The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(42)

His face pales. He’s obviously not sure what to make of me right now. He knows I stabbed Valerian once, but he doesn’t know I killed him, nor that I have killed since then. He has no idea I became a spy and then a spymaster. Even the sword fight with Taryn was something he only heard about.

“Making you Queen of Mirth was a jest,” Locke says, gazing up at me from the floor with a kind of fondness in his fox eyes, a little smile on the corner of his mouth, as though he’s willing me to grin along with him. “Come on, Jude, let me up. Am I really to believe you’d harm me?”

My voice is mock-sweet. “You once accused me of playing the great game. What was it you called it: ‘the game of kings and princes, of queens and crowns’? But to play it well, I must be pitiless.”

He begins to get up, but I press down harder with my foot and shift the grip on my knife. He stops moving. “You always liked stories,” I remind him. “You said you wanted to create the sparks of stories. Well, the tale of a twin who murders her sister’s betrothed is a good one, don’t you think?”

He closes his eyes and holds out his empty hands. “Peace, Jude. Perhaps I overplayed my hand. But I cannot believe you want to murder me for it. Your sister would be devastated.”

“Better she never be a bride than wind up a widow,” I say, but take my foot off his chest. He gets up slowly, dusting himself off. Once on his feet, he looks around the room as though he doesn’t quite recognize his own manor now that he’s seen it from the vantage of the floor.

“You’re right,” I continue. “I don’t want to harm you. We are to be family. You will be my brother and I your sister. Let us make friends. But to do that, I need you to do some things for me.

“First, stop trying to make me uncomfortable. Stop trying to turn me into a character in one of your dramas. Pick another target to weave stories around.

“Second, whatever your issue is with Cardan, whatever pushed you to make such a meal of toying with him, whatever made you think it was a fun to steal his lover and then throw her over for a mortal girl—as though you wanted him to know the thing dearest to him was worth nothing to you—let it go. Whatever made you decide to make me Queen of Mirth to torment him with the feelings you suspected he had, leave off. He’s the High King, and it’s too dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” he says, “but fun.”

I don’t smile. “Humiliate the king before the Court, and the courtiers will spread rumors and his subjects will forget to be afraid. Soon, the lesser Courts will think they can go against him.”

Locke leans down to right the broken chair, leaning it against a nearby table when it becomes clear it won’t stand on its own. “Oh, fine, you’re angry with me. But think. You may be Cardan’s seneschal and you’ve obviously fascinated him with your hips and lips and warm mortal skin, but I know that in your heart, whatever he has promised you, you still hate him. You’d love to see him brought low in front of his entire Court. Why, if you hadn’t been dressed in rags and been laughed at, you’d probably have forgiven me for every wrongdoing I’ve ever committed against you, just for engineering that.”

“You’re wrong,” I say.

He smiles. “Liar.”

“Even if I did like it,” I say. “It must end.”

He seems to be evaluating how serious I am and of what I am capable. I am sure he is seeing the girl he brought home, the one he kissed and tricked. He is wondering, probably not for the first time, how I lucked into being made seneschal, how I managed to get my hands on the crown of Elfhame to orchestrate my little brother’s putting it on Cardan’s head.

“The last thing is this,” I say. “You’re going to be faithful to Taryn. Unless she’s screwing around on you or with you, once you’re wed, there are going to be no more affairs.”

He stares at me in blankly. “Are you accusing me of not caring for your sister?” he asks.

“If I truly believed you didn’t care for Taryn, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

He gives a long sigh. “Because you’d murder me?”

“If you’re playing with Taryn, Madoc will murder you; I won’t even get a chance.”

I sheath my knife and head toward the door.

“Your ridiculous family might be surprised to find that not everything is solved by murder,” Locke calls after me.

“We would be surprised to find that,” I call back.





I n the five months that Vivi and Oak have been gone, I have visited the mortal world only twice. Once to help them set up their apartment, and the second time for a wine party Heather threw for Vivi’s birthday. At it, Taryn and I sat awkwardly on the edge of a couch, eating cheese with oily olives, being allowed little sips of Shiraz by college girls because we were “too young to legally drink.” My nerves were on edge the whole night, wondering what trouble was happening in my absence.

Madoc had sent Vivi a present, and Taryn had faithfully carried it across the sea—a golden dish of salt that never emptied. Turn it over, and it’s full again. I found it to be a nervous-making present, but Heather had only laughed, as though it was some kind of novelty with a trick bottom.

She didn’t believe in magic.

How Heather was going to react to Taryn’s wedding was anyone’s guess. All I hoped was that Vivienne had warned her about at least some of what was about to happen. Otherwise, the news that mermaids were real was going to come along with the news that mermaids were out to get us. I didn’t think “all at once” was the ideal way to hear any of that news.