The Cruel Prince (23 page)

His hand slides lower on my hip. I narrow my eyes at him.

“You really hate me, don't you?” he asks, his smile growing.

“Almost as much as you hate me,” I say, thinking of the page with my name scratched on it. Thinking of the way he looked at me when he was drunk in the hedge maze. The way he's looking at me now.

He lets go of my hand. “Until we spar again,” he says, making a bow that I cannot help feel is nothing but mockery.

I look after him as he weaves unsteadily through the crowd, not sure what to make of that conversation.

Bells begin to ring, signaling the start of the ceremony. The musicians quiet their fiddles and harps. For a long moment, the hill is silent, listening, and then people move to their places. I push toward the front, where the rest of the Gentry of the High King's Court are assembling. Where my family will be. Oriana is there already, standing beside one of Madoc's best knights and looking as though she wishes she could be anywhere else. Oak is off his leash and on Taryn's shoulders. She is whispering something to a laughing Locke.

I stop moving. The crowd surges around me, but I am rooted to the spot as Taryn leans in and tucks a stray bit of hair behind Locke's ear.

There is so much in that small gesture. I try to make myself believe it means nothing, but after the strange conversation we had, I can't. But Taryn has a lover, one who is going to ask for her hand tonight. And she knows that Locke and I are… whatever we are.

Do you love me enough to give me up? Isn't that a test of love?

Vivienne has come out of the crowd, cat eyes agleam, hair loose around her face. She takes Oak in her arms and swings him around and around until they both fall in a whoosh of Vivi's skirts. I should go over, but I don't.

I can't face Taryn yet, not when I cannot get such a disloyal thought out of my head.

Instead, I hang back, watching the royal family assemble on the dais. The High King is seated on his throne of woven branches, wearing the heavy circlet, looking out from his deeply lined face with alert bronze eyes, like those of an owl. Prince Dain sits on a humble wooden stool beside him, dressed in all-white robes, his feet and hands bare. And behind the throne stands the rest of the royal family—Balekin and Elowyn, Rhyia and Caelia. Even Taniot, Prince Dain's mother, is present, in a garment of shining gold. The only family member missing is Cardan.

The High King Eldred stands, and the entire hill goes quiet. “Long has been my rule, but today I take my leave of you.” His voice echoes through the hill. Rarely has he ever spoken this way, to a great assemblage of us, and I am struck both by the power of his voice and the frailness of his person. “When first I felt the call to search out the Land of Promise, I believed it would pass. But I can resist it no longer. Today, I will be king no more, but wanderer.”

Although everyone here must know this was what we've gathered for, still there are cries from all around me. A sprite begins to weep into the hair of a goat-headed phooka.

The Court Poet and Seneschal, Val Moren, steps from the side of the dais. He is stooped, spindly, his long hair full of sticks, with a scald crow perched on one shoulder. He leans heavily on a staff of smooth wood that has begun to bud at the very top, as though it were still alive. He is rumored to have been lured away from the mortal lands to Eldred's bed in his youth. I wonder what he will do now, without his king.

“We are loath to let you go, my lord,” he says, and the words seem to take on a special, bittersweet resonance coming from his mouth.

Eldred cups his hands, and the branches of the throne shudder and begin to grow, sending up new green shoots to spiral into the air, leaves unfurling and flower buds bursting along the length of them. The roots of the ceiling begin to worm, lengthening like vines and crawling across the underside of the hill. There is a scent in the air, like a summer breeze, heavy with the promise of apples. “Another will stand in my place. I ask of you, release me.”

The assembled Folk speak as one, surprising me. “
We release you
,” they say, words echoing around me.

The High King lets his heavy robe of state fall from his shoulders. It crumples on the stone in a jewel-encrusted pile. He takes the oak-leaf crown from his own head. Already, he stands up straighter. There is an unnerving eagerness in him. Eldred has been the High King of Elfhame longer than the memories of many of the Folk; he has always seemed ancient to me, but the years seem to fall from him along with the mantle of rule.

“Whom will you put in your stead, to be our High King?” Val Moren asks.

“My third-born, my son Dain,” says Eldred. “Come forward, child.”

Prince Dain rises from his humble place on the stool. His mother removes the white cloth covering him, leaving him naked. I blink once. I am used to a certain amount of nakedness in Faerie, but not among the royal family. Standing next to the rest of them in their heavy brocade and embroidered magnificence, he looks exquisitely vulnerable.

I wonder if he's cold. I think of my hurt hand and hope so.

“Will you accept?” Val Moren asks. The scald crow on his shoulder lifts black-tipped wings and beats the air. I am not sure if that's supposed to be part of the ceremony.

“I will assume the burden and the honor of the crown,” Dain says gravely, and in that moment, his nakedness becomes something else, some sign of power. “I will have it.”

“Unseelie Court, night host, come forward and anoint your prince,” Val Moren says.

A boggan makes her hulking way to the raised dais. Her body is covered in thick golden hair, her arms long enough to drag on the ground if she didn't bend them. She looks strong enough to break Prince Dain in half. Around her waist she wears a skirt of patchwork furs, and in one massive hand she carries what looks like an inkpot.

She paints his left arm with long spirals of clotting blood, paints it over his stomach, down his left leg. He does not flinch. When she is done, she steps back to admire her grisly handiwork and then gives a shallow bow to Eldred.

“Seelie Court, twilight folk, come forward and anoint your prince,” Val Moren says.

A diminutive boy in a wrapper of what looks like birch bark, his wild hair sticking up at odd angles, walks to the dais. Small pale green wings sit on his back. When he anoints Dain's other side, he paints it in thick swaths of pollen, yellow as butter.

“Wild fey, Shy Folk, come forward and anoint your prince,” says Val Moren.

It is a hob who comes forward this time, in a dapper little suit, carefully sewn. He carries with him a handful of mud, which he smears over the center of Prince Dain's chest, just above his heart.

I finally spot Cardan in the crowd, unsteady on his feet and with a wineskin in one hand. He appears to have gotten himself riotously drunk. When I think of the smear of silver paint on his face and the way his hand had slid on my hip, I guess he was well on his way there when I saw him. I feel an immense, mean satisfaction that he is not standing with the royal family at the most important moment for the Court in centuries.

He's going to be in so much trouble.

“Who will clothe him?” Val Moren asks, and in turn, each of his sisters and then his mother bring him a white tunic and pants made from hide, a collar of gold, and high kidskin boots. He looks like a storybook king, one who will have a wise and just rule. I imagine the Ghost in the rafters, and the Roach in his mask, watching proudly. I feel some of that same pride, being sworn to him.

But I cannot forget his words to me:
You are my creature, Jude Duarte.

I touch my wounded hand to the hilt of my silver sword, the sword my father forged. After tonight, I will be the High King's spy and a true member of his Court. I will lie to his enemies and, if that doesn't work, I will find a way to do something worse. And if he crosses me, well, then I will find a way around that, too.

Val Moren brings the end of his staff down hard against the ground, and I feel the reverberation to my teeth. “And who will crown him?”

Eldred wears an expression of pride. The crown gleams in his gnarled hands, glowing as if sunlight emanated from the metal itself. “I will.”

The guards are changing configuration subtly, perhaps preparing to escort Eldred out of the palace. There are more knights at the edges of the crowd than there were when the coronation ceremony began.

The High King speaks. “Come, Dain. Kneel before me.”

The Crown Prince bends down in front of his father and the assemblage.

My gaze cuts to Taryn, who is still standing with Locke. Oriana has a protective arm around Oak, one of Madoc's lieutenants bending to speak with her. He gestures toward a doorway, and she says something to Vivi and then starts toward it. Taryn and Locke follow. I grit my teeth and start to push my way through the crowd to them. I don't want to disgrace myself like Cardan, by not being where I'm supposed to be.

Val Moren's voice cuts through my thoughts. “And will you, the Folk of Elfhame, accept Prince Dain as your High King?”

The cry rose up from the crowd, in chirping voices and bellows: “We will.”

My gaze goes to the knights surrounding the dais. In another life, I would have been one of them. But as my eyes rest there, I notice familiar faces. Madoc's best commanders. Warriors who are fiercely loyal.

They are not dressed in their uniforms. Over shining armor, they wear the Greenbriar livery. Perhaps Madoc is only being careful, only putting his best people in place. But the spy I killed, the one with the taunting message, was Madoc's as well.

And Oriana, Oak, and my sisters are gone. Escorted out of the hill by one of Madoc's lieutenants just as the dais became more heavily guarded.

I have a plan to ensure our futures.

I need to find the Roach. I need to find the Ghost. I need to tell them that something's wrong.

A well-seasoned strategist waits for the right opportunity.

I push past a trio of goblins and a troll and one of the Still Folk. A spriggan growls at me, but I don't pay any mind. The end of the coronation is in sight. I see goblets and tankards being refilled.

Up on the dais, Balekin has left his place with the other princes and princesses. For a moment, I think it's part of the ceremony—until he draws a long, thin blade, one I recognize from his horrible duel with Cardan. I stop moving.

“Brother,” Prince Dain admonishes.

“I will not accept you,” Balekin says. “I have come to challenge you for the crown.” All around the dais, I see knights unsheathing blades. But neither Elowyn nor Eldred, nor any of the rest of them—not Val Moren nor Taniot nor Rhyia—is equipped. Only Caelia pulls out a knife from her bodice, the blade too small to be of much use.

I want to draw my own sword, but everyone is pressed in too tightly.

“Balekin,” Eldred says sternly. “Child. The High Court cannot be like the lower Courts. We have no blood inheritance. No duel with your brother will induce me to place a crown on your unworthy head. Content yourself with my choice. Do not humiliate yourself before all of Faerie.”

“This ought only be between us,” Balekin says to Dain, not acknowledging that his father had even spoken. “There is no High Monarch now. There is no one but us and a crown.”

“I need not fight you,” Dain says, gesturing out toward the knights grouped thickly around the dais, waiting for an order. Madoc is among them, but I am not close enough to see more than that. “And you are not worthy of even that much regard.”

“Then have this on your conscience.” Balekin walks two steps and thrusts out his arm. He doesn't even look in the direction he's thrusting, but his blade pierces Elowyn's throat. Someone shrieks, then everyone does. For a moment, the wound is just a blotch against her skin, and then blood pours out, a river of red. She staggers forward, going to her hands and knees. Gold fabric and glittering gems are drowning in scarlet.

It was a mere flick of Balekin's blade, an almost nonchalant gesture.

Eldred's hand comes up. I think he means to conjure up the same magic that made the roots grow, made the branches of the throne bloom and twine. But that power is gone; he gave it up with his kingdom. Instead, the newly budded flowers of the throne brown and wither.