What I never expected was for him to turn to us—and for his eyes not to meet mine, but yours, Jude.
As though he couldn’t tell us apart.
Prince Cardan saw him looking, too.
All that night I tossed and turned on my blankets, waiting for Locke. But he never came.
The next day at the palace grounds, I didn’t know what to think or do. I felt sick, the kind of sick that makes your whole body heavy, as though your blood is turning to gravel.
Then Prince Cardan kicked dirt on our food. It coated a piece of buttered bread in your hand. You looked up at him and you didn’t manage to smother your anger before he saw it.
Mostly, we are agreed that the youngest prince is trouble we ought to avoid. Royal, terrible, and vicious. And mostly we were beneath his notice. But not that day.
“Something the matter?” Nicasia asked, draping her arm over Cardan’s shoulder. “Dirt. It’s what you came from, mortal. It’s what you’ll return to soon enough. Take a big bite.”
I wondered at Cardan, allowing her so close to him after her betrayal. And I wondered at them both, frowning down at you, Jude, when it was me they ought to be angry with. I kept expecting them to turn, kept expecting them to know something of what I’d been doing with Locke. I half-expected them to know all of it and to lay it out in hideous, humiliating detail.
But you stood in front of Nicasia and Cardan as though you were my shield. “Make me,” you snarled. I simultaneously wanted to make you shut up before things got worse and throw my arms around you in gratitude.
“I could, you know,” Prince Cardan said, something awful kindling behind his eyes. The way he looked at you made my stomach churn.
Nicasia pulled the pin from your hair. “You’ll never be our equal,” she told you, as though we needed reminding.
“Let’s leave them to their misery,” Locke urged Cardan, but it didn’t help.
You’d gone automatically into a fighting stance. I wasn’t sure if they knew it, but I did and I was terrified of what might happen next. I was pretty sure hitting Cardan was treasonous, even if he hit you first.
“Jude’s sorry,” I told them, which probably annoyed you, but that’s one thing I don’t regret. “We’re both really sorry.”
Cardan looked at me with those unsettlingly black eyes. “She can show us how sorry she is. Tell her she doesn’t belong in the Summer Tournament.”
“Afraid I’ll win?” you asked, that old urge not to back down from a dare kicking in hard.
“It’s not for mortals,” he returned, voice cold, and when he looked at me, it seemed he was talking about more than the tournament. It’s not for mortals. It’s not for you. Locke is not for you. “Withdraw, or wish that you had.”
“I’ll talk to her about it,” I put in quickly. “It’s nothing, just a game.”
Nicasia gave me the sort of smile usually reserved for a pet obediently doing a trick. For a moment I wondered if they really had only been being idly awful, if they knew nothing. But Cardan’s stare was heavy-lidded, lascivious. And when Nicasia spoke again, her words seemed to have more than one meaning. “It’s all just a game.”
That night, I resolved that if Locke came to my window, I would send him away. He should have defended me. He should have done something.
But as dawn threatened the horizon with no sign of him, I lost my resolve. If he came, I swore I would be content with that alone. I would be selfishly glad he was with me, even if it was only in secret. If he came, if only he’d come.
He didn’t.
Faeries despise humans as liars, but there are different kinds of lying. Since you and I first came to Faerie, Jude, we’ve lied to each other plenty. We pretended to be fine, pretended the possibility of being fine into existence. And when pretending seemed like it might be too hard, we just didn’t ask each other the questions that would require it. We smiled and forced laughter and rolled our eyes at the Folk, as though we weren’t afraid, when we were both scared all the time.
And if there were hairline cracks in all that pretending, we pretended those away, too.
So I didn’t understand. I knew you wanted to be a knight, but I didn’t understand how afraid you were of Madoc forbidding it. I thought that you’d just fight for him. I thought that it was me who needed to find a place in Faerie and that your sword had already bought you one. I thought the Summer Tournament was merely an opportunity to show off. There would be others. He hadn’t taught you the sword for nothing.
I should have understood.
We’d been raised like the children of the Gentry, but we weren’t. We were mortals and we had no fixed future in Faerie. You were wondering about your place here, just like I was.
“I am done with being good,” you told me after Madoc had basically crushed your dreams.
I thought you were just venting.
But then you salted the food of Prince Cardan and all his friends, including Locke. You played the kind of prank that was only supposed to be funny when it was done by them, not to them. You were bold and daring and breathtakingly stupid.
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.
Across the grounds, the prince looked at you, eyes alight with hatred. I have never seen a look like that on anyone’s face before, a look of such pure malice that I took an involuntary step back.
You had the nerve to grin at him.
And I was just so mad. I loved Locke and he hadn’t come for nights and nights, and there you were, making everything worse. And for what? Because they said something mean? Because they ruined our lunch?
I was afraid and I wanted to shout at you and shake you, but you would have just been puzzled. And I couldn’t make myself explain, not since I didn’t know if Locke would ever come to my window again. What if all of our whispered words and kisses and embraces meant nothing to him? I wasn’t ready to admit to my foolishness, but I was angry all the same.
Angry at you, angry at him.
On our way home, all my anger turned to terror. Prince Cardan and Valerian caught you, blindfolding you, pinning your arms—and Locke got hold of me. Nicasia was somewhere behind them, laughing.
“Don’t be afraid,” Locke whispered into my ear. I couldn’t see his expression, but his voice was soft. “This will be over quickly.”
“You have to stop them,” I whispered back. “You have to help—”
“Trust me,” he said, then pushed me into the river. I hit the water with a splash. The shock of cold hit me and I stumbled, making for a nearby boulder, my heart beating wildly. I had no idea what might happen next. Nicasia’s mother was the Queen of the Undersea and Cardan’s father was the High King. They could do whatever they wanted with us.
I thought of the look I’d seen on Cardan’s face and shuddered.
Trust me, Locke had said. But I didn’t. How could I?
You got a harder shove and went under the water, emerging spluttering, panicked. I tried to move toward you. Water soaked my skirts, dragging me down. I was terrified that I was going to slip, that the current was too strong. Locke’s words only made it worse. This will be over quickly, he’d said. But not everything is better for being fast.
You stood up. It was hard to concentrate on anything but the freezing river and keeping my balance. I heard Valerian say something about nixies. Hungry nixies. Cardan watched us greedily.
I was scared. Really, really, really scared.
“Is this fun?” you demanded, as though none of this fazed you. “Are you enjoying yourselves?”
Nicasia splashed you with water.
“Enormously,” Cardan said, just as your foot slipped and you went under.
You surfaced before I got close to you, taking shuddering breath after shuddering breath. But you still didn’t back down, didn’t beg, didn’t promise to do what he wanted. I wonder what it was that made you dig in your heels. Maybe it was the sheer unfairness of the way the deck was always stacked against us.
I tried to wade upstream, where it was shallower. On the bank, Locke watched me with an expression of polite interest, as though he were looking at a play unfolding on a stage. It was horrible. My skirts were so heavy and I was moving so slowly. My steps were uncertain.
“Twin sister,” Cardan said, turning to me. “I have a most generous offer for you. Climb up the bank and kiss me on both my cheeks. Once that’s done, so long as you don’t defend your sister by word or deed, I won’t hold you accountable for her defiance. Now, isn’t that a good bargain?”
“Go,” you said firmly. “I’ll be fine.”
I looked at Prince Cardan. A little smile pulled up the corner of his mouth. I had been in Faerie long enough to read between the lines of promises. He wouldn’t hold what you’d done against me. But he’d made no promises about what I’d done.
What were the chances he knew all? I wanted out of the river, away from the nixies and the current. I wanted to know that I wasn’t going to drown or be eaten. And though I suppose there was a certain nobility in staying in the water with you, it wasn’t as though it would help anything.
Maybe Cardan was just paying you back for the salting of his food.
I glanced over at Locke. He raised his brows slightly, in a way I found hard to interpret. Trust me, he’d said. But if he had a plan, I’d seen no sign of one.
Valerian came to the edge of the bank to hand me out of the water as though I were some great lady. When I pressed my cold mouth to the prince’s cheek, Locke waited a moment, then drew me a little ways away.
Nicasia turned toward me and the ferocity in her face filled me with dread. “Say ‘I forsake my sister Jude,’” she demanded. “‘I won’t help her. I don’t even like her.’”
“I don’t have to say that,” I said in confusion. “That wasn’t part of the bargain.”
The others laughed. Not Nicasia, who was clearly too incensed to even pretend amusement.