The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(78)

I go toward Cardan to try to intercede when Madoc catches my hand. His lip curls. “Is this going according to your plan?” he demands under his breath. “Your puppet is drunk. Get him out of here.”

“I’ll try,” I say.

“I have stood by long enough,” Madoc says, his cat eyes staring into mine. “Get your puppet to abdicate the throne in favor of your brother or face the consequences. I won’t ask you again. It’s now or never.”

I pitch my voice low to match his. “After barring me from the palace?”

“You were ill,” he returns.

“Working with you will always be working for you,” I say. “So, never.”

“You would really choose that over your own family?” he sneers, his gaze going to Cardan before cutting back to me.

I wince, but no matter how right he is, he’s also wrong. “Whether you believe me or not, this is for my family,” I tell him, and to Cardan I lay my hand on his shoulder, hoping I can guide him out of the room without anything else going wrong.

“Oh ho,” he says. “My darling seneschal. Let us take a turn around the room.” He grabs me and pulls me toward the dance.

He can barely stand. Three times he stumbles, and three times I have to hold most of his weight to keep him upright.

“Cardan,” I hiss. “This is no meet behavior for the High King.”

He giggles at that. I think of how serious he was last night in his rooms and how far he seems from that person.

“Cardan,” I try again. “You must not do this. I order you to pull yourself together. I command you to drink no more liquor and to attempt sobriety.”

“Yes, my sweet villain, my darling god. I will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as I can.” And with that, he kisses me on the mouth.

I feel a cacophony of things at once. I am furious with him, furious and resigned that he is a failure as High King, corrupt and fanciful and as weak as Orlagh could have hoped. Then there is the public nature of the kiss, parading this before the Court is shocking, too. He’s never been willing to seem to want me in public. Perhaps he can take it back, but in this moment, it is known.

But there is also a weakness in me, because I dreamed of him kissing me for all my time in the Undersea, and now with his mouth on mine, I want to sink my nails into his back.

His tongue brushes my lower lip, the taste heady and familiar.

Wraithberry.

He’s not drunk; he’s been poisoned.

I pull back and look into his eyes. Those familiar eyes, black, rimmed in gold. His pupils are blown wide.

“Sweet Jude. You are my dearest punishment.” He dances away from me and immediately falls to the ground again, laughing, arms flung wide as though he would embrace the whole room.

I watch in astonished horror.

Someone poisoned him, and he is going to laugh and dance himself to death in front of a Court that will veer between delight and disgust. They will think him ridiculous as his heart stops.

I try to concentrate. Antidotes. There must be one. Water, certainly, to flush the system. Clay. The Bomb would know more. I look around for her, but all I see is the dizzy array of courtiers.

I turn to one of the guards instead. “Get me a pail, a lot of blankets, two pitchers of water, and put them in my rooms. Yes?”

“As you wish,” he says, turning to give orders to the other knights. I turn back to Cardan, who has, predictably, headed in the worst direction possible. He’s walking straight toward the councilors Baphen and Randalin, where they stand with Lord Roiben and his knight, Dulcamara, doubtlessly trying to smooth the situation over.

I can see the faces of the courtiers, the glitter of their eyes as they regard him with a kind of greedy scorn.

They watch as he lifts a carafe of water, tipping it back to cascade over his laughing mouth till he chokes on it.

“Excuse us,” I say, wrapping my arm through his.

Dulcamara greets this with disdain. “We have come all this way to have an audience with the High King. Surely he means to stay longer than this.”

He’s been poisoned. The words are on my tongue when I hear Balekin say them instead. “I fear the High King is not himself. I believe he’s been poisoned.”

And then, too late, I understand the scheme.

“You,” he says to me. “Turn out your pockets. You are the only one here not bound by a vow.”

Had I been truly glamoured, I would have had to pull out the stoppered vial. And once the Court saw it and found wraithberry inside, any protest would come to nothing. Mortals are liars, after all.

“He’s drunk,” I say, and am gratified by Balekin’s shocked expression. “However, you are unbound as well, ambassador. Or, shall I say, not bound to the land.”

“Have I drunk too much? Merely a cup of poison for my breakfast and another for my dinner,” Cardan says.

I give him a look but say no more as I guide the stumbling High King across the floor.

“Where are you taking him?” asks one of the guard. “Your Majesty, do you wish to depart?”

“We all dance at Jude’s command,” he says, and laughs.

“Of course he doesn’t wish to go,” Balekin says. “Attend to your other duties, seneschal, and let me look after my brother. He has duties to perform tonight.”