فصل دهم

Ten.

The king of Elfhame tries to do one good thing.

The night before they are set to meet with the solitary fey in the mortal world, Vivi and Heather take them out for bubble tea. There are no actual bubbles. Instead, he is served toothsome balls soaked in a sweet, milky tea. Vivi orders grass jelly, and Heather gets a lavender drink that is the color of the flowers and just as fragrant.

Cardan is fascinated and insists on having a sip of each. Then he eats a bite of the half-dozen types of dumplings they order—mushroom, cabbage and pork, cilantro and beef, hot-oil chicken dumplings that numb his tongue, then creamy custard to cool it, along with sweet red bean that sticks to his teeth.

Heather glares at Cardan as though he bit the head off a sprite in the middle of a banquet.

“You can’t eat some of a dumpling and put it back,” Oak insists. “That’s revolting.” Cardan considers that villainy takes many forms, and he is good at all of them.

Jude stabs the remainder of the bean bun with a single chopstick, popping it into her mouth and chewing with obvious satisfaction. “Gooh,” she gets out when she notices the others looking at her.

Vivi laughs and orders more dumplings.

When they return to Heather’s apartment, they watch a movie about a terrible family in a big, old house and the beautiful and clever nurse who inherits everything. Cardan lies on the rug with one arm propping up his head and the other slung across Jude’s waist. He understands everything and nothing he sees on the screen—just as he understands everything and nothing about being here with her family. He feels like a feral cat that might bite out of habit.

Oak gave up his room so they could sleep there, and although the bed is small, Cardan cannot mind when he takes Jude in his arms.

“You’re probably missing your fancy palace right about now,” she whispers to him in the dark.

He traces the edge of her lip, runs his finger over the soft human hair of her cheek, pausing on a freckle, and comes to rest on a tiny scar, a line of pale skin drawn there by some blade.

He considers explaining how much he despised the palace as a child, how he dreamed of escaping Elfhame. She knows most of that already. Then he considers reminding her that the fancy palace is now as much hers as his. “Not in the least,” he says instead, and feels her smile against his skin.

But once he starts recalling his desire to leave Elfhame, he can’t help but also recall how desperately she wanted to stay. And how difficult that had been, how hard she had fought, how hard she was still fighting, even now that she didn’t have to.

“Why didn’t you hate everyone?” he asks. “Everyone, all the time.”

“I hated you,” Jude reassures him, bringing her mouth to his.

Late the next afternoon, Bryern comes to the woods between the highway and Heather’s apartment complex.

Jude’s old employer turns out to be a phooka in a vest and a bowler hat. He has black fur, golden goat eyes, and what Cardan believes to be a bad attitude. He’s accompanied by a scruffy clurichaun and a nervous-looking ogre serving as bodyguards, which suggests that Bryern was afraid to come before his sovereigns. That doesn’t bother Cardan—in fact, he’s rather pleased about it—but it’s insulting to think those two would keep Bryern safe from the High King and Queen of Elfhame. Not only that, but Cardan finds their bows to be insufferably shallow.

They seem rattled when they realize who he is. And somehow he finds that to be the thing that annoys him most of all, that they thought he wouldn’t be bothered to come, that he would leave this to Jude.

His queen is dressed in mortal clothing, jeans and what they call a hoodie, her thumbs through holes at the wrists. Her hair falls mostly loose, but two braids hang near her face in a style she might wear in Elfhame, but which here does not mark her as anything other than a mortal girl who grew up in a mortal home.

For his part, he is clad in what Vivi told him to put on—black shirt and jeans, boots and jacket. No silver or gold except the rings on his fingers, which he refused to remove. He has never before willingly worn such an understated costume.

“So,” Jude says, “you want to give me my old job back.”

Bryern has the good sense to flinch a little. “Your Majesty,” he says, “we are in the middle of a very difficult situation. A Court from the Northwest has come here, saying they are hunting a monster, and will not respect our self-governance. Their knights force us into servitude, claiming we must fight at their side. And the monster slaughters anyone who comes into the woods where it dwells.” “Huh,” says Jude. “Where exactly are these w—”

“Which Court?” Cardan interrupts, hoping to keep Jude from immediately volunteering to fight something.

“That of Queen Gliten, Your Majesty,” Bryern tells him, but then turns to Jude, fishing a folded paper out of his pocket. “This is a map. I thought you might want it.” Queen Gliten. Cardan frowns. He knows something about her, but he can’t quite recall what.

Jude pockets the map.

Bryern gives an awkward bob of his horned head. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

She gives him a look that Cardan would not enjoy having leveled in his direction. “Is that why you compared my foster father to Grima Mog and tried to guilt me into it?” “A comparison you can hardly mind, since Grima Mog now sits in a place of honor by your side,” the clurichaun puts in hopefully, speaking for the first time.

“Stuff it, Ladhar,” Jude says with a roll of her eyes. “Okay, we’re on it. Don’t say the High Court never did anything for you.” image

That night, Cardan lies in bed, looking at the ceiling, long after Jude falls asleep.

At first, he thinks it is the unfamiliar scents of this world keeping him awake, the iron tang that hangs over everything. And then he thinks that perhaps he has become too used to velvet coverlets and mattresses piled up on one another.

But as he slides out of bed, he realizes it isn’t that.

After their meeting with Bryern, Jude was entirely amenable to his suggestions. Yes, they should immediately send a message to Queen Gliten and command her representatives to present themselves to be reprimanded. Yes, absolutely, they ought to send for reinforcements. And sure, he could look at the map, although it was tucked into her rucksack, so maybe he should look later. After all, they had time.

Heather cooked something she called “plant-based meat” for dinner, formed into the shape of “hamburgers” and dressed with two sauces, leaves, and slices of raw onion soaked in water. Oak ate two. After dinner, Cardan found himself at a picnic table outside, drinking rosé wine from a paper cup and laughing over every detail Vivi supplied about Madoc’s attempts to fit into the mortal world.

It was an entirely lovely night.

Marriage means sharing each other’s interests, and since his wife’s run toward strategy and murder, he’s used to her throwing herself at absolutely everything that crosses her path. If she isn’t doing that now, there’s a reason.

He pads out to the kitchen and takes her leather rucksack. Fishing around, he draws out the map from Bryern. Beside it, he finds the ancient leafy metal armor that Taryn—of all people—discovered in the royal treasury.

He shakes his head, sure now of her plan.

Sometime before dawn, she will wake, dress herself in that armor, strap on her mortal father’s sword, sneak out, and go fight the creature. That’s what she always planned, why she wanted to come without retainers or knights in the first place.

It would serve her right if he sat at the kitchen table and caught her as she tried to sneak out.

But when he takes the map to the window and reads it by the dim light of the streetlamp outside, he realizes something else.

Over the stretch of woods where the creature is supposed to dwell is marked ASLOG. And that’s when he remembers the last time he heard Queen Gliten mentioned—she was the one who cheated the troll woman out of what she’d earned. Now Aslog is being hunted, both by Queen Gliten’s Court and by Jude, if she has half a chance.

Maybe he has the power to fix this. Maybe he’s actually the only one who can.

Oak looks up sleepily from the couch he’s been exiled to, but upon seeing Cardan, he turns over, kicking the blankets off his feet and burrowing deeper into the cushions.