The Cruel Prince (27 page)

My stomach drops.

“What is wrong with you two?” Madoc shouts, as angry as I have ever seen him. “Have we not already had a surfeit of death today?”

Which seems like a paradoxical thing to say since he was the cause of so much of it.

“Both of you will wait for me in the game room.” All I can think of is him up on the dais, his blade cracking through Prince Dain's chest. I cannot meet his gaze. I am shaking all over. I want to scream. I want to run at him. I feel like a child again, a helpless child in a house of death.

I want to do something, but I do nothing.

He turns to Gnarbone. “Go with them. Make sure they stay away from each other.”

I am led into the game room and sit on the floor with my head in my hands. When I bring them away, they are wet with tears. I wipe my fingers quickly against my pants, before Taryn can see.

We wait at least an hour. I don't say a single thing to Taryn, and she doesn't say anything to me, either. She sniffles a little, then wipes her nose and doesn't weep.

I think of Cardan tied to a chair to cheer myself. Then I think of the way he looked up at me through the curtain of his crow-black hair, of the curling edges of his drunken smile, and I don't feel in the least bit comforted.

I feel exhausted and utterly, completely defeated.

I hate Taryn. I hate Madoc. I hate Locke. I hate Cardan. I hate everyone. I just don't hate them enough.

“What did he give you?” I ask Taryn, finally tiring of the silence. “Madoc gave me the sword Dad made. That's the one we were fighting with. He said he had something for you, too.”

She's quiet long enough that I don't think she's going to answer. “A set of knives, for a table. Supposedly, they cut right through bone. The sword is better. It has a name.”

“I guess you could name your steak knives. Meaty the Elder. Gristlebane,” I say, and she makes a little snorting noise that sounds like the smothering of a laugh.

But after that, we lapse back into silence.

Finally, Madoc enters the room, his shadow preceding him, spreading across the floor like a carpet. He tosses a scabbarded Nightfell onto the ground in front of me, and then settles himself on a couch with legs in the shape of bird feet. The couch groans, unused to taking so much weight. Gnarbone nods at Madoc and sees himself out.

“Taryn, I would talk with you of Locke,” Madoc says.

“Did you hurt him?” There is a barely contained sob in her voice. Unkindly, I wonder if she's putting it on for Madoc's benefit.

He snorts, as though maybe he's wondering the same thing. “When he asked for your hand, he told me that although, as I knew, the Folk are changeable people, he'd still like to take you to wife—which is to mean, I suppose, that you will not find him particularly constant. He said nothing about a dalliance with Jude then, but when I asked a moment ago, he told me, ‘mortal feelings are so volatile that it's impossible to help toying with them a little.' He told me that you, Taryn, had shown him that you could be like us. No doubt whatever you did to show him that was the source of conflict between you and your sister.”

Taryn's dress is pillowed around her. She looks composed, although she has a shallow slash on her side and a cut skirt. She looks like a lady of the Gentry, if one does not stare overmuch at the rounded curves of her ears. When I allow myself to truly think on it, I cannot fault Locke for choosing her. I am violent. I've been poisoning myself for weeks. I am a killer and a liar and a spy.

I get why
he
chose her. I just wish
she
had chosen me.

“What did you say to him?” Taryn asks.

“That I have never found myself particularly changeable,” Madoc says. “And that I found him to be unworthy of both of you.”

Taryn's hands curl into fists at her side, but there is no other sign that she's angry. She has mastered a kind of courtly composure that I have not. While I have studied under Madoc, her tutor has been Oriana. “Do you forbid me from accepting him?”

“It will not end well,” Madoc says. “But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”

Taryn says nothing, but the way she lets out her breath shows her relief.

“Go,” he tells her. “And no more fighting with your kin. Whatever pleasure you find with Locke, your loyalty is to your family.”

I wonder what he means by that, by loyalty. I thought he was loyal to Dain. I thought he was sworn to him.

“But she—” Taryn begins, and Madoc holds up a hand, with the menace of his curved black fingernails.

“Was the challenger? Did she thrust a sword into your hand and make you swing it? Do you really think that your sister has no honor, that she would chop you into pieces while you stood by, unarmed?”

Taryn glowers, putting her chin up. “I didn't want to fight.”

“Then you ought not do so in the future,” Madoc says. “There's no point in fighting if you're not intending to win. You may go. Leave me to talk with your sister.”

Taryn stands and walks to the door. With her hand on the heavy brass latch, she turns back, as though to say something else. Whatever camaraderie we found when he wasn't there is gone. I can see in her face that she wants him to punish me and is half-sure that he won't.

“You should ask Jude where Prince Cardan is,” she says, narrow-eyed. “The last time I saw him, he was dancing with her.”

With that, she sweeps out the door, leaving me with a thundering heart and the royal seal burning in my pocket. She doesn't know. She's just being awful, just trying to get me in trouble with a parting shot. I cannot believe she would say that if she knew.

“Let's talk about your behavior tonight,” says Madoc, leaning forward.

“Let's talk about
your
behavior tonight,” I return.

He sighs and rubs one large hand over his face. “You were there, weren't you? I tried to get you all out, so you wouldn't have to see it.”

“I thought you loved Prince Dain,” I say. “I thought you were his friend.”

“I loved him well enough,” Madoc says. “Better than I will ever love Balekin. But there are others who have a claim on my loyalty.”

I think again of my puzzle pieces, of the answers I came back home to get. What could Balekin have given or promised Madoc that would have persuaded him to move against Dain?

“Who?” I demand. “What could be worth this much death?”

“Enough,” he growls. “You are not yet on my war council. You will know what there is to know in the fullness of time. Until then, let me assure you that although things are in disarray, my plans are not overturned. What I need now is the youngest prince. If you know where Cardan is, I could get Balekin to offer you a handsome reward. A position in his Court. And the hand of anyone you wanted. Or the still-beating heart of anyone you despised.”

I look at him in surprise. “You think I'd take Locke from Taryn?”

He shrugs. “You seemed like you wanted to take Taryn's head from her shoulders. She played you false. I don't know what you might consider a fitting punishment.”

For a moment, we just look at each other. He's a monster, so if I want to do a very bad thing, he's not going to judge me for it. Much.

“If you want my advice,” he says slowly, “love doesn't grow well, fed on pain. Grant me that I know that at least. I love you, and I love Taryn, but I don't think she's suited for Locke.”

“And I am?” I cannot help thinking that Madoc's idea of love doesn't seem like a very safe thing. He loved my mother. He loved Prince Dain. His love for us is likely to afford us no more protection than it afforded either of them.

“I don't think
Locke
is suited for
you
.” He smiles his toothy smile. “And if your sister is right and you do know where Prince Cardan is, give him to me. He's a foppish sort of boy, no good with a sword. He's charming, in a way, and clever, but nothing worth protecting.”

Too young, too weak, too mean.

I think again of the coup that Madoc had planned with Balekin, wondering how it was supposed to go. Kill the two elder siblings, the ones with influence. Then surely the High King would relent and put the crown on the head of the prince with the most power, the one with the military on his side. Perhaps grudgingly, but once threatened, Eldred would crown Balekin. Except he didn't. Balekin tried to force his hand, and then everyone died.

Everyone but Cardan. The board swept nearly clear of players.

That can't be how Madoc thought things would play out. But, still, I remember his lessons on strategy. Every outcome of a plan should lead to victory.

No one can really plan for every variable, though. That's ridiculous.

“I thought you were supposed to lecture me about not sword fighting in the house,” I say, trying to steer the conversation away from the whereabouts of Cardan. I've gotten what I promised the Court of Shadows—an offer. Now I just have to decide what to do with it.

“Must I tell you that if your blade had struck true and you'd hurt Taryn, you would have regretted it all your days? Of all the lessons I imparted to you, I would have thought that was the one I taught you best.” His gaze is steady on mine. He's talking about my mother. He's talking about murdering my mother.

I can say nothing to that.

“It is a shame you didn't take out that anger on someone more deserving. In times like these, the Folk go missing.” He gives me a significant look.

Is he telling me it's okay to kill Locke? I wonder what he'd say if he knew I'd already killed one of the Gentry. If I showed him the body. Apparently, maybe,
congratulations
.

“How do you sleep at night?” I ask him. It's a crappy thing to say, and I am only saying it, I know, because he has shown me just how close I am to being everything I have despised in him.

His eyebrows furrow, and he looks at me as though he's evaluating what sort of answer to give. I imagine myself as he must see me, a sullen girl sitting in judgment of him. “Some are good with pipes or paint. Some have skill in love,” he says finally. “My talent is in making war. The only thing that has ever kept me awake was denying it.”

I nod slowly.

He gets up. “Think about what I've said, and then think about where your own talents lie.”

We both know what that means. We both know what I am good at, what I am—I just chased my sister around the downstairs with a sword. But what to do with that talent is the question.

As I exit the game room, I realize that Balekin must have arrived with his retainers. Knights with his livery—three laughing birds emblazoned on their tabards—stand at attention in the hall. I slink past them and up the stairs, dragging my sword behind me, too exhausted to do anything else.

I am hungry, I realize, but I feel too sick to eat. Is this what it is to be brokenhearted? I am not sure it is Locke I am sick over, so much as the world the way it was before the coronation began. But if I could undo the passing of the days, why not unwind them to before I killed Valerian, why not unwind them until my parents are alive, why not unwind them all the way to the beginning?