The Wicked King

I shove the crystal back into the drawer. Who would cherish this? It’s horrible.

And yet, it’s not dangerous. There’s no reason to do anything with it but leave it where it was. The Bomb and I continue through the room together. Once we’re satisfied it’s safe, we head through a door carved with an owl, back into the king’s bedchamber.

A massive half-tester bed rests in the center, curtained in green, with the symbol of the Greenbriar line stitched in gleaming gold. Thick spider-silk blankets are smoothed out over a mattress that smells as though it has been stuffed with flowers.

“Come on,” says the Bomb, flopping down on the bed and rolling over so that she is looking up at the ceiling. “Let’s make sure it’s safe for our new High King, just in case.”

I suck in a surprised breath, but follow. My weight on the mattress makes it dip, and the heady scent of roses overwhelms my senses.

Spreading out on the King of Elfhame’s coverlets, breathing in the air that perfumed his nights, has an almost hypnotic quality. The Bomb pillows her head in her arms as though it’s no big thing, but I remember High King Eldred’s hand on my head and the slight jolt of nerves and pride I felt each time he acknowledged me. Lying on his bed feels like wiping my dirty peasant feet on the throne.

And yet, how could I not?

“Our king is a lucky duck,” the Bomb says. “I’d like a bed like this, big enough to have a guest or two.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask, teasing her as I would have once teased my sisters. “Anyone in particular?”

She looks away, embarrassed, which makes me pay attention. I push myself up on one elbow. “Wait! Is it someone I know?”

For a moment, she doesn’t answer, which is long enough.

“It is! The Ghost?”

“Jude!” she says. “No.”

I frown at her. “The Roach?”

The Bomb sits up, long fingers pulling the coverlet to her. Since she cannot lie, she only sighs. “You don’t understand.”

The Bomb is beautiful, delicate features and warm brown skin, wild white hair and luminous eyes. I think of her as possessing some combination of charm and skill that means she could have anyone she wanted.

The Roach’s black tongue and his twisted nose and the tuft of fur-like hair at the top of his scalp add up to his being impressive and terrifying, but even according to the aesthetics of Faerieland, even in a place where inhuman beauty is celebrated along with almost opulent ugliness, I am not sure even he would guess that the Bomb longs for him.

I would never have guessed it.

I don’t know how to say that to her without sounding as though I am insulting him, however.

“I guess I don’t,” I concede.

She draws a pillow onto her lap. “My people died in a brutal, internecine Court war a century ago, leaving me on my own. I went into the human world and became a small-time crook. I wasn’t particularly good at it. Mostly I was just using glamour to hide my mistakes. That’s when the Roach spotted me. He pointed out that while I might not be much of a thief, I was a dab hand at concocting potions and bombs. We went around together for decades. He was so affable, so dapper and charming, that he’d con people right to their faces, no magic required.”

I smile at the thought of him in a derby hat and a vest with a pocket watch, amused by the world and everything in it.

“Then he had this idea we were going to steal from the Court of Bone in the West. The con went wrong. The Court carved us up and filled us full of curses and geases. Changed us. Forced us to serve them.” She snaps her fingers, and sparks fly. “Fun, right?”

“I bet it wasn’t,” I say.

She flops back and keeps talking. “The Roach—Van, I can’t call him the Roach while I’m talking like this. Van’s the one who got me through being there. He told me stories, tales of Queen Mab’s imprisoning a frost giant, of binding all the great monsters of yore, and winning the High Crown. Stories of the impossible. Without Van, I don’t know if I could have survived.

“Then we screwed up a job, and Dain got hold of us. He had a scheme for us to betray the Court of Bone and join him. So we did. The Ghost was already by his side, and the three of us made a formidable team. Me with explosives. The Roach stealing anything or anyone. And the Ghost, a sharpshooter with a light step. And here we are, somehow, safe in the Court of Elfhame, working for the High King himself. Look at me, sprawled across his royal bed, even. But here there’s no reason for Van to take my hand or sing to me when I am hurting. There is no reason for him to bother with me at all.”

She lapses into silence. We both stare up at the ceiling.

“You should tell him,” I say. Which is not bad advice, I think. Not advice I would take myself, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad.

“Perhaps.” The Bomb pushes herself up off the bed. “No tricks or traps. You think it’s safe to let our king in here?”

I think of the boy in the crystal, of his proud smile and his balled fist. I think of the horned faerie woman, who must have been his mother, shoving him away from her. I think of his father, the High King, who didn’t bother to intervene, didn’t even bother to make sure he was clothed or his face wiped. I think of how Cardan avoided these rooms.

I sigh. “I wish I could think of a place he’d be safer.”

At midnight, I am expected to attend a banquet. I sit several seats from the throne and pick at a course of crisped eels. A trio of pixies sings a cappella for us as courtiers try to impress one another with their wit. Overhead, chandeliers drip wax in long strands.

High King Cardan smiles down the table indulgently and yawns like a cat. His hair is messy, as though he did no more than finger-comb it since rising from my bed. Our eyes meet, and I am the one who looks away, my face hot.

Kiss me until I am sick of it.

Wine is brought in colored carafes. They glow aquamarine and sapphire, citrine and ruby, amethyst and topaz. Another course comes, with sugared violets and frozen dew.

Then come domes of glass, under which little silvery fish sit in a cloud of pale blue smoke.

“From the Undersea,” says one of the cooks, dressed for the occasion. She bows.

I look across the table at Randalin, Minister of Keys, but he is pointedly ignoring me.

All around me, the domes rise, and the smoke, redolent of peppercorns and herbs, fills the room.

I see that Locke has seated himself beside Cardan, drawing the girl whose seat it was onto his lap. She kicks up her hooved feet and throws back her horned head in laughter.

“Ah,” says Cardan, lifting up a gold ring from his plate. “I see my fish has something in its belly.”

“And mine,” says a courtier on his other side, picking out a single shiny pearl as large as a thumbnail. She laughs with delight. “A gift from the sea.”

Each silvery fish contains a treasure. The cooks are summoned, but they give stammering disavowals, swearing the fish were fresh-caught and fed nothing but herbs by the kitchen Folk. I frown at my plate, at the beads of sea glass I find beneath my fish’s gills.

When I look up, Locke holds a single gold coin, perhaps part of a lost mortal ship’s hoard.

“I see you staring at him,” Nicasia says, sitting down beside me. Tonight she wears a gown of gold lacework. Her dark tourmaline hair is pulled up with two golden combs the shape of a shark jaw, complete with golden teeth.

“Perhaps I am looking only at the trinkets and gold with which your mother thinks she can buy this Court’s favor,” I say.

She picks up one of the violets from my plate and places it delicately on her tongue.

“I lost Cardan’s love for Locke’s easy words and easier kisses, sugared like these flowers,” she says. “Your sister lost your love to get Locke’s, didn’t she? But we all know what you lost.”

“Locke?” I laugh. “Good riddance.”

Her brows knit together. “Surely it’s not the High King himself you were gazing at.”

“Surely not,” I echo, but I don’t meet her eyes.

“Do you know why you didn’t tell anyone my secret?” she asks. “Perhaps you tell yourself that you enjoy having something over my head. But in truth, I think it’s that you knew no one would ever believe you. I belong in this world. You don’t. And you know it.”

“You don’t even belong on land, sea princess,” I remind her. And yet, I cannot help recalling how the Living Council doubted me. I cannot help how her words crawl under my skin.

Someone you trust has already betrayed you.

“This will never be your world, mortal,” she says.

“This is mine,” I say, anger making me reckless. “My land and my king. And I will protect them both. Say the same, go on.”

“He cannot love you,” she says to me, her voice suddenly brittle.

She obviously doesn’t like the idea of my claiming Cardan, obviously is still infatuated with him, and just as obviously has no idea what to do about it.

“What do you want?” I ask her. “I was just sitting here, minding my own business, eating my dinner. You’re the one who came up to me. You’re the one accusing me of… I’m not even sure what.”

“Tell me what you have over him,” Nicasia says. “How did you trick him into putting you at his right hand, you whom he despised and reviled? How is it that you have his ear?”

“I will tell you, if you tell me something in return.” I turn toward her, giving her my full attention. I have been puzzling over the secret passageway in the palace, over the woman in the crystal.

“I’ve told you all that I am willing to—” Nicasia begins.

“Not that. Cardan’s mother,” I say, cutting her off. “Who was she? Where is she now?”

She tries to turn her surprise into mockery. “If you’re such good friends, why don’t you ask him?”

“I never said we were friends.”

A servant with a mouth full of sharp teeth and butterfly wings on his back brings the next course. The heart of a deer, cooked rare and stuffed with toasted hazelnuts. Nicasia picks up the meat and tears into it, blood running over her fingers.     PrevNextTip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between pages.

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