The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #3)(27)
“Me?” My gaze goes to the fire. It’s jarring to hear him talk about me, but the idea of hearing something meant for Taryn alone is worse. I feel as though I am taking something from her. I can think of no way to stop it, though, no way that doesn’t involve giving myself away.
He reaches over to grip my shoulder. It would be reassuring, except that the pressure is a little too hard, his claws a little too sharp. This is the moment he’s going to grab me by the throat and tell me I am caught. My heart speeds.
“You must have felt as though I favored her, despite her ingratitude,” he says. “But it was only that I understood her better. And yet, you and I have something in common—we both made a poor marriage.”
I give him a sideways look, relief and incredulity warring with each other. Is he really saying his marriage to our mother was like Taryn’s marriage to Locke?
He draws away from me to add another log to the fire. “And both ended tragically.”
I suck in a breath. “You don’t really think …” But I don’t know what lie to give. I don’t even know if Taryn would lie.
“No?” Madoc asks. “Who killed Locke, if not you?”
For too long, I can’t think of any good answer.
He barks out a laugh and points a clawed finger at me, absolutely delighted. “It was you! Truly, Taryn, I always thought you were soft and meek, but I see now how wrong I have been.”
“Are you glad I killed him?” He seems prouder of Taryn for murdering Locke than for all her other graces and skills combined—her ability to put people at ease, to choose just the right garment, and to tell just the right kind of lie to make people love her.
He shrugs, still smiling. “Alive or dead, I never cared about him. I only cared for you. If you’re sorrowful that he’s gone, then I am sorry for that. If you wish he were returned to life so you could kill him again, I recognize that feeling. But perhaps you dispensed justice and are only troubled that justice can be cruel.”
“What do you think he did to me to deserve to die?” I ask.
He stokes the fire. Sparks fly up. “I assumed he broke your heart. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart.”
I remember what it was like to have a knife pressed to Cardan’s throat. To panic at the thought of the power he had over me, to realize there was an easy way to end it. “Is that why you killed Mom?”
He sighs. “I honed my instincts in battle,” he says. “Sometimes those instincts are still there when there is no more war.”
I consider that, wondering what it takes to harden yourself to fight and kill over and over again. Wondering if some part of him is cold inside, a kind of cold that can never be warmed, like a shard of ice through the heart. Wondering if I have a shard like that, too.
For a moment, we sit quietly together, listening to the crackle and pop of the flames. Then he speaks again. “When I murdered your mother—your mother and your father—I changed you. Their deaths were a crucible, the fire in which all three of you girls were forged. Plunge a heated sword into oil, and any small flaw will turn into a crack. But quenched in blood as you were, none of you broke. You were only hardened. Perhaps what led you to end Locke’s life is more my fault than yours. If it’s hard for you to bear what you did, give me the weight.”
I think of Taryn’s words: No one should have the childhood we had.
And yet I find myself wanting to reassure Madoc, even if I can never forgive him. What would Taryn say? I don’t know, but it would be unfair to comfort him with her voice.
“I should take this to Oriana,” I say, indicating the basket of foraged food. I rise, but he catches my hand.
“Do not think I will forget your loyalty.” He looks up at me meditatively. “You put our family’s interests above your own. When all this is over, you can name your reward, and I will make sure you get it.”
I feel a pang that I am no longer the daughter to whom he makes offers like this. I am not the one welcomed to his hearth, not the one he would care for and cherish.
I wonder what Taryn would ask for herself and the baby in her belly. Safety, I’d wager, the one thing Madoc believes he has already given us, the one thing he can never truly provide. No matter what promises he would make, he is too ruthless to ever keep anyone safe for long.
As for me, safety is not even on offer. He hasn’t caught me yet, but my ability to sustain this masquerade is wearing thin. Although I am not sure how I will manage the trek across the ice, I resolve that I must run tonight.
Oriana oversees the preparation of dinner for the company, and I stay by her side. I observe the making of nettle soup, stewed with potatoes until the sting is removed, and the butchering of deer, their freshly shot bodies steaming in the cold, their fat used to flavor tender greens. Each of the company has their own bowl and cup, clanking on their belts like ornamentation, and these are presented to the servers and filled with a ration of food and watered wine.
Madoc eats with his generals, laughing and talking. The Court of Teeth keep to their tents, sending a servant out to prepare their meal over a different fire. Grimsen sits apart from the generals, at a table of knights who listen with rapt attention to his stories of exile with the Alderking. It is impossible not to notice that the Folk who surround him wear perhaps more ornament than is typical.
The area where the cookpots and tables are is on the far side of the camp, closer to the mountain. In the distance, I see two guards standing sentry near the cave, not leaving their shift to eat with us. Near them, two reindeer nuzzle the snow, looking for buried roots.