The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(73)

“I wasn’t kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn’t sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before.”

I am so surprised by his words that I keep trying to find the trick in them. He can’t truly mean what he’s saying.

“Perhaps I am foolish, but I am not a fool. You like something about me,” he says, mischief lighting his face, making its planes more familiar. “The challenge? My pretty eyes? No matter, because there is more you do not like and I know it. I can’t trust you. Still, when you were gone, I had to make a great many decisions, and so much of what I did right was imagining you beside me, Jude, giving me a bunch of ridiculous orders that I nonetheless obeyed.”

I am robbed of speech.

He laughs, his warm hand going to my shoulder. “Either I’ve surprised you or you are as ill as Madoc claimed.”

But before I can say anything, before I can even figure out what I might say, a crossbow is suddenly lowered at me. Behind it stands the Roach, with the Bomb at his heels, twin daggers in her hands.

“Your Majesty, we tracked her. She came from your brother’s house, and she’s here to kill you. Please step out of the bed,” says the Bomb.

“That’s ridiculous,” I say.

“If that’s true, show me what charms you’re wearing,” says the Roach. “Rowan? Is there even salt in your pockets? Because the Jude I know wouldn’t go around with nothing.”

My pockets are empty, of course, since Balekin would check for anything, and I don’t need it anyway. But it doesn’t leave me a lot of options in terms of proof. I could tell them about the geas from Dain, but they have no reason to believe me.

“Please get out of the bed, Your Majesty,” repeats the Bomb.

“I should be the one to get out—it’s not my bed,” I say, moving toward the footboard.

“Stay where you are, Jude,” says the Roach.

Cardan slips out of the sheets. He’s naked, which is briefly shocking, but he goes and pulls on a heavily embroidered dressing gown with no apparent shame. His lightly furred tail twitches back and forth in annoyance. “She woke me,” he says. “If she was intent on murder, that’s hardly the way to go about it.”

“Empty your pockets,” the Roach tells me. “Let’s see your weapons. Put everything on the bed.”

Cardan settles himself in a chair, his dressing gown settling around him like a robe of state.

I have little. The heel of bread, gnawed but unfinished. Two knives, crusted with dirt and grass. And the stoppered vial.

The Bomb lifts it up and looks at me, shaking her head. “Here we go. Where did you get this?”

“From Balekin,” I say, exasperated. “Who tried to glamour me to murder Cardan because he needs him dead to persuade Grimsen to make him his own crown of Elfhame. And that is what I came to tell the High King. I would have told you first, but I couldn’t get to the Court of Shadows.”

The Bomb and the Roach share a disbelieving look.

“If I was really glamoured, would I have told you any of that?”

“Probably not,” says the Bomb. “But it would make for a quite clever piece of misdirection.”

“I can’t be glamoured,” I admit. “It’s part of a bargain I made with Prince Dain, in exchange for my service as a spy.”

The Roach’s eyebrows go up. Cardan gives me a sharp look, as though sure anything to do with Dain can’t be good. Or perhaps he’s just surprised that I have yet another secret.

“I wondered what he gave you to make you throw in your lot with us ne’er-do-wells,” the Bomb says.

“Mostly a purpose,” I say, “but also the ability to resist glamour.”

“You could still be lying,” says the Roach. He turns to Cardan. “Try her.”

“Your pardon?” Cardan says, drawing himself up, and the Roach seems to suddenly remember to whom he’s speaking in such an offhanded way.

“Don’t be such a prickly rose, Your Majesty,” the Roach says with a shrug and a grin. “I’m not giving you an order. I’m suggesting that if you tried to glamour Jude, we could find out the truth.”

Cardan sighs and walks toward me. I know this is necessary. I know that he doesn’t intend to hurt me. I know he can’t glamour me. And yet I draw back automatically.

“Jude?” he asks.

“Go ahead,” I say.

I hear the glamour enter his voice, heady and seductive and more powerful than I expected. “Crawl to me,” he says with a grin. Embarrassment pinks my cheeks.

I stay where I am, looking at all their faces. “Satisfied?”

The Bomb nods. “You’re not charmed.”

“Now tell me why I ought to trust you,” I say to her and the Roach. “The Ghost came, with Vulciber, to take me to the Tower of Forgetting. Urged me to go alone, led me right to where I was to be captured, all because he didn’t want me to have Dain’s Court of Shadows. Were either of you in on it with him?”

“We didn’t know what was going on with the Ghost until it was too late,” the Roach says.