Holly Black’s The Stolen Heir Finds a Magic Queen Hiding Among Humans

Fantasy creator Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles) kicks off a brand new duology set in the identical world as her mega-popular Folk of the Air sequence with January’s The Stolen Heir. io9 is happy to share the primary chapter of this extremely anticipated YA launch, so let’s get into it!

First, right here’s a abstract of the story to set the scene.

A runaway queen. A reluctant prince. And a quest that will destroy them each.

Eight years have handed for the reason that Battle of the Serpent. But within the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is utilizing an historic relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and actual her revenge.

Suren, baby queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one individual with energy over her mom, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral within the woods. Lonely, and nonetheless haunted by the cruel torments she endured within the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from silly bargains. She believes herself forgotten till the storm hag, Bogdana chases her via the night time streets. Suren is saved by none apart from Prince Oak, inheritor to Elfhame, to whom she was as soon as promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.

Now seventeen, Oak is charming, lovely, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that may lead him into the north, and he needs Suren’s assist. But if she agrees, it should imply guarding her coronary heart in opposition to the boy she as soon as knew and a prince she can not belief, in addition to confronting all of the horrors she thought she left behind.

Here’s the total cowl, adopted by the primary chapter of The Stolen Heir.

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Chapter 1

The slant of the moon tells me that it’s half previous ten when my unsister comes out the again door. She’s in her second yr of faculty and retains odd hours. As I watch from the shadows, she units down an empty cereal bowl on the highest step of the splintery and sagging deck. Then she glugs milk into it from a carton. Spills slightly. Squatting, she frowns out towards the tree line.

For an not possible second, it’s as if she’s taking a look at me.

I draw deeper into the darkish.

The scent of pine needles is heavy within the air, mingling with leaf mildew and the moss I crush between my naked toes. The breeze carries the odor of the sticky, rotten, sugary dregs nonetheless clinging to bottles within the recycling bin; the putrid one thing on the backside of the empty rubbish can; the chemical sweetness of the fragrance my unsister is carrying.

I watch her hungrily. Bex leaves the milk for a neighborhood cat, however I prefer to faux it’s me she’s leaving it for. Her forgotten sister.

She stands there for a couple of minutes whereas moths flit above her head and mosquitoes buzz. Only when she goes again inside do I slink nearer to the home, peering via the window to observe my unmother knit in entrance of the tv. Watching my unfather within the breakfast nook along with his laptop computer, answering e-mail. He places a hand to his eyes, as if drained.

In the Court of Teeth, I used to be punished if I known as the people who raised me my mom and father. Humans are animals, Lord Jarel would say, the admonishment coming with a breathtakingly exhausting blow. Filthy animals. You share no blood with them.

I taught myself to name them unmother and unfather, hoping to keep away from Lord Jarel’s wrath. I hold the behavior to remind myself of what they have been to me, and what they may by no means be once more. Remind myself that there’s nowhere that I belong and nobody to whom I belong.

The hair on the again of my neck prickles. When I go searching, I word an owl on a excessive department, observing me with a swivel of its head. No, not an owl.

I decide up a rock, hurling it on the creature.

It shifts into the form of a hob and takes off into the sky with a screech, beating feathered wings. It circles twice after which glides off towards the moon.

The native Folk aren’t any buddies to me. I’ve seen to that.

Another purpose I’m nobody, of nowhere.

Resisting the temptation to linger longer close to the yard the place I as soon as performed, I head for the branches of a hawthorn on the fringe of city. I persist with the dimness of shadowed woodland, my naked toes discovering their method via the night time. At the doorway to the graveyard, I cease.

Huge and lined within the white blooms of early spring, the hawthorn towers over headstones and different grave markers. Desperate locals, youngsters particularly, come right here and tie needs to the branches.

I heard the tales as a child. It’s known as the Devil’s Tree. Come again 3 times, make three needs, and the satan was supposed to seem. He’d offer you what you requested for and take what he needed in return.

It’s not a satan, although. Now that I’ve lived among the many Folk, I do know the creature that fulfills these bargains is a glaistig, a faerie with goat toes and a style for human blood.

I climb right into a cradle of branches and wait, petals falling round me with the sway of the tree limbs. I lean my cheek in opposition to the tough bark, listening to the susurration of leaves. In the cemetery that surrounds the hawthorn, the close by graves are greater than 100 years outdated. These stones have weathered skinny and bone pale. No one visits them anymore, making this an ideal spot for determined folks to come back and never be seen.

A number of stars wink down at me via the cover of flowers. In the Court of Teeth, there was a nisse who made charts of the sky, searching for probably the most propitious dates for torture and homicide and betrayal.

I stare up, however no matter riddle is within the stars, I can’t learn it. My training in Faerie was poor, my human training, inconsistent.

The glaistig arrives slightly after midnight, clopping alongside. She is wearing an extended burgundy coat that stops on the knees, designed to focus on her goat toes. Her bark‑brown hair is pulled up and again into a decent braid.

Beside her flies a sprite with grasshopper‑inexperienced pores and skin and wings to match. It’s solely a bit bigger than a hummingbird, buzzing via the air restlessly.

The glaistig turns to the winged faerie. “The Prince of Elfhame? How interesting to have royalty so close by…”

My coronary heart thuds dully at prince.

“Spoiled, they say,” the sprite chirps. “And wild. Far too irresponsible for a throne.”

That doesn’t sound just like the boy I knew, however within the 4 years since I noticed him final, he would have been inducted into all of the pleasures of the High Court, would have been served up a surfeit of each possible debauched delight. Sycophants and toadies could be so busy vying for his consideration that, nowadays, I wouldn’t be allowed shut sufficient to kiss the hem of his cloak.

The sprite departs, darting up and away, fortunately not weaving via the branches of the tree the place I crouch. I settle in to watch.

Three folks come that night time to make needs. One, a sandy‑haired younger man I went to fourth grade with, the yr earlier than I used to be taken. His fingers tremble as he ties his scrap of paper to the department with a little bit of twine. The second, an aged lady with a stooped again. She retains wiping at her moist eyes, and her word is tearstained by the point she affixes it with a twist tie. The third is a freckled man, broad‑shouldered, a baseball cap pulled low sufficient to cover most of his face.

This is the freckled man’s third journey, and at his arrival, the glaistig steps out of the shadows. The man provides a moan of concern. He didn’t count on this to be actual. They seldom do. They embarrass themselves with their reactions, their terror, the sounds they make.

The glaistig makes him inform her what he needs, despite the fact that he’s written it three separate occasions on three separate notes. I don’t assume she ever bothers to learn the desires.

I do. This man wants cash due to some dangerous enterprise deal. If he doesn’t get it, he’ll lose his home, after which his spouse will go away him. He whispers this to the glaistig, fidgeting along with his wedding ceremony ring as he does so. In return, she provides him her phrases—each night time for seven months and 7 days, he should carry her a dice of contemporary human flesh. He could lower it from himself, or from one other, whichever he prefers.

He agrees eagerly, desperately, foolishly, and lets her tie an ensorcelled piece of leather-based round his wrist.

“This was crafted from my own skin,” she tells him. “It will let me find you, no matter how you try to hide from me. No mortal‑made knife can cut it, and should you fail to do as you have promised, it will tighten until it slices through the veins of your arm.”

For the primary time, I see panic on his face, the kind that he should have felt all alongside. Too late, and a part of him is aware of it. But he denies it a second later, the information surfacing and being shoved again down.

Some issues appear too horrible to look potential. Soon he could be taught that the worst factor he can think about is barely the start of what they’re prepared to do to him. I recall that realization and hope I can spare him it.

Then the glaistig tells the freckled man to assemble leaves. For every one in his pile, he’ll get a crisp twenty‑greenback invoice instead. He’ll have three days to spend the cash earlier than it disappears.

In the word he hooked up to the tree, he wrote that he wanted $40,000. That’s two thousand leaves. The man scrambles to get collectively a sufficiently big pile, looking out desperately via the effectively‑manicured graveyard. He collects some from the stretch of woods alongside the border and rips handfuls from a couple of timber with low‑hanging branches. Staring at what he assembles, I consider the sport they’ve at gala’s, the place you guess the variety of jelly beans in a jar.

I wasn’t good at that recreation, and I fear he isn’t, both.

The glaistig glamours the leaves into cash with a bored wave of her hand. Then he’s busy stuffing the payments into his pockets. He races after a couple of the wind takes and whips towards the street.

This appears to amuse the glaistig, however she’s clever sufficient to not grasp round to snicker. Better he not notice how completely he’s been had. She disappears into the night time, drawing her magic to shroud her.

When the person has stuffed his pockets, he shoves extra payments into his shirt, the place they settle in opposition to his abdomen, forming a man-made paunch. As he walks out of the graveyard, I let myself drop silently out of the tree.

I comply with him for a number of blocks, till I see my likelihood to hurry up and seize maintain of his wrist. At the sight of me, he screams.

Screams, identical to my unmother and unfather.

I flinch on the sound, however the response shouldn’t shock me. I do know what I appear like.

My pores and skin, the pale blue of a corpse. My costume, streaked with moss and dirt. My tooth, constructed for ease of ripping flesh from bone. My ears are pointed, too, hidden beneath matted, soiled blue hair, solely barely darker than my pores and skin. I’m no pixie with fairly moth wings. No member of the Gentry, whose magnificence makes mortals silly with want. Not even a glaistig, who barely wanted a glamour if her skirts have been lengthy sufficient.

He tries to drag away, however I’m very sturdy. My sharp tooth make quick work of the glaistig’s string and her spell. I’ve by no means realized to glamour myself effectively, however within the Court of Teeth I grew expert at breaking curses. I’d had sufficient placed on me for it to be essential.

I press a word into the freckled man’s arms. The paper is his personal, along with his want written on one aspect. Take your loved ones and run, I wrote with one among Bex’s Sharpies. Before you harm them. And you’ll.

He stares after me as I race off, as if I’m the monster.

I’ve seen this specific cut price play out earlier than. Everyone begins out telling themselves that they may pay with their very own pores and skin. But seven months and 7 days is a very long time, and a dice of flesh is quite a bit to chop from your personal physique each night time. The ache is intense, worse with every new damage. Soon it’s straightforward to justify slicing a bit from these round you. After all, didn’t you do that for his or her sake? From there, issues go downhill quick.

I shudder, remembering my very own unfamily taking a look at me in horror and disgust. People who I believed would all the time love me. It took me the higher a part of a yr to find that Lord Jarel had enchanted their love away, that his spells have been the rationale he was so sure they wouldn’t need me.

Even now, I have no idea if the enchantment remains to be on them.

Nor do I do know whether or not Lord Jarel amplified and exploited their precise horror on the sight of me or created that feeling solely out of magic.

It is my revenge on Faerie to unravel the glaistig’s spells, to undo each curse I uncover. Free anybody who’s ensnared. It doesn’t matter if the person appreciates what I’ve accomplished. My satisfaction comes on the glaistig’s frustration at one other human slipping from her internet.

I can not assist all of them. I can not stop them from taking what she presents and paying her worth. And the glaistig is hardly the one faerie providing bargains. But I attempt.

By the time I return to my childhood dwelling, my unfamily has all gone to mattress.

I raise the latch and creep via the home. My eyes see effectively sufficient at midnight for me to maneuver via the unlit rooms. I am going to the sofa and press my unmother’s half‑completed sweater to my cheek, feeling the softness of the wool, respiration within the acquainted scent of her. Think of her voice, singing to me as she sat on the finish of my mattress.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

I open the rubbish and select the stays of their dinner. Bits of gristly steak and gobs of mashed potatoes clump along with scattered items of what will need to have been a salad. It’s all combined in with crumpled‑up tissues, plastic wrap, and vegetable peels. I make a dessert of a plum that’s mushy on one finish and the little little bit of jam on the backside of a jar within the recycling bin.

I gobble the meals, making an attempt to think about that I’m sitting on the desk with them. Trying to think about myself as their daughter once more, and never what’s left of her.

A cuckoo making an attempt to suit again into the egg.

Other people sensed the wrongness in me as quickly as I set foot within the mortal world. That was proper after the Battle of the Serpent, when the Court of Teeth had been disbanded and Lady Nore fled. With nowhere else to go, I got here right here. That first night time again, I used to be found by a handful of youngsters in a park who picked up sticks to drive me off. When one of many larger ones jabbed me, I ran at him, sinking my sharp tooth into the meat of his arm. I opened up his flesh as if he have been a tin can.

I have no idea what I’d do to my unfamily in the event that they pushed me away once more. I’m no secure factor now. A baby no extra, however a completely grown monster, like those that got here for me.

Still, I’m tempted to attempt to break the spell, to disclose myself to them. I’m all the time tempted. But once I consider talking with my unfamily, I consider the storm hag. Twice, she discovered me within the woods exterior the human city, and twice she hung the strung‑up and skinned physique of a mortal over my camp. One who she claimed knew an excessive amount of concerning the Folk. I don’t need to give her a purpose to decide on one among my unfamily as her subsequent sufferer.

Upstairs, a door opens and I freeze. I fold up my legs, circling my arms round my knees, making an attempt to make myself as small as potential. A couple of minutes later, I hear a bathroom flush and let myself breathe usually once more.

I shouldn’t come. I don’t all the time—some nights, I handle to remain far-off, consuming moss and bugs and ingesting from soiled streams. Going via the dumpsters behind eating places. Breaking spells in order that I can consider I’m not like the remainder of them.

But I’m lured again, many times. Sometimes I wash the dishes within the sink or transfer moist garments to the dryer, like a brownie. Sometimes I steal knives. When I’m at my angriest, I rip a couple of of their issues into tiny shreds. Sometimes I doze behind the sofa till all of them go away for work or college and I can crawl out once more. Search via the rooms for scraps of myself, report playing cards and yarn crafts. Family photographs that embrace a human model of me with my pale hair and pointy chin, my large, hungry eyes. Evidence that my recollections are actual. In one field marked Rebecca, I discovered my outdated stuffed fox and marvel how they defined away a whole room of my belongings.

Rebecca goes by Bex now, a brand new identify for her contemporary begin in faculty. Despite her most likely telling everybody who asks that she’s an solely baby, she’s in almost each good reminiscence I’ve of being a child. Bex ingesting cocoa in entrance of the tv, squishing marshmallows till her fingers have been sticky. Bex and I kicking one another’s legs within the automotive till Mom yelled at us to cease. Bex sitting in her closet, taking part in motion figures with me, holding up Batman to kiss Iron Man and saying: Let’s get them married, after which they will get some cats and stay fortunately ever after. Imagining myself scrubbed out of these recollections makes me grind my tooth and really feel much more like a ghost.

Had I grown up within the mortal world, I is perhaps at school with Bex. Or touring, taking odd jobs, discovering new issues. That Wren would take her place on the earth without any consideration, however I can not think about my method into her pores and skin.

Sometimes I sit up on the roof, watching the bats twirl within the moonlight. Or I watch my unfamily sleep, reaching my hand daringly near my unmother’s hair. But tonight, I solely eat.

When I’m accomplished with the scavenged meal, I am going to the sink and stick my head beneath the faucet, guzzling the candy, clear water. After I’ve my fill, I wipe my mouth with the again of my hand and slip out onto the deck. At the highest step, I drink the milk my unsister put out. A bug has fallen in and spins on the floor. I drink that, too.

I’m about to slink again into the woods when an extended shadow comes from the aspect yard, its fingers like branches.

Heart racing, I pad down the steps and slide beneath the porch. I make it simply moments earlier than Bogdana lopes across the nook of the home. She is each bit as tall and terrifying as I keep in mind her being that first night time, and worse, as a result of now I do know of what she is succesful.

My breath catches. I’ve to chew down exhausting on the within of my cheek to maintain quiet and nonetheless.

I watch Bogdana drag one among her nails throughout the sagging aluminum siding. Her fingers are so long as flower stalks, her limbs as spindly as sticks of birch. Weed‑like strands of black straight hair grasp over her mushroom‑pale face, half‑hiding tiny eyes that gleam with malice.

She friends in via the glass panes of a window. How straightforward to push up a sash, to creep in and slit the throats of my unfamily as they sleep, then flense the skins from their our bodies.

My fault. If I had been capable of keep away, she wouldn’t have scented my spoor right here. Wouldn’t have come. My fault.

And now I’ve two selections. I can keep the place I’m and hearken to them die. Or I can lead her from the home. It’s no selection in any respect, aside from the concern that has been my fixed companion since I used to be stolen from the mortal world. Terror seared deep in my marrow.

Deeper than my want to be secure, although, I need my unfamily to stay. Even if I not belong with them, I would like to avoid wasting them. Were they gone, the final shred of what I used to be could be gone with them, and I’d be set adrift.

Taking a deep, shuddery breath, I kick out from beneath the porch. I run for the street, away from the quilt of woods, the place she would simply acquire on me. I’m heedless in my steps throughout the garden, ignoring the snapping of twigs beneath my naked toes. The crack of every one carries via the night time air.

I don’t look again, however I do know that Bogdana will need to have heard me. She will need to have turned, nostrils flaring, scenting the breeze. Movement attracts the attention of the predator. The intuition to chase.

I wince in opposition to the headlights of the automobiles as I hit the sidewalk.

Leaves are tangled into the muddy clots of my hair. My costume—as soon as white—is now a boring and stained colour, like the robe one would count on to adorn a ghost. I have no idea if my eyes shine like an animal’s. I believe they could.

The storm hag sweeps after me, swift as a crow and sure as doom.

I pump my legs quicker.

Sharp bits of gravel and glass dig into my toes. I wince and stumble slightly, imagining I can really feel the breath of the hag. Terror provides me the energy to shoot ahead.

Now that I’ve drawn her off, I have to lose her by some means. If she turns into distracted for even a second, I can slip away and conceal. I obtained superb at hiding, again on the Court of Teeth.

I flip into an alley. There’s a niche within the chain‑hyperlink fence on the finish, sufficiently small for me to wriggle via. I run for it, toes sliding in muck and trash. I hit the fence and press my physique into the opening, steel scratching my pores and skin, the stink of iron heavy within the air.

As I race on, I hear the shake of the fence because it’s being climbed.

“Stop, you little fool!” the storm hag shouts after me.

Panic steals my ideas. Bogdana is simply too quick, too positive. She’s been killing mortals and faeries alike since lengthy earlier than I used to be born. If she summons lightning, I’m pretty much as good as lifeless.

Instinct makes me need to go to my a part of the woods. To burrow within the cave‑like dome I’ve woven from willow branches. Lie on my flooring of easy river stones, pressed down into the mud after a rainstorm till they made a floor flat sufficient to sleep on. Cocoon myself in my three blankets, regardless of them being moth‑eaten, stained, and singed by fireplace alongside a nook.

There, I’ve a carving knife. It is barely so long as one among her fingers, however sharp. Better than both of the opposite little blades I’ve on my individual.

I dart sideways, towards an residence advanced, working via the swimming pools of sunshine. I lower throughout streets, via the playground, the creak of swing chains loud in my ears.

I’ve extra talent at unraveling enchantments than making them, however since her final go to I warded round my lair so {that a} dread comes upon anybody who will get too shut. Mortals avoid the place, and even the Folk develop into uneasy after they come close to.

I’ve little hope that may chase her off, however I’ve little hope in any respect.

Bogdana was the one individual that Lord Jarel and Lady Nore feared. A hag who may carry on storms, who had lived for numerous scores of years, who knew extra of magic than most beings alive. I noticed her slash open and devour people within the Court of Teeth and intestine a faerie with these lengthy fingers over a perceived insult. I noticed lightning flash at her annoyance. It was Bogdana who helped Lord Jarel and Lady Nore with their scheme to conceive a toddler and conceal me away amongst mortals, and lots of occasions she had been witness to my torment within the Court of Teeth.

Lord Jarel and Lady Nore by no means let me overlook that I belonged to them, regardless of my title as queen. Lord Jarel delighted in leashing me and dragging me round like an animal. Lady Nore punished me ferociously for any imagined slight, till I grew to become a snarling beast, clawing and biting, barely conscious of something however ache.

Once, Lady Nore threw me out into the howling wasteland of snow and barred the citadel doorways in opposition to me.

If being a queen doesn’t swimsuit you, nugatory baby, then discover your personal fortune, she stated.

I walked for days. There was nothing to eat however ice, and I may hear nothing however the chilly wind blowing round me. When I wept, the tears froze on my cheeks. But I saved on going, hoping in opposition to hope that I would discover somebody to assist me or some solution to escape. On the seventh day, I found I had solely gone in a terrific circle.

It was Bogdana who wrapped me in a cloak and carried me inside after I collapsed within the snow.

The hag carried me to my room, with its partitions of ice, and set me down on the skins of my mattress. She touched my forehead with fingers twice so long as fingers should be. Looked down at me together with her black eyes, shook her head of untamed, storm‑tossed hair. “You will not always be so small or so frightened,” she informed me. “You are a queen.”

The method the hag stated these phrases made me increase my head. She made the title sound as if it was one thing of which I should be proud.

When the Court of Teeth ventured south, to conflict with Elfhame, Bogdana didn’t include us. I assumed to by no means see her once more and was sorry for it. If there was one among them who might need regarded out for me, it was her.

Somehow that makes it worse that she’s the one at my heels, the one searching me via the streets.

When I hear the hag’s footfalls draw shut, I grit my tooth and check out for a burst of pace. My lungs are already aching, my muscular tissues sore.

Perhaps, I attempt to inform myself, maybe I can purpose together with her. Perhaps she is chasing me solely as a result of I ran.

I make the error of glancing again and lose the rhythm of my stride. I falter because the hag reaches out an extended hand towards me, her knife‑ sharp nails able to slice.

No, I don’t assume I can purpose together with her.

There is just one factor left to do, and so I do it, whirling round. I snap my tooth within the air, recalling sinking them into flesh. Remembering how good it felt to harm somebody who scared me.

I’m not stronger than Bogdana. I’m neither quicker nor extra crafty. But it’s potential I’m extra determined. I need to stay.

The hag attracts up quick. At my expression, she takes a step towards me, and I hiss. There is one thing in her face, glittering in her black eyes, that I don’t perceive. It appears triumphant. I attain for one of many little blades beneath my costume, wishing once more for the carving knife.

The one I pull out is folded, and I fumble making an attempt to open it.

I hear the clop of a pair of hooves, and I feel that by some means it’s the glaistig, come to observe me be taken. Come to brag. She will need to have been the one to alert Bogdana to what I used to be doing; she have to be the rationale that is occurring.

But it isn’t the glaistig who emerges from the darkness of the woods. A younger man with goat toes and horns, carrying a shirt of golden scale mail and holding a skinny‑bladed rapier, steps into the pool of sunshine close to a constructing. His face is expressionless, like somebody in a dream.

I word the curls of his tawny blond hair tucked behind his pointed ears, the garnet‑coloured cloak tossed over extensive shoulders, the scar alongside one aspect of his throat, a circlet at his forehead. He strikes as if he expects the world to bend to his will.

Above us, clouds are gathering. He factors his sword towards Bogdana.

Then his gaze glints to me. “You’ve led us on a merry chase.” His amber eyes are brilliant, like these of a fox, however there’s nothing heat in them.

I may have informed him to not look away from Bogdana. The hag sees the opening and goes for him, nails poised to tear open his chest.

Another sword stops her earlier than he must parry. This one is held within the gloved hand of a knight. He wears armor of sculpted brown leather-based banded with extensive strips of a silvery steel. His blackberry hair is cropped quick, and his darkish eyes are cautious.

“Storm hag,” he says.

“Out of my way, lapdog,” she tells the knight. “Or I will call down lightning to strike you where you stand.”

“You may command the sky,” the horned man within the golden scale mail returns. “But, alas, we are here on the ground. Leave, or my friend will run you through before you summon so much as a drizzle.”

Bogdana narrows her eyes and turns towards me. “I will come for you again, child,” she says. “And when I do, you best not run.”

Then she strikes into the shadows. As quickly as she does, I attempt to sprint to at least one aspect of him, intent on escape.

The horned man seizes maintain of my arm. He’s stronger than I count on him to be.

“Lady Suren,” he says.

I growl deep in my throat and catch him with my nails, raking them down his cheek. Mine are nowhere close to as lengthy or sharp as Bogdana’s, however he nonetheless bleeds.

He makes a hiss of ache however doesn’t let go. Instead, he wrenches my wrists behind my again and holds them tight, irrespective of how I snarl or kick. Worse, the sunshine hits his face at a unique angle and I lastly acknowledge whose pores and skin is underneath my fingernails.

Prince Oak, inheritor to Elfhame. Son of the traitorous Grand General and brother to the mortal High Queen. Oak, to whom I used to be as soon as promised in marriage. Who had as soon as been my good friend, though he doesn’t appear to recollect it.

What was it the pixie had stated about him? Spoiled, irresponsible, and wild. I consider it. Despite his gleaming armor, he’s so poorly skilled in swordplay that he didn’t even try to dam my blow.

But after that thought comes one other one: I’ve struck the Prince of Elfhame.

Oh, I’m in bother now.

“Things will be much easier if you do exactly as we tell you from this moment forward, daughter of traitors,” the darkish‑eyed knight within the leather-based armor informs me. He has an extended nostril and the look of somebody extra snug saluting than smiling.

I open my mouth to ask what they need with me, however my voice is tough with disuse. The phrases come out garbled, the sounds not those I supposed.

“What’s the matter with her?” he asks, frowning at me as if I’m some type of insect.

“Living wild, I suppose,” says the prince. “Away from people.”

“Didn’t she at least talk to herself?” the knight asks, elevating his eyebrows.

I growl once more.

Oak brings his fingers to the aspect of his face and attracts them again with a wince. He has three lengthy slashes there, bleeding sluggishly.

When his gaze returns to me, there’s one thing in his expression that jogs my memory of his father, Madoc, who was by no means so glad as when he went to conflict.

“I told you that nothing good ever came out of the Court of Teeth,” says the knight, shaking his head. Then he takes a rope and ties it round my wrists, looping it via the center to make it safe. He doesn’t pierce my pores and skin like Lord Jarel used to, leashing me by stabbing a needle threaded with a silver chain between the bones of my arms. I’m not but in ache.

But I don’t doubt that I will likely be.

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Excerpt from Holly Black’s The Stolen Heir reprinted by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

The Stolen Heir by Holly Black will likely be launched January 3; you’ll be able to pre-order a replica here and hold updated on its launch via the writer’s NOVL enewsletter.

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