The Cruel Prince

I glance at a silver plate on the wall, which shows only a distorted and blurred image of myself. Even in that, I can tell she’s right—a halo of brown surrounds my head. Reaching up, I begin undoing my braid, combing it out with my fingers.

“Locke’s asleep,” I say, assuming that she’s waiting to see him. I expect to feel as though I have something over her, being the one that came from his bedroom, but what I actually feel is a little bit of panic.

I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to wake up in a boy’s house and talk to the girl with whom he had a relationship. That she’s also a girl who probably wants me dead is, oddly, the only part of this that feels at all normal.

“My mother and his brother thought we were to be wed,” she says, seeming as though she might be talking to the air and not to me at all. “It was going to be a useful alliance.”

“With Locke?” I ask, confused.

She gives me an annoyed look, my question seeming to bring her briefly out of her story. “Cardan and me. He ruins things. That’s what he likes. To ruin things.”

Of course Cardan likes to ruin things. I wonder how that could be something she only just realized. I would have thought that would be something they had in common.

I leave her to her apple and her reminiscences and head toward the palace. A cool breeze blows through the trees, lifting my loose hair and bringing me the scent of pine. In the sky, I hear the call of gulls. I am grateful for the lecture today, glad to have an excuse for not going home and hearing whatever Oriana has to say to me.

Today the lecture is in the tower, my least favorite location. I climb the steps and settle myself. I am late, but I find a spot on a bench near the back. Taryn is sitting on the other side. She looks at me once, raising her brows. Cardan is beside her, dressed in green velvet, with golden stitching picking out thorns tipped in blue thread. He lounges in his seat, long fingers tapping restlessly against the wood of the bench beside him.

Looking at him makes me feel equally restless.

At least Valerian hasn’t shown up. It is too much to hope that he never returns, but at least I have today.

A new instructor, a knight named Dulcamara, is talking about rules of inheritance, probably in anticipation of the coming coronation.

The coronation, which will mark my rise to power as well. Once Prince Dain is the High King, his spies can haunt the shadows of Elfhame with only Dain himself to keep us in check.

“In some of the lower Courts, a king or queen’s murderer can take the throne,” Dulcamara says. She goes on to tell us that she is part of the Court of Termites, which has not yet joined Eldred’s banner.

Although she is not wearing armor, she stands as though she’s used to the weight of it. “And that is why Queen Mab bargained with the wild fey to make the crown King Eldred wears, which can only be passed down to her descendants. It would be tricky to get it by force.” She grins wickedly.

If Cardan were to try to stop her lesson, she looks like she would eat him alive and crack his bones for marrow.

The Gentry children look at Dulcamara uncomfortably. Rumor has it that Lord Roiben, her king, is planning to swear to the new High King, bringing with him his large Court, one that has held off Madoc’s forces for years. Roiben’s joining the High Court of Elfhame is widely considered to be a masterstroke of diplomacy, negotiated by Prince Dain against Madoc’s wishes. I suppose she’s come for the coronation.

Larkspur, one of the youngest of us, pipes up. “What happens when there are no more children in the Greenbriar line?”

Dulcamara’s smile gentles. “Once there are fewer than two descendants—one to wear the crown and the other to place it on the ruler’s head—the High Crown and its power crumble. All of Elfhame will be free from their oaths to it.

“Then, who knows? Maybe a new ruler will make a new crown. Maybe you’ll return to warring with smaller Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Maybe you will join our banners in the Southwest.” Her smile makes it clear which of those she would prefer.

I stick my hand up. Dulcamara nods in my direction. “What if someone tries to take the crown?”

Cardan gives me a look. I want to glare, but I can’t help thinking of him sprawled out on the ground with those girls. My cheeks heat all over again. I drop my gaze.

“An interesting question,” Dulcamara says. “Legend has it that the crown will not allow itself to be placed on the brow of anyone who isn’t an heir of Mab, but Mab’s line has been very fruitful. So long as a pair of descendants try to take the crown, it could be done. But the most dangerous part of a coup would be this: The crown is cursed so that a murder of its wearer causes the death of the person responsible.”

I think of the note I found in Balekin’s house, about blusher mushrooms, about vulnerability.

After the lecture, I go down the steps carefully, remembering taking them at a run after stabbing Valerian. My vision blurs, and I feel dizzy for a moment, but the moment passes. Taryn, coming behind me, all but pushes me into the woods once we’re outside.

“First of all,” she says, tugging me over patches of curling ferns, “no one knows you weren’t home all last night except for Tatterfell, and I gave her one of your nicest rings to make sure she wouldn’t say anything. But you have to tell me where you were.”

“Locke had a party at his house,” I say. “I stayed—but it wasn’t, I mean, nothing much happened. We kissed. That was it.”

Her chestnut braids fly as she shakes her head. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

I let out my breath, perhaps a little dramatically. “Why would I lie? I’m not the one hiding the identity of the person courting me.”

Taryn frowns. “I just think that sleeping in someone’s room, in someone’s bed, is more than kissing.”

My cheeks heat, thinking of the way it had felt to wake up with his body stretched out beside mine. To get the attention off me, I start speculating about her. “Ooooh, maybe it’s Prince Balekin. Are you going to marry Prince Balekin? Or perhaps it’s Noggle and you can count the stars together.”

She smacks me in the arm, a little too hard. “Stop guessing,” she says. “You know I’m not allowed to say.”

“Ow.” I pick a white campion flower and stick it behind my ear.

“So you like him?” she asks. “Really like him?”

“Locke?” I ask. “Of course I do.”

She gives me a look, and I wonder how much I worried her, not coming home the night before.

“Balekin I like less well,” I say, and she rolls her eyes.

When we get back to the stronghold, I find that Madoc has left word he will be out until late. With little else to do for once, I look for Taryn, but although I saw her go upstairs just minutes before, she’s not in her room. Instead, her dress is on the bed and her closet open, a few gowns hanging roughly, as though she pulled them out before finding them wanting.

Has she gone to meet her suitor? I take a turn around the room, trying to see it as a spy might, alert for signs of secrets. I notice nothing unusual but a few rose petals withering on her dressing table.

I go to my room and lie on my bed, going over my memories of the night before. Reaching into my pocket, I remove my knife to finally clean it. When I bring it out, I am holding the golden acorn, too. I turn the bauble over in my hand.

It’s a solid lump of metal—a beautiful object. At first I take it only for that, before I notice the tiny lines running across it, tiny lines that seem to indicate moving parts. As though it were a puzzle.

I can’t screw off the top, although I try. I can’t seem to do anything else with it, either. I am about to give up and toss it onto my dressing table when I glimpse a tiny hole, so small as to be nearly invisible, right at the bottom. Hopping off my bed, I rattle through my desk, looking for a pin. The one I find has a pearl on one end. I try to fit the point into the acorn. It takes a moment, but I manage, pushing past resistance until I feel a click and it opens.

Mechanized steps swing out from a shining center, where a tiny golden bird rests. Its beak moves, and it speaks in a creaky little voice. “My dearest friend, these are the last words of Liriope. I have three golden birds to scatter. Three attempts to get one into your hand. I am too far gone for any antidote, and so if you hear this, I leave you with the burden of my secrets and the last wish of my heart. Protect him. Take him far from the dangers of this Court. Keep him safe, and never, ever tell him the truth of what happened to me.”

Tatterfell comes into the room, bringing with her a tray with tea things. She tries to peek at what I am doing, but I cup my hand over the acorn.

When she goes out, I set down the bauble and pour myself a cup of tea, holding it to warm my hands. Liriope is Locke’s mother. This seems like a message asking someone—her dearest friend—to spirit him—Locke—away. She calls the message her “last words,” so she must have known she was about to die. Perhaps the acorns were to be sent to Locke’s father, in the hopes Locke might spend the rest of his life exploring wild places with him rather than be caught up in intrigues.

But since Locke is still here, it seems as if none of the three acorns were found. Maybe none of them even left her bower.

I should give it to him, let him decide for himself what to do with it. But all I keep thinking about is the note on Balekin’s desk, the note that seemed to implicate Balekin in Liriope’s murder. Should I tell Locke everything?

I know the provenance of the blusher mushroom that you ask after, but what you do with it must not be tied to me.

I turn the words over in my mind the way I turned the acorn in my hand, and I feel the same seams.

There’s something odd about that sentence.

I copy it out again on a piece of paper to be sure I remember it correctly. When I first read it, the note seemed to imply that Queen Orlagh had located a deadly poison for Balekin. But blusher mushrooms—while rare—grow wild, even on this island. I picked blusher mushrooms in the Milkwood, beside the black-thorned bees, who build their hives high in the trees (an antidote can be made with their honey, I learned recently from all my reading). Blusher mushrooms aren’t dangerous if you don’t drink the red liquid.     PrevNextTip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between pages.

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