The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)(27)

Above us, in the black dome of night, seven stars fall, streaking gloriously across the sky before guttering out. I look up automatically, too late to have seen their precise path.

“Did anyone note that down?” Noggle begins shouting, fumbling in his beard for a pen. “This is the celestial event we’ve been waiting for! Someone must have seen the exact origin point. Quickly! Set down everything you can remember.”

Just then, as I am looking at the stars, Valerian shoves something soft against my mouth. An apple, sweet and rotten at the same time, honeyed juice running over my tongue, tasting of sunlight and pure heady, stupid joy. Faerie fruit, which muddles the mind, which makes humans crave it enough to starve themselves for another taste, which makes us pliant and suggestible and ridiculous.

Dain’s geas protected me from enchantment, from anyone’s control, but faerie fruit puts you out of even your own control.

Oh no. Oh no no no no no.

I spit it out. The apple rolls in the dirt, but I can already feel it working on me.

Salt, I think, fumbling for my basket. Salt is what I need. Salt is the antidote. It will clear the fog in my head.

Nicasia sees what I am going for and snatches up my basket, dancing out of the way, while Valerian pushes me to the ground. I try to crawl away from him, but he pins me, shoving the filthy apple back into my face.

“Let me sweeten that sour tongue of yours,” he says, pressing it down. Pulp is in my mouth and up my nose.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

My eyes are open, staring up at Valerian’s face. I’m choking. He’s watching me with an expression of mild curiosity, as though he’s looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Darkness is creeping in at the edges of my vision. I am choking to death.

The worst part is the joy blooming inside me from the fruit, blotting out the terror. Everything is beautiful. My vision is swimming. I reach up to claw at Valerian’s face, but I am too dizzy to reach him. A moment later, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to hurt him, not when I am so happy.

“Do something!” someone says, but in my delirium, I can’t tell who is speaking.

Abruptly, Valerian is kicked off me. I roll onto my side, coughing. Cardan is looming there. Tears and snot are running down my face, but all I can do is lie in the dirt and spit out pieces of sweet, fleshy pulp. I have no idea why I am crying.

“Enough,” Cardan says. He has an odd, wild expression on his face, and a muscle is jumping in his jaw.

I start to laugh.

Valerian looks mutinous. “Ruin my fun, will you?”

For a moment, I think they’re going to fight, although I cannot think why. Then I see what Cardan’s got in his hand. The salt from my basket. The antidote. (Why did I want that? I wonder.) He tosses it up into the air with a laugh, and I watch it scatter with the wind. Then he looks at Valerian, mouth curling. “What’s wrong with you, Valerian? If she dies, your little prank is over before it begins.”

“I’m not going to die,” I say, because I don’t want them to worry. I feel fine. I feel better than I have ever felt in my entire life. I’m glad the antidote is gone.

“Prince Cardan?” Noggle says. “She ought to be taken home.”

“Everyone is so dull today,” Cardan says, but he doesn’t sound as if he’s bored. He sounds as if he’s barely keeping his temper in check.

“Oh, Noggle, she doesn’t wish to go.” Nicasia comes over to me and strokes my cheek. “Do you, pretty thing?”

The cloying taste of honey is in my mouth. I feel light. I am unwinding. I am unfurling like a banner. “I’d like to stay,” I say, because here is wondrous. Because she is dazzling.

I’m not sure I feel good, but I know I feel great.

Everything is wondrous. Even Cardan. I didn’t like him before, but that seems silly. I give him a wide, happy grin, although he doesn’t smile in return.

I don’t take it personally.

Noggle turns away from us, muttering something about the general and foolishness and princes getting their heads removed from their shoulders. Cardan watches him go, hands fisting at his sides.

A knot of girls flop down in the moss beside me. They’re laughing, which makes me laugh again, too. “I’ve never seen a mortal take the fruits of Elfhame before,” one of them, Flossflower, says to another. “Will she remember this?”

“Would that someone would enchant her to do otherwise,” Locke says from somewhere behind me, but he doesn’t sound angry like Cardan. He sounds nice. I turn toward him, and he touches my shoulder. I lean into the warmth of his skin.

Nicasia laughs. “She wouldn’t want that. What she’d like is another bite of apple.”

My mouth waters at the memory. I recall them strewn across my path, golden and glittering, on the way to school and curse my foolishness for not stopping to eat my fill.

“So we can ask her things?” Another girl—Moragna—wants to know. “Embarrassing things. And she’ll answer?”

“Why should she find anything embarrassing when she’s among friends?” says Nicasia, eyes slitted. She looks like a cat that has eaten all the cream and is ready for a nap in the sun.

“Which one of us would you most like to kiss?” Flossflower demands, coming closer. She’s barely spoken to me before. I’m glad she wants to be friends.