The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)

“I, Jude Duarte, take Cardan, High King of Elfhame, to be my husband. Let us be wed until we don’t want to be and the crown has passed from our hands.”

“I, Cardan, son of Eldred, High King of Elfhame, take you, Jude Duarte, mortal ward of Madoc, to be my bride and my queen. Let us be wed until we wish for it to be otherwise and the crown has passed from our hands.”

“Jude Duarte, you will leave the High King’s side,” Balekin says.
At that tone, Cardan’s focus narrows. I can see him straining to concentrate. “She will not,” he says.

“Sweet Jude. You are my dearest punishment.”

He takes my hand. “Nothing is sweeter,” he says, kissing the back of it, “but that which is scarce.”

perhaps the smith will make you a cup that never runs out of wine.”

“I didn’t,” she says. “I swear. I only meant to kill the girl he was with.”

He looks up at me with his night-colored eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. “For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.”

I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?”

He grins up at me. “They missed.”

“Revenge is sweet, but ice cream is sweeter.”

I would like to say that he always hated me, but for a brief, strange time it felt as though we understood each other, maybe even liked each other.