The Cruel Prince

  “Sure, Daddy,” she says with small, poisonous emphasis as she slips out with my earrings.

  He clears his throat a little awkwardly and holds the silver sword out to me. The guard and pommel are unadorned, elegantly shaped. The blade is etched along the fuller with a barely visible pattern of vines. “I have something I’d like you to wear tonight. It’s a gift.”

  I think I make a little gasp. It’s a really, really, really pretty sword.

  “You’ve been training so diligently that I knew it should be yours. Its maker called it Nightfell, but of course you are welcome to call it anything you like or nothing at all. It’s said to bring the wielder luck, but everyone says that about swords, don’t they? It’s something of a family heirloom.”

  Oriana’s words come back to me: He’s besotted with you girls. He must have loved your mother very much. “But what about Oak?” I blurt out. “What if he wants it?”

  Madoc gives me a small smile. “Do you want it?”

  “Yes,” I say, unable to help myself. When I pull it from its sheath, it comes as though made for my hand. The balance is perfect. “Yes, of course I do.”

  “That’s good, because this is your sword by right, forged for me by your father, Justin Duarte. He’s the one who crafted it, the one who named it. It’s your family heirloom.”

  I am momentarily robbed of breath. I have never heard my father’s name spoken aloud by Madoc before. We do not talk about the fact that he murdered my parents; we talk around it.

  We certainly don’t talk about when they were alive.

  “My father made this,” I say carefully, to be sure. “My father was here, in Faerie?”

  “Yes, for several years. I only have a few pieces of his. I found two, one for you and one for Taryn.” He grimaces. “This is where your mother met him. Then they ran away together, back to the mortal world.”

  I take a shuddering breath, finding the courage to ask a question I have often wondered but never dared voice aloud. “What were they like?” I flinch as the words leave my mouth. I don’t even know if I want him to tell me. Sometimes I just want to hate her; if I can hate her, then it won’t be so bad that I love him.

  But, of course, she’s still my mother. The only thing I can truly be angry with her for is being gone, and that’s certainly not her fault.

  Madoc sits down on the goat-footed stool in front of my dressing table and stretches out his bad leg, looking for all the world as though he’s about to tell me a bedtime story. “She was clever, your mother. And young. After I brought her to Faerie, she drank and danced weeks away at a time. She was at the center of every revel.

  “I could not always accompany her. There was a war in the East, an Unseelie king with a lot of territory and no desire to bend his knee to the High King. But I drank in her happiness when I was here. She had a way of making everyone around her feel as though every impossible thing was possible. I suppose I put it down to her mortality, but I don’t think I was being fair. It was something else. Her daring, perhaps. She never seemed cowed, not by any of the magic, not by anything.”

  I thought he might be angry, but he obviously isn’t. In fact, his voice holds a totally unexpected fondness. I sit down on the bench in front of my bed, holding on to my new silver sword for support.

  “Your father was interesting. I imagine you think I didn’t know him, but he came to my house—my old house, the one they burned down—many times. We drank honey wine in the gardens, the three of us. He loved swords, he said, from the time he was a child. When he was around your age, he persuaded his parents to allow him to build his first forge in their backyard.

  “Instead of going to college, he found a master swordsmith to take him on as an apprentice. From there, he got himself introduced to an assistant curator in a museum. She snuck him in after hours, allowing him to see ancient swords up close and honing his craft. But then he heard about the kinds of blades that could be wrought only by the fey, so he came looking for us.

  “He was a master smith when he came here and even better when he left. But he couldn’t resist bragging about stealing our secrets along with his bride. Eventually, the tale came to Balekin, who gave it to me.”

  If my father had really talked with Madoc, he ought to have known better than to brag about stealing from him. But I have stood on the streets of the mortal world and felt how far it seems from Elfhame. As the years passed, his time in Faerie must have seemed like a distant dream.

  “There is little good in me,” Madoc says. “But I owe you a debt, and I have sworn to do the best by you that I know how.”

  I rise, crossing the room to put one gloved hand against the pallid green skin of his face. He closes his cat eyes. I cannot forgive him, but I cannot hate him, either. We stand like that for a long moment, then he looks up, takes my unbandaged hand, and kisses the back of it, mouth against cloth.

  “After today, things will be different,” he tells me. “I will wait for you in the carriage.”

  He leaves me. I hold my head. My thoughts will not focus. When I rise, though, I strap on my new sword. It is cold and solid in my hands, heavy as a promise.

  Oak is in cricket green, dancing around in front of the carriage. When he sees me, he runs over, wanting me to carry him, then he runs off to pet the horses before I can. He is a faerie child, with a faerie child’s whims.

  Taryn is beautiful in her heavily embroidered dress, and Vivi radiant in soft violet gray with artfully sewn moths seeming to fly from her shoulder across her chest to gather in another group on one side of her waist. I realize how rarely I’ve seen her in truly splendid clothes. Her hair is up, and my earrings glitter in her lightly furred ears. Her cat eyes gleam in the half light, twin to Madoc’s. For once, that makes me smile. I take Taryn’s hand with my undamaged one, and she squeezes it, hard. We grin at each other, conspirators for once.

  In the carriage, there is a hamper of things to eat, which was smart of someone, because none of us has remembered to eat enough all day. I remove a glove and eat two small rolls of bread so light and filled with air that they seem to dissolve on my tongue. At the center of each is a mass of honeyed raisins and nuts, their sweetness enough to bring tears to my eyes. Madoc passes me a slab of pale yellow cheese and a still-bloody slice of juniper-and-pepper-crusted venison. We make quick work of the food.

  I spot Madoc’s red cap, half in and half out of his front pocket. His version of a medal, I suppose, to be worn on state occasions.

  None of us really speaks. I do not know what the others dwell on, but abruptly, I realize I am going to have to dance. I am terrible at dancing, since I have no practice in it other than humiliating lessons at school, partnered with Taryn.

  I think of the Ghost and the Roach and the Bomb, trying to safeguard Dain against whatever Balekin has planned. I wish I knew what to do, how to help them.

  KILL THE BEARER OF THIS MESSAGE.

  I look over at Madoc, drinking spiced wine. He seems entirely comfortable, totally unaware of—or unconcerned with—the loss of one of his spies.

  My heartbeat drums faster. I keep remembering not to wipe my hand on my skirts for fear of smearing them with food. Eventually, Oriana pulls out some handkerchiefs soaked in rose and mint water for us to wipe ourselves down with. This sets off a chase, with Oak trying to avoid being washed. There isn’t far for him to run in the carriage, but he keeps it going longer than you’d think, stepping on all of us in the process.

  I am so distracted I don’t even automatically brace when we go straight through the rock and into the palace. We’re lurching to a stop before I even notice we’ve arrived. A footman opens the door, and I see the whole courtyard, filled with music and voices and merriment. And candles, forests of them, the wax melting to create an effect like termite-eaten wood. Candles rest atop tree branches, flames flickering with the whoosh of dresses sweeping below. They line the walls like sentries and clump in tight arrangements on stones, lighting up the hill.

  “Ready?” Tary
n whispers to me.

  “Yes,” I say a little breathlessly.

  We pile out of the carriage. Oriana has a little silver leash she attaches to Oak’s wrist, which strikes me as not the worst idea, although he whines and sits in the dirt in protest, like a cat.

  Vivienne looks around the courtyard. There’s something feral in her gaze. Her nose flares. “Are we supposed to present ourselves to the High King one last time?” she asks Madoc.

  He gives a half shake of his head. “No. We will be called forth when it is time to take our oaths. Until then, I must stand beside Prince Dain. The rest of you should go enjoy yourselves until the bells chime and Val Moren begins the ceremony. Then, come to the throne room to witness the coronation. I’d have you close to the dais, where my knights can look after you.”

  I turn toward Oriana, expecting another speech about not getting into trouble or even a new speech about keeping my legs closed around royalty, but she is too busy pleading with Oak to get out of the road.

  “Let’s party,” Vivi says, sweeping Taryn and me along with her. We escape into the crowd, and moments later, we are drowning in it.

  The Palace of Elfhame is packed with bodies. The unallied wild fey, courtiers, and monarchs mingle together. Selkies from Queen Orlagh’s Court of the Undersea speak together in their own language, skins slung from their shoulders like capes. I spot the lord of the Court of Termites, Roiben, who is said to have killed his own lover to win a throne. He stands near one of the long trestle tables, and even in the cramped hall, there is space around him, as though no one dares get too close. His hair is the color of salt, his garments entirely black, and a deadly curved sword sits at his hip. Incongruously, beside him, a green-skinned pixie girl is dressed in what appears to be a pearl-gray slip dress and heavy lace-up boots—obviously mortal clothes. And standing on either side of the pixie are two knights in his livery, one with scarlet hair braided into a crown on her head. Dulcamara, who lectured us on the crown.

  There are others, figures I have heard of in ballads: Rue Silver of New Avalon, who cut her island out of the California coast, is talking to the exiled Alderking’s son, Severin, who might try to ally with the new High King or might join Lord Roiben’s Court. He’s with a red-haired human boy about my age, which makes me pause to study them. Is the boy his servant? Is he enchanted? I can’t tell just from the way he looks around the room, but when he sees me staring, he grins.

  I turn quickly away.

  As I do, the selkies shift, and I spot someone else with them. Gray-skinned and blue-lipped, hair hanging around her sunken-eyed face. But despite all that, I recognize her. Sophie. I had heard stories about the merfolk of the Undersea keeping drowned sailors, but I didn’t believe them. When her mouth moves, I see that she has sharp teeth. A shudder ripples across my shoulders.

  I stumble along after Vivi and Taryn. When I look back, I don’t see Sophie, and I am not entirely sure I didn’t imagine her.

  We slide past a shagfoal and a barghest. Everyone is laughing too loudly, dancing too fiercely. As I pass one reveler in a goblin mask, he lifts it and winks at me. It’s the Roach.

  “Heard about the other night. Good work,” he says. “Now keep your eyes out for anything that seems amiss. If Balekin’s going to move against Dain, he’s going to do it before the ceremony starts.”

  “I will,” I say, pulling free of my sisters to tarry with him a moment. In a crowd this size, it’s easy to be briefly lost.

  “Good. Came to see Prince Dain win the crown with my own eyes.” He reaches into his leaf-brown jacket and pulls out a silver flask, popping the top and taking a swig. “Plus watching the Gentry cavort and make fools out of themselves.”

  He holds the flask out to me with one gray-green clawed hand. Even from there, I can smell whatever is inside, pungent and strong and a little swampy. “I’m okay,” I say, shaking my head.

  “You sure are,” he tells me, laughing, and then pulls down his mask again.

  I am left grinning after him as he sweeps away into the crowd. Just seeing him has filled me with a sense of finally belonging to this place. He and the Ghost and the Bomb are not precisely my friends, but they actually seem to like me, and I am not inclined to split hairs. I have a place with them and a purpose.

  “Where have you been?” Vivienne asks, grabbing hold of me. “You need a leash like Oak’s. Come on, we’re going to dance.”

  I eddy along with them. There’s music everywhere, urging a lightness of step. They say the pull of faerie music is impossible to resist, which isn’t quite true. What’s impossible is to stop dancing once you’ve begun, so long as the music goes on. And it does, all night, one dance bleeding into the next, one song becoming another without a pause to catch your breath. It’s exhilarating to be caught up in the music, to be swept away in the tide of it. Of course, Vivi, being one of them, can stop whenever she wants. She can also yank us out, so dancing with her is almost safe. Not that Vivi always remembers to do the safe thing.

  But really, I am the last person to judge anyone for that.

  We clasp hands and join the circle dance, leaping and laughing. The song feels as though it is calling my blood, moving it through my veins to the same ragged beat, with the same sweet chords. The circle breaks up, and somehow I am holding Locke’s hands. He sweeps me around in a giddy whoosh.

  “You are very beautiful,” he says. “Like a winter night.”

  He smiles down at me with his fox eyes. His russet hair curls around his pointed ears. From one lobe, a golden earring dangles, catching the candlelight like a mirror. He’s the one who’s beautiful, a kind of breathless, inhuman beauty.

  “I’m glad you like the dress,” I manage.

  “Tell me, could you love me?” he asks, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “Of course.” I laugh, not sure of the answer I am supposed to give. But the question is so oddly phrased that I can hardly deny him. I love my parents’ murderer; I suppose I could love anyone. I’d like to love him.

  “I wonder,” he says. “What would you do for me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” This riddling figure with flinty eyes isn’t the Locke who stood on the rooftop of his estate and spoke so gently to me or who chased me, laughing, through its halls. I am not quite sure who this Locke is, but he has put me entirely off balance.

  “Would you forswear a promise for me?” He is smiling at me as though he’s teasing.

  “What promise?” He sweeps me around him, my leather slippers pirouetting over the packed earth. In the distance, a piper begins to play.

  “Any promise,” he says lightly, although it is no light thing he is asking.

  “I guess it depends,” I say, because the real answer, a flat no, isn’t what anyone wants to hear.

  “Do you love me enough to give me up?” I am sure my expression is stricken. He leans closer. “Isn’t that a test of love?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I say. All this must be leading up to some declaration on his part, either of affection or of a lack of it.

  “Do you love me enough to weep over me?” The words are spoken against my neck. I can feel his breath, making the tiny hairs stand up, making me shudder with an odd combination of desire and discomfort.

  “You mean if you were hurt?”

  “I mean if I hurt you.”

  My skin prickles. I don’t like this. But at least I know what to say. “If you hurt me, I wouldn’t cry. I would hurt you back.”

  His step falters as we sweep over the floor. “I’m sure you’d—”

  And then he breaks off speaking, looking behind him. I can barely think. My face is hot. I dread what he will say next.

  “Time to change partners,” a voice says, and I look to see that it’s the worst person possible: Cardan. “Oh,” he says to Locke. “Did I steal your line?”

  His tone is unfriendly, and as I turn his words over in my mind, they do little to comfort me.

  Locke relinquishes me to the youngest prince, as is
expected out of deference. I see out of the corner of my eye that Taryn is watching us. She’s standing frozen in the middle of the revel, looking lost, as faeries swarm around her, swinging their partners in dizzying spirals. I wonder if Cardan bothered her before he bothered me.

  He takes my wounded hand in his. He’s wearing black gloves, the leather warm even through the silk over my fingers, and a black suit of clothes. Raven feathers cover the upper half of his doublet, and his boots have excessively pointed metal toes that make me conscious of how easy it will be to kick me savagely once we’ve begun dancing. At his brow, he wears a crown of woven metal branches, cocked slightly askew. Dark silver paint streaks over his cheekbones, and black lines run along his lashes. The left one is smeared, as though he forgot about it and wiped his eye.

  “What do you want?” I ask him, forcing the words out. I am still thinking about Locke, still reeling from what he said and what he didn’t. “Go ahead. Insult me.”

  His eyebrows go up. “I don’t take commands from mortals,” he says with his customary cruel smile.

  “So you’re going to say something nice? I don’t think so. Faeries can’t lie.” I want to be angry, but what I feel right now is gratitude. My face is no longer flaming and my eyes aren’t stinging. I am ready to fight, which is far better. Though I am sure it’s the last thing he meant, he did me an enormous favor when he whisked me away from Locke.

  His hand slides lower on my hip. I narrow my eyes at him.

  “You really hate me, don’t you?” he asks, his smile growing.

  “Almost as much as you hate me,” I say, thinking of the page with my name scratched on it. Thinking of the way he looked at me when he was drunk in the hedge maze. The way he’s looking at me now.

  He lets go of my hand. “Until we spar again,” he says, making a bow that I cannot help feel is nothing but mockery.

  I look after him as he weaves unsteadily through the crowd, not sure what to make of that conversation.