CopyrightThis book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents arethe product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anyresemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, iscoincidental.Copyright © 2019 by Holly BlackIllustrations by Kathleen JenningsCover art copyright © 2019 by Sean Freeman. Cover design by KarinaGranda.Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value ofcopyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists toproduce the creative works that enrich our culture.The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is atheft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to usematerial from the book (other than for review purposes), please contactpermissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.Little, Brown and CompanyHachette Book Group1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104Visit us at LBYR.comFirst Edition: January 2019Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group,Inc.The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are notowned by the publisher. “Nymphidia” by Michael Drayton, first published in 1627“The Fairies” by William Allingham, first published in 1850Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Black, Holly, author. | Jennings, Kathleen, illustrator.Title: The wicked king / Holly Black ; illustrations by Kathleen Jennings.First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. |Series: [The Folk of the Air ; 2] | Summary: As seneschal to High KingCardan, Jude must fight to keep control of the Faerie throne while heryounger brother, Oak, enjoys the childhood she never knew.Identifiers: LCCN 2017056642| ISBN 9780316310352 (hardcover) | ISBN9780316310338 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316310345 (library edition ebook)Subjects: | CYAC: Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Power (Philosophy)—Fiction. | Courts and courtiers—Fiction. | Fairies—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Fantasy.Classification: LCC PZ7.B52878 Wic 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056642ISBNs: 978-0-316-31035-2 (hardcover), 978-0-316-31033-8 (ebook), 978-0-316-45213-7 (int’l), 978-0-316-48713-9 (Barnes & Noble)E3-20181107-JV-NF-ORI ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightDedicationMapBook OnePrologueChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17 Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Book TwoChapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30EpilogueAcknowledgments For Kelly Link, one of the merfolk Jude lifted the heavy practice sword, moving into the first stance—readiness.Get used to the weight, Madoc had told her. You must be strong enough tostrike and strike and strike again without tiring. The first lesson is to makeyourself that strong.It will hurt. Pain makes you strong.That was the first lesson he’d taught her after he’d cut down her parentswith a sword not unlike the one she held now. Then she’d been seven, a baby.Now she was nine and lived in Faerieland, and everything was changed.She planted her feet in the grass. Wind ruffled her hair as she movedthrough the stances. One; the sword before her, canted to one side, protectingher body. Two; the pommel high, as though the blade were a horn comingfrom her head. Three: down to her hip, then in a deceptively casual droop infront of her. Then four: up again, to her shoulder. Each position could moveeasily into a strike or a defense. Fighting was chess, anticipating the move ofone’s opponent and countering it before one got hit.But it was chess played with the whole body. Chess that left her bruisedand tired and frustrated with the whole world and with herself, too.Or maybe it was more like riding a bike. When she’d been learning to dothat, back in the real world, she’d fallen lots of times. Her knees had beenscabby enough that Mom thought she might have scars. But Jude had takenoff her training wheels herself and disdained riding carefully on the sidewalk,as Taryn did. Jude wanted to ride in the street, fast, like Vivi, and if she gotgravel embedded into her skin for it, well, then she’d let Dad pick it out with tweezers at night.Sometimes Jude longed for her bike, but there were none in Faerie.Instead, she had giant toads and thin greenish ponies and wild-eyed horsesslim as shadows.And she had weapons.And her parents’ murderer, now her foster father. The High King’s general,Madoc, who wanted to teach her how to ride too fast and how to fight to thedeath. No matter how hard she swung at him, it just made him laugh. He likedher anger. Fire, he called it.She liked it when she was angry, too. Angry was better than scared. Betterthan remembering she was a mortal among monsters. No one was offering herthe option of training wheels anymore.On the other side of the field, Madoc was guiding Taryn through a seriesof stances. Taryn was learning the sword, too, although she had differentproblems than Jude. Her stances were more perfect, but she hated sparring.She paired the obvious defenses with the obvious attacks, so it was easy tolure her into a series of moves and then score a hit by breaking the pattern.Each time it happened, Taryn got mad, as though Jude were flubbing the stepsof a dance rather than winning.“Come here,” Madoc called to Jude across the silvery expanse of grass.She walked to him, sword slung over her shoulders. The sun was justsetting, but faeries are twilight creatures, and their day was not even halfdone. The sky was streaked with copper and gold. She inhaled a deep breathof pine needles. For a moment, she felt as though she were just a kid learninga new sport.“Come spar,” he said when Jude got closer. “Both of you girls against thisold redcap.” Taryn leaned against her sword, the tip of it sinking into theground. She wasn’t supposed to hold it that way—it wasn’t good for the blade—but Madoc didn’t reprimand her.“Power,” he said. “Power is the ability to get what you want. Power is theability to be the one making the decisions. And how do we get power?”Jude stepped beside her twin. It was obvious that Madoc expected aresponse, but also that he expected the wrong one. “We learn how to fightwell?” she said to say something.When Madoc smiled at her, she could see the points of his bottom cuspids,longer than the rest of his teeth. He tousled her hair, and she felt the sharpedges of his claw-like nails against her scalp, too light to hurt, but a reminderof what he was nonetheless. “We get power by taking it.”He pointed toward a low hill with a thorn tree growing on it. “Let’s make agame of the next lesson. That’s my hill. Go ahead and take it.” Taryn dutifully trooped toward it, Jude behind her. Madoc kept pace, hissmile all teeth.“Now what?” Taryn asked, without any particular excitement.Madoc looked into the distance, as though he was contemplating anddiscarding various rules. “Now hold it against attack.”“Wait, what?” Jude asked. “From you?”“Is this a strategy game or a sparring practice?” Taryn asked, frowning.Madoc brought one finger under her chin, raising her head until she waslooking into his golden cat eyes. “What is sparring but a game of strategy,played at speed?” he told her, with a great seriousness. “Talk with your sister.When the sun reaches the trunk of that tree, I will come for my hill. Knockme down but once and you both win.”Then he departed for a copse of trees some ways away. Taryn sat down onthe grass.“I don’t want to do this,” she said.“It’s just a game,” Jude reminded her nervously.Taryn gave her a long look—the one that they gave each other when oneof them was pretending things were normal. “Okay, so what do you think weshould do?”Jude looked up into the branches of the thorn tree. “What if one of usthrew rocks while the other did the sparring?”“Okay,” Taryn said, pushing herself up and beginning to gather stones intothe folds of her skirts. “You don’t think he’ll get mad, do you?”Jude shook her head, but she understood Taryn’s question. What if hekilled them by accident?You’ve got to choose which hill to die on, Mom used to tell Dad. It hadbeen one of those weird sayings adults expected her to understand, eventhough they made no sense—like, “one in the hand is worth two in the bush”or “every stick has two ends” or the totally mysterious “a cat may look at aking.” Now, standing on an actual hill with a sword in her hand, sheunderstood it a lot better.“Get into position,” Jude said, and Taryn wasted no time in climbing thethorn tree. Jude checked the sunmark, wondering what sort of tricks Madocmight use. The longer he waited, the darker it would get, and while he couldsee in the dark, Jude and Taryn could not.But, in the end, he didn’t use any tricks. He came out of the woods and intheir direction, howling as though he were leading an army of a hundred.Jude’s knees went weak with terror.This is just a game, she reminded herself frantically. The closer he got,though, the less her body believed her. Every animal instinct strained to run. Their strategy seemed silly now in the face of his hugeness and theirsmallness, in the face of her fear. She thought of her mother bleeding on theground, recalled the smell of her insides as they leaked out. The memory feltlike thunder in her head. She was going to die.Run, her whole body urged. RUN!No, her mother had run. Jude planted her feet.She made herself move into the first position, even though her legs feltwobbly. He had the advantage, even coming up that hill, because he hadmomentum on his side. The stones raining down on him from Taryn barelychecked his pace.Jude spun out of the way, not even bothering to try to block the first blow.Putting the tree between them, she dodged his second and third. When thefourth one came, it knocked her to the grass.She closed her eyes against the killing strike.“You can take a thing when no one’s looking. But defending it, even withall the advantage on your side, is no easy task,” Madoc told her with a laugh.She looked up to find him offering her a hand. “Power is much easier toacquire than it is to hold on to.”Relief broke over her. It was just a game, after all. Just another lesson.“That wasn’t fair,” Taryn complained.Jude didn’t say anything. Nothing was fair in Faerie. She had learned tostop expecting it to be.Madoc hauled Jude to her feet and threw a heavy arm over her shoulders.He drew her and her twin in for an embrace. He smelled like smoke and driedblood, and Jude let herself sag against him. It was good to be hugged. Evenby a monster. The new High King of Faerie lounges on his throne, his crown resting at aninsouciant angle, his long villainously scarlet cloak pinned at his shouldersand 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 amsupposed to be High King Cardan’s most trusted advisor, and so I play thatpart, rather than my real role—the hand behind the throne, with the power tocompel him to obey should he try to cross me.Scanning the crowd, I look for a spy from the Court of Shadows. Theyintercepted a communication from the Tower of Forgetting, where Cardan’sbrother 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 asmy puppet king, five months since I betrayed my family, since my sistercarried my little brother to the mortal realm and away from the crown that hemight have worn, since I crossed swords with Madoc.Five months since I’ve slept for more than a few hours at a stretch.It seemed like a good trade—a very faerie trade, even: put someone whodespised me on the throne so that Oak would be out of danger. It was thrillingto trick Cardan into promising to serve me for a year and a day, exhilaratingwhen my plan came together. Then, a year and a day seemed like forever. But