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

by Holly Black

  I open my eyes to see people crowded around me. Councilors. Guards. I have no memory of closing my eyes, no idea how long I was unconscious.

  “Jude Duarte,” someone says. “Broken her exile to murder the High King.”

  “Your Majesty,” says Randalin. “Give the order.”

  Cardan sweeps across the floor toward me, looking like a ridiculously magnificent fiend. The guards part to let him closer, but if I make a move, I have no doubt they’ll stab me through.

  “I lost your cloak,” I croak up at him, my voice coming out all breath.

  He peers down at me. “You’re a liar,” he says, eyes glittering with fury. “A dirty, mortal liar.”

  I close my eyes again against the harshness of his words. But he has no reason to believe I haven’t come here to kill him.

  If he sends me to the Tower of Forgetting, I wonder if he’ll visit.

  “Clap her in chains,” says Randalin.

  Never have I so wished there was a way for me to show I was telling the truth. But there isn’t. No oath of mine carries any weight.

  I feel a guard’s hand close on my arm. Then Cardan’s voice comes. “Do not touch her.”

  A terrible silence follows. I wait for him to pronounce judgment on me. Whatever he commands will be done. His power is absolute. I don’t even have the strength to fight back.

  “Whatever can you mean?” Randalin says. “She’s—”

  “She is my wife,” Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd. “The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.”

  The shocked roar of the crowd rolls around me, but none of them are more shocked than I am. I try to open my eyes, try to sit up, but darkness crowds in at the edges of my vision and drags me under.

  I am on the High King’s enormous bed, bleeding on his majestically appointed coverlets. Everything hurts. There’s a hot, raw pain in my belly, and my head is pounding.

  Cardan stands over me. His jacket is thrown on a nearby chair, the velvet soaked through with some dark substance. His white sleeves are rolled up, and he’s washing my hands with a wet cloth. Getting the blood off them.

  I try to speak, but my mouth feels like it is full of honey. I slide back into the syrupy dark.

  I don’t know how long I sleep. All I know is that it’s a long time. When I wake, I am afflicted with a powerful thirst. I stumble out of bed, disoriented. Several candles burn around the room. By that light, I can tell that I am still in Cardan’s chamber, in his bed, and that I am alone.

  I find a pitcher of water and bring it to my lips, not bothering with a glass. I drink and drink and drink, until finally I am satisfied. I sag back onto the mattress and try to think over what’s happened. It feels like a fever dream.

  I can’t stay in bed any longer. Ignoring the aches in my body, I head to the bathing room. The tub is filled, and when I touch it, the water shimmers as my fingers trail through it. There’s a chamber pot for me to use as well, something for which I am immensely grateful.

  I gingerly peel off my clothes and get into the bath, scrubbing with my nails so the water can wash away the grime and crusted blood of the last several days. I scrub my face and wring out my hair. When I emerge, I feel much better.

  Back in the bedroom, I go to the closet. I look through rows and rows of Cardan’s absurd garments until I determine that even if they fit me, there’d be no way I could wear any of them. I put on a voluminous puffy-sleeved shirt and take his least ridiculous cloak—black wool trimmed in deer fur and embroidered with a border of leaves—to wrap around myself. Then I make my way through the hall to my old rooms.

  The knights outside his door notice my bare feet and bare ankles and the way I am clutching the robe. I am not sure what they suppose, but I refuse to be embarrassed. I summon my newly minted status as the Queen of Elfhame and shoot them such a withering look that they turn their faces away.

  When I enter my old rooms, Tatterfell looks startled from where she sits on the couch, playing a game of Uno with Oak.

  “Oh,” I say. “Whoops.”

  “Hi,” Oak says uncertainly.

  “What are you doing here?” He flinches, and I regret the harshness of my words. “I’m sorry,” I say, coming around the couch and bending down to pull him into a hug. “I’m happy you’re here. I’m just surprised.” I do not add that I am worried, although I am. The Court of Elfhame is a dangerous place for everyone, but it is particularly dangerous for Oak.

  Still, I lean my head against his neck and drink in the scent of him, loam and pine needles. My little brother, who is squeezing me so tightly that it hurts, one of his horns scraping lightly against my jaw.

  “Vivi’s here, too,” he says, letting me go. “And Taryn. And Heather.”

  “Really?” For a moment, we share a significant look. I’d hoped Heather might get back together with Vivi, but I am stunned she was willing to make another trip to Elfhame. I figured it was going to be a long time before she was okay with more than a very cursory amount of Faerie. “Where are they?”

  “At dinner, with the High King,” says Tatterfell. “This one didn’t want to go, so he had a tray sent up.” She injects the words with a familiar disapproval. I am sure she thinks rejecting the honor of royal company is a sign that Oak is spoiled.

  I think it’s a sign he’s been paying attention.

  But I am more interested in the dinner tray, with half-eaten portions of delectable things on silver plates. My stomach growls. I am not sure how long it’s been since I had a real meal. Without asking for permission, I go over and begin to gobble up cold strips of duck and chunks of cheese and figs. There’s some too-strong tea in a pot, and I drink that, too, straight from the spout.

  My hunger is great enough to make me suspicious. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Well, they drugged you,” Oak says with a shrug. “So you’ve woken up before, but not for too long. Not like this.”

  That’s disturbing, partially because I don’t remember it and partially because I must have been hogging Cardan’s bed this whole time, but I refuse to think too much about it, the way I refused to think about sweeping out of the High King’s chambers in nothing but his shirt and cloak. Instead, I pick out one of my old seneschal outfits—a gown that is a long column of black with silver-tipped cuffs and collar. It is perhaps too plain for a queen, but Cardan is extravagant enough for both of us.

  When I am dressed, I go back into the living space.

  “Will you do my hair?” I ask Tatterfell.

  She huffs to her feet. “I should hope so. You can hardly walk around the way you came in here.” I am swept back into the bedroom, where she shoos me toward my dressing table. There, she braids my brown locks in a halo around my head. Then she paints my lips and eyelids in a pale rose color.

  “I wanted your hair to suggest a crown,” she says. “But then I suppose you’ll have a real coronation at some point.”

  The thought makes my head swim, a sense of unreality creeping in. I do not understand Cardan’s game, and that worries me.

  I think of how Tatterfell once urged me to marry. The memory of that, and my certainty that I wouldn’t, makes it even stranger that she is here, doing my hair as she did then. “You made me look regal anyway,” I say, and her beetle-black eyes meet mine in the mirror. She smiles.

  “Jude?” I hear a soft voice. Taryn.

  She’s come in from the other room, in a gown of spun gold. She looks magnificent—roses in her cheeks and a brightness in her eyes.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “You’re awake!” she says, rushing into the room. “Vivi, she’s awake.”

  Vivi walks in, wearing a suit of bottle-green velvet. “You nearly died, you know? You nearly died again.”

  Heather follows in a pale blue gown with edges of the same pink that sits in her tight curls. She gives me a sympathetic grin, which I appreciate. It’s good to have one person who doesn’t know me well enough to be angry.

&nbs
p; “Yes,” I say. “I know.”

  “You keep rushing into danger,” Vivi informs me. “You’ve got to stop acting as though Court politics is some kind of extreme sport and stop chasing the adrenaline high.”

  “I couldn’t help that Madoc kidnapped me,” I point out.

  Vivi goes on, ignoring me. “Yeah, and the next thing we know, the High King is on our doorstep looking ready to tear down the whole apartment complex to find you. And when we finally hear from you through Oriana, it’s not like we could trust anyone. So we had to hire a cannibal redcap to come with us, just in case. And it’s a good thing we did—”

  “Seeing you lie in the snow—you were so pale, Jude,” Taryn interrupts. “And when things started budding and blooming around you, I didn’t know what to think. Flowers and vines pushed right up through the ice. Then color came back into your skin, and you got up. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Yeah,” I say softly. “I was fairly surprised myself.”

  “Does this mean you’re magical?” Heather asks, which is a fair question. Mortals are not supposed to be magical.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her.

  “I still can’t believe you married Prince Cardan,” Taryn says.

  I feel an obscure need to justify myself. I want to deny that desire came into it, want to claim that I was entirely practical when I agreed. Who wouldn’t want to be the Queen of Faerie? Who wouldn’t make the bargain I made?

  “It’s just—you hated him,” Taryn says. “And then I found out he was under your control the whole time. So I thought maybe you still hated him. I mean—I guess it’s possible that you hate him now and that he hates you, too, but it’s confusing.”

  A knock on the door interrupts her. Oak runs over to open it. As though summoned by our discussion, the High King is there, surrounded by his guard.

  Cardan is wearing a high jeweled collar of jet on a stiff black doublet. Over the tops of his pointed ears are knifelike caps of gold, matching the gold along his cheekbones. His expression is remote.

  “Walk with me,” he says, leaving little room for refusal.

  “Of course.” My heart speeds, despite myself. I hate that he saw me when I was at my most vulnerable, that he let me bleed all over his spider-silk sheets.

  Vivi catches my hand. “You’re not well enough.”

  Cardan raises his black brows. “The Living Council is eager to speak with her.”

  “No doubt,” I say, then look at my sisters, Heather and Oak behind them. “And Vivi should be happy, because the only danger anyone has ever been in at a Council meeting is of being bored to death.”

  I let go of my sister. The guards fall in behind us. Cardan gives me his arm, causing me to walk at his side, instead of behind him the way I would have as his seneschal. We make our way through the halls, and when we pass courtiers, they bow. It’s extremely unnerving.

  “Is the Roach okay?” I ask, low enough not to be overheard.

  “The Bomb has not yet discovered how to wake him,” Cardan says. “But there is hope that she yet will.”

  At least he’s not dead, I remind myself. But if he sleeps for a hundred years, I will be in my grave before he opens his eyes again.

  “Your father sent a message,” Cardan says, glancing at me sideways. “It was very unfriendly. He seems to blame me for the death of his daughter.”

  “Ah,” I say.

  “And he has sent soldiers to the low Courts with promises of a new regime. He urges them to not hesitate, but to come to Elfhame and hear his challenge to the crown.” Cardan says all this neutrally. “The Living Council waits to hear all you know about the sword and his maps. They found my descriptions of the camp to be sadly inadequate.”

  “They can wait a little longer,” I say, forcing out the words. “I need to talk to you.”

  He looks surprised and a little uncertain.

  “It won’t take long.” The last thing I want is to have this conversation, but the longer I put it off, the larger it will loom in my mind. He ended my exile—and while I extracted a promise from him to do that, he had no reason to declare me queen. “Whatever your scheme is, whatever you are planning to hold over me, you might as well tell me now, before we’re in front of the whole Council. Make your threats. Do your worst.”

  “Yes,” he says, turning down a corridor in the palace that led outside. “We do need to talk.”

  It is not long before we come to the royal rose garden. The guards stop at the gate, letting us go on alone. As we make our way down a path of shimmering quartz steps, everything is hushed. The wind carries floral scents through the air, a wild perfume that doesn’t exist outside of Faerie and reminds me at once of home and of menace.

  “I assume you weren’t actually trying to shoot me,” Cardan says. “Since the note was in your handwriting.”

  “Madoc sent the Ghost—” I say, then stop and try again. “I thought that there was going to be an attempt on your life.”

  Cardan gazes at a rosebush with petals so black and glossy they look like patent leather. “It was terrifying,” he says, “watching you fall. I mean, you’re generally terrifying, but I am unused to fearing for you. And then I was furious. I am not sure I have ever been that angry before.”

  “Mortals are fragile,” I say.

  “Not you,” he says in a way that sounds a little like a lament. “You never break.”

  Which is ridiculous, as hurt as I am. I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness. Still, I like hearing it. I like everything he’s saying all too well.

  That boy is your weakness.

  “When I came here, pretending to be Taryn, you said you’d sent me messages,” I say. “You seemed surprised I hadn’t gotten any. What was in them?”

  Cardan turns to me, hands clasped behind his back. “Pleading, mostly. Beseeching you to come back. Several indiscreet promises.” He’s wearing that mocking smile, the one he says comes from nervousness.

  I close my eyes against frustration great enough to make me scream. “Stop playing games,” I say. “You sent me into exile.”

  “Yes,” he says. “That. I can’t stop thinking about what you said to me, before Madoc took you. About it being a trick. You meant marrying you, making you queen, sending you to the mortal world, all of it, didn’t you?”

  I fold my arms across my chest protectively. “Of course it was a trick. Wasn’t that what you said in return?”

  “But that’s what you do,” Cardan says. “You trick people. Nicasia, Madoc, Balekin, Orlagh. Me. I thought you’d admire me a little for it, that I could trick you. I thought you’d be angry, of course, but not quite like this.”

  I stare at him, openmouthed. “What?”

  “Let me remind you that I didn’t know you’d murdered my brother, the ambassador to the Undersea, until that very morning,” he says. “My plans were made in haste. And perhaps I was a little annoyed. I thought it would pacify Queen Orlagh, at least until all promises were finalized in the treaty. By the time you guessed the answer, the negotiations would be over. Think of it: I exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world. Until and unless she is pardoned by the crown.” He pauses. “Pardoned by the crown. Meaning by the King of Faerie. Or its queen. You could have returned anytime you wanted.”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  It wasn’t an accident, his choice of words. It wasn’t infelicitous. It was deliberate. A riddle made just for me.

  Maybe I should feel foolish, but instead, I feel furiously angry. I turn away from him and walk, swiftly and completely directionless through the garden. He runs after me, grabbing my arm.

  I haul around and slap him. It’s a stinging blow, smearing the gold on his cheekbone and causing his skin to redden. We stare at each other for long moments, breathing hard. His eyes are bright with something entirely different from anger.

  I am in over my head. I am drowning.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He grabs my hand, possibly to keep
me from hitting him again. Our fingers lace together. “No, it’s not that, not exactly. I didn’t think I could hurt you. And I never thought you would be afraid of me.”

  “And did you like it?” I ask.

  He looks away from me then, and I have my answer. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit to that impulse, but he has it.

  “Well, I was hurt, and yes, you scare me.” Even as I am speaking, I wish I could snatch back the words. Perhaps it is exhaustion or having been so close to death, but the truth pours out of me in a devastating rush. “You’ve always scared me. You gave me every reason to fear your capriciousness and your cruelty. I was afraid of you even when you were tied to that chair in the Court of Shadows. I was afraid of you when I had a knife to your throat. And I am scared of you now.”

  Cardan looks more surprised than he did when I slapped him.

  He was always a symbol of everything about Elfhame that I couldn’t have, everything that would never want me. And telling him this feels a little like throwing off a heavy weight, except that weight is supposed to be my armor, and without it, I am afraid I am going to be entirely exposed. But I keep talking anyway, as though I no longer have control of my tongue. “You despised me. When you said you wanted me, it felt like the world had turned upside down.

  “But sending me into exile, that made sense.” I meet his gaze. “That was an entirely right-side-up Cardan move. And I hated myself for not seeing it coming. And I hate myself for not seeing what you’re going to do to me next.”

  He closes his eyes. When he opens them, he releases my hand and turns so I can’t see his face. “I can see why you thought what you did. I suppose I am not an easy person to trust. And maybe I ought not to be trusted, but let me say this: I trust you.”

  He takes a deep breath. “You may recall that I did not want to be the High King. And that you did not consult me before plopping this crown on my head. You may further recollect that Balekin didn’t want me to keep the title and that the Living Council never took a real shine to me.”