The Cruel Prince

Vivienne’s chin came up. “Leave them alone. If you have to, take me, but not them.”

He stared at Vivi, and then he snorted. “You’d protect your sisters from me, would you? Tell me, then, where would you have them go?”

Vivi didn’t answer. They had no grandparents, no living family at all. At least, none they knew.

He looked at Jude again, released her shoulders, and rose to his feet. “They are the progeny of my wife and, thus, my responsibility. I may be cruel, a monster, and a murderer, but I do not shirk my responsibilities. Nor should you shirk yours as the eldest.”

Cardan has stopped beside a boy with long copper hair and a pair of small moth wings—a boy who isn’t bowing. The boy laughs and Cardan lunges. Between one eyeblink and the next, the prince’s balled fist strikes the boy hard across the jaw, sending him sprawling. As the boy falls, Cardan grabs one of his wings. It tears like paper. The boy’s scream is thin and reedy. He curls up into himself on the ground, agony plain on his face. I wonder if faerie wings grow back; I know that butterflies that lose a wing never fly again.

Cardan frowns. “Twin sister,” he says, turning to Taryn. A smile returns to his mouth, as though a terrible new idea has come to delight him. “Would you make a similar sacrifice? Let’s find out. I have a most generous offer for you. Climb up the bank and kiss me on both my cheeks. Once that’s done, so long as you don’t defend your sister by word or deed, I won’t hold you accountable for her defiance. Now, isn’t that a good bargain? But you get it only if you come to us now and leave her there to drown. Show her that she will always be alone.”

“How can you stand them?” I ask, fury making me turn on Locke, even though he’s the only one I’m not mad at. “They’re horrible. They’re monsters.”

He doesn’t answer me. We walk along, and when I come to the patch of windfall apples, I kick one so hard it ricochets off the trunk of an elm tree.

“There is a pleasure in being with them,” he says. “Taking what we wish, indulging in every terrible thought. There’s safety in being awful.”

“Because at least they’re not terrible to you?” I ask.

Again, he does not answer.

She goes on. “You think I’m weak.”

“You are weak,” I tell her. “You’re weak and pathetic and I—”

“I’m a mirror,” she shouts. “I’m the mirror you don’t want to look at.”

I swing toward Taryn again, putting my whole weight into the strike. I am so angry, angry at so many things. I hate that I was stupid. I hate that I was tricked. Fury roars in my head, loud enough to drown out my every other thought.