’re comfortable?” I demand.

I hear a footfall and stand up from the desk. From the common room comes the sound of smashing glass. I shove Cardan’s ring into my bodice, where it rests heavily against my skin, and head into the hall. The Roach has knocked a line of jars off the bookshelf and cracked the wood of a cabinet. Jagged glass and spilled infusions carpet the stone floor. Mandrake. Snakeroot. Larkspur. The Ghost is grabbing the Roach’s arm, hauling him back from smashing more things. Despite the line of blood streaking down his leg, the stiffness of his movements. The Ghost has been in a fight.

“Hey,” I say.

Both look surprised to see me. They are even more surprised when they notice Prince Cardan tied to a chair in the doorway of the map room.

“Shouldn’t you be with your father, celebrating?” the Ghost spits. I take a step back. Before, he’s always been a model of perfect, unnatural calm. Neither of them seems calm now. “The Bomb is still out there, and both of them nearly gave their lives to free me from Balekin’s dungeon, only to find you here, gloating.”

“No!” I say, holding my ground. “Think about it. If I knew what was going to happen, if I was on Madoc’s side, the only way I would be here is with a retainer of knights. You’d have been shot coming in the door. I would hardly have come alone, dragging along a prisoner that my father would dearly love to have.”

“Peace, both of you. We’re all of us reeling,” the Roach says, looking at the damage he has done. He shakes his head, then his attention goes to Cardan. He walks toward him, studying the prince’s face. The Roach’s black lips pull back from his teeth in a considering grimace. When he turns back to me, he’s obviously impressed. “Although it seems that one of us kept her head.”

“Hello,” Cardan says, raising his brows and regarding the Roach as though they were sitting down to tea together.

Cardan’s clothes are disarranged, from crawling under tables or being captured and tied, and his infamous tail is showing under the white lawn of his shirt. It is slim, nearly hairless, with a tuft of black fur at the tip. As I watch, the tail forms one wavering curve after another, snaking back and forth, betraying his cool face, telling its own story of uncertainty and fear.

I can see why he hides that thing away.

“We should kill him,” says the Ghost, slouching in the hallway, light brown hair blown across his forehead. “He’s the only member of the royal family who can crown Balekin. Without Cardan, the throne will be forever lost, and we will have avenged Dain.”

Cardan draws a sharp breath and then lets it out slowly. “I’d prefer to live.”

“We don’t work for Dain anymore,” the Roach reminds the Ghost, the nostrils of his long green knife of a nose flaring. “Dain’s dead and beyond caring about thrones or crowns. We sell the prince back to Balekin for everything we can get and leave. Go among the low Courts or the free Folk. There’s fun to be had, and gold. You could come along, Jude. If you want.”

The offer is tempting. Burn it all down. Run. Start over in a place where no one knows me except the Ghost and the Roach.

“I don’t want Balekin’s money.” The Ghost spits on the ground. “And other than that, the boy prince is useless to us. Too young, too weak. If not for Dain, then let’s kill him for all of Faerie.”

“Too young, too weak, too mean,” I put in.

“Wait,” Cardan says. I have imagined him afraid many times, but the reality outstrips those imaginings. Seeing the quickening of his breath, the way he pulls against my careful knots, delights me. “Wait! I could tell you what I know, everything I know, anything about Balekin, anything you’d like. If you want gold and riches, I could get them for you. I know the way to Balekin’s treasury. I have the ten keys to the ten locks of the palace. I could be useful.”

Only in my dreams has Cardan ever been like this. Begging. Miserable. Powerless.

“What did you know about your brother’s plan?” the Ghost asks him, peeling himself off the wall. He limps over.

Cardan shakes his head. “Only that Balekin despised Dain. I despised him as well. He was despicable. I didn’t know he’d managed to convince Madoc of that.”

“What do you mean, despicable?” I ask, indignant, even with the still-healing wound on my hand. Dain’s death washed away the resentment I had for him.

Cardan gives me an indecipherable look. “Dain poisoned his own child, still in the womb. He worked on our father until he trusted no one but Dain. Ask them—surely Dain’s spies know how he made Eldred believe that Elowyn was plotting against him, convinced him that Balekin was a fool. Dain orchestrated my being thrown out of the palace, so that I had to be taken in by my elder brother or go without any home at the Court. He even persuaded Eldred to step down after poisoning his wine so that he became tired and ill—the curse on the crown doesn’t prevent that.”

“That can’t be true.” I think of Liriope, of the letter, of how Balekin wanted proof of who got the poison. But Eldred couldn’t have been poisoned with blusher mushroom.

“Ask your friends,” Cardan says, with a nod to the Roach and the Ghost. “It was one of them who administered the poison that killed the child and its mother.”

I shake my head, but the Ghost doesn’t meet my gaze. “Why would Dain do that?”

“Because he’d fathered the child with Eldred’s consort and was afraid Eldred would find out and choose another of us for his heir.” Cardan seems pleased with himself at having surprised me—surprised us, from the looks on the faces of the Roach and the Ghost. I do not like the way they watch him now, as though he might have value after all. “Even the King of Faerie doesn’t like to think of his son taking his place in a lover’s bed.”

It shouldn’t shock me that the Court of Faerie is corrupt and kind of gross. I knew that, just as I knew Madoc could do gruesome things to people he cared about. Just as I knew Dain was never kind. He made me stab my own hand, clean through. He took me on for my usefulness, nothing more.

Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.

I feel sick from the smell of blood. It’s on my dress, under my fingers, in my nose. How am I supposed to be worse than the Folk?

Sell the prince back to Balekin. I turn the idea over in my mind. Balekin would be in my debt. He’d make me a member of the Court, just as I once wanted. He’d give me anything I asked for, any of the things Dain offered and more: land, knighthood, a love mark on my brow so all who looked upon me would be sick with desire, a sword that wove charms with every blow.

And yet none of those things seems all that valuable anymore. None of those are true power. True power isn’t granted. True power can’t be taken away.

I think of what it will be like to have Balekin for a High King, for the Circle of Grackles to devour all the other circles of influence. I think of his starveling servants, of his urging Cardan to kill one of them for training, of the way he ordered Cardan beaten while professing his love for their family.

No, I cannot see myself serving Balekin.

“Prince Cardan is my prisoner,” I remind them, pacing back and forth. I’m not good at much, and I’ve been good at being a spy for only a very short time. I am not ready to give that up. “I get to decide what happens to him.”

The Roach and the Ghost exchange glances.

“Unless we’re going to fight,” I say, because they’re not my friends, and I need to remember that. “But I have access to Madoc. I have access to Balekin. I’m our best shot at brokering a deal.”

“Jude,” Cardan cautions me from the chair, but I am beyond caution, especially from him.

There’s a tense moment, but then the Roach cracks a grin. “No, girl, we’re not fighting. If you’ve got a plan, then I’m glad of it. I’m not really much of a planner, unless it’s how to prize out a gem from a nice setting. You stole the boy prince. This is your play, if you think you can make it.”

The Ghost frowns but doesn’t contradict him.

What I must do is put the puzzle pieces together. Here’s what doesn’t make sense—why is Madoc backing Balekin? Balekin is cruel and volatile, two qualities not preferable in a monarch. Even if Madoc believes Balekin will give him the wars he wants, it seems as though he could have gotten those some other way.

I think of the letter I found on Balekin’s desk, the one to Nicasia’s mother: I know the provenance of the blusher mushroom that you ask after. Why, after all this time, would Balekin want proof that Dain orchestrated Liriope’s murder? And if he had it, why hadn’t he taken it to Eldred? Unless he had and Eldred hadn’t believed him. Or cared. Or… unless the proof was for someone else.

“When was Liriope poisoned?” I ask.

“Seven years ago, in the month of storms,” the Ghost says with a twist in his mouth. “Dain told me that he’d been given a foresight about the child. Is this important or are you just curious?”

“What was the foresight?” I ask.

He shakes his head, as if he doesn’t want the memory, but he answers. “If the boy was born, Prince Dain would never be king.”

What a typical faerie prophecy—one that gives you a warning about what you’ll lose but never promises you anything. The boy is dead, but Prince Dain will never be king.

Let me not be that kind of fool, to base my strategies on riddles.

“So it’s true,” the Roach says quietly. “You’re the one who killed her.” The Ghost’s frown deepens. It didn’t occur to me until then that they might not know one another’s assignments.

Both of them look uncomfortable. I wonder if the Roach would have done it. I wonder what it means that the Ghost did. When I look at him now, I don’t know what I see.

“I’m going to go home,” I say. “I’ll pretend I got lost at the coronation revel. I should be able to figure out what Cardan is worth to them. I’ll come back tomorrow and run the particulars by you both and the Bomb, if she’s here. Give me a day to see what I can do and your oath to make no decisions until then.”

“If the Bomb has better sense than we do, she’s already gone to ground.” The Roach points to a cabinet. Wordlessly, the Ghost goes and gets out a bottle, placing it on the worn wooden table. “How do we know you won’t betray us? Even if you think you’re on our side now, you might get back to that stronghold of Madoc’s and reconsider.”

I eye the Roach and the Ghost speculatively. “I’ll have to leave Cardan in your care, which means trusting you. I promise not to betray you, and you promise that the prince will be here when I get back.”

Cardan looks relieved at the idea that there will be a delay, whatever happens next. Or perhaps he’s just relieved by the presence of the bottle.

“You could be a kingmaker,” the Ghost says. “That’s seductive. You could make Balekin even more deeply indebted to your father.”

“He’s not my father,” I say sharply. “And if I decide that I want to throw in with Madoc, well then, so long as you get paid, it won’t matter, will it?”

“I guess not,” the Ghost says grudgingly. “But if you come back here with Madoc or anyone else, we’ll kill Cardan. And then we’ll kill you. Understood?”

I nod. If it wasn’t for Prince Dain’s geas, they might have compelled me. Of course, whether Prince Dain’s geas lasted past his death, I do not know and am afraid to find out.

“And if you take more than the day you asked for to get back, we’ll kill him and cut our losses,” the Ghost continues. “Prisoners are like damson plums. The longer you keep them, the less valuable they become. Eventually, they spoil. One day and one night. Don’t be late.”

Cardan flinches and tries to catch my eye, but I ignore him.

“I’ll agree to that,” I say, because I am no fool. None of us is feeling all that trusting at the moment. “So long as you swear Cardan will be here and hale when I return tomorrow, alone.”

And because they’re not fools, either, they swear it.