The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(46)

“It’s just the top layer that’s clothes,” Vivi says. “Underneath, it’s mostly stuff for Taryn that’s hard to get on the…island.”

“Do you think what I’m planning on wearing will be okay?” I can understand why Heather is worried, since she’s never met my family. She believes our dad is strict. She has no idea.

“Sure,” Vivi says, and then looks at me. “It’s a hot silver dress.”

“Wear anything you want. Really,” I tell Heather, thinking of how gowns and rags and nakedness are all acceptable in Faerie. She’s about to have much bigger problems.

“Hurry up. We don’t want to get stuck in traffic,” Heather says, and goes out again. In the other room, I hear her talking to Oak, asking him if he wants some milk.

“So,” Vivi says, “You were saying…”

I let out a long sigh and gesture with my coffee cup toward the door, bugging out my eyes.

Vivi shakes her head. “Come on. You won’t be able to tell me any of this once we’re there.”

“You know already,” I say. “Locke is going to make Taryn unhappy. But she doesn’t want to hear that, and she especially doesn’t want to hear it from me.”

“You did once have a sword fight over him,” Vivi points out.

“Exactly,” I say. “I’m not objective. Or I don’t seem objective.”

“You know what I wonder about, though,” she says, closing her suitcase and sitting on it to squish it down. She looks up at me with her cat eyes, twin to Madoc’s. “You’ve manipulated the High King of Faerie into obeying you, but you can’t find a way to manipulate one jerk into keeping our sister happy?”

Not fair, I want to say. Practically the last thing I did before I came here was threaten Locke, ordering him not to cheat on Taryn after they got married—or else. Still, her words rankle. “It’s not that simple.”

She sighs. “I guess nothing ever is.”





O ak holds my hand, and I carry his small suitcase down the steps toward the empty parking lot.

I look back up at Heather. She’s dragging a bag behind her and some bungee cords she says we can use if we have to put one of the suitcases on the roof rack. I haven’t told her there isn’t even a car.

“So,” I say, looking at Vivi.

Vivi smiles, reaching out her hand toward me. I take the ragwort stalks out of my pocket and hand them over.

I can’t look at Heather’s face. I turn back to Oak. He’s picking four-leaf clovers from the grass, finding them effortlessly, making a bouquet.

“What are you doing?” Heather asks, puzzled.

“We’re not going to take a car. We’re going to fly instead,” says Vivi.

“We’re going to the airport?”

Vivi laughs. “You’ll love this. Steed, rise and bear us where I command.”

A choked gasp behind me. Then Heather screams. I turn despite myself.

The ragwort steeds are there in front of the apartment complex—starved-looking yellow ponies with lacy manes and emerald eyes, like sea horses on land, weeds come to snorting, snuffling life. And Heather, hands over her mouth.

“Surprise!” says Vivi, continuing to behave as though this is a small thing. Oak, clearly anticipating this moment, chooses it to rip off his own glamour, revealing his horns.

“See, Heather,” he says. “We’re magic. Are you surprised?”

She looks at Oak, at the monstrous ragwort ponies, and then sinks down to sit on her suitcase. “Okay,” she says. “This is some kind of bullshit practical joke or something, but one of you is going to tell me what’s going on or I am going to go back inside the house and lock you all out.”

Oak looks crestfallen. He’d really expected her to be delighted. I put my arm around him, rubbing his shoulder. “Come on, sweets,” I say. “Let’s get the stuff loaded up, and they can come after. Mom and Dad are so excited to see you.”

“I miss them,” he tells me. “I miss you, too.”

I kiss him on one soft cheek as I lift him onto the horse’s back. He looks over my shoulder at Heather.

Behind me, I can hear Vivi start to explain. “Faerie is real. Magic is real. See? I’m not human, and neither is my brother. And we’re going to take you away to a magic island for the whole week. Don’t be afraid. We’re not the scary ones.”

I manage to get the bungee cords from Heather’s numb hands while Vivi shows off her pointed ears and cat eyes and tries to explain away never telling her any of it before.

We are definitely the scary ones.





Some hours later, we are in Oriana’s parlor. Heather, still looking bewildered and upset, walks around, staring at the strange art on the walls, the ominous pattern of beetles and thorns in the weave of draperies.

Oak sits on Oriana’s lap, letting her cradle him in her arms as though he is very small again. Her pale fingers fuss with his hair—which she thinks is too short—and he tells her a long, rambling story about school and the way the stars are different in the mortal world and what peanut butter tastes like.

It hurts a little to watch, because Oriana no more gave birth to Oak than to me or Taryn, but she is very clearly Oak’s mother while she has steadfastly refused to be ours.