Chapter 23 #3
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?
There’s a knock on my door, and then it opens without my signaling anything. Vivi comes in, carrying a wooden plate with a sandwich on it, along with a stoppered bottle of amber glass.
“I’m a jerk. I’m an idiot,” I say. “I admit it. You don’t have to lecture me.”
“I thought you were going to give me a hard time about the glamour,” she says. “You know, the one you resisted.”
“You shouldn’t magic your sisters.” I draw the cork on the bottle and take a long swig of water. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was. I guzzle more, nearly draining the whole container in one continuous gulping swallow.
“And you shouldn’t try to chop yours in half.” She settles back against my pillows, against my worn stuffed animals. Idly, she picks up the snake and flicks the forks of its felt tongue. “I thought all of it—swordplay, knighthood—I thought it was a game.”
I remember how angry she was when Taryn and I gave in to Faerie and started having fun.
Crowns of flowers on our heads, shooting bows and arrows at the sky.
Eating candied violets and falling asleep with our heads pillowed on logs.
We were children. Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.
But to hold a blade in my hand, a blade like the one that killed our parents, and think it was a toy, she’d have to believe I was heartless.
“It’s not,” I say finally.
“No,” Vivi says, wrapping the stuffed snake around the stuffed cat.
“Did she tell you about him?” I ask, climbing onto my bed next to her. It feels good to lie down, maybe a little too good. I am instantly drowsy.
“I didn’t know Taryn was with Locke,” Vivi says, deliberately giving me the whole sentence so I won’t have to wonder if she’s trying to trick me. “But I don’t want to talk about Locke. Forget him. I want us to leave Faerie. Tonight.”
That makes me sit upright. “What?”
She laughs at my reaction. It’s such a normal sound, so completely out of step with the high drama of the last two days.
“I thought that would surprise you. Look, whatever happens next here, it’s not going to be good.
Balekin’s an asshole. And he’s dumb on top of it.
You should have heard Dad swearing on our way home. Let’s just go.”
“What about Taryn?” I ask.
“I’ve already asked her, and I’m not going to tell you if she agreed to come or not. I want you to answer for you. Jude, listen. I know you’re keeping secrets. Something is making you sick. You’re paler and thinner, and your eyes have a weird shine.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Liar,” she says, but the accusation has no heat.
“I know that you’re stuck here in Faerie because of me.
I know that the shittiest things that have happened in your whole life are because of me.
You’ve never said it, which is kind of you, but I know.
You’ve had to turn yourself into something else, and you’ve done it.
Sometimes, when I look at you, I’m not sure if you’d even know how to be human anymore. ”
I don’t know what to do with that—compliment and insult all at once. But behind it is a feeling of prophecy.
“You fit in better here than I do,” Vivi says. “But I bet it cost you something.”
I mostly don’t like to imagine the life I could have had, the one without magic in it.
The one where I went to a regular school and learned regular things.
The one where I had a living father and mother.
The one where my older sister was the weirdo.
Where I wasn’t so angry. Where my hands weren’t stained with blood.
I picture it now, and I feel strange, tense all over, my stomach churning.
What I feel is panic.
When the wolves come for that Jude, she’ll be eaten up in an instant—and wolves always come.
It frightens me to think of myself so vulnerable.
But as I am now, I am well on my way to becoming one of the wolves.
Whatever essential thing the other Jude has, whatever part that’s unbroken in her and broken in me, that thing might be unrecoverable.
Vivi is right; it cost me something to be the way I am.
But I do not know what. And I don’t know if I can get it back. I don’t even know if I want it.
But maybe I could try.
“What would we do in the mortal world?” I ask her.
Vivi smiles and pushes the plate with the sandwich toward me. “Go to movies. Visit cities. Learn to drive a car. There are lots of the Folk who don’t live in the Courts, don’t play at politics. We could live any way we like. In a loft. In a tree. Whatever you want.”
“With Heather?” I pick up the food and take a huge bite. Sliced mutton and pickled dandelion greens. My stomach growls.
“Hopefully,” she says. “You can help me explain things to her.”
It occurs to me for the first time that, whether she knows it or not, she isn’t suggesting running away to be human.
She’s suggesting we live like the wild fey, among mortals, but not of them.
We’d steal the cream from their cups and the coins from their pockets.
But we wouldn’t settle down and get boring jobs. Or at least she wouldn’t.
I wonder what Heather is going to think of that.
Once Prince Cardan is dealt with in some way, then what?
Even if I figure out the mystery of Balekin’s letters, there’s still no good place for me.
The Court of Shadows will be disbanded. Taryn will be wed.
Vivi will be gone. I could go with her. I could try to figure out what’s broken in me, try to start over.
I think of the Roach’s offer, to go with them to another court. To start over in Faerie. Both feel like giving up, but what else is there to do? I thought that once I was home, I’d come up with a plan, but so far I haven’t.
“I couldn’t leave tonight,” I say hesitatingly.
She gasps, hand to her heart. “You’re seriously thinking about it.”
“There are some things I need to finish. Give me a day.” I keep bargaining for the same thing over and over: time.
But in a day I will have squared things with the Court of Shadows.
Arrangements will be made for Cardan. One way or another, everything will be settled.
I will wring whatever payment I can from Faerie.
And if I still don’t have a plan, it will be too late to make one.
“What’s a single day in your eternal, everlasting, interminable life? ”
“One day to decide or one day to pack your bags?”
I take another bite of sandwich. “Both.”
Vivi rolls her eyes. “Just remember, in the mortal world, it won’t be the way it is here.” She goes to the door. “You wouldn’t have to be the way you are here.”
I hear Vivi’s steps in the hall. I take another bite of my sandwich. I chew and swallow it, but I don’t taste anything.
What if the way I am is the way I am? What if, when everything else is different, I’m not?
I take Cardan’s royal ring out of my pocket and hold it in the center of my palm.
I shouldn’t have this. Mortal hands shouldn’t hold it.
Even looking closely seems wrong, yet I do anyway.
The gold is full of a deep rich redness, and the edges are smoothed by constant wear.
There is a little bit of wax stuck in the impression, and I try to root it out with the edge of my nail.
I wonder how much the ring would be worth out in the world.
Before I can persuade myself not to, I slip it onto my unworthy finger.