The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)(87)

I think of the river and how, when one nixie detached from the others, Cardan waited until it paused and then left so we could get out of the water. I stare at him, at the traces of silver on his face from the party, at the inky black of his eyes. I suddenly remember how he pulled Valerian off me when I was choking on faerie fruit.

I never wanted anyone dead.

Against my will, I recall the way he held that sword in the study with Balekin and the sloppiness of his technique. I thought he’d been doing that deliberately, to annoy his brother. Now, for the first time, I consider the possibility that he just doesn’t much like sword fighting. That he’d never learned it particularly well. That if we ever fought, I would win. I consider all the things I have done to become a worthy adversary of him, but maybe I haven’t been fighting Cardan at all. Maybe I’ve been fighting my own shadow.

“Valerian tried to murder me outright. Twice. First in the tower, then in my room at my house.”

Cardan lifts his head, and his whole posture stiffens as though some uncomfortable truth just came home to him. “I thought when you said you killed him you meant that you tracked him down and …” His voice trails off, and he starts over. “Only a fool would break into the general’s house.”

I draw down the collar of my shirt so he can see where Valerian tried to strangle me. “I have another on my shoulder from where he knocked me into the floor. Believe me yet?”

He reaches toward me, as though he’s going to run his fingers over the bruises. I bring up the crossbow, and he thinks better of it. “Valerian liked pain,” he says. “Anyone’s. Mine, even. I knew he wanted to hurt you.” He pauses, seeming to actually have heard his own words. “And he had. I thought he’d be satisfied with that.”

It never occurred to me to wonder what it was like to be Valerian’s friend. It sounds like it wasn’t so different from being his enemy.

“So it doesn’t matter that Valerian wanted to hurt me?” I ask. “So long as he wasn’t going to kill me.”

“You have to admit, being alive is better,” Cardan returns, that faintly amused tone back in his voice.

I put both of my hands on the desk. “Just tell me why you hate me. Once and for all.”

His long fingers smooth over the wood of Dain’s desk. “You really want honesty?”

“I am the one with the crossbow, not shooting you because you promised me answers. What do you think?”

“Very well.” He fixes me with a spiteful look. “I hate you because your father loves you even though you’re a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because you don’t have a brother who beats you. And I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.”

I didn’t think Balekin even knew who I was.

We stare at each other across the desk. Lounging in the chair, Cardan looks every bit the wicked prince. I wonder if he expects to be shot.

“Is that all?” I demand. “Because it’s ridiculous. You can’t be jealous of me. You don’t have to live at the sufferance of the same person who murdered your parents. You don’t have to stay angry because if you don’t, there’s a bottomless well of fear ready to open up under you.” I stop speaking abruptly, surprised at myself.

I said I wasn’t going to be charmed, but I let him trick me into opening up to him.

As I think that, Cardan’s smile turns into a more familiar sneer. “Oh, really? I don’t know about being angry? I don’t know about being afraid? You’re not the one bargaining for your life.”

“That’s really why you hate me?” I demand. “Only that? There’s no better reason?”

For a moment, I think he’s ignoring me, but then I realize he’s not answering because he can’t lie and he doesn’t want to tell me the truth.

“Well?” I say, lifting the crossbow again, glad to have a reason to reassert my position as the person in charge. “Tell me!”

He leans in and closes his eyes. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”

I am shocked into silence.

“Maybe you should shoot me after all,” he says, covering his face with one long-fingered hand.

“You’re playing me,” I say. I don’t believe him. I won’t fall for some silly trick, because he thinks I am some fool to lose my head over beauty; if I was, I couldn’t last a single day in Faerie. I stand, ready to call his bluff.

Crossbows aren’t great at close range, so I trade mine for a dagger.

He doesn’t look up as I walk around the desk to him. I place the tip of the blade against the bottom of his chin, as I did the day before in the hall, and I tilt his face toward mine. He shifts his gaze with obvious reluctance.

The horror and shame on his face look entirely too real. Suddenly, I am not so sure what to believe.

I lean toward him, close enough for a kiss. His eyes widen. The look in his face is some commingling of panic and desire. It is a heady feeling, having power over someone. Over Cardan, who I never thought had any feelings at all.

“You really do want me,” I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. “And you hate it.” I change the angle of the knife, turning it so it’s against his neck. He doesn’t look nearly as alarmed by that as I might expect.