The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #3)(26)

“You have a good memory,” he says. Hopefully, I have a better memory than he does, because Taryn didn’t attend the Blood Moon revel. “It allowed him to overhear those speaking just outside of range. A wonderful device for eavesdropping.”

I wait expectantly.

He laughs. “That’s not what you want to know, is it? Yes, it was cursed. With a word, I could turn it into a ruby spider that would bite him until he died.”

“Did you use it?” I ask, recalling the globe I saw in Cardan’s study, in which a glittering red spider scrabbled restlessly at the glass. I am filled with cold horror at a tragedy already averted—and then blinding anger.

Grimsen shrugs. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

A very faerie answer. It sounds like no, when the truth is that the smith tried and it didn’t work.

I ought to press him for more, ought to ask him about a way for me to escape the camp, but I can’t bear to speak with him for another minute and not stab him with one of his own weapons. “Can I visit again?” I grit out, the false smile I am wearing feeling a lot more like a grimace.

I don’t like the look he gives me, as though I am a gemstone he wishes to set into metal. “I would like that,” he says, sweeping his hand around the forge, at all the objects there. “As you can see, I like beautiful things.”





After my visit to Grimsen, I tromp back into the woods to do the promised foraging with satisfying aggressiveness, collecting rowan berries, wood sorrel, nettles, a bit of deathsweet, and enormous cep mushrooms. I kick a rock, sending it skittering deeper into the woods. Then I kick another. It takes a lot of rocks before I feel even a little bit better.

I am no closer to finding a way to get out of here and no clearer on my father’s plans. The only thing I am closer to is getting caught.

With that grim thought in mind, I discover Madoc sitting by the fire outside the tent, cleaning and sharpening the set of daggers he keeps on his person. Habit urges me to help him with the job, and I have to remind myself that Taryn wouldn’t do that.

“Come sit,” he urges, patting a bare side of a log on which he’s perched. “You aren’t used to campaigning, and you’ve been thrust into the thick of it.”

Does he suspect me? I sit, resting my overfull basket near the fire, and reassure myself that he wouldn’t sound nearly as friendly if he thought he was talking to Jude. I know I don’t have long, though, so I chance it and ask him what I want to ask. “Do you really think you can defeat him?”

He laughs as though it’s the question of a small child. If you could reach your hand up far enough, could you pluck the moon from the sky? “I wouldn’t play the game if I couldn’t win.”

I feel oddly emboldened by his laughter. He really believes that I’m Taryn and that I know nothing of war. “But how?”

“I will spare you the whole of the strategy,” he says. “But I am going to challenge him to a duel—and after I win, I will split his melon of a head.”

“A duel?” I am flummoxed. “Why would he fight you?” Cardan is the High King. He has armies to stand between them.

Madoc grins. “For love,” he says. “And for duty.”

“Love of whom?” I can’t believe that Taryn would be any less confused than I am right now.

“There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man,” he says.

I don’t know what to say to that. After a moment, he takes pity on me. “I know you don’t care for lessons on tactics, but I think this one will appeal even to you. For what we want most, we will take almost any chance. There is a prophecy that he would make a poor king. It hangs over his head, but he believes he can charm his way free of fate. Let’s see him try. I am going to give him a chance to prove he’s a good ruler.”

“And then?” I prompt.

But he only laughs again. “Then the Folk will call you Princess Taryn.”

All my life I have heard of the great conquests of Faerie. As one might expect of an immortal people with few births, most battles are highly formalized, as are lines of succession. The Folk like to avoid all-out war, which means it’s not unusual to settle an issue with some mutually agreed-upon contest. Still, Cardan never cared much for sword fighting and isn’t particularly good at it. Why would he agree to a duel?

If I ask that, though, I am terrified Madoc will know me. Yet I must say something. I can’t just sit here staring at him with my mouth hanging open.

“Jude got control of Cardan somehow,” I pose. “Maybe you could do the same and—”

He shakes his head. “Look what became of your sister. Whatever power she had, he took back from her. No, I don’t intend to continue even the pretense of serving any longer. Now I would rule.” He stops sharpening his dagger and looks over at me with a dangerous gleam in his eye. “I gave Jude chance after chance to be a help to the family. Every opportunity to tell me the game she was playing. Had she done so, things would have come out very different.”

A shiver goes through me. Does he guess I am sitting beside him?

“Jude is pretty sad,” I say in what I hope is a neutral way. “At least according to Vivi.”

“And you do not wish me to punish her further when I am High King, is that it?” he asks. “It’s not as though I am not proud. What she achieved was no small thing. She’s perhaps the most like me of all my children. And like children the world over, she was rebellious, and her grasp exceeded her reach. But you …”