فصل نهم

Nine.

The prince of Elfhame stomps around.

Cardan had his polished boots resting on a rock and his head pillowed on the utterly ridiculous mortal book he’d been reading. Since the one with the girl and the rabbit and the bad queen, he’d discovered he had a taste for human novels. A hob in the market traded them to Cardan for roses smuggled out of the royal gardens.

Nearby, sprites wearing acorn caps and wielding glaives the size of toothpicks battled above a sea of tiger lilies. He glanced up to see Nicasia standing above him, a basket over her arm.

“I wish to talk,” she said, and settled beside him, arranging a blanket and some little cakes dotted with dried fish and wrapped in kelp beside a bottle of what appeared to be a greenish wine. Cardan wrinkled his nose. There was no reason for her to go to all this trouble. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t behaved perfectly civilly toward her and Locke. The four of them menaced the rest of the Court as thoroughly as before. And if his cruelty had the sharp edge of despair, if slights and taunts were all that fell from his tongue now, what did it matter? He had always been awful. Now he was just worse.

“Have one,” she offered.

If he wasn’t going to rule by her side in the Undersea, he didn’t have to eat the food there. “Perhaps once you’ve told me why you’ve disturbed my repose.” “I want you to take me back,” she said. “None of our plans need to change. Nothing between us needs to change from the way it was before.” He yawned, refusing to give her the satisfaction of his surprise. Those were the words that he’d hoped for her to say when he’d discovered her with Locke, but now, he found he no longer wanted them.

In the end, he supposed Balekin had been right. Her dalliance had been a mere nothing. Balekin was probably also right when he said that only with her by his side would Cardan have some measure of political power. If he lost her, he was only himself, the despised, youngest prince.

Luckily, Cardan cared very little for politics. Or reprimands from Eldred.

“No, I don’t think so,” Cardan said. “But I am curious about your change of heart.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one sprite tumbling into a flower and emerging heavily dusted with carrot-colored pollen. The other held up its glaive, victorious.

For a long moment, Nicasia didn’t speak. She picked at a fishcake.

Cardan raised his eyebrows. “Ah, you didn’t make the choice to leave him, did you?” “It’s more complicated than that,” she told him. “And it affects you as well.” “Does it?” he inquired.

“You must listen! Locke’s taken one of the mortal girls as his lover,” Nicasia said, obviously attempting to keep her voice from shaking.

Cardan was silent, his thoughts thrown into confusion.

One of the mortal girls.

“You can’t expect me to pity you,” he said finally, voice tight.

“No,” she said slowly. “I expect you to laugh in my face and tell me that it’s no more than I deserve.” She looked out toward Hollow Hall, miserable. “But I think Locke means to humiliate you as much as he does me in doing this. How does it look, after all, to steal your lover and then tire of her so quickly?” He didn’t care how it made him look. He didn’t care in the least.

“Which one?” Cardan asked. “Which mortal girl?”

“Does it matter?” Nicasia was clearly exasperated. “Either. Both.” It shouldn’t matter. The human girls were insignificant, nothing. In fact, he ought to feel delighted that Nicasia had such swift cause to regret what she’d done. And if he felt even angrier than he had before, well then, he had no cause. “At least you will have the pleasure of seeing what the Grand General does when Locke inevitably mishandles this situation.” “That’s not enough,” she said.

“What then?”

“Punish them.” She took his hands, her expression fierce. “Punish all three of them. Convince Valerian he’d like tormenting the mortals. Force Locke to play along. Make them all suffer.” “You should have led with that,” Cardan told her, getting to his feet. “That I would have agreed to just for fun.” image

It wasn’t until he was glaring down at Jude, standing waist-deep in river water, fighting the current, that he realized he was in trouble. Ink swirled around her from the pot Valerian had dumped out. Sharp-toothed nixies lurked not far off.

Jude’s wet chestnut hair was plastered to her throat. Her cheeks were flushed with cold, her lips turning bluish. And her dark eyes blazed with hatred and contempt.

Which was fair, he supposed, since he was the reason she was in the water. Valerian, Nicasia, and even Locke jeered from the bank.

Jude ought to be cowed. She was supposed to bow and scrape, to submit and acknowledge his superiority. A little groveling wouldn’t have gone amiss. He would have very much liked it if she begged.

“Give up,” Cardan said, fully expecting she would.

“Never.” Jude wore an unnerving little smile in the corners of her mouth, as though even she couldn’t believe what she was saying. The most infuriating part was that she didn’t have to mean it. She was mortal. She could lie. So why wouldn’t she?

In this, there was no winning for her.

And yet, after he told her all the soft, menacing things he could think of, after he left her clambering back up onto the riverbank, he realized he was the one who had retreated. He was the one who backed down.

And all through that night and for many nights after, he couldn’t rid his thoughts of her. Not the hatred in her eyes. That he understood. That he didn’t mind. It warmed him.

But the contempt made him feel as though she saw beneath all his sharp and polished edges. It reminded him of how his father and all the Court had seen him, before he had learned how to shield himself with villainy.

And doomed as she was, he envied her whatever conviction made her stand there and defy him.

She ought to be nothing. She ought to be insignificant. She ought not to matter.

He had to make her not matter.

But every night, Jude haunted him. The coils of her hair. The calluses on her fingers. An absent bite of her lip. It was too much, the way he thought about her. He knew it was too much, but he couldn’t stop.

It disgusted him that he couldn’t stop.

He had to make her see that he was her better. To beg his pardon. And grovel. He had to find a way to make her admire him. To kneel before him and plead for his royal mercy. To surrender. To yield.

Choose a future, Balekin had commanded him when he’d first brought Cardan to Hollow Hall. But no one chooses a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads.

Choose one way and a monster rends your flesh.

Choose another and your heart turns to stone, or fire, or glass.

Years later, Cardan would sit at a table in the Court of Shadows while the Roach taught him how to spin a coin over his knuckles, to set it whirling and have it land the way he wished.

Cardan tried again and again, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate.

“Tails, see?” The Roach repeated the movement, making it look frustratingly easy. “But a prince like yourself, what possible reason would you have to learn a rogue’s trick?” “Who doesn’t want to control fate?” Cardan answered, setting his coin to spinning again.

The Roach slammed his hand down on the table, breaking the pattern. “Remember, all you really get to control is yourself.”