The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)(43)

And when he goes, he does it in such a way that it appears like vanishing. I head back home and use what I’ve just learned to slyfoot my way past the servants on the stairs. I make it to my room, and this time when I collapse, I manage to do it in my bed.

Then I get up the next day and do everything all over again.





Attending lectures is harder than ever. For one thing, I am sick, my body fighting the effects of the fruit and the poisons I am forcing down. For another, I am exhausted from training with Madoc and training with Dain’s Court of Shadows. Madoc gives me puzzles—twelve goblin knights to storm a fortress, nine untrained Gentry to defend one—and then asks for my answers each evening after dinner. The Roach orders me to practice moving through the crowds of courtiers without being noticed, to eavesdrop without seeming interested. The Bomb teaches me how to find the weak spot in a building, the pressure point on a body. The Ghost teaches me how to hang from rafters and not be seen, to line up a shot with a crossbow, to steady my shaking hands.

I am sent on two more missions to get information. First, I steal a letter addressed to Elowyn from a knight’s desk in the palace. The next time, I wear the clothing of a faerie bride and walk through a party to the private chambers of the lovely Taracand, one of Prince Balekin’s consorts, where I take a ring from a desk. In neither case am I allowed to know the significance of what I stole.

I attend lectures beside Cardan, Nicasia, Valerian, and all the Gentry children who laughed at my humiliation. I do not give them the satisfaction of my withdrawing, but since the incident with the faerie fruit, there are no more skirmishes. I bide my time. I can only assume they are doing the same. I am not foolish enough to think we are done with one another.

Locke continues his flirtation. He sits with Taryn and me when we take our lunch, spread out on a blanket, watching the sun set. Occasionally he walks me home through the woods, stopping to kiss me near a copse of fir trees just before Madoc’s estate. I only hope he doesn’t taste the bitterness of poison on my lips.

I do not understand why he likes me, but it is exciting to be liked.

Taryn doesn’t seem to understand it, either. She regards Locke with suspicion. Perhaps since I am worried over her mysterious paramour, it is fitting that she seems equally worried over mine.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” I overhear Nicasia ask Locke once, as he joins them for a lecture. “Cardan won’t forgive you for what you’re doing with her.”

I pause, unable to pass by without listening for his answer.

But Locke only laughs. “Is he more angry that you chose me over him or that I chose a mortal over you?”

I startle, not sure I heard him right.

She’s about to answer when she spots me. Her mouth curls. “Little mousie,” she says. “Don’t believe his sugared tongue.”

The Roach would despair of me if he saw how badly I fumbled my newfound skills. I did nothing he taught me—I neither concealed myself nor blended in with others to avoid notice. At least no one would suspect me of knowing much about spycraft.

“So has Cardan forgiven you?” I ask her, pleased by her stricken look. “Too bad. I hear a prince’s favor is a really big deal.”

“What need have I for princes?” she demands. “My mother is a queen!”

There’s much I could say about her mother, Queen Orlagh, who is planning a poisoning, but I bite my tongue. In fact, I bite it so hard that I don’t say anything at all. I just walk to where Taryn is sitting, a small, satisfied smile on my face.



More weeks pass, until the coronation is mere days away. I am so tired that I fall asleep whenever I put my head down.

I even fall asleep in the tower during a demonstration of moth summoning. The susurration of their wings lulls me, I guess. It doesn’t take much.

I wake on the stone floor. My head is ringing, and I am scrambling for my knife. I don’t know where I am. For a moment, I think that I must have fallen. For a moment, I think I am paranoid. Then I see Valerian, grinning down at me. He has pushed me out of my chair. I know it just from the look on his face.

I have not yet become paranoid enough.

Voices sound from outside, the rest of our classmates having their luncheon on the grass as evening rolls in. I hear the shrieks of the youngest children, probably chasing one another over blankets.

“Where’s Taryn?” I ask, because it wasn’t like her not to wake me.

“She promised not to help you, remember?” Valerian’s golden hair hangs over one eye. As usual, he’s clad entirely in red, a tone so deep that it might appear black at first glance. “Not by word or by deed.”

Of course. Stupid me to forget I was on my own.

I push myself up, noticing a bruise on my calf as I do. I am not sure how long I was sleeping. I brush off my tunic and trousers. “What do you want?”

“I’m disappointed,” he says slyly. “You bragged about how you were going to best Cardan, and yet you’ve done nothing, sulking after one little prank.”

My hand slides automatically to the hilt on my knife.

Valerian lifts my necklace of rowan berries from his pocket and smirks at me. He must have cut it from my throat while I slept. I shudder at the thought that he was so close to me, that instead of slicing the necklace, he could have sliced skin. “Now you will do what I say.” I can practically smell the glamour in the air. He’s weaving magic with his words. “Call down to Cardan. Tell him he’s won. Then jump from the tower. After all, being born mortal is like being born already dead.”