The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)

by Holly Black

  Mortal girls do not become queens of Faerieland.

  I imagine what it would be like to have my own crown, my own power. Maybe I wouldn’t have to be afraid to love him. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe I wouldn’t have to be scared of all the things I’ve been scared of my whole life, of being diminished and weak and lesser. Maybe I would become a little bit magic.

  “Yes,” I say, but my voice fails me. It comes out all breath. “Yes.”

  He leans forward in the chair, eyebrows raised, but he doesn’t wear his usual arrogant mien. I cannot read his expression. “To what are you agreeing?”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll do it. I’ll marry you.”

  He gives me a wicked grin. “I had no idea it would be such a sacrifice.”

  Frustrated, I flop over on the couch. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Marriage to the High King of Elfhame is largely thought to be a prize, a honor of which few are worthy.”

  I suppose his sincerity could last but only so long. I roll my eyes, grateful that he’s acting like himself again, so I can better pretend not to be overawed by what’s about to happen. “So what do we do?”

  I think of Taryn’s wedding and the part of the ceremony we did not witness. I think of my mother’s wedding, too, the vows she must have made to Madoc, and abruptly a shiver goes through me that I hope has nothing to do with premonition.

  “It’s simple,” he says, moving to the edge of the chair. “We pledge our troth. I’ll go first—unless you wish to wait. Perhaps you imagined something more romantic.”

  “No,” I say quickly, unwilling to admit to imagining anything to do with marriage at all.

  He slides my ruby ring off his finger. “I, Cardan, son of Eldred, High King of Elfhame, take you, Jude Duarte, mortal ward of Madoc, to be my bride and my queen. Let us be wed until we wish for it to be otherwise and the crown has passed from our hands.”

  As he speaks, I begin to tremble with something between hope and fear. The words he’s saying are so momentous that they’re surreal, especially here, in Eldred’s own rooms. Time seems to stretch out. Above us, the branches begin to bud, as though the land itself heard the words he spoke.

  Catching my hand, he slides the ring on. The exchange of rings is not a faerie ritual, and I am surprised by it.

  “Your turn,” he says into the silence. He gives me a grin. “I’m trusting you to keep your word and release me from my bond of obedience after this.”

  I smile back, which maybe makes up for the way that I froze after he finished speaking. I still can’t quite believe this is happening. My hand tightens on his as I speak. “I, Jude Duarte, take Cardan, High King of Elfhame, to be my husband. Let us be wed until we don’t want to be and the crown has passed from our hands.”

  He kisses the scar of my palm.

  I still have his brother’s blood under my fingernails.

  I don’t have a ring for him.

  Above us, the buds are blooming. The whole room smells of flowers.

  Drawing back, I speak again, pushing away all thoughts of Balekin, of the future in which I am going to have to tell him what I’ve done. “Cardan, son of Eldred, High King of Elfhame, I forsake any command over you. You are free of your vow of obedience, for now and for always.”

  He lets out a breath and stands a bit unsteadily. I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that I am… I can’t even think the words. Too much has happened tonight.

  “You look as if you’ve barely rested.” I rise to be sure that if he falls over, I can grab for him before he hits the floor, although I am not so sure of myself, either.

  “I will lie down,” he says, letting me guide him toward his enormous bed. Once there, he does not let go of my hand. “If you lie with me.”

  With no reason to object, I do, the sense of unreality heightening. As I stretch out on the elaborately embroidered comforter, I realize that I have found something far more blasphemous than spreading out on the bed of the High King, far more blasphemous than sneaking Cardan’s signet onto my finger, or even sitting on the throne itself.

  I have become the Queen of Faerie.

  We trade kisses in the darkness, blurred by exhaustion. I don’t expect to sleep, but I do, my limbs tangled with his, the first restful sleep I’ve had since my return from the Undersea. When I am awakened, it is to a banging on the door.

  Cardan is already up, playing with the vial of clay the Bomb brought, tossing it from hand to hand. Still dressed, his rumpled aspect gives him only an air of dissipation. I pull my robe more tightly around me. I am embarrassed to be so obviously sharing his bed.

  “Your Majesty,” says the messenger—a knight, from the clipped, official sound of him. “Your brother is dead. There was a duel, from what we’ve been able to determine.”

  “Ah,” Cardan says.

  “And the Queen of the Undersea.” The knight’s voice trembles. “She’s here, demanding justice for her ambassador.”

  “I just bet she is.” Cardan’s voice is dry, clipped. “Well, we can hardly keep her waiting. You. What’s your name?”

  The knight hesitates. “Rannoch, Your Majesty.”

  “Well, Sir Rannoch, I expect you to assemble a group of knights to escort me to the water. You will wait in the courtyard. Will you do that for me?”

  “But the general…” he begins.

  “Is not here right now,” Cardan finishes for him.

  “I will do it,” the knight says. I hear the door close, and Cardan rounds the corner, expression haughty.

  “Well, wife,” he says to me, a chill in his voice. “It seems you have kept at least one secret from your dowry. Come, we must dress for our first audience together.”

  And so I am left to rush through the halls in my robe. Back in my rooms, I call for my sword and throw on my velvets, all the while wondering what it will mean to have this newfound status and what Cardan will do now that he is unchecked.

  Orlagh waits for us in a choppy ocean, accompanied by her daughter and a pod of knights mounted on seals and sharks and all manner of sharp-toothed sea creatures. She, herself, sits on an orca and is dressed as though ready for battle. Her skin is covered in shiny silvery scales that seem both to be metallic and to have grown from her skin. A helmet of bone and teeth hides her hair.

  Nicasia is beside her, on a shark. She has no tail today, her long legs covered in armor of shell and bone.

  All along the edge of the beach are clumps of kelp, washed up as though from a storm. I think I see other things out in the water. The back of a large creature swimming just below the waves. The hair of drowned mortals, blowing like sea grass. The Undersea’s forces are larger than they seem at first glance.

  “Where is my ambassador?” Orlagh demands. “Where is your brother?”

  Cardan is seated on his gray steed, in black clothes and a cloak of scarlet. Beside him are two dozen mounted knights and both Mikkel and Nihuar. On the ride over, they tried to determine what Cardan had planned, but he has kept his own counsel from them and, more troublingly, from me. Since hearing of the death of Balekin, he’s said little and avoided looking in my direction. My stomach churns with anxiety.

  He looks at Orlagh with a coldness that I know from experience comes from either fury or fear. In this case, possibly both. “As you well know, he’s dead.”

  “It was your responsibility to keep him safe,” she says.

  “Was it?” Cardan asks with exaggerated astonishment, touching his hand to his breast. “I thought my obligation was not to move against him, not to keep him from the consequences of his own risk taking. He had a little duel, from what I hear. Dueling, as I am sure you know, is dangerous. But I neither murdered him nor did I encourage it. In fact, I quite discouraged it.”

  I attempt to not let anything I am feeling show on my face.

  Orlagh leans forward as though she senses blood in the water. “You ought not to allow such disobedience.”

  Cardan shrugs nonchalantly. “Perhaps.”
/>
  Mikkel shifts on his horse. He’s clearly uncomfortable with the way Cardan is speaking, carelessly, as though they are merely having a friendly conversation and Orlagh hasn’t come to chisel away his power, to weaken his rule. And if she knew Madoc was gone, she might attack outright.

  Looking at her, looking at Nicasia’s sneer and the selkies and merfolk’s strange, wet eyes, I feel powerless. I have given up command of Cardan, and for it, I have his vow of marriage. But without anyone’s knowing, it seems less and less as though it ever happened.

  “I am here to demand justice. Balekin was my ambassador, and if you don’t consider him to be under your protection, I do consider him to be under mine. You must give his murderer to the sea, where she will find no forgiveness. Give us your seneschal, Jude Duarte.”

  For a moment, I feel as though I can’t breathe. It’s as though I am drowning again.

  Cardan’s eyebrows go up. His voice stays light. “But she’s only just returned from the sea.”

  “So you don’t dispute her crime?” asks Orlagh.

  “Why should I?” asks Cardan. “If she’s the one with whom he dueled, I am certain she would win; my brother supposed himself expert with the sword—a great exaggeration of abilities. But she’s mine to punish or not, as I see fit.”

  I hate hearing myself spoken of as though I am not right there when I have his pledge of troth. But a queen killing an ambassador does seem like a potential political problem.

  Orlagh’s gaze doesn’t go to me. I doubt very much she cares about anything but that Cardan gave up a lot for my return and by threatening me, she believes she can get more. “King of the land, I am not here to fight your sharp tongue. My blood is cold and I prefer blades. Once, I considered you as a partner for my daughter, the most precious thing in the sea. She would have brokered a true peace between us.”

  Cardan looks at Nicasia, and although Orlagh leaves him an opening, for a long moment, he does not speak. And when he does, he only says, “Like you, I am not so good with forgiveness.”

  Something in Queen Orlagh’s manner changes. “If it’s war you want, you would be unwise to declare it on an island.” Around her, waves grow more violent, their white caps of froth larger. Whirlpools form just off the edge of the land, small ones, deepening, only to spin themselves out as new ones form.

  “War?” He peers at her as though she’s said something particularly puzzling and it vexes him. “Do you mean for me to really believe you want to fight? Are you challenging me to a duel?”

  He’s obviously baiting her, but I cannot imagine to what benefit.

  “And if I was?” she asks. “What then, boy?”

  The smile that curves his lip is voluptuous. “Beneath every bit of your sea is land. Seething, volcanic land. Go against me, and I will show you what this boy will do, my lady.”

  He stretches out his hand, and something seems to rise to the top of the water around us, like a pale scrum. Sand. Floating sand.

  Then, all around the Court of the Undersea, water begins to churn.

  I stare at him, hoping to catch his eye, but he is concentrating. Whatever magic he is doing, this is what Baphen meant when he said the High King was tied to the land, was the beating heart and the star upon whom Elfhame’s future was written. This is power. And to see Cardan wield it is to understand just how inhuman he is, how transformed, how far outside my control he’s moved.

  “What is this?” Orlagh asks as the churning turns to boiling. An oblong of bubbling and seething ocean as the Folk of the Undersea scream and scatter, swimming out of range of whatever is happening. Several seals come up on the black rocks near the land, calling to one another in their language.

  Nicasia’s shark is spun sideways, and she plunges into the water.

  Steam billows up from the waves, blowing hot. A huge white cloud rolls across my vision. When it clears, I can see that new earth has coalesced from the depths, hot stone cooling as we watch.

  With Nicasia standing on it, her expression half amazement and half terror. “Cardan,” she calls.

  He’s facing her, and one corner of his mouth is turned up in a little smile, but his gaze is unfocused. He believed that he needed to convince Orlagh that he wasn’t feckless.

  Now I see he’s come up with a plan to do that. Just as he came up with a plan to throw off the yoke of my control.

  During my month in the Undersea, he changed. He began scheming schemes. And he has become disturbingly effective at them.

  I am thinking of that as I watch grass grow between Nicasia’s toes and wildflowers spring up all along the gently rising hills, as I notice the trees and brambles sprout, and as the trunk of a tree begins to form around Nicasia’s body.

  “Cardan!” she screams as bark wraps around her, closing over her waist.

  “What have you done?” Orlagh cries as the bark moves higher, as branches unfold, budding with leaves and fragrant blossoms. Petals blow out onto the waves.

  “Will you flood the land now?” Cardan asks Orlagh with perfect calm, as though he didn’t just cause a fourth island to rise from the sea. “Send salt water to corrupt the roots of our trees and make our streams and lakes brackish? Will you drown our berries and send your merfolk to slit our throats and steal our roses? Will you do it if it means your daughter will suffer the same? Come, I dare you.”

  “Release Nicasia,” says Orlagh, defeat heavy in her voice.

  “I am the High King of Elfhame,” Cardan reminds her. “And I mislike being given orders. You attacked the land. You stole my seneschal and freed my brother, who was imprisoned for the murder of our father, Eldred, with whom you had an alliance. Once, we respected each other’s territory.

  “I have allowed you too much disrespect, and you have overplayed your hand.

  “Now, Queen of the Undersea, we will have a truce as you had with Eldred, as you had with Mab. We will have a truce or we will have a war, and if we fight, I will be unsparing. Nothing and no one you love will be safe.”

  “Very well, High King,” Orlagh says, and I suck in my breath, not at all sure what will come next. “Let us have an alliance and no longer be at one another’s throats. Give me my daughter, and we will go.”

  I let out a breath. He was wise to push her, even though it was terrifying. After all, once she found out about Madoc, she might press her advantage. Better to bring this moment to its crisis.

  And it worked. I look down to hide my smile.

  “Let Nicasia stay here and be your ambassador in Balekin’s stead,” Cardan says. “She has grown up on these islands, and many who love her are here.”

  That wipes the smile off my face. On the new island, the bark is pulling away from Nicasia’s skin. I wonder what he’s playing at, bringing her back to Elfhame. With her will inevitably come trouble.

  And yet, maybe it’s the sort of trouble he wants.

  “If she wishes to stay, she may. Are you satisfied?” Orlagh asks.

  Cardan inclines his head. “I am. I will not be led by the sea, no matter how great its queen. As the High King, I must lead. But I must also be just.”

  Here he pauses. And then he turns to me. “And today I will dispense justice. Jude Duarte, do you deny you murdered Prince Balekin, Ambassador of the Undersea and brother to the High King?”

  I am not sure what he wants me to say. Would it help to deny it? If so, surely he would not put it to me in such a way—a way that makes it clear he believes I did kill Balekin. Cardan has had a plan all along. All I can do is trust that he has a plan now.

  “I do not deny that we had a duel and that I won it,” I say, my voice coming out more uncertain than I’d like.

  All the eyes of the Folk are on me, and for a moment, as I look out at their pitiless faces, I feel Madoc’s absence keenly. Orlagh’s smile is full of sharp teeth.

  “Hear my judgment,” Cardan says, authority ringing in his voice. “I hereafter exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world until such time as she is pardoned by the crown. Until the
n, let her not step one foot in Faerie or forfeit her life.”

  I gasp. “But you can’t do that!”

  He looks at me for a long moment, but his gaze is mild, as though he’s expecting me to be fine with exile. As though I am nothing more than one of his petitioners. As though I am nothing at all. “Of course I can,” he replies.

  “But I’m the Queen of Faerie,” I shout, and for a moment, there is silence. Then everyone around me begins to laugh.

  I can feel my cheeks heat. Tears of frustration and fury prick my eyes as, a beat too late, Cardan laughs with them.

  At that moment, knights clap their hands on my wrists. Sir Rannoch pulls me down from the horse. For a mad moment I consider fighting him as though two dozen knights aren’t around us.

  “Deny it then,” I yell. “Deny me!”

  He cannot, of course, so he does not. Our eyes meet, and the odd smile on his face is clearly meant for me. I remember what it was to hate him with the whole of my heart, but I’ve remembered too late.

  “Come with me, my lady,” Sir Rannoch says, and there is nothing I can do but go.

  Still, I cannot resist looking back. When I do, Cardan is taking the first step onto the new island. He looks every bit the ruler his father was, every bit the monster his brother wanted to become. Crow-black hair blown back from his face, scarlet cape swirling around him, eyes reflecting the flat gray emptiness of the sky.

  “If Insweal is the Isle of Woe, Insmire, the Isle of Might, and Insmoor the Isle of Stone,” he says, his voice carrying across the newly formed land. “Then let this be Insear, Isle of Ash.”

  I lie on the couch in front of the television. In front of me a plate of microwaved fish sticks grows cold. On the screen in front of me, a cartoon ice-skater is sulking. He is not a very good skater, I think. Or maybe he’s a great skater. I keep forgetting to read the subtitles.

  It’s hard to concentrate on pretty much anything these days.

  Vivi comes into the room and flops down on the couch. “Heather won’t text me back,” she says.