The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(27)

He begins to toss the acorns back and forth, then adds the wishbone. A few of the Larks nudge one another, whispering delightedly. “No matter how many things you add, you’ve got only two hands, so you can only toss two things. You’ve just got to throw faster and faster, higher and higher.” He adds the stone and the crystal, the things flying between his hands fast enough that it’s hard to see what he’s tossing. I suck in a breath.

Then everything falls, crashing to the stone floor. The crystal shatters. One of the acorns rolls close to the fire.

“My advice,” says Val Moren, “is that you learn to juggle better than I did, seneschal.”

For a long moment, I am so angry that I can’t move. I feel incandescent with it, betrayed by the one person who ought to understand how hard it is to be what we are, here.

Before I do something I will regret, I turn on my heels and walk away.

“I foretold you wouldn’t take my advice,” he calls after me.





The evening of the Hunter’s Moon, the whole Court moves to the Milkwood, where the trees are shrouded in masses of silk coverings that look, to my mortal eyes, like nothing so much as the egg sacks of moths, or perhaps the wrapped-up suppers of spiders.

Locke has had a structure of flat stones built up the way a wall might be, into the rough shape of a throne. A massive slab of rock serves for a back, with a wide stone for a seat. It towers over the grove. Cardan sits on it, crown gleaming at his brow. The nearby bonfire burns sage and yarrow. For a distorted moment, he seems larger than himself, moved into myth, the true High King of Faerie and no one’s puppet.

Awe slows my step, panic following at my heels.

A king is a living symbol, a beating heart, a star upon which Elfhame’s future is written. Surely you have noticed that since his reign began, the isles are different. Storms come in faster. Colors are a bit more vivid, smells are sharper. When he becomes drunk, his subjects become tipsy without knowing why. When his blood falls, things grow.

I just hope he doesn’t see any of this on my face. When I am in front of him, I bow my head, grateful for an excuse not to meet his eyes.

“My king,” I say.

Cardan rises from the throne, unclasping a cape made entirely of gleaming black feathers. A new ring glimmers on his pinkie finger, red stone catching the flames of the bonfire. A very familiar ring. My ring.

I recall that he took my hand in his rooms.

I grind my teeth, stealing a glance at my own bare hand. He stole my ring. He stole it and I didn’t notice. The Roach taught him how to do that.

I wonder if Nicasia would count that as a betrayal. It sure feels like one.

“Walk with me,” he says, taking my hand and guiding me through the crowd. Hobs and grigs, green skin and brown, tattered wings and sculpted bark garments—all the Folk of Elfhame have come out tonight in their finery. We pass a man in a coat stitched with golden leaves and another in a green leather vest with a cap that curls up like a fern. Blankets cover the ground and are piled with trays of grapes the size of fists and ruby-bright cherries.

“What are we doing?” I ask as Cardan steers me to the edge of the woods.

“I find it tedious to have my every conversation remarked on,” he says. “I want you to know your sister isn’t here tonight. I made sure of it.”

“So what does Locke have planned?” I ask, unwilling to be grateful and refusing to compliment him on his sleight of hand. “He’s certainly staked his reputation on this evening.”

Cardan makes a face. “I don’t worry my pretty head about that kind of thing. You’re the ones who are supposed to be doing the work. Like the ant in the fable who labors in the dirt while the grasshopper sings the summer away.”

“And has nothing left for winter,” I say.

“I need for nothing,” he says, shaking his head, mock-mournful. “I am the Corn King, after all, to be sacrificed so little Oak can take my place in the spring.”

Overhead, orbs have been lit and glow with warm, magical light as they drift through the night air, but his words send a shiver of dread through me.

I look into his eyes. His hand slides to my hip, as though he might pull me closer. For a dizzy, stupid moment, something seems to shimmer in the air between us.

Kiss me until I am sick of it.

He doesn’t try to kiss me, of course. He hasn’t been shot at, isn’t delirious with drink, isn’t filled with enough self-loathing.

“You ought not to be here tonight, little ant,” he says, letting go of me. “Go back to the palace.” Then he is cutting back through the crowd. Courtiers bow as he passes. A few, the most brazen, catch hold of his coat, flirt, try to pull him into the dance.

And he, who once ripped a boy’s wing from his back because he wouldn’t bow, now allows all this familiarity with a laugh.

What has changed? Is he different because I have forced him to be? Is it because he is away from Balekin? Or is he no different at all and I am only seeing what I want to see?

I still feel the warm pressure of his fingers against my skin. Something is really wrong with me, to want what I hate, to want someone who despises me, even if he wants me, too. My only comfort is that he doesn’t know what I feel.

Whatever debauchery Locke has planned, I must stay to find the representative from the Court of Termites. The sooner my favor to their Lord Roiben is dismissed, the sooner I have one less debt hanging over my head. Besides, they can hardly offend me more than they have.