The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
What a typical faerie prophecy—one that gives you a warning about what you’ll lose but never promises you anything. The boy is dead, but Prince Dain will never be king.
Let me not be that kind of fool, to base my strategies on riddles.
“So it’s true,” the Roach says quietly. “You’re the one who killed her.” The Ghost’s frown deepens. It didn’t occur to me until then that they might not know one another’s assignments.
Both of them look uncomfortable. I wonder if the Roach would have done it. I wonder what it means that the Ghost did. When I look at him now, I don’t know what I see.
“I’m going to go home,” I say. “I’ll pretend I got lost at the coronation revel. I should be able to figure out what Cardan is worth to them. I’ll come back tomorrow and run the particulars by you both and the Bomb, if she’s here. Give me a day to see what I can do and your oath to make no decisions until then.”
“If the Bomb has better sense than we do, she’s already gone to ground.” The Roach points to a cabinet. Wordlessly, the Ghost goes and gets out a bottle, placing it on the worn wooden table. “How do we know you won’t betray us? Even if you think you’re on our side now, you might get back to that stronghold of Madoc’s and reconsider.”
I eye the Roach and the Ghost speculatively. “I’ll have to leave Cardan in your care, which means trusting you. I promise not to betray you, and you promise that the prince will be here when I get back.”
Cardan looks relieved at the idea that there will be a delay, whatever happens next. Or perhaps he’s just relieved by the presence of the bottle.
“You could be a kingmaker,” the Ghost says. “That’s seductive. You could make Balekin even more deeply indebted to your father.”
“He’s not my father,” I say sharply. “And if I decide that I want to throw in with Madoc, well then, so long as you get paid, it won’t matter, will it?”
“I guess not,” the Ghost says grudgingly. “But if you come back here with Madoc or anyone else, we’ll kill Cardan. And then we’ll kill you. Understood?”
I nod. If it wasn’t for Prince Dain’s geas, they might have compelled me. Of course, whether Prince Dain’s geas lasted past his death, I do not know and am afraid to find out.
“And if you take more than the day you asked for to get back, we’ll kill him and cut our losses,” the Ghost continues. “Prisoners are like damson plums. The longer you keep them, the less valuable they become. Eventually, they spoil. One day and one night. Don’t be late.”
Cardan flinches and tries to catch my eye, but I ignore him.
“I’ll agree to that,” I say, because I am no fool. None of us is feeling all that trusting at the moment. “So long as you swear Cardan will be here and hale when I return tomorrow, alone.”
And because they’re not fools, either, they swear it.
I don’t know what I expect to find when I get home. It’s a long walk through the woods, longer because I give the encampments of the Folk here for the coronation a wide berth. My dress is dirty and tattered at the hem, my feet are sore and cold. When I arrive, Madoc’s estate looks the way it always does, familiar as my own step.
I think of all the other dresses hanging in my closet, waiting to be worn, the slippers waiting to be danced in. I think of the future I thought I was going to have and the one yawning in front of me like a chasm.
In the hall, I see that there are more knights here than I am used to, coming in and out of Madoc’s parlor. Servants rush back and forth, bringing tankards and inkpots and maps. Few spare me a look.
There’s a cry from across the hall. Vivienne. She and Oriana are in the parlor. Vivi runs toward me, throws her arms around me.
“I was going to kill him,” she says. “I was going to kill him if his stupid plan got you hurt.”
I realize I have not moved. I bring one hand up to touch her hair, let my fingers slip to her shoulder. “I’m fine,” I say. “I just got swept up in the crowd. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
Everything is, of course, not at all fine. But no one tries to contradict me. “Where are the others?”
“Oak is in bed,” Oriana says. “And Taryn is outside Madoc’s study. She’ll be along in a moment.”
Vivi’s expression shifts at that, although I am not sure how to read it.
I go up the stairs to my room, where I wash the paint off my face and the mud off my feet. Vivi follows me, perches on a stool. Her cat eyes are bright gold in the sunlight streaming in from my balcony. She doesn’t speak as I take a comb to my hair, raking through the tangles. I dress myself in dark colors, in a deep blue tunic with a high collar and tight sleeves, in shiny black boots, with new gloves to cover my hands. I strap Nightfell onto a heavier belt and surreptitiously put the ring with the royal seal into my pocket.
It feels so surreal to be in my room, with my stuffed animals and my books and my collection of poisons. With Cardan’s copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass sitting on my bedside table. A new wave of panic passes over me. I’m supposed to figure out how to turn the capture of the missing prince of Faerie to my advantage. Here, in my childhood home, I want to laugh at my daring. Just who do I think I am?
“What happened to your throat?” Vivi asks, frowning at me. “And what’s wrong with your left hand?”
I forgot how carefully I had concealed those injuries. “They’re not important, not with everything that happened. Why did he do it?”
“You mean, why did Madoc help Balekin?” she says, lowering her voice. “I don’t know. Politics. He doesn’t care about murder. He doesn’t care that it’s his fault Princess Rhyia is dead. He doesn’t care, Jude. He’s never cared. That’s what makes him a monster.”
“Madoc can’t really want Balekin to rule Elfhame,” I say. Balekin would influence how Faerie interacts with the mortal world for centuries, how much blood is shed, and whose. All of Faerie will be like Hollow Hall.
That’s when I hear Taryn’s voice float up the stairwell. “Locke has been in with Madoc for ages. He doesn’t know anything about where Cardan is hiding.”
Vivi goes still, watching my face. “Jude—” she says. Her voice is mostly breath.
“Madoc’s probably just trying to frighten him,” Oriana says. “You know he’s not keen on arranging a marriage in the middle of all this turmoil.”
Before Vivi can say anything else, before she can stop me, I’ve gone to the top of the stairs.
I recall the words Locke said to me after I’d fought in the tournament and pissed off Cardan: You’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale. When he said that he wanted to see what I would do, did he mean to find out what would happen if he broke my heart?
If I can’t find a good enough story, I make one.
Cardan’s words when I asked if he thought I didn’t deserve Locke echo in my head. Oh no, he’d said with a smirk. You’re perfect for each other. And at the coronation: Time to change partners. Oh, did I steal your line?
He knew. How he must have laughed. How they all must have laughed.
“So I suppose I know who your lover is now,” I call to my twin sister.
Taryn looks up and blanches. I descend the stairs slowly, carefully.
I wonder if, when Locke and his friends laughed, she laughed with them.
All the odd looks, the tension in her voice when I talked about Locke, her concern about what he and I were doing in the stables, what we’d done at his house—all of it makes sudden, awful sense. I feel the sharp stab of betrayal.
I draw Nightfell.
“I challenge you,” I tell Taryn. “To a duel. For my honor, which was grievously betrayed.”
Taryn’s eyes widen. “I wanted to tell you,” she says. “There were so many times I started to say something, but I just couldn’t. Locke said if I could endure, it would be a test of love.”
I remember his words from the revel:
I guess she passed the test, and I failed.
“So he proposed to you,” I say. “While the royal family got butchered. That’s so romantic.”
Oriana gives a little gasp, probably afraid that Madoc would hear me, that he’d object to my characterization. Taryn looks a little pale, too. I suppose since none of them actually saw it, they could have been told nearly anything. One doesn’t have to lie to deceive.
My hand tightens on the hilt of Nightfell. “What did Cardan say that made you cry the day after we came back from the mortal world?” I remember my hands buried in his velvet doublet, his back hitting the tree when I shoved him. And then later, how she denied it had anything to do with me. How she wouldn’t tell me what it did have to do with.
For a long moment, she doesn’t answer. By her expression, I know she doesn’t want to tell me the truth.
“It was about this, wasn’t it? He knew. They all knew.” I think of Nicasia sitting at Locke’s dining table, seeming for a moment to take me into her confidence. He ruins things. That’s what he likes. To ruin things.
I thought she’d been talking about Cardan.
“He said it was because of me that he kicked dirt onto your food,” Taryn says, voice soft. “Locke tricked them into thinking it was you who stole him away from Nicasia. So it was you they were punishing. Cardan said you were suffering in my place and that if you knew why, you’d back down, but I couldn’t tell you.”
For a long moment, I do nothing but take in her words. Then I throw my sword down between us. It clangs on the floor. “Pick it up,” I tell her.
Taryn shakes her head. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“You sure about that?” I stand in front of her, in her face, annoyingly close. I can feel how much she itches to take my shoulders and shove. It must have galled her that I kissed Locke, that I slept in his bed. “I think maybe you do. I think you’d love to hit me. And I know I want to hit you.”
There’s a sword hung high on the wall over the hearth, beneath a silken banner with Madoc’s turned-moon crest. I climb onto a nearby chair, step up onto the mantel, and lift it from its hook. It will do.
I hop down and walk toward her, pointing steel at her heart.
“I’m out of practice,” she says.
“I’m not.” I close the distance between us. “But you’ll have the better sword, and you can strike the first blow. That’s fair and more than fair.”
Taryn looks at me for a long moment, then picks up Nightfell. She steps back several paces and draws.
Across the room, Oriana springs to her feet with a gasp. She doesn’t come toward us, though. She doesn’t stop us.
There are so many broken things that I don’t know how to fix. But I know how to fight.
“Don’t be idiots!” Vivi shouts from the balcony. I cannot give her much of my attention. I am too focused on Taryn as she moves across the floor. Madoc taught us both, and he taught us well.
She swings.
I block her blow, our swords slamming together. The metal rings out, echoing through the room like a bell. “Was it fun to deceive me? Did you like the feeling of having something over me? Did you like that he was flirting and kissing me and all the while promising you would be his wife?”
“No!” She parries my first series of blows with some effort, but her muscles remember technique. She bares her teeth. “I hated it, but I’m not like you. I want to belong here. Defying them makes everything worse. You never asked me before you went against Prince Cardan—maybe he started it because of me, but you kept it going. You didn’t care what it brought down on either of our heads. I had to show Locke I was different.”
A few of the servants have gathered to watch.
I ignore them, ignore the soreness in my arms from digging a grave only a night before, ignore the sting of the wound through my palm. My blade slices Taryn’s skirt, cutting nearly to her skin. Her eyes go wide, and she stumbles back.
We trade a series of fast blows. She’s breathing harder, not used to being pushed like this, but not backing down, either.
I beat my blade against hers, not giving her time to do more than defend herself. “So this was revenge?” We used to spar when we were younger, with practice sticks. And since then we’ve engaged in hair pulling, shouting matches, and ignoring each other—but we’ve never fought like this, never with live steel.
“Taryn! Jude!” Vivi yells, starting toward the spiral stair. “Stop or I will stop you.”
“You hate the Folk.” Taryn’s eyes flash as she spins her sword in an elegant strike. “You never cared about Locke. He was just another thing to take from Cardan.”
That staggers me enough that she’s able to get under my guard. Her blade just kisses my side before I whirl away, out of her reach.
She goes on. “You think I’m weak.”
“You are weak,” I tell her. “You’re weak and pathetic and I—”
“I’m a mirror,” she shouts. “I’m the mirror you don’t want to look at.”
I swing toward Taryn again, putting my whole weight into the strike. I am so angry, angry at so many things. I hate that I was stupid. I hate that I was tricked. Fury roars in my head, loud enough to drown out my every other thought.
I swing my sword toward her side in a shining arc.
“I said stop,” Vivi shouts, glamour shimmering in her voice like a net. “Now, stop!”
Taryn seems to deflate, relaxing her arms, letting Nightfell hang limply from suddenly loose fingers. She has a vague smile on her face, as though she’s listening to distant music. I try to check my swing, but it’s too late. Instead, I let the sword go. Momentum sends it sailing across the room to slam into a bookshelf and knock a ram’s skull to the ground. Momentum sends me sprawling on the floor.
I turn to Vivi, aghast. “You had no right.” The words tumble out of my mouth, ahead of the more important ones—I could have sliced Taryn in half.
She looks as astonished as I am. “Are you wearing a charm? I saw you change your clothes, and you didn’t have one.”
Dain’s geas. It outlasted his death.
My knees feel raw. My hand is throbbing. My side stings where Nightfell grazed my skin. I am furious she stopped the fight. I am furious she tried to use magic on us. I push myself to my feet. My breath comes hard. There’s sweat on my brow, and my limbs are shaking.
Hands grab me from behind. Three more servants pitch in, getting between us and grabbing my arms. Two have Taryn, dragging her away from me. Vivi blows in Taryn’s face, and she comes to sputtering awareness.
That’s when I see Madoc outside his parlor, lieutenants and knights crowded around him. And Locke.
My stomach drops.
“What is wrong with you two?” Madoc shouts, as angry as I have ever seen him. “Have we not already had a surfeit of death today?”
Which seems like a paradoxical thing to say since he was the cause of so much of it.
“Both of you will wait for me in the game room.” All I can think of is him up on the dais, his blade cracking through Prince Dain’s chest. I cannot meet his gaze. I am shaking all over. I want to scream. I want to run at him. I feel like a child again, a helpless child in a house of death.
I want to do something, but I do nothing.
He turns to Gnarbone. “Go with them. Make sure they stay away from each other.”
I am led into the game room and sit on the floor with my head in my hands. When I bring them away, they are wet with tears. I wipe my fingers quickly against my pants, before Taryn can see.
We wait at least an hour. I don’t say a single thing to Taryn, and she doesn’t say anything to me, either. She sniffles a little, then wipes her nose and doesn’t weep.
I think of Cardan tied to a chair to cheer myself. Then I think of the way he looked up at me through the curtain of his crow-black hair, of the curling edges of his drunken smile, and I don’t feel in the least bit c
I feel exhausted and utterly, completely defeated.
I hate Taryn. I hate Madoc. I hate Locke. I hate Cardan. I hate everyone. I just don’t hate them enough.
“What did he give you?” I ask Taryn, finally tiring of the silence. “Madoc gave me the sword Dad made. That’s the one we were fighting with. He said he had something for you, too.”
She’s quiet long enough that I don’t think she’s going to answer. “A set of knives, for a table. Supposedly, they cut right through bone. The sword is better. It has a name.”
“I guess you could name your steak knives. Meaty the Elder. Gristlebane,” I say, and she makes a little snorting noise that sounds like the smothering of a laugh.
But after that, we lapse back into silence.
Finally, Madoc enters the room, his shadow preceding him, spreading across the floor like a carpet. He tosses a scabbarded Nightfell onto the ground in front of me, and then settles himself on a couch with legs in the shape of bird feet. The couch groans, unused to taking so much weight. Gnarbone nods at Madoc and sees himself out.
“Taryn, I would talk with you of Locke,” Madoc says.
“Did you hurt him?” There is a barely contained sob in her voice. Unkindly, I wonder if she’s putting it on for Madoc’s benefit.
He snorts, as though maybe he’s wondering the same thing. “When he asked for your hand, he told me that although, as I knew, the Folk are changeable people, he’d still like to take you to wife—which is to mean, I suppose, that you will not find him particularly constant. He said nothing about a dalliance with Jude then, but when I asked a moment ago, he told me, ‘mortal feelings are so volatile that it’s impossible to help toying with them a little.’ He told me that you, Taryn, had shown him that you could be like us. No doubt whatever you did to show him that was the source of conflict between you and your sister.”
Taryn’s dress is pillowed around her. She looks composed, although she has a shallow slash on her side and a cut skirt. She looks like a lady of the Gentry, if one does not stare overmuch at the rounded curves of her ears. When I allow myself to truly think on it, I cannot fault Locke for choosing her. I am violent. I’ve been poisoning myself for weeks. I am a killer and a liar and a spy.