Page 4 of How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

“What’s the matter with her?” Cardan asked.

Balekin yawned. “She’s ensorcelled. A victim of her own foolish bargain.”

Cardan had little experience of mortals. Some came through the High Court, musicians and artists and lovers who had wished for magic and found it. And there were the twin mortal children that Grand General Madoc had stolen and insisted on treating as though they were his own born daughters, kissing them on the tops of their heads and resting his clawed fingers protectively on their shoulders.

“Humans are like mice,” Balekin went on. “Dead before they learn how to be canny. Why shouldn’t they serve us? It gives their short lives some meaning.”

Cardan looked at Margaret. The emptiness of her eyes still unnerved him. But the strap in her hand unnerved him more.

“She is going to punish you,” Balekin said. “And do you know why?”

“I am certain you are about to enlighten me,” answered Cardan with a sneer. It was almost a relief to know that curbing his tongue wouldn’t help, as he’d never been very good at it.

“Because I won’t dirty my hands,” Balekin said. “Better you experience the humiliation of being beaten by a creature who ought to be your inferior. And every time you think of how disgusting mortals are—with their pocked skin and their decaying teeth and their fragile, little minds—I want you to think of this moment, when you were lower than even that. And I want you to remember how you willingly submitted, because if you don’t, you will have to leave Hollow Hall and my mercy.

“Now, little brother, you must choose a future.”

It turned out that Cardan didn’t have a heart of stone after all. As he removed his shirt and sank to his knees, as he fisted his hands and tried not to cry out when the strap fell, he burned with hatred. Hatred for Dain; for his father; for all the siblings who didn’t take him in and the one who did; for his mother, who spat at his feet as she was led away; for stupid, disgusting mortals; for all of Elfhame and everyone in it. Hate that was so bright and hot that it was the first thing that truly warmed him. Hate that felt so good that he welcomed being consumed by it.

Not a heart of stone, but a heart of fire.

Under Balekin’s tutelage, Cardan remade himself. He learned to drink a vast variety and quantity of wines, learned how to take powders that made him laugh and fall down and feel nothing at all. He visited the weavers and tailors with his brother, choosing garments with cuffs of feathers and exquisite embroidery, with collars as sharp as the points of his ears, and fabrics as soft as the tuft of his tail—a tail he tucked away, for it showed too much of what he schooled his face to hide. A poisonous flower displays its bright colors, a cobra flares its hood; predators ought not to shrink from extravagance. And that was what he was being polished and punished into being.

And when he returned to the palace dressed magnificently, behaving with perfect deference toward Eldred, shown off by his brother as though he were a tamed hawk, everyone pretended he was no longer in disgrace. Balekin relaxed his rules toward Cardan after that, allowing him to do what he wished so long as he didn’t draw the ire of their father.

That spring, Elfhame bustled with preparations for a state visit from Queen Orlagh and had little time to consider an errant prince anyway.

There were whispers that if Orlagh, known for her brutal and swift conquests over her rivals in the Undersea, didn’t already control everything beneath the waves, she soon would. And she had announced that she wanted to foster her daughter on land. In the High Court of Elfhame.

An honor. And an opportunity, if someone was clever enough to exploit it.

Orlagh hopes the girl will marry one of Eldred’s offspring, Prince Cardan overheard a courtier say.And then the queen will scheme to make that child the next ruler of Elfhame, so her daughter, Nicasia, may rule land and sea.

After which, the spouse will likely meet with an accident, put in another.

But if that was what some thought, others saw only the immediate benefits of such an alliance. Balekin and two of his sisters determined they would be the ones to befriend Princess Nicasia, imagining that friendship could change their balance of power in the family.

Cardan thought they were fools. Their father already favored his second-born child, Princess Elowyn. And if she wasn’t chosen as his heir, it would be Prince Dain, with his machinations. None of the others had the shadow of a chance.

Not that he cared.

He decided he would be thoroughly unpleasant to the girl from the sea, no matter how Balekin punished him for it. He would not have anyone think he was a part of this farce. He would not give her the opportunity to disdain him.

By the time Queen Orlagh and Princess Nicasia arrived, the great hall was draped in blue cloth. Dishes of cold, sliced scallops and tiny shrimp quivered on trays of ice beside honeycomb and oatcakes. Musicians had taken up playing merfolk songs on their instruments, the music strange to Cardan’s ear.

He wore a doublet of blue velvet. Gold hoops hung from his ears, and rings covered his fingers. His hair, dark as the sloes of a blackthorn, tumbled around his cheeks. When courtiers looked at him, he could tell they saw someone new, someone they were drawn to and a little afraid of. The feeling was as heady as any wine.

Then the procession arrived, clad like a conquering army. They were draped in teeth and bone and skins, with Orlagh leading them. She wore a gown of stingray, and her black hair was threaded with pearls. Around her throat hung the partial jawbone of a shark.

Cardan watched Queen Orlagh present her daughter to the High King. The girl had hair the deep aqua of the sea, drawn back with combs of coral. Her dress was gray sharkskin, and her brief curtsy was that of someone who had never questioned her own value. Her gaze swept the room with undisguised contempt.

He watched as Balekin swooped to her side, doubtless making light, charming conversation full of little compliments. He saw her laugh.

Prince Cardan bit into one of the raw, wriggling shrimps. It was foul. He spat it onto the packed dirt floor. One of the Undersea guards eyed him, obviously feeling that this was an insult.

Cardan made a rude gesture, and the guard looked away.

He secured himself a large plate of oatcakes slathered with honey and was dunking them into tea when Princess Nicasia wandered over to him. He paused midchew and hastily swallowed.

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