It still wasn’t enough.

That night Locke came to my window and called for me, but I pretended to be asleep. I was too hurt, too raw. I didn’t want to hear whatever he would say to me if I asked about you.

He called and called, but I wouldn’t go down. Finally he gave up.

And yet, it was impossible for me to rest. After an hour of tossing and turning, I threw on a cloak and sat on my balcony. I listened to the night owls calling to one another.

Then music started up near the Lake of Masks. I heard a singer begin a tune I hadn’t heard before, a song of heartbreak. Of a girl who walked the earth by starlight. Whose aspect was mortal but with beauty divine. Her cruelty had pierced his heart.

I was listening to Edir singing about me.

Locke had been as good as his word. He had shown me how to make Faerie love me. He had shown me how to be the shaper of a story. He had done more than that, even. He had shown me how to achieve something like immortality.

I sat there in the dark for a long time, listening. And then I turned around and walked to Locke’s estate.

You’ve been there, I know, so you’ve seen it, like a fairy-tale castle with a tower of the sort Rapunzel might have been imprisoned in. During the day it’s pretty, but in the dark, it was intimidating.

Be bold, be bold.

With a shudder, I drew myself up, wrapped my cloak more tightly around myself, and knocked on the heavy front door with all my strength.

I saw a light blaze in one of the high rooms and I knocked again.

The door opened and a thin, tall creature—a servant of the house, I presumed—opened the door.

“I would see Locke,” I told him with as much haughtiness as I could bring to bear.

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

He gave me a steady look and I stared back, trying not to notice how pale and sunken-eyed he looked, like one of the dead. But then he swept a bow and indicated without speaking that I ought to come inside.

I was brought to a little parlor that was shabbier and dustier than I’d expected. Another servant, this one small and round, brought a decanter of some purple liquid and a small glass.

When Locke finally came into the room, I was coughing because it turned out the purple stuff was very strong. His hair was mussed from sleep and he wore a thin shirt and soft-looking pants beneath a dressing gown. His feet were bare on the stone floor.

“You came here,” he said, as though it had never occurred to him I could do that. I suppose that’s one good thing about being obedient and faithful and good. People think you will never surprise them.

“Yes,” I said. “I think I understand now. What you meant when you said I had to give up my mortal qualms. And I am willing to do that. But I want you to marry me.”

“Ah.” He sat down on the couch, looking stunned with lack of sleep. “And so you came here in the middle of the night?”

“I hope that you love me.” I tried to sound the way Oriana did when she forbade us to do things—stern, but not unkind. “And I will try to live as the Folk do. But you ought to marry me even if neither of those things were true, because otherwise I might ruin your fun.”

“My fun?” he echoed. Then he sounded worried. Then he sounded awake.

“Whatever game you are playing with Nicasia and Cardan,” I said. “And with me. Tell Madoc we’re to be wed and tell Jude about your real intentions or I will start shaping stories of my own.”

I thought of the brothers in the story of Mr. Fox, cutting the villain to pieces. It came to me, standing on my balcony, that with their inclination to violence, my family would need a lot less provocation to turn on Locke. As Edir’s song drifted through the air, I realized that Locke might teach me lessons, but he wasn’t going to like what I did once I learned them.

“You promised—” he began, but I cut him off.

“Not a marriage of a year and a day, either,” I said. “I want you to love me until you die.”

He blinked. “Don’t you mean until you die? Because you’re sure to.”

I shook my head. “You’re going to live forever. If you love me, I will become a part of your story. I will live on in that.”

He looked at me in a way he’d never done before, as though evaluating me all over again. Then he nodded. “We will marry,” he said, holding up his hand. “On three conditions. The first is that you will tell no one about us until the coronation of Prince Dain.”

That seemed like a small thing, the waiting.

“And during that time, you must not renounce me, no matter what I say or do.”

I know the nature of faerie bargains. I should have heard this as the warning that it was. Instead, I was only glad that two of his conditions seemed simple enough to fulfill. “What else?”

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.

“Only this,” Locke said. “Remember, we don’t love the way that you do.”

I know that I should have been a better sister, that I should have given you some warning, but some part of you must understand.

All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and put up with anything he did, until Prince Dain’s coronation. Then he had to tell you the truth. Then he would be with me forever.

And love me until he died.

So you see, I am sorry. I really am. I didn’t think he could win your heart. If it makes you feel any better, it was agony to watch you with him, to see you laughing as the three of us sat on the blanket at the palace school, your hand in his. I was anguished seeing your blushes and shining eyes. Jealousy wasn’t a spice to me then. It was the whole meal and I was gagging it down.

But I am not our mother and I am not going to make her mistakes. I won’t turn back. I know what I want. I want Locke. I’m not afraid of his secrets.

And you’re going to forgive me. You have to. You’re my sister, my twin. You’ve got to understand. If I just explain it right, I know you’re going to understand.

And I am going to keep standing here and practicing it in the mirror until you stop looking at me that way when I finish.

Continue reading for a sneak peek of Holly Black’s The Wicked King.

The new High King of Faerie lounges on his throne, his crown resting at an insouciant angle, his long, villainously scarlet cloak pinned at his shoulders and sweeping the floor. An earring shines from the peak of one pointed ear. Heavy rings glitter along his knuckles. His most ostentatious decoration, however, is his soft, sullen mouth.

It makes him look every bit the jerk that he is.

I stand to one side of him, in the honored position of seneschal. I am supposed to be High King Cardan’s most trusted advisor, and so I play that part, rather than my real role—the hand behind the throne, with the power to compel him to obey should he try to cross me.

Scanning the crowd, I look for a spy from the Court of Shadows. They intercepted a communication from the Tower of Forgetting, where Cardan’s brother is jailed, and are bringing it to me instead of to its intended recipient.

And that’s only the latest crisis.

It’s been five months since I forced Cardan onto the throne of Elfhame as my puppet king, five months since I betrayed my family, since my sister carried my little brother to the mortal realm and away from the crown that he might have worn, since I crossed swords with Madoc.