The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2) - Holly Black Page 0,75

begin, the Ghost is at my shoulder. Vulciber, beside him. They are both in uniform.

“Come with us,” the Ghost says, uncharacteristically blunt.

“What is it?” I ask them, my voice sharp. I am still thinking about Vivi and Heather.

The Ghost is as grim as I’ve ever seen him. “The Undersea made its move.”

I look around for Oak, but he is where I left him moments before, with Oriana, watching Heather insist that she’s fine. A small frown creases the space between his brows, but he seems otherwise utterly safe from everything but bad influence.

Cardan stands on the other side of the green, near where Taryn and Locke have just come back from swearing their vows. Taryn looks shy, with roses in her cheeks. Folk rush over to kiss her—goblins and grigs, Court ladies and hags. The sky is bright overhead, the wind sweet and full of flowers.

“The Tower of Forgetting. Vulciber insists you ought to see it,” the Bomb says. I didn’t even notice her walking up. She’s all in black, her hair pulled into a tight bun. “Jude?”

I turn back to my spies. “I don’t understand.”

“We will explain on the way,” Vulciber says. “Are you ready?”

“Just a second.” I should congratulate Taryn before I leave. Kiss her cheeks and say something nice, and then she’ll know I was here, even if I had to go. But as I look toward her, evaluating how swiftly I can do that, my gaze catches on her earrings.

Dangling from her lobes are moons and stars. The same ones I bargained for from Grimsen. The ones I lost in the wood. She wasn’t wearing them when we got in the carriage, so she must have got them…

Beside her, Locke is smiling his fox smile, and when he walks, he has a slight limp.

For a moment, I just stare, my mind refusing to acknowledge what I’m seeing. Locke. It was Locke with the riders, Locke and his friends on the night before he was to be married. A bachelor party of sorts. I guess he decided to pay me back for threatening him. That, or perhaps he knew he could never stay faithful and decided to go after me before I came back for him.

I take one last look at them and realize I can do nothing now.

“Pass the news about the Undersea on to the Grand General,” I tell the Bomb. “And make sure—”

“I’ll watch over your brother,” she reassures me. “And the High King.”

Turning my back on the wedding, I follow Vulciber and the Ghost. Yellow horses with long manes are nearby, already saddled and bridled. We swing up onto them and ride to the prison.

From the outside, the only evidence that something might be wrong is the waves striking higher than I’ve ever seen them. Water has pooled on the uneven flagstones.

Inside, I see the bodies. Knights, lying pale and still. The few on their backs have water filling their mouths as though their lips were the edges of cups. Others lie on their sides. All their eyes have been replaced with pearls.

Drowned on dry land.

I rush down the stairs, terrified for Cardan’s mother. She is there, though, alive, blinking out at me from the gloom. For a moment, I just stand in front of her cell, hand on my chest in relief.

Then I draw Nightfell and cut straight down between bar and lock. Sparks fly, and the door opens. Asha looks at me suspiciously.

“Go,” I say. “Forget our bargains. Forget everything. Get out of here.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asks me.

“For Cardan,” I say. I leave unsaid the second part: because his mother is still alive and mine is not, because even if he hates you, at least he should get a chance to tell you about it.

With one baffled look back at me, she begins to ascend.

I need to know if Balekin is still imprisoned, if he’s still alive. I head lower, picking my way through the gloom with one hand against the wall and the other holding my blade.

The Ghost calls my name, probably because of Asha’s abrupt arrival in front of him, but I am intent on my purpose. My feet grow swifter and more sure on the spiral steps.

I find Balekin’s cell is empty, the bars bent and broken, his opulent rugs wet and covered in sand.

Orlagh took Balekin. Stole a prince of Faerie from right under my nose.

I curse my own shortsightedness. I knew they were meeting, knew they were scheming together, but I was sure,