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.

“You must be Prince Cardan,” she said.

“And you’re the princess of fishes.” He sneered, making sure she knew he wasn’t impressed. “Over whom everyone is making such an enormous fuss.”

“You’re very rude,” she told him. Across the floor, he saw Princess Caelia rushing toward them, her corn-silk hair flying behind her, too late to prevent the international incident that was her youngest brother.

“I have many other, even worse, qualities.”

Surprisingly, that made Nicasia smile, a lovely, venomous little grin. “Do you now? That’s excellent, because everyone else in the palace seems very dull.”

Understanding came to him all at once. The daughter of fearsome Orlagh, expected to rule over the brutal, vast depths of the Undersea, had cold-bloodedness for her birthright. Of course she would despise empty flattery and have contempt for the silly fawning of his siblings. He grinned back at her, sharing the joke.

At that moment, Princess Caelia arrived, her mouth open, ready to say something that might distract their honored guest from a wretched younger brother who might not be so tame after all.

“Oh, go away, Caelia,” Cardan said before she had a chance to speak. “The sea princess finds you wearisome.”

His sister closed her mouth abruptly, looking comically surprised.

Nicasia laughed.

For all the charm and distinction of his siblings, it was Cardan who won the Undersea’s favor. It was the first time he’d won anything.

With Nicasia by his side, Cardan drew others to him, until he formed a malicious little foursome who prowled the isles of Elfhame looking for trouble. They unraveled precious tapestries and set fire to part of the Crooked Forest. They made their instructors at the palace school weep and made courtiers terrified to cross them.

Valerian, who loved cruelty the way some Folk loved poetry.

Locke, who had a whole empty house for them to run amok in, along with an endless appetite for merriment.

Nicasia, whose contempt for the land made her eager to have all of Elfhame kiss her slipper.

And Cardan, who modeled himself on his eldest brother and learned how to use his status to make Folk scrape and grovel and bow and beg, who delighted in being a villain.

Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted.

And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming.

But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.

Prince Cardan wasn’t feeling nearly villainous enough as he flew over the sea on the back of an enormous moth late one afternoon. The moth had been his mother’s creature, hand-tamed out of the Crooked Forest with honey and wine. Once she was imprisoned in the Tower of Forgetting, the moth languished and was easily tempted into his service by a few sips of mead.

The powder of its wings kept making him sneeze. He cursed the moth, cursed his poor planning, and doubly cursed the middle-aged human woman clutching him too tightly around the waist.

He told himself this was nothing more than a prank, a way to pay Balekin back for ill treatment, by stealing away one of his servants.

Cardan wasn’t saving her, and he would never do this again.

“You know I don’t like you,” he told Margaret with a scowl.

She didn’t reply. He wasn’t even sure she’d heard with the wind whipping around them. “You made Balekin a promise, a foolish promise, but a promise all the same. You deserve—” He couldn’t get out the rest of the sentence. You deserved everything you got. That would have been a lie, and while the Folk could trick and deceive, no untruth could pass their lips.