The Cruel Prince: Chapters 9–14

The decadent eldest son, Prince Balekin, is sprawled in a carved chair, three attendants around him.

Her blue skin is even more blazingly cerulean under the bright sky.

You are docile today. Did your sister admonish you?

His fury has transmuted into gloating.

Since we started being tutored together, you’ve gone out of your way to make me feel like I’m less than you. And to coddle your ego, I have made myself less. I have made myself small, I have kept my head down.

Vivi knocks her skewer against mine, bringing me out of my reverie.

His livery is pulled tight across his chest, and pieces of fur stick out of the gaps.

Dain, about to be crowned the High King, has the power to grant me a place in the Court, the power to gainsay Madoc and make me a knight.

“Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle. And so, Jude Duarte, I am asking you what you would want next if I made you part of my company.”

If I could ask him for any boon, what would it be?

I could grant you the power to enrapture all who looked upon you instead.

Jude Duarte, daughter of clay, from this day forward no Faerie glamour will addle your mind. No enchantment will move your body against your will.

I suspect that hunting with Rhyia was a ruse and that she has gone to the mortal world after a brief ride through the woods.

I let myself have a brief fantasy of Prince Dain’s coronation, of me dancing with a grinning Locke while Cardan is dragged away and thrown in a dark oubliette.

Noggle, our instructor, is a kind but odd old Fir Darrig from up north, with huge eyebrows, a long beard into which he occasionally shoves pens or scraps of paper, and a tendency to maunder on about meteor storms and their meanings.

“Remember,” Noggle says, “unusual celestial events often presage important political changes, so with a new king on the horizon, it’s important for us to observe the signs carefully.”

“Tell me what event might portend success in love?”

I suspect she knows the answer but doesn’t want to court Valerian’s ire.

An apple, sweet and rotten at the same time, honeyed juice running over my tongue, tasting of sunlight and pure heady, stupid joy.

Faerie fruit, which muddles the mind, which makes humans crave it enough to starve themselves for another taste, which makes us pliant and suggestible and ridiculous.

All of them so resplendent that it is difficult for me to look too long without my head hurting.

Another of our lecturers, a sinewy elf-woman from an island to the east, is trying to begin her talk.

And there, on the foot of my bed, is a folded-up dress of homespun with the royal crest that servants of the princes and princesses wear.

Human midwives to deliver babies from human consorts. Human artisans cursed or blessed with tempting skill. Human wet nurses to suckle sickly faerie infants. Little human changelings, raised in Faerie, but not educated with the Gentry as we are. Cheerful magic-seekers who don’t mind a little drudgery in exchange for some wish of their heart.

Although a servant would probably not have a mount of any kind, at least the toad is less conspicuous.
Only in Faerieland is a giant toad the less conspicuous choice.

He makes a disgusted sound, which I guess means I am doing a good enough job of pretending to be an ensorcelled human servant, although I feel I went weird and over the top in my nervousness.

Three more of the Folk lie in a dissipated stupor beside a thimble-sized bottle of spirits.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since Balekin heads the profligate Circle of Grackles.

Prince Dain, about to be crowned the High King, does not have time to indulge in the petty sport of pretending to take me into his service just because a callow younger brother wishes it.

The circular room I come to is paneled in bookshelves, filled with manuscripts, scrolls, golden daggers, thin glass vials with jewel-colored liquids inside, and the skull of some deerlike creature with massive antlers supporting thin taper candles.

I know the provenance of the blusher mushroom that you ask after, but what you do with it must not be tied to me.

Cardan swings his sword in a desultory manner, and Balekin brings down his staff hard, smacking him in the side of the head.

I drop the inane smile as I follow him into his parlor.

Furnished in elaborate velvets, silks, and brocades, it’s a riot of scarlet and deep blues and greens, everything rich and dark, like overripe fruit.

I cast a plaintive look in Dain’s direction. I don’t want to go with the Roach, whom I have just met and whom I am not at all sure I trust.

It’s the kind of blunt thing I don’t expect faeries to say, but I am used to being around Court faeries with their baroque etiquette.

His breath is a soft susurration against my skin.

There is trepidation in Taryn’s voice.

While I can’t quite remember the cadence of my mother’s voice, I think I hear an echo of it in Taryn’s.

I reach down surreptitiously and shove the fallen paper under my pillow.