Chapter Text
At ten years of age, I was informed that my eldest brother Balekin would now raise me in Hollow Hall—his home—with the aim of teaching me the ways of propriety and court life. I had learned some bad habits according to my second-eldest brother Dain, and I was too wild to be trusted in the palace.
My mother rarely wished to involve herself in my rearing, and frequently kicked me out of her suite of rooms in the palace, so I often nursed from a barn cat those first few years to stay nourished. I would lay in the hay of the stables for hours on end, pretending that my hiding was a game, and that I had not yet been found—not because no one was looking—but because I was clever and strategic enough to evade discovery.
At birth, a particularly grim prophecy was declared upon me—that I would be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne, were I ever to become High King. As the youngest, I was hardly considered viable for succession, but my brother Dain was manipulative and wanted no contest when he ascended to the throne. He framed me for the murder of the lover of my father’s seneschal, which resulted in the sentencing of my mother to the Tower of Forgetting—a prison on the outskirts of Elfhame—and my banishment from the palace.
Dain spent decades cultivating a public image of benevolence and honor, while also commanding a well-connected and well-trained spy network that had infiltrated the palace. He slowly turned our father against each of his siblings in turn, highlighting flaws in every one of us and hiding his own—willing to kill to hide evidence of his infidelity and the bastard child he’d sired, or simply to frame his own brother to improve his chances of ascending to the throne.
And so, that’s how at ten years of age, Dain convinced our father that I needed to be trained in the ways of court life, away from the palace so as not to disgrace the royal family or cause a diplomatic incident. It was unbecoming of me to not know how to conduct myself at the dinner table, during Court proceedings, and during the countless obligations to which a member of the royal line would be subjected. It was especially unbecoming of me, though I was not even in my tenth year, to have incomplete knowledge of our Court’s history and our family’s place in it.
So I found myself at the door of Hollow Hall, the home of my eldest brother Balekin. I knew little about him, only that he was the leader of the Circle of Grackles—a circle dedicated to hedonism and gluttony in all its forms. Members of this circle would frequently drink themselves into stupor or ingest powders that dissolve one’s faculties and replace them with artificial euphoria, and be intimate with each other and any other willing—and sometimes unwilling—partner they could find.
I was unsure how my life would shape itself in his care, and on the trip to his home, he had not spoken a word. Our arrival was only announced by him dismounting and pulling his keys into his palm as we approached the entrance.
The entry door had a face carved into it, with a mouth curled in a sinister smile. As we approached, the mouth curled even more wickedly, like it knew a deadly secret that it wouldn’t share with me, but would delight in my downfall because of it.
You can’t frighten me, I thought.
As I passed through, the door met my eyes and gave me a wink, as if we had been friends since birth. “Welcome, my princes,” it greeted.
You can’t befriend me, either.
Balekin led me to his drawing room, where the furniture was draped in layers of velvet and silk, strewn about without regard for color or function. He discarded his greatcoat onto the floor and kicked it aside, turning his attention to me.
My eyes had fallen on the human woman in the corner, staring forward into the middle distance with an uncomprehending look coloring her mortal face. Her clothes, hair, and even her skin was a drab gray, meant to fade into the background. But I couldn’t look away—something about her deeply unsettled me. She held a worn leather strap in one palm.
“So,” Balekin began, “I am supposed to make you into a proper Prince of Elfhame.”
“Or a delightfully improper one,” I replied with a conspiratorial smile, hoping that my words came across as companionable banter.
“That’s almost charming, little brother. And indeed, you ought to flatter me, because if I hadn’t taken you in, you might have been sent to be fostered in one of the low Courts. There are many places where an inconsequential Prince of Elfhame would be the source of much diversion, none of it comfortable for you.”
At the time, those words had sent a chill down my spine, but I had long learned how to still my face and hide my tail so my true feelings would remain mine alone. It felt like foreshadowing, like something ominous was now looming on the horizon, big and horrific, but too far to discern its shape.
“I brought you here because you are one of the few people who see Dain for what he is and are, therefore, valuable to me. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a disgrace,” Balekin had said. “You will choose clothing suitable to your station and no longer wear garments that are dirty and torn. You will stop scavenging what you can find from the kitchens or stealing from banquets, but sit at a table with cutlery—and use it. You will learn some modicum of swordplay, and you will attend the palace school, where I expect you to do what they ask of you.”
I was angry at having to leave all the fun and freedom of my first ten years behind, but I still wanted to earn Balekin’s favor—or at least prevent him from casting me out for as long as possible. “All will be as you say, brother,” I replied.
“Now I will show you what happens if you fail. This is Margaret.” He gestured to the human in all-gray that had been standing to the side. “Margaret, come here.”
When she moved, her face remained frozen, staring straight forward as if she were in a dream. I had never seen a human move like that.
“What’s the matter with her?” I asked
“She’s ensorcelled,” he replied, yawning as if this were an everyday conversation that was boring him. “A victim of her own foolish bargain.
“Humans are like mice,” Balekin continued. “Dead before they learn how to be canny. Why shouldn’t they serve us? It gives their short lives some meaning.
“She is going to punish you. And do you know why?”
Oh.
“I am certain you are about to enlighten me,” I responded, no longer caring to earn Balekin’s favor. If I would receive his wrath either way, I had no need to filter my words.
“Because I won’t dirty my hands. Better you experience the humiliation of being beaten by a creature who ought to be your inferior. And every time you think of how disgusting mortals are—with their pocked skin and their decaying teeth and their fragile, little minds—I want you to think of this moment, when you were lower than even that. And I want you to remember how you willingly submitted, because if you don’t, you will have to leave Hollow Hall and my mercy.”
He paused then, letting his words burrow into my mind.
“Now, little brother, you must choose a future.”
Prior to that day, I had thought that my armor of apathy was ironclad—that my heart of stone was impenetrable. It was the only way I had survived my first ten years with my spirit intact.
But that day, kneeling shirtless as the human servant whipped me for what felt like hours on end, the stone cracked and the iron melted away with each lash—revealing something so scalding and bright that my vision went white and everything else was obscured.
Hatred. Hatred for Dain, who framed me; for father, who didn’t believe me when I spoke the truth even though the Fae cannot lie; for my mother, who viewed me as the dirt beneath her shoe right up until her exile; for my other siblings, who did not intercede on my behalf throughout my whole life so far—though they had many opportunities to do so; for Balekin, who had taken me in to raise me—yes—but also to have a target, a whipping stone, a victim onto which he could direct his wrath so that he had something that was decidedly beneath him; for mortals, for being so disgusting and stupid that they could be made to fulfill heinous deeds by their own hand without knowledge or intercession; and for all of Elfhame, for allowing this rot to grow at the core of the realm, unchecked and unquestioned.
So, I chose clothing suitable to my station, no longer wearing garments that were dirty and torn. I stopped scavenging from the kitchens and banquets, and instead sat at his table with cutlery that I learned how to use. I learned the basics of swordplay. I attended the palace school, and I did what they asked of me, at first.
Balekin paraded me around the palace like a dog brought to heel, and everyone congratulated him. A miracle, they had said; it was impressive—what he had been able to accomplish with me, and my siblings and father were pleased to see me now acting in a manner befitting a prince.
Balekin eventually gave me space, granting me limited freedom on the condition that I not invite father’s ire. But father was High King—he had never paid attention to me before, so I quickly learned there was much that I could do that would escape his notice.
It was around that time that I met Nicasia.
The Court was preparing for a state visit from the Undersea, and great lengths had been made to prepare. There were murmurs that Queen Orlagh—a cunning and brutal conqueror—was to present her daughter to my father, hoping to marry her into the Greenbriar line and then to eventually rule both land and sea.
Still, my siblings were eager to make her acquaintance, knowing the political benefits that such an alliance would bring.
The event was a farce, but I was expected to look the part—though I would not act it, even knowing the likely consequences that would follow. Instead, I vowed to keep to myself and be thoroughly unpleasant to Nicasia if we did speak at all.
As luck would have it, the Princess of the Undersea approached me after a short time. I had been eating, and I quickly swallowed down my honeyed oatcakes and tea to meet her gaze, unspeaking.
I was going to make her speak first.
“You must be Prince Cardan,” she said.
“And you’re the princess of fishes over whom everyone is making such an enormous fuss,” I replied with a sneer.
She tilted her head slightly. “You’re very rude.”
“I have many other, even worse, qualities.”
Nicasia smiled, pretty and sadistic, “Do you now? That’s excellent, because everyone else in the palace seems very dull.”
I smiled back. She understood. Palace life was all appearances, half-truths, bargains, and theatre.
My sister Caelia appeared out of nowhere, no doubt attempting to avoid a political incident. I didn’t give her the chance to speak.
“Oh, go away, Caelia,” I said, turning back to Nicasia with a grin. “The sea princess finds you wearisome.”
Caelia’s mouth snapped shut and her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline.
Nicasia laughed.
Slowly my group of friends began to coalesce after that inciting incident. We delighted in mischief, cruelty, and destruction—setting fire to a portion of the Crooked Forest, unraveling precious tapestries and destroying priceless art, ruining shopkeepers’ displays at the Court market, and reveling in the exasperation of our instructors and the fear of the palace courtiers.
Faerie was a hierarchy, and we had begun our ascent. The purest way of cultivating respect was from cruelty, and this was something that my friends—Nicasia, Valerian, and Locke—and I understood implicitly.
The most pleasure we could derive, however, was from the teasing and torture of the two mortal twins that Grand General Madoc had stolen and raised as his own. They stuck out among their peers—and among their superiors—in the way that a bruised and overripe apple may appear in a basket of freshly-picked ones. They were oddly-proportioned, somewhat shorter and thicker than the fae girls their age.
They mostly kept to themselves, sharing meals and jokes, and they took in all the information being taught with rapt attention, as if they had any right to it. They were bastards, mortal twins that their mother had sired with another while Grand General Madoc was in Faerie.
And yet, here they sat, among their betters as if they could simply exist in the space they inhabit. More infuriatingly, they would impress the instructors from time to time, bettering their betters during classes. One of them was a good swordsman, instructed personally by Madoc as if she wasn’t the insignificant child of infidelity.
They were intriguing. And infuriating.
What was the point in trying so hard when they will always sit at the bottom of the hierarchy? I had never tried for anything before, instead getting whatever I asked whenever I asked for it and receiving the respect from Elfhame without having to raise a finger.
It was due to our constant targeting that they began salting their food and wearing rowan berries to resist our enchantments. I would never admit it to anyone, not even myself, but it was a special kind of satisfaction for me, because their existence was illegitimate, yet they receive all the comforts of palace life—servants, beautiful dresses, an education alongside the children of the Gentry, and, most disturbingly, a father who listens to them.
Cares deeply for them.
Protects them.
So they should be afraid of enchantment. They should keep their guard up and never know a moment’s peace. How else will we get it into their dull human minds that they don’t belong?
The Circle of Worms, we had called them. From dust they came, and soon, to dust they will return.