Chapter 2 #3
But then it became clear that the royal guard was in on the scheme, and Roiben wanted to go up there himself and do something.
Dulcamara and several of his other knights had to hold him back as the rest of the royal family was slaughtered, one by one.
Screaming filled the hall. Kaye looked around for the youngest prince, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Let me go,” Roiben was saying to Dulcamara. “I order you—”
“You can’t cut through the whole guard,” she said, interrupting him before he could finish the sentence. “Don’t be a fool.”
On the dais, Balekin was engaged in a lot of yelling about the crown, which turned out to be cursed.
“Of course,” Kaye said to no one in particular, feeling a little nauseated. “Of course it’s cursed.”
She was starting to think that all crowns were.
It’s like one of those shows where people move to another country for love.
That was what Luis had told her a week and a half later, when she was packing up her stuff and giving Corny the keys to Moon in a Cup.
He’d started it with her, after all, and Val was going to help him run it, along with Ravus, her troll boyfriend, who concocted a goodly percentage of the potions they sold.
Luis, out of medical school and done with his residency, was busy being a doctor.
“There’s a yumboe who roasts her own beans out in Brooklyn,” Kaye told them. “Delicious, but she’s in high demand and fickle about availability. For backup beans, there’s a family just outside Newark. Mortal. They’ve got a whole setup in their garage.”
“I know,” Corny said for what he clearly felt was the millionth time.
“And for pastries, there’s no one better than that bucca up north in Kingston. His garden is full of flowers and he adds charmed glazes according to his whims,” Kaye went on. “Mostly they’re fun, but occasionally they’re a bit alarming.”
“Yes,” Corny said. “We know what we’re doing. Go be the lady of the manor. We’re fine.”
She told them about her resources for faerie fruit pastries. She reminded them about the little iron ball glued to the edge of the wooden counter, to touch money against before putting it in the register to make sure it wasn’t glamoured leaves.
“You’re not going that far away,” Corny said. “We’ll see you all the time. You’re even going to have your phone with you. I’ll text you, I promise.”
“Reception is terrible under the hill,” she reminded him, but he just gave her a look because, of course, she wasn’t trapped there. She could go outside and get his texts. If something went wrong, she could come back.
She had wings. She could fly back.
Besides, he didn’t really need her.
With no more excuses, Kaye gave them all hugs and said her good-byes. Then she took her garbage bags of clothes and her cardboard box of novelty mugs, and she started in the direction of the train station.
It’s like one of those shows where people move to another country for love, Kaye thought. Except in this one, he hasn’t asked me to come.
Roiben wasn’t in his rooms when she arrived under the hill in the Court of Termites.
She barged in anyway, sending servants into fits.
She was allowed to be there, of course, to stretch out on his tapestry bedcovers, sit for as long as she liked in his sinister chairs, and order anything she desired from the kitchens.
But she did not usually start putting stuff away in the armoire—or redecorating.
A page came in, pale as paper, wearing brown livery and sporting a pair of tiny goat horns. “My lady,” the page said. “May I offer you some assistance?”
“Oh, yes,” Kaye said. “I have something for you to send to the new High King of Elfhame.” Prince Cardan had turned up after all. As one of his vassals, she was pretty sure she owed him a present now and again—besides, she’d found the perfect thing.
“Yes, but…” the page began.
Reaching into the box, Kaye took out a paper-and-twine-wrapped package and handed it over. “And you can tell Roiben I’m staying.”
With a nervous bow and a wince at her not using Roiben’s title, the goat-horned faerie went out.
Not too long after, the Termite king himself arrived. Clad in flat black with shoulder plates that resembled the carapaces of beetles, he wore a look of someone caught between surprise and suspicion.
“And just what do you suppose you are doing?” he asked, taking in the clothes, the chibi sushi throw pillow Kaye had arranged on one chair, the dumpster-salvaged painting she’d propped against a wall. His voice had a chill in it.
“I told you I was coming to Faerie.” She hoped she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt.
“I thought I’d made my point at the coronation,” he said. “In fact, never has a point been so quickly supported by fate.”
“Yes, fine, you made your point,” Kaye said. “You won the argument. Faerie is dangerous. But I know you better than you think and I am tougher than you think and I am not going to get tired of you. Maybe of all the rest of Faerie sometimes, but never of you.”
“And if I do not want you here?” he said, voice still cold.
She took a deep breath and deployed the only weapon at her disposal. “Then you must tell me so. Tell me that you don’t want me. Say you don’t want me here and I’ll go.”
He stared at her intently for a long moment. Finally, he slumped down in the chair with the sushi pillow. A smile pulled at his mouth, and it was one of those rare moments when he seemed very young.
“Since I cannot lie,” Roiben said, “I suppose you must stay.”
Sometime later, the boy who had once been Prince Cardan lounged on the throne of Elfhame.
A page from one of the lower courts came in with a package, setting it before him and bowing deeply.
Cardan stared at the brown-paper wrapping, sealed with the waxen stamp of the Court of Termites. He opened it with trepidation.
There, in his long fingers, was a black coffee mug of the sort that mortals used. He spun it in his hands until he saw the writing on one side.
I RULE, it read.
High King Cardan gazed upon the message with great bafflement, and then, after a moment, his mouth lifted with the beginnings of a smile.
“I suppose that I do,” he said to himself, holding out the cup to be filled with wine. “But what sort of ruler will I be?”