I startle, not sure I heard him right.
She’s about to answer when she spots me. Her mouth curls. “Little mousie,” she says. “Don’t believe his sugared tongue.”
The Roach would despair of me if he saw how badly I fumbled my newfound skills. I did nothing he taught me—I neither concealed myself nor blended in with others to avoid notice. At least no one would suspect me of knowing much about spycraft.
“So has Cardan forgiven you?” I ask her, pleased by her stricken look. “Too bad. I hear a prince’s favor is a really big deal.”
“What need have I for princes?” she demands. “My mother is a queen!”
There’s much I could say about her mother, Queen Orlagh, who is planning a poisoning, but I bite my tongue. In fact, I bite it so hard that I don’t say anything at all. I just walk to where Taryn is sitting, a small, satisfied smile on my face.
More weeks pass, until the coronation is mere days away. I am so tired that I fall asleep whenever I put my head down.
I even fall asleep in the tower during a demonstration of moth summoning. The susurration of their wings lulls me, I guess. It doesn’t take much.
I wake on the stone floor. My head is ringing, and I am scrambling for my knife. I don’t know where I am. For a moment, I think that I must have fallen. For a moment, I think I am paranoid. Then I see Valerian, grinning down at me. He has pushed me out of my chair. I know it just from the look on his face.
I have not yet become paranoid enough.
Voices sound from outside, the rest of our classmates having their luncheon on the grass as evening rolls in. I hear the shrieks of the youngest children, probably chasing one another over blankets.
“Where’s Taryn?” I ask, because it wasn’t like her not to wake me.
“She promised not to help you, remember?” Valerian’s golden hair hangs over one eye. As usual, he’s clad entirely in red, a tone so deep that it might appear black at first glance. “Not by word or by deed.”
Of course. Stupid me to forget I was on my own.
I push myself up, noticing a bruise on my calf as I do. I am not sure how long I was sleeping. I brush off my tunic and trousers. “What do you want?”
“I’m disappointed,” he says slyly. “You bragged about how you were going to best Cardan, and yet you’ve done nothing, sulking after one little prank.”
My hand slides automatically to the hilt on my knife.
Valerian lifts my necklace of rowan berries from his pocket and smirks at me. He must have cut it from my throat while I slept. I shudder at the thought that he was so close to me, that instead of slicing the necklace, he could have sliced skin. “Now you will do what I say.” I can practically smell the glamour in the air. He’s weaving magic with his words. “Call down to Cardan. Tell him he’s won. Then jump from the tower. After all, being born mortal is like being born already dead.”
The violence of it, the awful finality of his command, is shocking. A few months ago, I would have done it. I would have said the words, I would have leapt. If I hadn’t made that bargain with Dain, I would be dead.
Valerian may have been planning my murder since the day he choked me. I remember the light in his eyes then, the eagerness with which he watched me gasp. Taryn had warned me I was going to get myself killed, and I bragged that I was ready for it, but I am not.
“I think I’ll take the stairs,” I tell Valerian, hoping I don’t seem half as shaken as I am. Then, acting as though everything is normal, I go to move past him.
For a moment, he just looks confused, but his confusion quickly morphs into rage. He blocks my escape, moving in front of the steps. “I commanded you. Why don’t you obey me?”
Looking him dead in the eye, I force myself to smile. “You had the advantage of me twice, and twice you gave it away. Good luck getting it again.”
He’s sputtering, furious. “You’re nothing. The human species pretends it is so resilient. Mortal lives are one long game of make-believe. If you couldn’t lie to yourselves, you’d cut your own throats to end your misery.”
I am struck by the word species, by the idea that he thinks I am something entirely else, like an ant or a dog or a deer. I am not sure he’s wrong, but I don’t like the thought. “I don’t feel particularly miserable right at the moment.” I can’t show him I’m afraid.
His mouth curls. “What happiness do you have? Rutting and breeding. You’d go mad if you accepted the truth of what you are. You are nothing. You barely exist at all. Your only purpose is to create more of your kind before you die some pointless and agonizing death.”
I look him in the eye. “And?”
He seems taken aback, although the sneer doesn’t leave his face.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. I am going to die. And I am a big liar. So what?”
He pushes me against the wall, hard. “So you lose. Admit that you lost.”
I try to shrug him off, but he grabs for my throat, fingers pressing hard enough to cut off my airflow. “I could kill you right now,” he says. “And you would be forgotten. It would be as though you’d never been born.”
There is no doubt in my mind that he means it, no doubt at all. Gasping, I pull the knife from my little pocket and stab him in the side. Right between his ribs. If my knife had been longer, I would have punctured his lung.
His eyes go wide with shock. His grip on me loosens. I know what Madoc would say—to push the blade higher. Go for an artery. Go for his heart. But if I manage it, I will have murdered one of the favored sons of Faerie. I cannot even guess my punishment.
You’re no killer.
I balk and pull the knife free, running out of the room. I shove the bloody blade into my pocket. My boots clatter on the stone as I head for the stairs.
Looking back, I see him on his knees, pressing a hand to his side to stanch the blood. He lets out a hiss of pain that makes me recall my knife is cold iron. Cold iron hurts faeries a lot.
I could not be gladder of carrying it.
I round the corner and nearly run down Taryn.
“Jude!” she exclaims. “What happened?”
“Come on,” I tell her, dragging her toward the other students. There’s blood on my knuckles, blood on my fingers, but not much. I rub it off on my tunic.
“What did he do to you?” Taryn cries as I hustle her along.
I tell myself that I don’t mind that she left me. It wasn’t her job to stick out her neck, especially when she made it abundantly clear she didn’t want any part of this fight. Is there a treacherous part of me that’s pissed off and sad that she didn’t kick me awake and damn the consequences? Sure. But even I didn’t guess how far Valerian would go or how fast he’d get there.
We’re crossing the lawn when Cardan veers in our direction. He’s wearing loose clothes and carrying a practice sword.
His eyes narrow at the blood, and he points the wooden stick at me. “You seem to have cut yourself.” I wonder if he’s surprised that I’m alive. I wonder if he watched the tower the whole time during his luncheon, waiting for the amusing spectacle of me jumping to my death.
I take the knife out from under my tunic and show it to him, stained a flinty red. I smile. “I could cut you, too.”
“Jude!” Taryn says. She’s clearly shocked by my behavior. She should be. My behavior is shocking.
“Oh, go already,” Cardan tells her, waving her off with one hand. “Stop boring us both.”
Taryn takes a step back. I’m surprised, too. Is this part of the game?
“Are your dirty blade and even dirtier habits supposed to mean something?” His words are airy, drawling. He is looking at me as though I’m being uncouth by pointing a weapon at him—even though he’s the one with the minion who assaulted me. Twice. He’s looking at me as though we’re going to share some kind of witty repartee, but I am not sure what to say.
Is he really not worried about what I might have done to Valerian?
Could he possibly not know Valerian attacked me?
Taryn spots Locke and takes off toward him, hurrying across the field. They converse for a moment, then Taryn departs. Cardan notices my noticing. He sniffs, as though the very smell of me offends him.
Locke starts toward us, all loose limbs and shining eyes. He gives me a wave. For a moment, I feel almost safe. I am immensely grateful to Taryn, for sending him over. I am immensely grateful to Locke, for coming.
“You think I don’t deserve him,” I say to Cardan.
He smiles slowly, like the moon slipping beneath the waves of the lake. “Oh no, I think you’re perfect for each other.”
A few moments later, Locke has an arm thrown around my shoulders. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
And so, without a backward glance at any of them, we do.
We walk through the Crooked Forest, where all the trees are bowed in the same direction as though they’ve been blown by a strong wind since they were saplings. I stop to pick a few blackberries from prickly stems of bushes growing between them. I have to blow tiny sugar ants from each before putting it in my mouth.
I offer a berry to Locke, but he demurs.
“So, in short, Valerian tried to kill me,” I say, finishing my story. “And I stabbed him.”
His fox eyes are steady on me. “You stabbed Valerian.”
“So I might be in some trouble.” I take a deep breath.
He shakes his head. “Valerian won’t tell anyone he was bested by a mortal girl.”
“What about Cardan? Won’t he be disappointed his plan didn’t work?” I gaze out at the sea, visible between the trunks of the trees. It seems to stretch on to forever.
“I doubt he even knew about it,” Locke says, and smiles at my surprise. “Oh, he’d like to make you believe he’s our leader, but it’s more that Nicasia likes power, I like dramatics, and Valerian likes violence. Cardan can provide us with all three, or at least excuses for all three.”