The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(65)

My plan has narrowed to endurance, to surviving hour by hour, sunless day by day.

Perhaps I cannot be glamoured, but that doesn’t mean I cannot be broken.

Nicasia has said that her mother has many palaces in the Undersea and that this, built into the rock of Insweal and along the seafloor beneath it, is only one of them. But for me, it is a constant torment to be so close to home and yet leagues beneath it.

Cages hang in the water all through the palace, some of them empty, but many of them containing mortals with graying skin, mortals who seem as though they ought to be dead but occasionally move in ways that suggest they are not. The drowned ones, the guards sometimes call them, and more than anything, that’s what I fear becoming. I remember thinking I’d spotted the girl I pulled out of Balekin’s house at Dain’s coronation, the girl that threw herself into the sea, the girl who’d certainly drowned. Now I am not so sure I was wrong.

“Tell me,” Balekin says today. “Why did my brother steal my crown? Orlagh thinks she understands, because she understands the craving for power, but she doesn’t understand Cardan. He never much cared for hard work. He liked charming people, sure. He liked making trouble, but he despaired of real effort. And whether or not Nicasia would admit it, she doesn’t understand, either. The Cardan she knows might have manipulated you, but not into this.”

This is a test, I think nonsensically. A test where I have to lie, but I am afraid my ability to make sense has deserted me.

“I am no oracle,” I say, thinking of Val Moren and the refuge he’s found in riddles.

“Then guess,” he says. “When you paraded in front of my cell in the Tower of Forgetting, you suggested it was because I’d had a firm hand with him. But you of all people must believe he lacked discipline and that I sought his improvement.”

He must be remembering the tournament that Cardan and I fought and the way he tormented me. I am tangled up in memories, in lies. I am too exhausted to make up stories. “In the time I knew him, he drunkenly rode a horse through a lesson from a well-respected lecturer, tried to feed me to nixies, and attacked someone at a revel,” I say. “He did not seem to be disciplined. He seemed to have his way all the time.”

Balekin seems surprised. “He sought Eldred’s attention,” he says finally. “For good or for ill, and mostly for ill.”

“Then perhaps he wants to be High King for Eldred’s sake,” I say. “Or to spite his memory.”

That’s seems to draw Balekin’s attention. Though I said it only to suggest something that would misdirect him from thinking too much about Cardan’s motives, once it comes out of my mouth, I ponder whether there isn’t some truth to it.

“Or because he was angry with you for chopping off Eldred’s head. Or being responsible for the deaths of all his siblings. Or because he was afraid you might murder him too.”

Balekin flinches. “Be quiet,” he says, and I go gratefully silent. After a moment, he looks down at me. “Tell me which of us is worthy of being High King, myself or Prince Cardan?”

“You are,” I say easily, giving him a look of practiced adoration. I do not point out that Cardan is no longer a prince.

“And would you tell him that yourself?” he asks.

“I would tell him whatever you wish,” I say with all the sincerity I can wearily muster.

“Would you go to him in his rooms and stab him again and again until his red blood ran out?” Balekin asks, leaning closer. He says the words softly, as though to a lover. I cannot control the shudder that runs through me, and I hope he will believe it is something other than disgust.

“For you?” I ask, closing my eyes against his closeness. “For Orlagh? It would be my pleasure.”

He laughs. “Such savagery.”

I nod, trying to rein in overeagerness at the thought of being sent on a mission away from the sea, at having the opportunity for escape. “Orlagh has given me so much, treated me like a daughter. I want to repay her. Despite the loveliness of my chambers and the delicacies I am given, I was not made to be idle.”

“A pretty speech. Look at me, Jude.”

I open my eyes and gaze up at him. Black hair floats around his face, and here, under the water, the thorns on his knuckles and running up his arms are visible, like the spiky fins of a fish.

“Kiss me,” he says.

“What?” My surprise is genuine.

“Don’t you want to?” he asks.

This is nothing, I tell myself, certainly better than being slapped. “I thought you were Orlagh’s lover,” I tell him. “Or Nicasia’s. Won’t they mind?”

“Not in the least,” he tells me, watching carefully.

Any hesitation on my part will seem suspicious, so I move toward him in the water, pressing my lips against his. The water is cold, but his kiss is colder.

After what I hope is a sufficient interval, I pull back. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, clearly disgusted, but when he stares down at me, there’s greed in his eyes. “Now kiss me as though I were Cardan.”

To buy myself a moment of reflection, I gaze into his owl eyes, run my hands up his thorned arms. It is clearly a test. He wants to know how much control he has over me. But I think he wants to know something else, too, something about his brother.