The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #3)(71)

Then I feel self-conscious and stupid and stop.

I can’t do this. I am a mortal girl. I am the furthest thing from magic. I can’t save Cardan. I can’t heal anyone. This isn’t going to work.

I open my eyes and shake my head.

The Ghost puts his hand on my shoulder, steps as close as he did when instructing me in the art of murder. His voice is soft. “Jude, stop trying to force it. Let it come.”

With a sigh, I close my eyes again. And again I try to feel the earth beneath me. The land of Faerie. I think of Val Moren’s words: Do you think a seed planted in goblin soil grows to be the same plant it would have in the mortal world? Whatever I am, I have been nurtured here. This is my home and my land.

I feel once again that strange sensation of being stung all over with nettles.

Wake, I think, putting my hand on his ankle. I am your queen, and I command you to wake.

A spasm racks the Roach’s body. A vicious kick catches me in the stomach, knocking me against the wall.

I sag to the floor. The pain is intense enough that I am reminded how recently I received a gut wound.

“Jude!” the Bomb says, moving to secure his legs.

The Ghost kneels down by my side. “How hurt are you?”

I give a thumbs-up to indicate I’m okay, but I can’t speak yet.

The Roach cries again, but this time, it dwindles to something else. “Lil—” he says, voice sounding soft and scratchy, but speaking.

He’s conscious. Awake.

Healed.

He grabs hold of the Bomb’s hand. “I’m dying,” he says. “The poison—I was foolish. I don’t have long.”

“You’re not dying,” she says.

“There’s something I could never tell you while I lived,” he says, pulling her closer to him. “I love you, Liliver. I’ve loved you from the first hour of our meeting. I loved you and despaired. Before I die, I want you to know that.”

The Ghost’s eyebrows rise, and he glances at me. I grin. With both of us on the floor, I doubt the Roach has any idea we’re there.

Besides, he’s too busy looking at the Bomb’s shocked face.

“I never wanted—” he begins, then bites off the words, clearly reading her expression as horror. “You don’t have to say anything in return. But before I die—”

“You’re not dying,” she says again, and this time he seems to actually hear her.

“I see.” His face suffuses with shame. “I shouldn’t have spoken.”

I creep toward the kitchen, the Ghost behind me. As we head toward the door, I hear the Bomb’s soft voice.

“If you hadn’t,” she says, “then I couldn’t tell you that your feelings are returned.”

Outside, the Ghost and I walk back toward the palace, looking up at the stars. I think about how much cleverer the Bomb is than I am, because when she had her chance, she took it. She told him how she felt. I failed to tell Cardan. And now I never can.

I veer toward the pavilions of the low Courts.

The Ghost looks a question at me.

“There’s one more thing I need to do before I sleep,” I tell him.

He asks me nothing more, only matches his steps to mine.



We visit Mother Marrow and Severin, son of the Alderking who had Grimsen so long in his employ. They are my last hope. And though they meet me under the stars and hear me out politely, they have no answers.

“There must be a way,” I insist. “There must be something.”

“The difficulty,” says Mother Marrow, “is that you already know how to end the curse. Only death, Grimsen said. You want another answer, but magic is seldom so convenient as to conform to our preferences.”

The Ghost glowers nearby. I am grateful for his being with me, particularly right at the moment, when I am not sure I can bear to hear this alone.

“Grimsen would not have intended for the curse to be broken,” says Severin. His curved horns make him look fearsome, but his voice is gentle.

“All right.” I slump onto a nearby log. It wasn’t as though I was expecting good news, but I feel the fog of sorrow closing over me again.

Mother Marrow narrows her eyes at me. “So you’re going to use this bridle from the Court of Teeth? I’d like to see it. Grimsen made such interestingly awful things.”

“You’re welcome to have a look,” I say. “I’m supposed to tie my own hair to it.”

She snorts. “Well, don’t do that. If you do that, you’ll be bound along with the serpent.”

You will be bound together.

The rage I feel is so great that for a moment, everything goes white, like a strike of lightning where the thunder is just behind it.

“So how ought it work?” I ask, my voice shaking with fury.

“There is probably a word of command,” she tells me with a shrug. “Hard to know what that would be, though, and the thing is useless without it.”

Severin shakes his head. “There’s only one thing the smith ever wanted anyone to remember.”

“His name,” I say.



It is not long after I arrive back at the palace that Tatterfell comes with the dress that Taryn found for me to wear to the banquet. Servants bring food and set about drawing me a bath. When I emerge, they perfume me and comb my hair as though I were a doll.