How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories - Holly Black Page 0,8

He felt smug to see how bad she was at even such an easy thing.

It was only later that it disturbed him to think back on the shape of her boot in the soil, as though she was the only real thing in a land of ghosts.

He had seen her before, he supposed. But at the palace school, he really looked. He noted her skirts, spattered with mud, and her hair ribbons, partially undone. He saw her twin sister, her double, as though one of them were a changeling child and not human at all. He saw the way they whispered together while they ate, smiling over private jokes. He saw the way they answered the instructors, as though they had any right to this knowledge, had any right to be sitting among their betters. To occasionally better their betters with those answers. And the one girl was good with a sword, instructed personally by the Grand General, as though she was not some by-blow of a faithless wife.

When she stood up against him, she was so good that it was almost possible to believe she hadn’t let him win.

The seeds of Prince Cardan’s resentment came full bloom. What was the point of her trying so hard? Why would she work like that when it would never win her anything?

“Mortals,” said Nicasia with a curl of her lip.

He had never tried like that for anything in his life.

Jude, Cardan thought, hating even the shape of her name. Jude.

C

ome back with me to the Undersea,” Nicasia whispered against Cardan’s throat.

They were lying on a bed of soft moss at the edge of the Crooked Forest. He could hear waves crashing along the shore. She was sprawled out in a robe of silver, her hair spread beneath her like a tide pool.

It was a relationship they had fallen into, slipping easily from friendship to kisses with the eagerness of youth. She whispered to him about her childhood beneath the waves, about a foiled assassination that nearly ended her life, and recited poetry to him in the language of the selkies. In turn, he told her about his brother and his mother, about the prophecy hanging over his head, the one that foretold he would be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne, the one that set his father against him. He could not imagine being parted from her.

“The Undersea?” he murmured, turning toward her.

“When my mother returns for me, come away with us,” she said. “Live with me forever in the deep. We will ride sharks, and everyone will fear us.”

“Yes,” he agreed immediately, thrilled by the idea of abandoning Elfhame. “With pleasure.”

She laughed, delighted, and pressed her mouth to his.

Cardan kissed her back, feeling smug at the thought of being consort to the future Queen of the Undersea while the rest of his siblings squabbled over the Blood Crown. He would relish their envy.

Even the prophecy that once seemed to doom him took on a new meaning. Perhaps he would destroy Elfhame one day and be a villain above the waves but a hero beneath them. Perhaps all the hatred in his heart was good for something after all.

Princess Nicasia would be his destiny, and her kingdom would be his.

But as he moved to kiss her shoulder, she pushed him away with a grin. “Let’s dive down into the deep,” she said, springing up. “Let me show you what it will be like.”

“Now?” he asked, but she was already on her feet, wriggling out of her dress. Naked, Nicasia ran toward the waves, beckoning him.

With a laugh, he kicked off his boots, following her. He liked swimming and spent hot days in a pond near the palace or bobbing in the Lake of Masks. Sometimes he would float, staring up at the sky and watching the drifting of the clouds. In the sea, he threw his body against the waves, daring them to drag him out with them. If he liked that, then surely he would like this better.

He disrobed on the beach, the water cold on his toes as they sank in the sand. When he waded into the surf, his tail lashed unconsciously.

Nicasia pressed a finger to his lips and said a few words in the language of the Undersea, a language that sounded like whale song and the screeching of gulls. Immediately he felt a sting in his lungs, an interruption of his breath. Magic.

Orlagh had many enemies in the Undersea, and she sent