The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)(79)

That staggers me enough that she’s able to get under my guard. Her blade just kisses my side before I whirl away, out of her reach.

She goes on. “You think I’m weak.”

“You are weak,” I tell her. “You’re weak and pathetic and I—”

“I’m a mirror,” she shouts. “I’m the mirror you don’t want to look at.”

I swing toward Taryn again, putting my whole weight into the strike. I am so angry, angry at so many things. I hate that I was stupid. I hate that I was tricked. Fury roars in my head, loud enough to drown out my every other thought.

I swing my sword toward her side in a shining arc.

“I said stop,” Vivi shouts, glamour shimmering in her voice like a net. “Now, stop!”

Taryn seems to deflate, relaxing her arms, letting Nightfell hang limply from suddenly loose fingers. She has a vague smile on her face, as though she’s listening to distant music. I try to check my swing, but it’s too late. Instead, I let the sword go. Momentum sends it sailing across the room to slam into a bookshelf and knock a ram’s skull to the ground. Momentum sends me sprawling on the floor.

I turn to Vivi, aghast. “You had no right.” The words tumble out of my mouth, ahead of the more important ones—I could have sliced Taryn in half.

She looks as astonished as I am. “Are you wearing a charm? I saw you change your clothes, and you didn’t have one.”

Dain’s geas. It outlasted his death.

My knees feel raw. My hand is throbbing. My side stings where Nightfell grazed my skin. I am furious she stopped the fight. I am furious she tried to use magic on us. I push myself to my feet. My breath comes hard. There’s sweat on my brow, and my limbs are shaking.

Hands grab me from behind. Three more servants pitch in, getting between us and grabbing my arms. Two have Taryn, dragging her away from me. Vivi blows in Taryn’s face, and she comes to sputtering awareness.

That’s when I see Madoc outside his parlor, lieutenants and knights crowded around him. And Locke.

My stomach drops.

“What is wrong with you two?” Madoc shouts, as angry as I have ever seen him. “Have we not already had a surfeit of death today?”

Which seems like a paradoxical thing to say since he was the cause of so much of it.

“Both of you will wait for me in the game room.” All I can think of is him up on the dais, his blade cracking through Prince Dain’s chest. I cannot meet his gaze. I am shaking all over. I want to scream. I want to run at him. I feel like a child again, a helpless child in a house of death.

I want to do something, but I do nothing.

He turns to Gnarbone. “Go with them. Make sure they stay away from each other.”

I am led into the game room and sit on the floor with my head in my hands. When I bring them away, they are wet with tears. I wipe my fingers quickly against my pants, before Taryn can see.



We wait at least an hour. I don’t say a single thing to Taryn, and she doesn’t say anything to me, either. She sniffles a little, then wipes her nose and doesn’t weep.

I think of Cardan tied to a chair to cheer myself. Then I think of the way he looked up at me through the curtain of his crow-black hair, of the curling edges of his drunken smile, and I don’t feel in the least bit comforted.

I feel exhausted and utterly, completely defeated.

I hate Taryn. I hate Madoc. I hate Locke. I hate Cardan. I hate everyone. I just don’t hate them enough.

“What did he give you?” I ask Taryn, finally tiring of the silence. “Madoc gave me the sword Dad made. That’s the one we were fighting with. He said he had something for you, too.”

She’s quiet long enough that I don’t think she’s going to answer. “A set of knives, for a table. Supposedly, they cut right through bone. The sword is better. It has a name.”

“I guess you could name your steak knives. Meaty the Elder. Gristlebane,” I say, and she makes a little snorting noise that sounds like the smothering of a laugh.

But after that, we lapse back into silence.

Finally, Madoc enters the room, his shadow preceding him, spreading across the floor like a carpet. He tosses a scabbarded Nightfell onto the ground in front of me, and then settles himself on a couch with legs in the shape of bird feet. The couch groans, unused to taking so much weight. Gnarbone nods at Madoc and sees himself out.

“Taryn, I would talk with you of Locke,” Madoc says.

“Did you hurt him?” There is a barely contained sob in her voice. Unkindly, I wonder if she’s putting it on for Madoc’s benefit.

He snorts, as though maybe he’s wondering the same thing. “When he asked for your hand, he told me that although, as I knew, the Folk are changeable people, he’d still like to take you to wife—which is to mean, I suppose, that you will not find him particularly constant. He said nothing about a dalliance with Jude then, but when I asked a moment ago, he told me, ‘mortal feelings are so volatile that it’s impossible to help toying with them a little.’ He told me that you, Taryn, had shown him that you could be like us. No doubt whatever you did to show him that was the source of conflict between you and your sister.”

Taryn’s dress is pillowed around her. She looks composed, although she has a shallow slash on her side and a cut skirt. She looks like a lady of the Gentry, if one does not stare overmuch at the rounded curves of her ears. When I allow myself to truly think on it, I cannot fault Locke for choosing her. I am violent. I’ve been poisoning myself for weeks. I am a killer and a liar and a spy.