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. He became the snarling feral child that had prowled the palace, stealing from tables, unkempt and unloved. Launching himself at Locke, he bore him to the floor. They collapsed in a heap. Cardan punched, hitting Locke somewhere between the eye and the cheekbone.
“Stop telling me who I am,” he snarled, teeth bared. “I am tired of your stories.”
Locke tried to knock Cardan off him. But Cardan had the advantage, and he used it to wrap his hands around Locke’s throat.
Maybe he really was still drunk. He felt giddy and dizzy all at once.
“You’re going to really hurt him!” Nicasia shouted, hitting Cardan’s shoulder and then, when that didn’t work, trying to haul him off the other boy.
Locke made a wordless sound, and Cardan realized he was pressing so tightly on his windpipe that he couldn’t speak.
Cardan dropped his hands away.
Locke choked, gasping for air.
“Create some tale about this,” Cardan shouted, adrenaline still fizzing through his bloodstream.
“Fine,” Locke finally managed, his voice strange. “Fine, you mad, hedge-born coxcomb. But you were only together out of habit; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so easy to make her love me.”
Cardan punched him. This time, Locke swung back, catching Cardan on the side of the head. They rolled around, hitting each other, until Locke scuttled back and made it to his feet. He ran for the door, Cardan right behind.
“You are both fools,” Nicasia shouted after them.
They thundered down the stairs, nearly colliding with Valerian.
His shirt was singed, and he stank of smoke. “Good morrow,” he said, apparently not noticing the bruises rising on Locke’s face or how the sight of him had brought them all up short. “Cardan, I hope your brother won’t be angry. I’m afraid I may have set one of the guests on fire.”
Cardan had no time to react or to even find out if someone died before Nicasia grabbed his arm. “Come with me,” she said, dragging him into a parlor where a faun was spread out on a divan. The faun sat up at the sight of them.
“Get out,” she commanded, pointing at the door. With a single look at her face, the faun left, his hooves clacking on the stone floor.
Then she spun on Cardan. He folded his arms over his chest protectively.
“I’m a little glad you hit him,” Nicasia said. “I’m even glad you found us. You ought to have known from the first, and it was only cowardice that kept me from telling you.”
“Do you suppose that I am glad as well? I’m not.” Cardan was having difficulty assuming his previous reserve, what with his left ear ringing from the blow Locke landed, his knuckles burning from the punches he’d thrown, and Nicasia before him.
“Forgive me.” She looked up, a little smile at the corners of her mouth. “I do care for you. I always shall.”
He wanted to ask if Locke was right, if friendship had stolen the thrill from being lovers. But looking at her, he knew the answer. And he knew the only way he could possibly keep his dignity.
“You have cast your lot with him,” he said. “There is nothing to forgive. But if you regret it, do not think that you will be able to call me back to your side like some forgotten plaything you mislaid for a while.”
Nicasia looked at him, a little frown forming between her brows. “I wouldn’t—”
“Then we understand each other.” Cardan turned and stalked from the parlor.
Valerian and Locke had disappeared from the hall.
To Cardan, there seemed little purpose to do anything but resume drinking before he properly sobered up. The shouting and punching had disturbed enough revelers to wake them. Most were glad to join Cardan in new bouts of merriment.
He licked golden dust from collarbones and drank strong, grass-scented liquor from the belly button of a phooka. By the time it occurred to him that he had missed school, he had been drunk for three days and consumed enough powders and potions to have been awake for most of that time.
If he stank of wine before, now he reeked of it, and if he’d felt light-headed then, now he was reeling.
But it seemed to him that he ought to present himself to his tutors and show the children of the Gentry that no matter what they’d heard, he was fine. In fact, he had seldom felt so fine before in his life.
He staggered through the hall and out the door.
“My prince?” The door’s wooden face was the picture of distress. “You’re not truly going out like that, are you?”
“My door,” Cardan replied. “I most certainly am.”
He promptly fell down the front steps.
At the stables, he began to laugh. He had to lie down in the hay he was laughing so hard. Tears leaked out of his eyes.
He thought of Nicasia and Locke and dalliances and stories and lies, but it all jumbled together. He saw himself drowning in a sea of red wine from which an enormous moth was steadily drinking; saw Nicasia with a fish’s head instead of a tail; saw his hands around Dain’s throat; saw Margaret looming over him with a strap, giggling, as she transformed into Aslog.