“You see, the rich man hadn’t told the boy the whole truth about the curse. His daughter had spurned a witch’s son and been cursed by the witch, a curse forcing the girl to take for her husband anyone—no matter how poor or hideous—who could spend three nights with her and show no fear. But what the witch didn’t know was that the girl had rejected the son out of fear for him. For she loved the son, and her father had threatened to have him slain if they wed.
“Now, the witch’s son knew only a little magic, but he knew a great deal about the heart of the rich man’s daughter. And so, when rumors came to him that someone was going to break the curse, he knew he must act immediately. He could not break the curse, but he did know how to bring a curse down on himself.
“And so he made himself a monster twin to hers and rushed at the boy.
“The boy’s back slammed against the wall, and he felt something crack in his chest. His curse was broken. He felt remorse for at least a few of the things he’d done. And he was filled with a strange and tender love for her, his cursed bride.
“‘Stay back,’ the boy shouted at the new monster, tears wetting his cheeks. He grabbed up a poker from before the fire.
“But before he could strike, the two monsters went out the window, flying into the night. He watched them go, his heart no longer stone, but heavier than before. The next morning, when he was discovered, he went to the rich man and told him the tale. And since the man’s only daughter was gone, he declared that the boy should be his heir and inherit all his lands.”
“Even though he was terrible?” Cardan said. “Because they were both terrible? Don’t ask me the lesson, because I don’t know it and I can’t imagine there is one.”
“No?” Aslog inquired. “It’s simply this. A heart of stone can still be broken.”
I
f Aslog’s tale was an ill omen, Prince Cardan did his best to push it away with overindulgence, merriment, and an absolute refusal to think about the future.
It was working a treat when Prince Cardan awoke on a rug in the parlor of Hollow Hall. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed in through the window. He was fully dressed, stank of wine, and felt light-headed in a way that suggested he might yet be drunk.
He was not the only one to have fallen asleep on the floor. Near him, a lilac-skinned courtier in a ball gown with tattered hems slumbered on, her thin wings twitching on her back. And next to her sprawled a trio of pixies, gold dust in their hair. On the couch was a troll, with what looked like blood crusted around his mouth.
Prince Cardan tried to recall the party, but what he mostly remembered was Balekin tipping a goblet against his lips.
The night began coming back to him in pieces. Balekin had encouraged Cardan to bring his friends to his latest revel. Usually, they spent their riotous evenings drinking wine in the moonlight and coming up with such schemes as might amuse them and horrify the populace.
Your little Grackle protégés, Balekin had called them.
Cardan was skeptical about the invitation, as his eldest brother was most generous when he would somehow become the greatest beneficiary of his largess. But Valerian and Locke were eager to compete with the legendary debauchery of the Grackles, and Nicasia was looking forward to mocking everyone, so there was no dissuading them.
She had arrived in a gown of black silk beneath a cage of fish bones and shells, her deep aquamarine hair caught up in a crown of coral. One look at her, and at his brother, and Cardan couldn’t help recalling how Balekin had once planned to win influence through her favor.
He might have worried that his brother still planned something like that. But she had assured him many times that she considered all of Elfhame beneath her, all of Elfhame save for Cardan.
Valerian arrived soon after, and Locke shortly followed. They took to Balekin’s form of merriment as ticks to blood. Much wine was poured. Courtiers shared gossip and flirtations and promises for the evening ahead. There was a brief spate of declaiming erotic poetry. Powders were pressed on Cardan’s tongue, and he passed them to Nicasia with a kiss.
As dawn broke, Cardan experienced a vast delight with the world and everyone in it. He even felt an expansiveness toward Balekin, a gratitude for being taken in and remade in his eldest brother’s image, no matter how harsh his methods. Cardan went to pour another goblet of wine with which to make a toast.
Across the room, he saw Locke sit down beside Nicasia on one of the low velvet couches, close enough that his thigh pressed against hers, and then turned to whisper in her ear. She glanced over, a guilty look flashing across her features when she saw Cardan notice.
But it was easy to let such a little thing slip from his thoughts as the evening wore on. Revelry is inherently slippery; part of its munificence is an easing of boundaries. And there were plenty of entertainments to distract him.
A treewoman got up on a table to dance. Her branches brushed against the chandeliers, her knothole eyes were closed, and her bark-covered fingers waved in the air. She took swigs from a bottle.
“It’s too bad Balekin didn’t invite the Duarte girls,” said Valerian with a curled lip, his gaze on an ensorcelled human taking a silver platter of grapes and split-open pomegranates to the table. “I would relish the chance to demonstrate their true place in Elfhame.”
“Oh no, I rather like them,” Locke said. “Especially the one. Or is it the other?”
“The Grand General would mount your head on a wall,” Nicasia informed him, patting his cheek.
“A very fine head,” he informed her with a wicked grin. “Suitable for mounting.”
Nicasia cut her gaze toward Cardan and said no more. Her expression was a careful blank. He marked that, when he wouldn’t have marked their words.
Cardan tipped back his goblet and drank it to the dregs, ignoring the sourness in his stomach. The evening quickly became a blur.
He recalled the treewoman crashing through a table. Sap leaked out of her open mouth as Valerian studied her with an odd, cruel expression.
A hob played a lute strung with another reveler’s hair.
Sprites swarmed around a spilled jug of mead.
Cardan stood in the gardens, staring up at the stars.
Then he woke on the rug. Looking around the room, he didn’t spot anyone he knew. He stumbled up the stairs and into his room.
There he found Locke and Nicasia curled up on the rug before the dying fire. They were wrapped in the tapestry blanket from his bed. Her black silk gown had been discarded in a shining puddle, the cage she’d worn over it now tucked half underneath the bed. Locke’s white coat was spread across the wooden planks of the floor.
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.