The Cruel Prince (The Folk of t -(The Folk of the Air #1) - Holly Black Page 0,52

Cardan’s bare back.

And my own name, written over and over and over. I thought I knew how much Cardan hated me, but looking at that paper, I realized I had no idea. And he’d hate me even more still if he knew I had seen him on his knees, beaten by a human servant. A mortal, for an extra bit of humiliation, an extra dose of rage.

“Jude?” Oriana says, and I realize that I’ve been staring off toward the window and the fading light.

“Yes?” I put on a bright, false smile.

Taryn and Vivienne begin to laugh.

“And just who are you thinking about with a dreamy expression like that on your face?” Oriana asks, which makes Vivi laugh again. Taryn doesn’t, probably because she thinks I am an idiot.

I shake my head, hoping I have not gone red-faced. “No, it wasn’t anything like that. I was just—I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What were we talking about?”

“The seamstress wishes to measure you first,” Oriana says. “Since you’re the youngest.”

I look over at Brambleweft, who holds a string between her hands. I hop up onto the box she has set before her, holding out my arms. I am a good daughter today. I am going to get a pretty gown. I will dance at Prince Dain’s coronation until my feet bleed.

“Don’t scowl,” the seamstress says. Before I can stammer apologies, she continues, voice pitched low. “I was told to sew this dress with pockets that can conceal weapons and poisons and other little necessities. We’ll make sure that’s done while still showing you to great advantage.”

I almost stumble off the box, I am so surprised. “That’s wonderful,” I whisper back, knowing better than to thank her. Faeries don’t believe in dismissing gratitude with a few words. They believe in debts and bargains, and the person I am meant to be most indebted to is not here. Prince Dain is the one who expects to be repaid.

She smiles, pins in her mouth, and I grin back at her. I will repay him, although it seems I will have much to repay him for. I will make him proud of me. Everyone else, I will make very, very sorry.

When I look up, Vivi is watching me suspiciously. Taryn is next to be measured. As she gets on the box, I go and drink more tea. Then I eat three sugary cakes and a strip of ham.

“Where did you go the other day?” Vivi asks as I gulp down the meat like some kind of raptor bird. I have woken ravenous.

I think of how I fled from our conversation on my way to Hollow Hall. I can’t exactly deny that, not without explaining more about where I was going than my geased tongue will allow. I shrug, one-shouldered.

“I made one of the other Gentry kids describe what happened to you at that lecture,” Vivi says. “You could have died. The only reason you’re alive is that they didn’t want their game to be over.”

“That’s the way they are,” I remind her. “That’s the way things are. Do you want the world to be different than it is? Because this is the world we get, Vivi.”

“It’s not the only world,” she says softly.

“It’s my world,” I say, my heart hammering in my chest. I stand before she can tell me otherwise. My hands are shaking, though, and my palms are sweaty when I go to finger the fabrics.

Ever since I staggered home through the woods in my underwear, I have been trying to feel nothing about what happened. I am afraid that if I begin to feel, I won’t be able to bear it. I am afraid that the emotion will be like a wave sucking me under.

It’s not the first awful thing I have endured and pushed into the back of my brain. That’s how I’ve been coping, and if there’s another, better way, I do not know it.

I focus my attention on the cloth until I can breathe evenly again, until the panic dissipates. There’s a velvet blue-green, reminding me of the lake at dusk. I find an amazing, fantastical fabric embroidered with moths and butterflies and ferns and flowers. I lift it up, and underneath is a bolt of beautiful fog-gray cloth that ripples like smoke. They’re so very pretty. The kind of fabrics that princesses in fairy tales wear.

Of course, Taryn is right about stories. Bad things happen to those princesses. They are pricked with thorns, poisoned by apples, married to their