The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(29)

I could order him to stop whatever happens next. He knows it, too, which means that he supposes I will hate what he’s about to do, but not enough to command him and reveal all.

Of course, there’s a lot I would endure before I did that.

You will regret this. I don’t say the words, but I look at Cardan and think them with such force that it feels as though I am shouting.

Locke gives a signal, and a group of imps comes forward carrying an ugly, tattered dress, along with a circle of branches. Affixed to the makeshift crown are foul little mushrooms, the kind that produce a putrid-smelling dust.

I swear under my breath.

“New raiment for our new queen,” Locke says.

There is some scattered laughter and gasps of surprise. This is a cruel game, meant to be played on mortal girls when they’re glamoured so they don’t know they’re being laughed at. That’s the fun of it, their foolishness. They delight over dresses that appear like finery to them. They exult greedily over crowns seeming to gleam with jewels. They swoon at the promise of true love.

Thanks to Prince Dain’s geas, faerie glamours do not work on me, but even if they did, every member of the Court expects the High King’s human seneschal to be wearing a charm of protection—a strand of rowan berries, a tiny bundle of oak, ash, and thorn twigs. They know I see the truth of what Locke is giving me.

The Court watches me with eager, indrawn breaths. I am sure they have never watched a Queen of Mirth who knew she was being mocked before. This is a new kind of game.

“Tell us what you think of our lady,” Locke asks Cardan loudly, with a strange smile.

The High King’s expression stiffens, only to smooth out a moment later when he turns toward the Court. “I have too often been troubled by dreams of Jude,” he says, voice carrying. “Her face features prominently in my most frequent nightmare.”

The courtiers laugh. Heat floods my face because he’s telling them a secret and using that secret to mock me.

When Eldred was High King, his revels were staid, but a new High King isn’t just a renewal of the land, but of the Court itself. I can tell he delights them with his caprices and his capacity for cruelty. I was a fool to be tempted into thinking he’s any different than he’s always been. “Some among us do not find mortals beautiful. In fact, some of you might swear that Jude is unlovely.”

For a moment, I wonder if he wants me to be furious enough to order him to stop and reveal our bargain to the Court. But no, it’s only that with my heart thundering in my head, I can barely think.

“But I believe it is only that her beauty is… unique.” Cardan pauses for more laughter from the crowd, greater jeering. “Excruciating. Alarming. Distressing.”

“Perhaps she needs new raiment to bring out her true allure,” Locke says. “Greater finery for one so fine.”

The imps move to pull the tattered, threadbare rag gown over my own to the delight of the Folk.

More laughter. My whole body feels hot. Part of me wants to run away, but I am caught by the desire to show them I cannot be cowed.

“Wait,” I say, pitching my voice loud enough to carry. The imps hesitate. Cardan’s expression is unreadable.

I reach down and catch hold of my hem, then pull the dress I am wearing over my head. It’s a simple thing—no corset, no clasps—and it comes off just as simply. I stand in the middle of the party in my underwear, daring them to say something. Daring Cardan to speak.

“Now I am ready to put on my new gown,” I say. There are a few cheers, as though they don’t understand the game is humiliation. Locke, surprisingly, appears delighted.

Cardan steps close to me, his gaze devouring. I am not sure I can bear his cutting me down again. Luckily, he seems at a loss for words.

“I hate you,” I whisper before he can speak.

He takes my chin in his fingers, tilting my face to his.

“Say it again,” he says as the imps comb my hair and place the ugly, stinking crown on my head. His voice is low. The words are for me alone.

I pull out of his grip, but not before I see his expression. He looks as he did when he was forced to answer my questions, when he admitted his desire for me. He looks as though he’s confessing.

A flush goes through me, confusing because I am both furious and shamed. I turn my head.

“Queen of Mirth, time for your first dance,” Locke tells me, pushing me toward the crowd.

Clawed fingers close on my arms. Inhuman laughter rings in my ears as the music starts. When the dance begins anew, I am in it. My feet slap down on the dirt in time with the pounding rhythm of the drums, my heart speeds with the trill of a flute. I am spun around, passed hand to hand through the crowd. Pushed and shoved, pinched and bruised.

I try to pull against the compulsion of the music, try to break away from the dance, but I cannot. When I try to drag my feet, hands haul me along until the music catches me up again. Everything becomes a wild blur of sound and flying cloth, of shiny inkdrop eyes and too-sharp teeth.

I am lost to it, out of my own control, as though I were a child again, as though I hadn’t bargained with Dain and poisoned myself and stolen the throne. This is not glamour. I cannot stop myself from dancing, cannot stop my body from moving even as my terror grows. I will not stop. I will dance through the leather of my shoes, dance until my feet are bloody, dance until I collapse.