The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)(65)

I turn toward Oriana, expecting another speech about not getting into trouble or even a new speech about keeping my legs closed around royalty, but she is too busy pleading with Oak to get out of the road.

“Let’s party,” Vivi says, sweeping Taryn and me along with her. We escape into the crowd, and moments later, we are drowning in it.

The Palace of Elfhame is packed with bodies. The unallied wild fey, courtiers, and monarchs mingle together. Selkies from Queen Orlagh’s Court of the Undersea speak together in their own language, skins slung from their shoulders like capes. I spot the lord of the Court of Termites, Roiben, who is said to have killed his own lover to win a throne. He stands near one of the long trestle tables, and even in the cramped hall, there is space around him, as though no one dares get too close. His hair is the color of salt, his garments entirely black, and a deadly curved sword sits at his hip. Incongruously, beside him, a green-skinned pixie girl is dressed in what appears to be a pearl-gray slip dress and heavy lace-up boots—obviously mortal clothes. And standing on either side of the pixie are two knights in his livery, one with scarlet hair braided into a crown on her head. Dulcamara, who lectured us on the crown.

There are others, figures I have heard of in ballads: Rue Silver of New Avalon, who cut her island out of the California coast, is talking to the exiled Alderking’s son, Severin, who might try to ally with the new High King or might join Lord Roiben’s Court. He’s with a red-haired human boy about my age, which makes me pause to study them. Is the boy his servant? Is he enchanted? I can’t tell just from the way he looks around the room, but when he sees me staring, he grins.

I turn quickly away.

As I do, the selkies shift, and I spot someone else with them. Gray-skinned and blue-lipped, hair hanging around her sunken-eyed face. But despite all that, I recognize her. Sophie. I had heard stories about the merfolk of the Undersea keeping drowned sailors, but I didn’t believe them. When her mouth moves, I see that she has sharp teeth. A shudder ripples across my shoulders.

I stumble along after Vivi and Taryn. When I look back, I don’t see Sophie, and I am not entirely sure I didn’t imagine her.

We slide past a shagfoal and a barghest. Everyone is laughing too loudly, dancing too fiercely. As I pass one reveler in a goblin mask, he lifts it and winks at me. It’s the Roach.

“Heard about the other night. Good work,” he says. “Now keep your eyes out for anything that seems amiss. If Balekin’s going to move against Dain, he’s going to do it before the ceremony starts.”

“I will,” I say, pulling free of my sisters to tarry with him a moment. In a crowd this size, it’s easy to be briefly lost.

“Good. Came to see Prince Dain win the crown with my own eyes.” He reaches into his leaf-brown jacket and pulls out a silver flask, popping the top and taking a swig. “Plus watching the Gentry cavort and make fools out of themselves.”

He holds the flask out to me with one gray-green clawed hand. Even from there, I can smell whatever is inside, pungent and strong and a little swampy. “I’m okay,” I say, shaking my head.

“You sure are,” he tells me, laughing, and then pulls down his mask again.

I am left grinning after him as he sweeps away into the crowd. Just seeing him has filled me with a sense of finally belonging to this place. He and the Ghost and the Bomb are not precisely my friends, but they actually seem to like me, and I am not inclined to split hairs. I have a place with them and a purpose.

“Where have you been?” Vivienne asks, grabbing hold of me. “You need a leash like Oak’s. Come on, we’re going to dance.”

I eddy along with them. There’s music everywhere, urging a lightness of step. They say the pull of faerie music is impossible to resist, which isn’t quite true. What’s impossible is to stop dancing once you’ve begun, so long as the music goes on. And it does, all night, one dance bleeding into the next, one song becoming another without a pause to catch your breath. It’s exhilarating to be caught up in the music, to be swept away in the tide of it. Of course, Vivi, being one of them, can stop whenever she wants. She can also yank us out, so dancing with her is almost safe. Not that Vivi always remembers to do the safe thing.

But really, I am the last person to judge anyone for that.

We clasp hands and join the circle dance, leaping and laughing. The song feels as though it is calling my blood, moving it through my veins to the same ragged beat, with the same sweet chords. The circle breaks up, and somehow I am holding Locke’s hands. He sweeps me around in a giddy whoosh.

“You are very beautiful,” he says. “Like a winter night.”

He smiles down at me with his fox eyes. His russet hair curls around his pointed ears. From one lobe, a golden earring dangles, catching the candlelight like a mirror. He’s the one who’s beautiful, a kind of breathless, inhuman beauty.

“I’m glad you like the dress,” I manage.

“Tell me, could you love me?” he asks, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Of course.” I laugh, not sure of the answer I am supposed to give. But the question is so oddly phrased that I can hardly deny him. I love my parents’ murderer; I suppose I could love anyone. I’d like to love him.

“I wonder,” he says. “What would you do for me?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” This riddling figure with flinty eyes isn’t the Locke who stood on the rooftop of his estate and spoke so gently to me or who chased me, laughing, through its halls. I am not quite sure who this Locke is, but he has put me entirely off balance.