How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories by Holly Black

Author:Holly Black [Black, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780316540827
Google: qSPkDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2020-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Nicasia’s head rested on Locke’s bare chest. Fox-red hair stuck to his cheek with sweat.

As Cardan stared at them, a rush of blood heated his cheeks, and the pounding in his head grew so loud that it momentarily drowned out thought. He looked at their tangled bodies, at the glowing embers in the grate, at the half-finished work for the palace tutors that was still on his desk, sloppy blotches of ink dotting the paper.

Cardan ought to have been the boy with the heart of stone in Aslog’s story, but somehow he had let his heart turn to glass. He could feel the shattered shards of it lodged in his lungs, making his every breath painful.

Cardan had trusted Nicasia not to hurt him, which was ridiculous, since he well knew that everyone hurts one another and that the people you loved hurt you the most grievously. Since he was well aware that they both took delight in hurting everyone else that they could, how could he have thought himself safe?

He knew he had to wake them, sneer, and behave as though it didn’t matter. And since his only true talent so far had ever been in awfulness, he trusted that he could manage it.

Cardan nudged Locke with a booted foot. It wasn’t quite a kick, but it wasn’t far from one, either. “Time to get up.”

Locke’s eyelashes fluttered. He groaned, then stretched. Cardan could see the calculation flash in his eyes, along with something that might have been fear. “Your brother throws quite the revel,” he said with a deliberately casual yawn. “We lost track of you. I thought you might have gone off with Valerian and the treewoman.”

“And why would you suppose that?” Cardan asked.

“It seemed you were attempting to outdo each other in excess.” Locke gestured expansively, a false smile on his face. One of Locke’s finest qualities was his ability to recast all their lowliest exploits as worthy of a ballad, told and retold until Cardan could almost believe that staggeringly better or thrillingly worse version of events. He could no more lie than any of the Folk, but stories were the closest thing to lies the Folk could tell.

And perhaps Locke hoped to make a story of this moment. Something they could laugh over. Perhaps Cardan ought to let him.

But then Nicasia opened her eyes. And at the sight of Cardan, she sucked in her breath.

Tell me it means nothing, that it was just a bit of fun, he thought. Tell me and everything will be as it was before. Tell me and I will pretend along with you.

But she was silent.

“I would have my room,” Cardan said, narrowing his eyes and assuming his most superior pose. “Perhaps you two might take whatever this is elsewhere.”

Part of him thought she would laugh, having known him before he perfected his sneer, but she shrank under his gaze.

Locke stood up, putting on his pants. “Oh, don’t be like that. We’re all friends here.”

Cardan’s practiced demeanor went up in smoke.

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