The Wicked King

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Holding a Leash on the High King
2. A Wedding in Madoc's House
3. Nicasia, Orlagh, and the Price of the Sea
4. Kidnapped by People I Trusted
5. Poison on His Mouth
6. What Works and What Wears Thin
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I went straight from The Cruel Prince into The Wicked King because that ending left me annoyed in the best way. Jude Duarte had forced Cardan Greenbriar onto the throne of Elfhame with a spoken geas, a year and a day of obedience, and then the book just stopped. I needed to know how you actually rule when your king hates you and everyone else wants you dead. This is book two in The Folk of the Air, published in 2019 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, and it is tighter and meaner than the first. Less schoolyard bullying, more council meetings where one wrong sentence can start a war.

Jude is eighteen now, or close enough that she feels it in her knees after sparring. She is seneschal to High King Cardan, which means she does the work while he lounges on the throne in a scarlet cloak and makes jokes at her expense. Oak, her little brother and the true heir Madoc wanted to use, is hidden in the human world with her older sister Vivienne. Jude tells herself the lie she bound Cardan with was necessary. She also knows that if anyone learns how she did it, she is finished.

Madoc opens the book with a lesson I kept underlining in my head. You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring. The first lesson is to make yourself strong. He says it while training Jude and her twin Taryn as kids, and Jude hears it again five months later every time she walks into a council room alone.

Holding a Leash on the High King

Five months in, Jude has a routine that is slowly killing her. She wakes before dawn, spars with the Ghost, reads stolen letters with the Roach and the Bomb, sits through councils where lords pretend she is furniture, then stays up late writing orders Cardan must sign. The geas says Cardan must obey her, but it does not say he has to be nice about it. He obeys in the most annoying way possible. He signs with a flourish. He asks loudly in court if his dear seneschal wants to approve his wine. He flirts with other people just to watch her jaw tighten.

The Court of Shadows has grown. Besides the Roach, who hears through walls, the Bomb, who makes poisons and laughs while she does it, and the Ghost, who moves quiet and teaches Jude new knife work, there are new recruits. A boy with sparrow wings. A couple of spriggans. A sluagh girl who watches everything. Jude likes being around them because they judge her on work, not blood. Mortals cannot be glamoured as easily if they prepare, and Jude can lie outright while Faeries cannot, so she is still useful in ways they respect.

One of the early scenes tells you the whole book. They drag in Vulciber, a guard from the Tower of Forgetting where Prince Balekin is locked up. Jude offers him cheese while he is tied to a chair. The Roach holds a nasty blade. The Bomb cleans her nails with a half moon knife. Vulciber swears the High King will not allow this, and Jude says the High King does not know. She is half sick with how much she enjoys scaring him, and she admits it to herself. Power goes to her head fast, like wine on an empty stomach.

Vulciber trades a secret for a promise of safety. People from the Undersea have been crawling up the rocks at night to whisper to Balekin. Shells and shark teeth left in his cell. Messages no land guard can read. Queen Orlagh is talking to the prisoner prince. Jude had assumed Orlagh was content because her daughter Nicasia was once close to Cardan. That assumption was lazy, and Jude knows it the second she hears it.

Cardan, meanwhile, is changing in ways Jude does not want to notice. He drinks too much. He stays out late. He also starts to feel the land in the way High Kings are supposed to. He can coax roots. He senses storms before the guards do. Eldred, the old king, could do it without thinking. Cardan does it by accident and then pretends he meant it. Jude catches him once with his hand flat on the throne, eyes closed, listening. She looks away fast because it feels private.

A Wedding in Madoc's House

Taryn is marrying Locke, and that plotline made my stomach hurt from the start. Locke is the charming one from Cardan's old circle, the boy who throws revels and tells every girl she is special. Jude remembers waking up with leaves in her hair after his parties and a sour feeling that she agreed to something she cannot recall. Taryn hears love promises and a future with a manor. Madoc is hosting the wedding because that is what powerful fathers do, and Oriana is arranging flowers and seating charts with a tight smile.

Jude tries to warn her twin and fails in exactly the way sisters fail. She says Locke lies. Taryn says Jude is jealous. Jude says Locke uses people. Taryn says Jude uses people too. They are both right, which is why the fight sticks. Vivi comes back for the wedding with her mortal girlfriend Heather in tow, braids and boots and open dislike for court manners. Oak stays mostly in the human world, a small boy with horns hidden under hats, guarded by trusted soldiers. Jude misses him and worries about him in alternating waves.

Madoc pulls Jude aside during the preparations. He is still her father in the ways that count. He trained her. He praised her footwork. He also murdered her mortal parents when she was seven and took her to Elfhame, a fact neither of them can file away. He tells her Orlagh is stronger than she looks and that Jude should not let Cardan tie himself to the sea. What he really means is that Jude should drop Cardan and help put Oak on the throne with Madoc holding the strings. He says it almost kindly. That kindness scared me more than his shouting.

The wedding scenes are full of small wrong details that pay off later. Taryn wears a pair of earrings Jude thought were lost. Locke limps for a day and claims he fell from a horse. Jude remembers being ambushed in the woods by masked riders and kicking one hard in the leg. She starts counting who was there that night. Nicasia was there. Locke was there. A few others she cannot place. She smiles at the wedding feast with her teeth together.

Taryn also asks Jude for a strange favor around this time. Stand in for me for an hour, wear my dress, cover for me while I handle something. Twins who can pass for each other will always abuse that trick. Jude agrees because guilt is a hook Taryn knows how to set. It seems small. In this series, small favors always cost blood later.

Nicasia, Orlagh, and the Price of the Sea

Nicasia has always hated Jude, and Jude has always hated her back with interest. Nicasia is daughter to Orlagh, Queen of the Undersea, fostered on land, proud of her blue green hair and her sharp tongue. In the first book she mocked Jude for reaching above herself. Here she is more desperate. Jude and the Ghost follow a secret passage from Cardan's wardrobe, after someone tries to shoot him in the night, and find Nicasia crying in old King Eldred's rooms with a crossbow on the floor.

Her story is messy. She says she went to seduce Cardan and found another woman in his bed. She meant to kill the woman, not Cardan. Maybe that is true. Maybe she is smoothing the edges because Faeries cannot lie outright but can leave out the ugly parts. What is clear is that Orlagh has given her an order. Get Cardan to marry you, or we will make the land pay.

Orlagh's envoys arrive soon after with polished manners and a threat underneath. Marry Nicasia. Join sea to land. Refuse, and we flood your coasts and starve your harbors. The Council argues for hours. Some lords think a marriage is cheap for peace. Others remember old wars where the sea took whole villages. Jude sits beside the throne taking notes and trying not to scream. Madoc watches her and shakes his head a fraction. Do not do it, that shake says.

Cardan surprises everyone, including Jude. He has Nicasia brought before the Council and says no in plain words. He says he will not be passed from Balekin to Orlagh like a cup. If Orlagh threatens him again, he will jail her daughter. His voice does not wobble. For a minute he looks like a king instead of a bored boy in a crown. Jude feels pride and fear at the same time, because pride will make her soft and fear will make her stupid.

Jude then makes one of her worst calls. She tells Cardan to charm Nicasia, to play the lover for information. She frames it as strategy. Cardan hears it as proof Jude does not care who shares his bed. He gets angry in that cold Cardan way, all smiles and cutting remarks. Then they end up in bed together anyway, not as a trick but as two people who have wanted each other for months and hate that they do. Jude tastes apples and smoke. Cardan traces the scar on her hand from training. Neither says what it means in the morning, which means it means a lot.

Behind all this, the smith Grimsen is working for the sea. Grimsen can make anything from metal and thistle and spite, and Orlagh has set him to forge a new crown. The old blood crown needs an heir of Eldred's line. A new-made crown could skip that rule entirely. If Orlagh gets it, she can crown whoever she likes and claim the old vows no longer bind. Jude learns this in pieces, from drunk lords and intercepted notes, and each piece makes her colder.

Kidnapped by People I Trusted

The middle of the book turns on betrayal, and I did not guess the right person until Jude did. Orlagh manages to pull Balekin out of the Tower of Forgetting. That should be impossible. The Tower sits on cold stone with guards at every stair. It happens because two of Jude's own side help. Vulciber, the guard she thought she turned, and the Ghost, her sparring partner who eats apple slices off her plate and laughs at her jokes.

Jude goes to the Tower with the Ghost after word comes that Balekin is gone. She breaks out Asha, Cardan's mother, who has been locked there for years and begs to leave. Jude tells her to run and not look back. It feels like mercy. It is also distraction. On the way back through the tunnels, Vulciber and the Ghost turn on her. She gets hit over the head so hard her vision whites out.

She wakes underwater. Nicasia holds her by the hair while cold water fills her nose. Little cuts. Petty slaps. Questions about Cardan's habits and Oak's hiding place. Jude spits water and lies with a straight face, which she can do because she is mortal. Then Orlagh arrives, huge and calm, with a voice that makes fish turn.

Orlagh tries to glamour Jude. Kill Cardan, she commands. Bring Oak to us under the waves. Serve the sea. In most Faerie stories that would be the end. Jude would walk back and put a knife in Cardan's back. But Jude has spent years dosing herself with small bits of poison and eating strange protections, and more than that, she was raised to resist. The glamour slides off. She pretends for a heartbeat that it held, then files the failure away as a weapon.

She is held for about a month. When Dulcamara, a land courtier who owes Jude a debt, finally calls it in, Jude learns the trade that bought her freedom. Orlagh was allowed to raid the Court of Termites, a small land court on the coast, while Cardan looked the other way. Jude is horrified. She would never have agreed to feed her own people to the sea to save herself. Cardan agreed without asking her, because for once he could act without her order, and he chose badly.

She gets back to the palace thin and bruised and furious. Madoc has ordered the guards to keep her from Cardan's rooms. The secret passage she used before has been caved in. The Roach and the Bomb find her in the halls and stare like she is a ghost. They followed her trail after she vanished and told Cardan she would never hurt him, that the glamour story was a lie Orlagh planted. They are half right and half wrong, and Jude is too tired to sort it for them.

I kept thinking about how lonely Jude is in these chapters. She has a twin planning a wedding without her, a father planning a coup without her, a king who traded lives for her without her, and spies who lied for her without her. Everyone acts around her while she was gone, and she has to smile and pretend she is still the person pulling strings.

Poison on His Mouth

Balekin is free and walking around like a guest instead of a traitor, because Orlagh named him her ambassador. That title protects him under treaty rules. Lord Roiben of the Court of Termites, whose people were slaughtered in the raid, comes to court and says plainly he wants Balekin dead. Jude wants it too. Cardan cannot just order it without breaking faith with the sea and starting open war.

Balekin moves first. He poisons Cardan with a slow faerie poison slipped into drink or onto skin. The scene where it shows is public and awful. Cardan pulls Jude forward before the whole court and kisses her hard. She tastes bitter metal under the wine. Poison on his mouth. Balekin steps up almost at once and shouts that Jude poisoned the king, holding up a vial he once gave her as proof. It is a neat trap. If Jude runs, she looks guilty. If she stays, she watches Cardan die.

Jude does what she always does. She lies fast and well. She laughs and tells the crowd Cardan is just drunk, that he drank too much at his own feast. She keeps her hand on his arm to hold him up while his knees try to buckle. She gets him to his rooms with help, gets the antidote from the Bomb's stores, and pours it down his throat while he curses and sweats. He lives. Barely.

Then she goes back down to face Balekin. No tricks this time. Swords in a cleared hall while lords ring the walls. Balekin is bigger and trained by the same masters as Madoc. Jude is smaller and meaner and willing to take a cut to give one. They slip on wet stone. He taunts her about being mortal mud. She remembers dawn drills and Madoc shouting to strike again. She puts her blade through him. The room goes silent in a way I could hear through the page.

That night Jude finds Taryn in Cardan's rooms wearing Jude's cloak and voice. Her twin has been impersonating her again. Cardan, thinking she was Jude, released Madoc from his old vow of service. At first Jude feels sick. Then Cardan explains. He wanted to prove he could make a sound choice without being compelled. Letting Madoc go was risky, but keeping a great general chained by a trick was breeding poison. He chose to trust Madoc's honor as a soldier over fear. Jude does not know whether to kiss him or yell.

Cardan then asks for the other release. Free me from the year and a day, he says. Marry me instead. Be queen in truth, not shadow. Jude hears the offer and counts the cost in seconds. Queen means power no one can strip with a rumor. Queen means she can protect Oak without hiding. Queen also means trusting Cardan Greenbriar, who has lied to her since they were kids. She says yes. They speak vows in his rooms with no priest and no crowd, just two people who have hurt each other and want to try something else. I believed them in that minute, which made the next morning worse.

What Works and What Wears Thin

Orlagh demands audience the next day. She is owed justice, she says, because her ambassador Balekin is dead by Jude's hand. She threatens war in front of everyone. Cardan answers by showing what being High King tied to the land really means. He walks to the edge of the sea with the court behind him and raises a new island from the water, black rock steaming, gulls screaming. It is a show of force aimed straight at Orlagh. I can unmake your kingdom drop by drop, that island says, without him having to say it. Orlagh blinks first and agrees to peace.

Then she adds a condition. Give me the murderer. Jude, thinking her secret marriage protects her, steps forward and admits she killed Balekin. She expects Cardan to stand beside her and name her queen. He does not. He looks at her with something closed and tired and says she is banished to the human world for the murder of a protected envoy. No trial. No delay. Jude tries to say she is queen now, but no one else heard those vows. The guards take her arms. Madoc looks away. Nicasia smiles through tears. Cardan does not meet her eyes.

I sat with that ending for a day. On one hand, it fits. Jude spent the whole book using compulsion instead of trust, and Cardan finally used lawful power instead of love. On the other hand, it feels abrupt after the tender night before, and Black knows it. Jude ends up in Vivi's apartment in the human world, sleeping on a couch, watching Oak play video games, planning how to get Grimsen to forge a crown for Oak and wondering if she should team up with Madoc after all. She is depressed and angry and already scheming, which is very Jude.

Fair notes, because the middle really does sag in spots. There are too many council scenes in a row where lords with similar names argue about treaties. Locke stays blurry for most of the book, charming at the wedding and cruel in the woods, without enough page time to make both sides stick. Nicasia flips from assassin to victim to torturer fast enough to give whiplash. Jude repeats the same loop a few times. I am tired, I cannot trust anyone, I miss Cardan, I push him away. I get why she loops. I still skimmed a paragraph or two when she started pitying herself after the Undersea prison.

The romance will also divide people. Jude tells Cardan to seduce Nicasia for secrets, then sleeps with him herself, then orders him around the next day. Cardan lets her, then resents her, then proposes. If you want clear consent talks and steady communication, this is not that book. Black writes it as two teenagers with power and trauma fumbling through want, and I bought it, but I winced more than once.

What still works is Jude's voice. She notices food and clothes and sore muscles. She counts exits. She admits when power feels good going to her head. Cardan's growth from bully to boy trying to be a king feels earned through small acts, listening to the throne, refusing Orlagh, freeing Madoc, raising the island, rather than speeches. The Ghost betrayal hurts because their sparring scenes were warm. Madoc hurts most of all because you can see he loves Jude in his cold way and still picks ambition over her.

Try this if you liked the first book's bargains and want higher stakes, sea courts and poison and secret marriages. Skip it if you need tidy morals or hate love stories built on lies. For me, book two is messier than book one and harder to put down. That last image of Jude exiled, mortal in a human grocery store after ruling Faerie, buying cereal with shaking hands while planning war, is the reason I picked up book three the same night.

FAQ

Do I need to read The Cruel Prince first?

Yes. The Wicked King starts five months after Jude puts Cardan on the throne and assumes you know about the geas, Oak, and the Court of Shadows.

Who is Orlagh and what does she want?

Orlagh is the Queen of the Undersea and Nicasia's mother. She wants Nicasia married to Cardan, and when he refuses she backs Balekin and threatens to flood the land courts.

Why does Cardan banish Jude at the end?

Jude admits in front of Orlagh that she killed Balekin, who was the Undersea ambassador. To keep the new treaty from collapsing, Cardan banishes Jude to the human world.