Faerie artists and musicians sit around him. Since the death of most of the royal family, he’s found himself at the center of one of the Court factions, the Circle of Larks. Brambles are coiled in his hair, and he sings softly to himself. He’s mortal, like me. He’s also probably mad.
“Come drink with us,” one of the Larks says, but I demur.
“Pretty, petty Jude.” The flames dance in Val Moren’s eyes when he looks my way. He begins picking off burnt skin and eating the soft white flesh of the eel. Between bites, he speaks. “Why haven’t you come to me for advice yet?”
It’s said that he was High King Eldred’s lover, once. He’s been in the Court since long before the time my sisters and I came here. Despite that, he never made common cause of our mortality. He never tried to help us, never tried to reach out to us to make us feel less alone. “Do you have some?”
He gazes at me and pops one of the eyes of the eel into his mouth. It sits, glistening, on his tongue. Then he swallows. “Maybe. But it matters little.”
I am so tired of riddles. “Let me guess. Because when I ask you for advice, you’re not going to give it to me?”
He laughs, a dry, hollow sound. I wonder how old he is. Under the brambles, he looks like a young man, but mortals won’t grow old so long as they don’t leave Elfhame. Although I cannot see age in lines in his face, I can see it in his eyes. “Oh, I will give you the finest advice anyone’s ever given you. But you will not heed it.”
“Then what good are you?” I demand, about to turn away. I don’t have time for a few lines of useless doggerel for me to interpret.
“I’m an excellent juggler,” he says, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving stains behind. He reaches into his pocket, coming up with a stone, three acorns, a piece of crystal, and what appears to be a wishbone. “Juggling, you see, is just tossing two things in the air at the same time.”
He begins to toss the acorns back and forth, then adds the wishbone. A few of the Larks nudge one another, whispering delightedly. “No matter how many things you add, you’ve got only two hands, so you can only toss two things. You’ve just got to throw faster and faster, higher and higher.” He adds the stone and the crystal, the things flying between his hands fast enough that it’s hard to see what he’s tossing. I suck in a breath.
Then everything falls, crashing to the stone floor. The crystal shatters. One of the acorns rolls close to the fire.
“My advice,” says Val Moren, “is that you learn to juggle better than I did, seneschal.”
For a long moment, I am so angry that I can’t move. I feel incandescent with it, betrayed by the one person who ought to understand how hard it is to be what we are, here.
Before I do something I will regret, I turn on my heels and walk away.
“I foretold you wouldn’t take my advice,” he calls after me.
The evening of the Hunter’s Moon, the whole Court moves to the Milkwood, where the trees are shrouded in masses of silk coverings that look, to my mortal eyes, like nothing so much as the egg sacks of moths, or perhaps the wrapped-up suppers of spiders.
Locke has had a structure of flat stones built up the way a wall might be, into the rough shape of a throne. A massive slab of rock serves for a back, with a wide stone for a seat. It towers over the grove. Cardan sits on it, crown gleaming at his brow. The nearby bonfire burns sage and yarrow. For a distorted moment, he seems larger than himself, moved into myth, the true High King of Faerie and no one’s puppet.
Awe slows my step, panic following at my heels.
A king is a living symbol, a beating heart, a star upon which Elfhame’s future is written. Surely you have noticed that since his reign began, the isles are different. Storms come in faster. Colors are a bit more vivid, smells are sharper. When he becomes drunk, his subjects become tipsy without knowing why. When his blood falls, things grow.
I just hope he doesn’t see any of this on my face. When I am in front of him, I bow my head, grateful for an excuse not to meet his eyes.
“My king,” I say.
Cardan rises from the throne, unclasping a cape made entirely of gleaming black feathers. A new ring glimmers on his pinkie finger, red stone catching the flames of the bonfire. A very familiar ring. My ring.
I recall that he took my hand in his rooms.
I grind my teeth, stealing a glance at my own bare hand. He stole my ring. He stole it and I didn’t notice. The Roach taught him how to do that.
I wonder if Nicasia would count that as a betrayal. It sure feels like one.
“Walk with me,” he says, taking my hand and guiding me through the crowd. Hobs and grigs, green skin and brown, tattered wings and sculpted bark garments—all the Folk of Elfhame have come out tonight in their finery. We pass a man in a coat stitched with golden leaves and another in a green leather vest with a cap that curls up like a fern. Blankets cover the ground and are piled with trays of grapes the size of fists and ruby-bright cherries.
“What are we doing?” I ask as Cardan steers me to the edge of the woods.