The Cruel Prince (The Folk of t -(The Folk of the Air #1) - Holly Black Page 0,81
slink away. I do not tell the Ghost that I thought she worked for Madoc. Instead, I try to puzzle through things myself. But I have too few pieces.
What does the murder of Liriope have to do with the coronation? What does Madoc have to do with any of this? Could his spy have been a double agent, working for Balekin as well as Madoc? If so, does that mean she was stealing information from my household?
“Someone is trying to distract us,” the Ghost says. “While they set their trap. Be alert tomorrow.”
The Ghost doesn’t give me any more specific orders, doesn’t even tell me to stop taking my tiny doses of poison. He doesn’t direct me to do anything differently; he leads me home to catch scraps of sleep just after dawn. As we’re about to part, I want to stop and throw myself on his mercy. I’ve done a terrible thing, I want to say. Help me with the body. Help me.
But we all want stupid things. That doesn’t mean we should have them.
I bury Valerian near the stables, but outside the paddock, so that even the most carnivorous of Madoc’s sharp-toothed horses are unlikely to dig him up and gnaw on his bones.
It’s not easy to bury a body. It’s especially not easy to bury a body without your whole household finding out. I must roll Valerian onto my balcony and hurl him into the brush below. Then, one-handed, I must drag him away from the house. I am straining and sweating by the time I get to a likely plot of dew-covered grass. Newly woken birds call to one another beneath the brightening sky.
For a moment, all I want to do is lie down myself.
But I still have to dig.
The next afternoon is a sleep-deprived blur of being painted and braided, corseted and cinched. Three fat gold earrings run up the side of one of Madoc’s green ears, and he wears long gold claws over his fingers. Oriana looks like a rose in bloom beside him, wearing a massive necklace of rough-cut green emeralds at her throat, large enough to nearly count as armor.
In my room, I unwrap my hand. It looks worse than I had hoped—wet and sticking instead of scabbed over. Swollen. I finally take Dain’s advice and get some moss from the kitchens, wash the wound, and rewrap it with my makeshift button brace. I wasn’t planning to wear gloves to the coronation, but I don’t have much choice. Hunting around in my drawers, I find a set in a dark blue silk and draw them on.
I imagine Locke taking my hands tonight, imagine him sweeping me around the hill. I hope I can avoid flinching if he presses on my palm. I can never let him guess what happened to Valerian. No matter how much he likes me, he wouldn’t like kissing the person who put his friend in the ground.
My sisters and I pass one another in the hall as we dart around, grabbing stray things we need. Vivienne goes through my jewelry cabinet, finding nothing adequately matching her ghostly dress in her own.
“You’re actually coming with us,” I say. “Madoc will be stunned.”
I am wearing a choker to cover the bruises blooming on my throat where Valerian’s fingers sank into my skin. When Vivi gets down on her knees to sort through a tangle of earrings, I have a terror that she will glance beneath my bed and see some smear of blood I have missed cleaning. I am so worried that I barely register her smile.
“I like to keep everyone on their toes,” she says. “Besides, I want to gossip with Princess Rhyia and see the spectacle of so many rulers of faerie Courts in one place. But most of all, I want to meet Taryn’s mysterious suitor and see what Madoc makes of his proposal.”
“Do you have any idea who he is?” I ask. With everything that’s happened, I had nearly forgotten about him.
“Not even a guess. Do you?” She finds what she is looking for—iridescent gray labradorite drops given to me by Taryn for my sixteenth birthday, forged by a goblin tinker with whom she traded three kisses.
In idle moments, I have turned over and over who might ask for her hand. I think of the way Cardan pulled her aside and made her cry. I think of Valerian’s leer. Of the way she shoved me too hard when I teased her about Balekin, although I am