The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)(86)

Fearing him is a habit, a habit I could break with a bolt to his heart.

He holds up his hands in protest, long bare fingers splayed. I am the one with the royal ring. “I’m nervous,” he says. “I smile a lot when I’m nervous. I can’t help it.”

That is not at all what I expected him to say. I lower the crossbow momentarily.

He keeps talking, as though he doesn’t want to leave me too much time to think. “You are terrifying. Nearly my whole family is dead, and while they never had much love for me, I don’t want to join them. I’ve spent all night worrying what you’re going to do, and I know exactly what I deserve. I have a reason to be nervous.” He’s talking to me as though we’re friends instead of enemies. It works, too: I relax a little. When I realize that, I am nearly freaked out enough to shoot him outright.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want,” he says. “Anything.”

“No word games?” The temptation is enormous. Everything Taryn told me is still rattling around in my head, reminding me how little I know.

He puts a hand over where his heart should be. “I swear it.”

“And if I shoot you anyway?”

“You might well,” he says, wry. “But I want your word that you won’t.”

“My word isn’t worth much,” I remind him.

“So you keep saying.” He raises his brows. “It’s not comforting, I’ve got to tell you.”

I give a surprised laugh. The crossbow wavers in my hand. Cardan’s gaze is locked on it. With deliberate slowness, I set it down on the wood of the desk. “You tell me whatever I want to know—all of it—and I won’t shoot you.”

“And what can I do to persuade you not to turn me over to Balekin and Madoc?” He lifts a single eyebrow. I am not used to the force of his attention being on me like this. My heart speeds.

All I can do is glower in return. “How about you concentrate on staying alive?”

He shrugs. “What do you want to know?”

“I found a piece of paper with my name on it,” I say. “Over and over, just my name.”

He flinches a little but doesn’t say anything.

“Well?” I prompt.

“That’s not a question,” he groans, as though exasperated. “Ask me a proper question, and I’ll give you an answer.”

“You’re terrible at this whole ‘telling me whatever I want to know’ thing.” My hand goes to the crossbow, but I don’t pick it up.

He sighs. “Just ask me something. Ask about my tail. Don’t you want to see it?” He raises his brows.

I have seen his tail, but I am not going to give him the satisfaction of telling him that. “You want me to ask you something? Fine. When did Taryn start whatever it is she has with Locke?”

He laughs with delight. This appears to be a discussion he isn’t interested in avoiding. Typical. “Oh, I wondered when you would ask about that. It was some months ago. He told us all about it—throwing stones at her window, leaving her notes to meet him in the woods, wooing her by moonlight. He swore us to silence, made it all seem like a lark. I think, in the beginning, he did it to make Nicasia jealous. But later …”

“How did he know it was her room?” I ask, frowning.

That makes his smile grow. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe either of you would have done as his first mortal conquest. I believe his goal is to have both of you in the end.”

I don’t like any of this. “What about you?”

He gives me a quick, odd look. “Locke hasn’t gotten around to seducing me yet, if that’s what you’re asking. I suppose I should be insulted.”

“That’s not what I mean. You and Nicasia were …” I don’t know what to call them. Together isn’t quite the word for an evil and beautiful team, ruining people and enjoying it.

“Yes, Locke stole her from me,” Cardan says with a tightness in his jaw. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t smirk. Clearly, it costs him something to tell me this. “And I don’t know if Locke wanted her to make some other lover jealous or to make me angry or just because of Nicasia’s magnificence. Nor do I know what fault in me made her choose him. Now do you believe I am giving you the answers you were promised?”

The thought of Cardan being brokenhearted is almost beyond my imagining. I nod. “Did you love her?”

“What kind of question is that?” he demands.

I shrug. “I want to know.”

“Yes,” he says, his gaze on the desk, on my hand resting there. I am suddenly conscious of my fingernails, bitten to the quick. “I loved her.”

“Why do you want me dead?” I ask, because I want to remind us both that answering embarrassing questions is the least of what he deserves. We’re enemies, no matter how many jokes he tells or how friendly he seems. Charmers are charming, but that’s all they are.

He lets out a long breath and puts his head down on his hands, not paying nearly enough attention to the crossbow. “You mean with the nixies? You were the one who was thrashing around and throwing things at them. They’re extremely lazy creatures, but I thought you might actually annoy them into taking a bite out of you. I may be rotten, but my one virtue is that I’m not a killer. I wanted to frighten you, but I never wanted you dead. I never wanted anyone dead.”