The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2) Read online

  “Ferocious enough for you?” I shout at them.

  The silver-eyed rider comes at me, and I throw my knife. It misses him but hits the horse in the flank. The animal rears up. But as he tries to get his mount back under control, another barrels toward me. I grab for the axe, take a deep breath, and focus.

  The skeletal horse watches me with its pupil-less white eyes. It looks hungry.

  If I die here in the woods because I wasn’t better prepared, because I was too distracted to bother to strap on my own stupid sword, I will be absolutely furious with myself.

  I brace as another rider bears down on me, but I am not sure I can withstand the charge. Frantically, I try to come up with another option.

  When the horse is close, I drop to the ground, fighting every instinct for survival, every urge to run from the huge animal. It rushes over me, and I lift the axe and chop upward. Blood spatters my face.

  The creature runs a little farther, and then drops with a vicious keening sound, trapping its rider’s leg underneath its bulk.

  I push to my feet, wiping my face, just in time to see the silver-eyed knight preparing to charge. I grin at him, lifting the bloody axe.

  The amber-eyed rider heads toward his fallen comrade, calling for the others. The silver-eyed knight wheels around at the sound, heading toward his companions. The trapped rider struggles as I watch the other two knights pulling him free and up onto one of the other horses. Then the six wheel away through the night, no more laughter following them.

  I wait, afraid they might double back, afraid that something worse is about to leap from the shadows. Minutes slip by. The loudest sound is my ragged breath and the roaring of blood in my ears.

  Shakily, painfully, I walk on through the woods, only to find my own steed lying in the grass, being devoured by the dead rider’s horse. I wave my axe, and it runs away. Nothing makes my poor horse any less dead, though.

  My pack is gone from her back. It must have fallen off during the ride, taking my clothing and crossbow with it. My knives are gone, too, littering the forest after I threw them, probably lost in the brush. At least Nightfell is still here, tied to the saddle. I unstrap my father’s sword with cramping fingers.

  Using it as a cane, I manage to drag myself the rest of the way to Madoc’s stronghold and wash off the blood in the pump outside.

  Inside, I find Oriana sitting near a window, sewing on an embroidery hoop. She looks at me with her pink eyes and does not bother to smile, as a human might, to put me at ease. “Taryn is upstairs with Vivi and her lover. Oak sleeps and Madoc schemes.” She takes in my appearance. “Did you fall in a lake?”

  I nod. “Stupid, right?”

  She takes another stitch. I head for the stairs, and she speaks again before my foot can hit the first step.

  “Would it be so terrible for Oak to stay with me in Faerie?” she asks. There is a long pause, and then she whispers. “I do not wish to lose his love.”

  I hate that I have to say what she already knows. “Here, there would be no end to courtiers pouring poison in his ear, whispers of the king he would be if only Cardan was out of the way—and that, in turn, might make those loyal to Cardan desirous of getting Oak out of the way. And that’s not even thinking about the biggest threats. So long as Balekin lives, Oak’s safest far from Faerie. Plus there’s Orlagh.”

  She nods, expression bleak, and turns back to the window.

  Maybe she just needs someone else to be the villain, someone to be responsible for keeping them apart. Good luck for her that I am someone she already doesn’t much like.

  Still, I remember what it was like to miss where I grew up, miss the people who raised me.

  “You’ll never lose his love,” I say, my voice coming out as quietly as hers did. I know she can hear me, but still she doesn’t turn.

  With that, I go up the stairs, leg aching. I am at the landing when Madoc comes out of his office and looks up at me. He sniffs the air. I wonder if he smells the blood still running down my leg, if he smells dirt and sweat and cold well water.

  A chill goes to my bones.

  I go into my old room and shut the door. I reach beneath my headboard and am grateful to find that one of my knives is still there, sheathed and a little dusty. I leave it where it was, feeling a little safer.

  I limp over to my old tub, bite the inside of my cheek against the pain, and sit down on the edge. Then I slice my pants and inspect what remains of the arrow imbedded in my leg. The cracked shaft is willow, stained with ash. What I can see of the arrowhead is made of jagged antler.

  My hands start to shake, and I realize how fast my heart is beating, how fuzzy my head feels.

  Arrow wounds are bad, because every time you move, the wound worsens. Your body can’t heal with a sharp bit cutting up tissue, and the longer it’s there, the harder it is to get out.

  Taking a deep breath, I slide my finger down to the arrowhead and press on it lightly. It hurts enough that I gasp and go light-headed for a moment, but it doesn’t seem lodged in bone.

  I brace myself, take the knife, and cut about an inch down the skin of my leg. It’s excruciating, and I am breathing in shallow huffs by the time I work my fingers into the skin and pull the arrowhead free. There’s a lot of blood, a scary amount. I press my hand against it, trying to stop the flow.

  For a while, I am too dizzy to do anything but sit there.

  “Jude?” It’s Vivi, opening the door. She takes a look at me, and then at the tub. Her cat eyes widen.

  I shake my head. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “You’re bleeding,” she says.

  “Get me…” I start and then stop, realizing that I need to stitch up the wound, that I didn’t think of that. Maybe I’m not as okay as I thought I was. Shock doesn’t always hit right away. “I need a needle and thread—not thin stuff, embroidery floss. And a cloth to keep putting pressure on the wound.”

  She frowns at the knife in my hand, the freshness of the wound. “Did you do that to yourself?”

  That snaps me out of my daze for a moment. “Yes, I shot myself with an arrow.”

  “Okay, okay.” She hands me a shirt from the bed and then goes out of the room. I press the fabric against my wound, hoping to slow the bleeding.

  When she gets back, she’s holding white thread and a needle. That thread is not going to be white for long.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to concentrate. “You want to hold or sew?”

  “Hold,” she says, looking at me as though she wished there was a third option. “Don’t you think I should get Taryn?”

  “The night before her wedding? Absolutely not.” I try to thread the needle, but my hands are shaking badly enough that it’s difficult. “Okay, now push the sides of the wound together.”

  Vivi kneels down and does, making a face. I gasp and try not to pass out. Just a few more minutes and I can sit down and relax, I promise myself. Just a few more minutes and it will be like this never happened.

  I stitch. It hurts. It hurts and hurts and hurts. After I’m done, I wash the leg with more water and rip off the cleanest section of the shirt to wrap around it.

  She comes closer. “Can you stand?”

  “In a minute.” I shake my head.

  “What about Madoc?” she asks. “We could tell—”

  “No one,” I say, and, gripping the edge of the tub, kick my leg over, biting back a scream.

  Vivi turns on the taps, and water splashes out, washing away the blood. “Your clothes are soaked,” she says, frowning.

  “Hand me a dress from over there,” I say. “Look for something sack-like.”

  I force myself to limp over to a chair and sink into it. Then I pull off my jacket and the shirt underneath it. Naked to my waist, I can’t go any further without pain stopping me.

  Vivi brings over a dress—one so old that Taryn didn’t bother to bring it to me—and bunches it up so she can guide it over my head, then guides my hands through the arm holes as though I were a chi
ld. Gently, she takes off my boots and the remains of my pants.

  “You could lie down,” she says. “Rest. Heather and I can distract Taryn.”

  “I am going to be fine,” I say.

  “You don’t have to do anything else, is all I’m saying.” Vivi looks as though she’s reconsidering my warnings about coming here. “Who did this?”

  “Seven riders—maybe knights. But who was actually behind the attack? I don’t know.”

  Vivi gives a long sigh. “Jude, come back to the human world with me. This doesn’t have to be normal. This isn’t normal.”

  I get up out of the chair. I would rather walk on the wounded leg than listen to more of this.

  “What would have happened if I hadn’t come in here?” she demands.

  Now that I am up, I have to keep moving or lose momentum. I head for the door. “I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know this. Danger can find me in the mortal world, too. My being here lets me make sure you and Oak have guards watching you there. Look, I get that you think what I am doing is stupid. But don’t act like it’s useless.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she says, but by then I am in the hall. I jerk open the door to Taryn’s room to find her and Heather laughing at something. They stop when we come in.

  “Jude?” Taryn asks.

  “I fell off my horse,” I tell her, and Vivi doesn’t contradict me. “What are we talking about?”

  Taryn is nervous, roaming around the room to touch the gauzy gown she will wear tomorrow, to hold up the circlet woven with greenery grown in goblin gardens and fresh as the moment they were plucked.

  I realize that the earrings I bought for Taryn are gone, lost with the rest of the pack. Scattered among leaves and underbrush.

  Servants bring wine and cakes, and I lick the sweet icing and let the conversation wash over me. The pain in my leg is distracting, but more distracting yet is the memory of the riders laughing, the memory of their closing in beneath the tree. The memory of being wounded and frightened and all alone.

  When I wake the day of Taryn’s wedding, it is in the bed of my childhood. It feels like coming up from a deep dream, and, for a moment, it’s not that I don’t know where I am—it’s that I don’t remember who I am. For those few moments, blinking in the late-afternoon sunlight, I am Madoc’s loyal daughter, dreaming of becoming a knight in the Court. Then the last half year comes back to me like the now-familiar taste of poison in my mouth.

  Like the sting of the sloppily done stitches.

  I push myself up and unwrap the cloth to look at the wound. It’s ugly and swollen, and the needlework is poor. My leg is stiff, too.

  Gnarbone, an enormous servant with long ears and a tail, comes into my room with a belated knock. He is carrying a tray with breakfast on it. Quickly, I flip the blankets over my lower body.

  He puts the tray on the bed without comment and goes into the bath area. I hear the rush of water and smell crushed herbs. I sit there, braced, until he leaves.

  I could tell him I’m hurt. It would be a simple thing. If I asked Gnarbone to send for a military surgeon, he’d do it. He’d tell Oriana and Madoc, of course. But my leg would be stitched up well and I’d be safe from infection.

  Even if Madoc had sent the riders, I believe he’d still take care of me. Courtesy, after all. He’d take it to be a concession, though. I’d be admitting that I needed him, that he won. That I’d come home for good.

  And yet, in the light of the morning, I am fairly sure it wasn’t Madoc who sent the riders, even if it was the sort of trap he favors. He would have never sent assassins who hung back and who rode off when the numbers were still on their side.

  Once Gnarbone goes out, I drink the coffee greedily and make my way to the bath.

  It’s milky and fragrant, and only under the water can I allow myself to weep. Only under the water can I admit that I almost died and that I was terrified and that I wish there was someone to whom I could tell all that. I hold my breath until there’s no more breath to hold.

  After the bath, I wrap myself in an old robe and make it back to the bed. As I try to decide if it’s worth sending a servant back to the palace to get me another dress or if I should just borrow something of Taryn’s, Oriana comes into the room, holding a silvery piece of cloth.

  “The servants tell me you brought no luggage,” she says. “I assume you forgot that your sister’s wedding would require a new gown. Or a gown at all.”

  “At least one person is going to be naked,” I say. “You know it’s true. I’ve never been to a single revel in Faerie where everyone had clothes on.”

  “Well, if that’s your plan,” she says, turning on her heels. “Then I suppose all you need is a pretty necklace.”

  “Wait,” I say. “You’re right. I don’t have a dress, and I need one. Please don’t go.”

  When Oriana turns, a hint of a smile is on her face. “How unlike you, to say what you actually mean and have it be something other than hostile.”

  I wonder how it is for her to live in Madoc’s house, to be Madoc’s obedient wife and have had a hand in all his schemes being undone. Oriana is capable of more subtlety than I would have given her credit for.

  And she has brought me a dress.

  That seems like a kindness until she spreads it out on my bed.

  “It’s one of mine,” she says. “I believe it will fit.”

  The gown is silver and reminds me a little of chain mail. It’s beautiful, with trumpet sleeves slashed along the length of the arm to show skin, but it has a plunging neckline, which would look one way on Oriana and a totally different way on me.

  “It’s a little, uh, daring for a wedding, don’t you think?” There’s no way to wear it with a bra.

  She just looks at me for a moment, with a puzzled, almost insect-like stare.

  “I guess I can try it on,” I say, remembering that I had joked about being naked just a moment ago.

  This being Faerie, she makes no move to leave. I turn around, hoping that will be enough to draw attention away from my leg as I strip. Then I pull the gown over my head and let it slither over my hips. It sparkles gorgeously, but, as I suspected, it shows a lot of my chest. Like, a lot.

  Oriana nods, satisfied. “I will send someone to do your hair.”

  A short while later, a willowy pixie girl has braided my hair into ram’s horns and wrapped the tips with silver ribbon. She paints the lids of my eyes and my mouth with more silver.

  Then, dressed, I go downstairs to join the rest of the family in Oriana’s parlor, as though the last few months haven’t happened.

  Oriana is dressed in a gown of pale violet with a collar of fresh petals that rises to her powdery jawline. Vivi and Heather are both in mortal clothes, Vivi in a fluttery fabric with a pattern of eyes printed on the cloth, and Heather in a short pink dress with little silver spangles all over it. Heather’s hair is pulled back in sparkling pink clips. Madoc is wearing a deep plum tunic, Oak in a matching one.

  “Hey,” Heather says. “We’re both in silver.”

  Taryn isn’t there yet. We sit around in the parlor, drinking tea and eating bannocks.

  “Do you really think she’s going to go through with this?” Vivi asks.

  Heather gives her a scandalized look, swats at her leg.

  Madoc sighs. “It is said we learn more from our failures than our successes,” he says with a pointed look in my direction.

  Then Taryn finally comes down. She’s been bathed in lilac dew and wears a gown of incredibly fine layers of cloth on top of one another, herbs and flowers trapped between them to give the impression that she’s this beautiful, floating figure and a living bouquet at the same time.

  Her hair is braided into a crown with green blooms all through it.

  She looks beautiful and painfully human. In all that pale fabric, she looks like a sacrifice instead of a bride. She smiles at all of us, shy and glowingly happy.

  We all rise and tell her how beautiful she looks.
Madoc takes her hands and kisses them, looking at her like any proud father. Even though he thinks she’s making a mistake.

  We get into the carriage, along with the small hob who is going to be Oak’s double, who switches jackets once we’re inside, and then sits worriedly in a corner.

  On our way to Locke’s estate, Taryn leans forward and catches my hand. “Once I am married, things will be different.”

  “Some things,” I say, not entirely sure what she’s talking about.

  “Dad has promised to keep him in line,” she whispers.

  I recall Taryn’s appeal to me to have Locke dismissed from his position as Master of Revels. Curbing Locke’s indulgences is likely to keep Madoc busy, which seems like no bad thing.

  “Are you happy for me?” she asks. “Truly?”

  Taryn has been closer to me than any other person in the world. She has known the tide and undertow of my feelings, my hurts, both small and large, for most of my life. It would be stupid to let anything interfere with that.

  “I want you to be happy,” I say. “Today and always.”

  She gives me a nervous smile, and her fingers tighten on mine.

  I am still holding her hand when the hedge maze comes into view. I see three pixie girls in diaphanous gowns fly over the greenery, giggling together, and beyond them other Folk already beginning to mill. As Master of Revels, Locke has organized a wedding worthy of the title.

  The first trap goes unsprung. The decoy climbs out with my family while Oak and I duck down in the carriage. He grins at me at first, when we huddle down in the space between the cushioned benches, but the grin slips off his face a moment later, replaced by worry.

  I take his hand and squeeze it. “Ready to climb through a window?”

  That delights him anew. “From the carriage?”

  “Yes,” I say, and wait for it to pull around. When it does, there’s a knock. I peek out and see the Bomb inside the estate. She winks at me, and then I lift up Oak and feed him, hooves first, through the carriage window and into her arms.

  I climb after, inelegantly. My dress is ridiculously revealing, and my leg is still stiff, still hurting, when I fall onto Locke’s stone floor.