The Cruel Prince (The Folk of t -(The Folk of the Air #1) - Holly Black Page 0,113
him the satisfaction of telling him that. “You want me to ask you something? Fine. When did Taryn start whatever it is she has with Locke?”
He laughs with delight. This appears to be a discussion he isn’t interested in avoiding. Typical. “Oh, I wondered when you would ask about that. It was some months ago. He told us all about it—throwing stones at her window, leaving her notes to meet him in the woods, wooing her by moonlight. He swore us to silence, made it all seem like a lark. I think, in the beginning, he did it to make Nicasia jealous. But later …”
“How did he know it was her room?” I ask, frowning.
That makes his smile grow. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe either of you would have done as his first mortal conquest. I believe his goal is to have both of you in the end.”
I don’t like any of this. “What about you?”
He gives me a quick, odd look. “Locke hasn’t gotten around to seducing me yet, if that’s what you’re asking. I suppose I should be insulted.”
“That’s not what I mean. You and Nicasia were …” I don’t know what to call them. Together isn’t quite the word for an evil and beautiful team, ruining people and enjoying it.
“Yes, Locke stole her from me,” Cardan says with a tightness in his jaw. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t smirk. Clearly, it costs him something to tell me this. “And I don’t know if Locke wanted her to make some other lover jealous or to make me angry or just because of Nicasia’s magnificence. Nor do I know what fault in me made her choose him. Now do you believe I am giving you the answers you were promised?”
The thought of Cardan being brokenhearted is almost beyond my imagining. I nod. “Did you love her?”
“What kind of question is that?” he demands.
I shrug. “I want to know.”
“Yes,” he says, his gaze on the desk, on my hand resting there. I am suddenly conscious of my fingernails, bitten to the quick. “I loved her.”
“Why do you want me dead?” I ask, because I want to remind us both that answering embarrassing questions is the least of what he deserves. We’re enemies, no matter how many jokes he tells or how friendly he seems. Charmers are charming, but that’s all they are.
He lets out a long breath and puts his head down on his hands, not paying nearly enough attention to the crossbow. “You mean with the nixies? You were the one who was thrashing around and throwing things at them. They’re extremely lazy creatures, but I thought you might actually annoy them into taking a bite out of you. I may be rotten, but my one virtue is that I’m not a killer. I wanted to frighten you, but I never wanted you dead. I never wanted anyone dead.”
I think of the river and how, when one nixie detached from the others, Cardan waited until it paused and then left so we could get out of the water. I stare at him, at the traces of silver on his face from the party, at the inky black of his eyes. I suddenly remember how he pulled Valerian off me when I was choking on faerie fruit.
I never wanted anyone dead.
Against my will, I recall the way he held that sword in the study with Balekin and the sloppiness of his technique. I thought he’d been doing that deliberately, to annoy his brother. Now, for the first time, I consider the possibility that he just doesn’t much like sword fighting. That he’d never learned it particularly well. That if we ever fought, I would win. I consider all the things I have done to become a worthy adversary of him, but maybe I haven’t been fighting Cardan at all. Maybe I’ve been fighting my own shadow.
“Valerian tried to murder me outright. Twice. First in the tower, then in my room at my house.”
Cardan lifts his head, and his whole posture stiffens as though some uncomfortable truth just came home to him. “I thought when you said you killed him you meant that you tracked him down and …” His voice trails off, and he starts over. “Only a fool would break into the general’s house.”
I draw down the collar of my shirt so he can see where Valerian tried to strangle me. “I have another on my shoulder from where he knocked me into the floor. Believe me yet?”