Chapter 2 #2
Then the prince went to a table, where he lifted a pitcher of wine to his mouth, not bothering with a glass, tipping the vessel back until the dark liquid streamed over his chin.
Kaye walked toward him on impulse, with some idea that if he was guzzling wine, he wouldn’t be that hard to draw into conversation. After all, if Roiben was going to pledge fealty to this guy’s brother, she’d better get to know the family.
“You’re Prince Cardan,” Kaye said with what she hoped was a half-decent curtsy. Raven feathers covered the top of his doublet, gleaming in blues and purples like an oil slick. Up close, she could see that he’d smeared his eye makeup.
Putting down the pitcher and wiping off his chin with the back of his gloved hand, he narrowed his gaze. She wondered if he was going to order her to step back ten paces.
“My name is Kaye,” she told him. “From the Court of Termites.” She waved vaguely toward where Roiben and Dulcamara and all the others were standing, hoping that would give him pause were he thinking of scolding her for talking to him.
A sneer pulled up a corner of his mouth. “Ah, come to watch your fearsome Lord Roiben bend a knee to my brother. Were I you, I would quit your king’s court before you are made part of this one.”
“I wouldn’t expect a prince to say that,” Kaye said.
“But then what do you know of princes?” he asked.
“Fair enough,” she said. Right then, she wasn’t sure she knew anything about anything.
All around them, bells rang out, signaling that the coronation was to begin soon. The musicians stilled their playing, and only the hum of conversation filled the hall.
An ogre, startled, knocked into the table, sending a pile of pomegranates rolling down the wood.
They knocked into plates of sweets and against the pitcher of wine, sending it careening off the table.
Prince Cardan caught the handle deftly, although she hadn’t seen him so much as look in that direction.
He smirked. “Care for a glass? If so, you’ll have to find an actual glass.”
“Should I get Roiben to reconsider joining the High Court?” she asked. When Roiben was a young knight, he’d sworn himself into the service of the beautiful queen he loved. That had been a big mistake. If he was about to make another, Kaye would like to prevent it if she could.
“Could you?” Prince Cardan returned, gaze heavy-lidded. She searched his face for some sign of whether to trust his judgment, an impossible task. “I doubt he’d thank you for the advice,” he went on. “Kings are notoriously fickle. They ill-reward that which stings their pride.”
“Bad kings, maybe,” she said.
Cardan snorted, as though she’d said something particularly amusing.
He cut a pointed look toward Roiben. The Alderking’s son had gone and Roiben was talking to a woman from the Undersea with dripping wet hair and pink gills that ran like three slashes just beneath her jawline. “Is he kind, then, your lord?”
Kaye rolled her eyes at him. Roiben’s reputation wasn’t for being kind, that much was true. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Maybe it was the same with Dain. Maybe Prince Cardan didn’t know anything.
“Ruling is like wine,” Cardan said, lifting the pitcher. “It brings out the worst in anyone who takes too deep a draught, yet we all want a taste.”
“Even you?” Kaye asked.
He looked away, his gaze going toward the dais, and Kaye realized he was looking at the girl.
The mortal girl. “What I want,” he said, “is for Dain never to get the throne. Failing that, I’d love to see the whole Court of Termites walk out of here without your king’s pledging anything.
But then it is my nature to only want things I cannot have. ”
“So tell me something,” Kaye said. “If joining this court is so bad, tell me something I can take back to Roiben, something that will give him doubts?”
Cardan shook his head. “What is there to say? First my brother will seem one way, and then another, and then, well, by then there will be no help possible, no help at all. But why would your king listen to either of us in preference to the newly anointed High King of Elfhame?” He handed the pitcher of wine to her.
“Drown your cares. Tonight we dance through the leather of our shoes and celebrate my father’s abandoning the rest of his children. ”
Before she was able to come up with a response, he staggered into the crowd.
Kaye stared after him, unnerved.
As she walked back to Roiben, Prince Cardan’s last words echoed in her ears. Many times she’d wished that Roiben would just abdicate his throne, but she’d never considered how his people would feel.
Abandoned.
“What if I told you not to swear to Prince Dain?” Kaye asked, hooking her hand in his. His long fingers were cool to the touch as he raised her palm to his lips.
His eyebrows went up. “Then I won’t,” he said after a moment, simply and a little terrifyingly. She wanted him to trust her, of course, but she wasn’t sure she deserved that much trust. “Is there a particular reason?” he went on.
“I have a bad feeling,” she said, hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake.
“It will make things a touch awkward,” he said after a moment. “We would be well served to leave the isles tonight, before the newly anointed High King Dain attempts to force the matter.”
Which meant, she guessed, that not swearing fealty was going to be really, really bad.
Like, maybe act-of-war bad. But before she could ask, King Eldred began to speak.
Kaye realized Cardan wasn’t on the stage with the rest of his family.
Had he left the court after all? Kaye hoped so, for his sake.
“When this is over, I want to come back to Faerie,” she whispered. “With you.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Whatsoever do you mean?”
Around them, the Folk called out the words to acknowledge High King Eldred’s abdicating his throne. But Kaye had realized Roiben was never going to do that—and probably shouldn’t. Unless she wanted them to live on the edges of each other’s lives, she was going to have to change.
“I could give the coffee shop to Corny and Luis and live in the Palace of Termites,” she said.
“I want to help you with your job.” Now that she’d come to a decision, Kaye felt embarrassed.
He might not expect her to be all that helpful.
She was occasionally clever, but Kaye often had the sinking feeling that she used her cleverness to get away with being lazy.
Also, she wasn’t sure if calling ruling a kingdom a “job” was insulting or not.
Also, she might have just talked him into a war.
She grew even more embarrassed at the way he stared. He seemed utterly thrown. Finally, after an overlong silence, he said, “I love you too well for that.”
“So it’s good enough for you, but not for me?” She put her hands on her hips. “And I’m supposed to—what? Be happy when I know you’re not? Be happy enough for both of us?”
He looked as though he was about to say something, but then swallowed the words.
On the dais, a representative from the Unseelie Courts was drawing swirls over Prince Dain’s skin with blood to prepare him for the coronation.
Roiben probably wanted Kaye to just shut up and pretend to be interested in what was happening, but she was feeling pettish and rejected and couldn’t seem to stop talking.
“Happiness isn’t something to carefully measure out in spoonfuls as though it’s medicine,” she said.
“I don’t need you to suffer to prove your love, and I definitely don’t need you to hide your suffering. I want to shoulder half our burden.”
“Love shouldn’t mean shouldering what has naught to do with you,” he said.
“But it does,” she said. “That is what it means. That’s exactly what it means.”
“You will tire of it,” he spat, real anger in his voice. “You will tire of it and you will tire of me.”
She stepped back, dropping his hand, and they stared at each other for a long moment, too shocked to speak.
Many times, Kaye had wondered over his loving her.
She hadn’t guessed he had doubts about her, too.
How could he, when he was the Unseelie king, born into the Gentry, a tortured and famous knight of Faerie?
When he came into Moon in a Cup, conversation grew hushed, laughter ceased.
And after he left, customers talked a lot about how they wanted to bone him.
“I drink a lot of coffee,” she said, trying for lightness. “My motto is ‘never tired.’”
“Faerie is a deadly place, as you well know,” he returned, grim, and she felt certain her joke had been a misstep. “Replete with horror and cruelty and caprice. But even knowing that, you still cannot know what it is for it to occupy the whole of your days and all your nights.”
“I have been in Faerie lots of times,” Kaye said. “It’s not all bad. And the Court of Termites is different now that you’re in charge. You’ve changed it.”
Just then, the hall seemed to inhale as one.
Someone screamed. Kaye turned back to the dais in time to see one of the princes had his sword out.
She couldn’t remember his name, but the one who wasn’t Cardan and wasn’t Dain was threatening the others.
A moment later, his blade pierced Princess Elowyn’s throat.
The princess went to her knees, everything drenched in red.
The blood poured from her throat the way wine had poured from Cardan’s pitcher.
Dulcamara grimaced. Even Roiben flinched.
“Why did he do that?” Kaye demanded. Maybe she really should have been paying better attention. “That’s not part of the ceremony, is it?”
“Perhaps you’d like to expound on your earlier point,” Roiben drawled, his hand going to the hilt of his own sword. “About how Faerie is ‘not all bad’?”
“You’re not seriously going for the ‘I told you so’ right now, are you?” Kaye demanded.
His eyes were on the violence, and his voice was very dry. “Admit I’ve won this argument.”