“Do you really think I care if you’re comfortable?” I demand.

I hear a footfall and stand up from the desk. From the common room comes the sound of smashing glass. I shove Cardan’s ring into my bodice, where it rests heavily against my skin, and head into the hall. The Roach has knocked a line of jars off the bookshelf and cracked the wood of a cabinet. Jagged glass and spilled infusions carpet the stone floor. Mandrake. Snakeroot. Larkspur. The Ghost is grabbing the Roach’s arm, hauling him back from smashing more things. Despite the line of blood streaking down his leg, the stiffness of his movements. The Ghost has been in a fight.

“Hey,” I say.

Both look surprised to see me. They are even more surprised when they notice Prince Cardan tied to a chair in the doorway of the map room.

“Shouldn’t you be with your father, celebrating?” the Ghost spits. I take a step back. Before, he’s always been a model of perfect, unnatural calm. Neither of them seems calm now. “The Bomb is still out there, and both of them nearly gave their lives to free me from Balekin’s dungeon, only to find you here, gloating.”

“No!” I say, holding my ground. “Think about it. If I knew what was going to happen, if I was on Madoc’s side, the only way I would be here is with a retainer of knights. You’d have been shot coming in the door. I would hardly have come alone, dragging along a prisoner that my father would dearly love to have.”

“Peace, both of you. We’re all of us reeling,” the Roach says, looking at the damage he has done. He shakes his head, then his attention goes to Cardan. He walks toward him, studying the prince’s face. The Roach’s black lips pull back from his teeth in a considering grimace. When he turns back to me, he’s obviously impressed. “Although it seems that one of us kept her head.”

“Hello,” Cardan says, raising his brows and regarding the Roach as though they were sitting down to tea together.

Cardan’s clothes are disarranged, from crawling under tables or being captured and tied, and his infamous tail is showing under the white lawn of his shirt. It is slim, nearly hairless, with a tuft of black fur at the tip. As I watch, the tail forms one wavering curve after another, snaking back and forth, betraying his cool face, telling its own story of uncertainty and fear.

I can see why he hides that thing away.

“We should kill him,” says the Ghost, slouching in the hallway, light brown hair blown across his forehead. “He’s the only member of the royal family who can crown Balekin. Without Cardan, the throne will be forever lost, and we will have avenged Dain.”

Cardan draws a sharp breath and then lets it out slowly. “I’d prefer to live.”

“We don’t work for Dain anymore,” the Roach reminds the Ghost, the nostrils of his long green knife of a nose flaring. “Dain’s dead and beyond caring about thrones or crowns. We sell the prince back to Balekin for everything we can get and leave. Go among the low Courts or the free Folk. There’s fun to be had, and gold. You could come along, Jude. If you want.”

The offer is tempting. Burn it all down. Run. Start over in a place where no one knows me except the Ghost and the Roach.

“I don’t want Balekin’s money.” The Ghost spits on the ground. “And other than that, the boy prince is useless to us. Too young, too weak. If not for Dain, then let’s kill him for all of Faerie.”

“Too young, too weak, too mean,” I put in.

“Wait,” Cardan says. I have imagined him afraid many times, but the reality outstrips those imaginings. Seeing the quickening of his breath, the way he pulls against my careful knots, delights me. “Wait! I could tell you what I know, everything I know, anything about Balekin, anything you’d like. If you want gold and riches, I could get them for you. I know the way to Balekin’s treasury. I have the ten keys to the ten locks of the palace. I could be useful.”

Only in my dreams has Cardan ever been like this. Begging. Miserable. Powerless.

“What did you know about your brother’s plan?” the Ghost asks him, peeling himself off the wall. He limps over.

Cardan shakes his head. “Only that Balekin despised Dain. I despised him as well. He was despicable. I didn’t know he’d managed to convince Madoc of that.”

“What do you mean, despicable?” I ask, indignant, even with the still-healing wound on my hand. Dain’s death washed away the resentment I had for him.

Cardan gives me an indecipherable look. “Dain poisoned his own child, still in the womb. He worked on our father until he trusted no one but Dain. Ask them—surely Dain’s spies know how he made Eldred believe that Elowyn was plotting against him, convinced him that Balekin was a fool. Dain orchestrated my being thrown out of the palace, so that I had to be taken in by my elder brother or go without any home at the Court. He even persuaded Eldred to step down after poisoning his wine so that he became tired and ill—the curse on the crown doesn’t prevent that.”

“That can’t be true.” I think of Liriope, of the letter, of how Balekin wanted proof of who got the poison. But Eldred couldn’t have been poisoned with blusher mushroom.

“Ask your friends,” Cardan says, with a nod to the Roach and the Ghost. “It was one of them who administered the poison that killed the child and its mother.”

I shake my head, but the Ghost doesn’t meet my gaze. “Why would Dain do that?”

“Because he’d fathered the child with Eldred’s consort and was afraid Eldred would find out and choose another of us for his heir.” Cardan seems pleased with himself at having surprised me—surprised us, from the looks on the faces of the Roach and the Ghost. I do not like the way they watch him now, as though he might have value after all. “Even the King of Faerie doesn’t like to think of his son taking his place in a lover’s bed.”

It shouldn’t shock me that the Court of Faerie is corrupt and kind of gross. I knew that, just as I knew Madoc could do gruesome things to people he cared about. Just as I knew Dain was never kind. He made me stab my own hand, clean through. He took me on for my usefulness, nothing more.

Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.

I feel sick from the smell of blood. It’s on my dress, under my fingers, in my nose. How am I supposed to be worse than the Folk?

Sell the prince back to Balekin. I turn the idea over in my mind. Balekin would be in my debt. He’d make me a member of the Court, just as I once wanted. He’d give me anything I asked for, any of the things Dain offered and more: land, knighthood, a love mark on my brow so all who looked upon me would be sick with desire, a sword that wove charms with every blow.

And yet none of those things seems all that valuable anymore. None of those are true power. True power isn’t granted. True power can’t be taken away.

I think of what it will be like to have Balekin for a High King, for the Circle of Grackles to devour all the other circles of influence. I think of his starveling servants, of his urging Cardan to kill one of them for training, of the way he ordered Cardan beaten while professing his love for their family.

No, I cannot see myself serving Balekin.

“Prince Cardan is my prisoner,” I remind them, pacing back and forth. I’m not good at much, and I’ve been good at being a spy for only a very short time. I am not ready to give that up. “I get to decide what happens to him.”

The Roach and the Ghost exchange glances.

“Unless we’re going to fight,” I say, because they’re not my friends, and I need to remember that. “But I have access to Madoc. I have access to Balekin. I’m our best shot at brokering a deal.”

“Jude,” Cardan cautions me from the chair, but I am beyond caution, especially from him.

There’s a tense moment, but then the Roach cracks a grin. “No, girl, we’re not fighting. If you’ve got a plan, then I’m glad of it. I’m not really much of a planner, unless it’s how to prize out a gem from a nice setting. You stole the boy prince. This is your play, if you think you can make it.”

The Ghost frowns but doesn’t contradict him.

What I must do is put the puzzle pieces together. Here’s what doesn’t make sense—why is Madoc backing Balekin? Balekin is cruel and volatile, two qualities not preferable in a monarch. Even if Madoc believes Balekin will give him the wars he wants, it seems as though he could have gotten those some other way.

I think of the letter I found on Balekin’s desk, the one to Nicasia’s mother: I know the provenance of the blusher mushroom that you ask after. Why, after all this time, would Balekin want proof that Dain orchestrated Liriope’s murder? And if he had it, why hadn’t he taken it to Eldred? Unless he had and Eldred hadn’t believed him. Or cared. Or… unless the proof was for someone else.

“When was Liriope poisoned?” I ask.

“Seven years ago, in the month of storms,” the Ghost says with a twist in his mouth. “Dain told me that he’d been given a foresight about the child. Is this important or are you just curious?”

“What was the foresight?” I ask.

He shakes his head, as if he doesn’t want the memory, but he answers. “If the boy was born, Prince Dain would never be king.”

What a typical faerie prophecy—one that gives you a warning about what you’ll lose but never promises you anything. The boy is dead, but Prince Dain will never be king.

Let me not be that kind of fool, to base my strategies on riddles.

“So it’s true,” the Roach says quietly. “You’re the one who killed her.” The Ghost’s frown deepens. It didn’t occur to me until then that they might not know one another’s assignments.

Both of them look uncomfortable. I wonder if the Roach would have done it. I wonder what it means that the Ghost did. When I look at him now, I don’t know what I see.