(Note: I have written out certain characters, such as Oak and the royal princesses, as being extraneous to my story. I have also made certain other changes to the characters and settings for convenience's sake.)

(Disclaimer: Please be advised that this is fan fiction based off characters and events in Holly black's The Folk of the Air series. I claim no ownership of these characters or the books or copyright they are based off of. This work is not intended for profit or publication, but for entertainment only, for users of . Use of anyone else's copy is purely coincidental.)

Silence

It's been a year since I've spoken a single word in public. I know, because Madoc just told me.

"Taryn," he says, "you haven't spoken a single word in public for a full year. What is the matter?"

He really wants to know, that's the hurtful part. His cat's eyes are concerned in his craggy face. He really wants to help.

I shrug. I used to talk to Madoc easily enough, but lately it's gotten harder and harder.

"Answer me, Taryn." His voice takes on a dangerous edge.

"I…it's hard." My voice comes out hoarse and slow. I cough. "It's hard for me to talk these days."

This is true, but not the whole truth. The truth is, I decided a long time ago, without quite being consciously aware of my decision, that I wouldn't talk. After all, if speaking to a faerie is bound to get you into dire trouble at some point and you live your life surrounded by them, why should you speak? It's maladaptive. (I smile a little, savoring my inner vocabulary: maladaptive. I may not talk, but I still love words.)

Outside, I can hear my sister Jude's voice raised in challenge as she practices swordplay with Madoc's knights. Jude would never take on silence as I have done. She's never afraid to speak out, even to Prince Cardan. She goes to every event, even still goes to class.

I stopped going to class six months ago. School was a miserable purgatory, and it's not like I was learning anything there—but try persuading Jude of that. She spent the better part of an afternoon yelling at me about how weak I was and how I was making both me and her look bad in front of our so-called classmates, did I want to confirm their opinion that we were a pair of worthless mortals, etc., etc., etc.

I didn't respond to her then. I didn't say a single word. Eventually, she gave up.

"Why is it hard?" Madoc's sharp, interrogative voice jerks me back to the present. "Are you ill?" Then, the perennial cry of the frustrated parent: "What's the matter with you?"

He sounds just like he's my father. Which is pretty ironic, considering.

Want to know why my sisters and I are here in Faerie, even though Jude and I are both completely human and Vivienne half so? Here's the deal: our mother was human. She used to be married to Madoc here in Faerie. She was pregnant with his daughter, Vivienne, when she ran off with Jude's and my father, a human man, back to Earth. It took Madoc ten years to track her down, but track her down he did. Jude and I were seven years old, Vivienne nine.

He murdered our parents in front of us. To avenge his so-called honor, he murdered the woman he loved and her husband. Then, because we were all his wife's daughters, he assumed responsibility for all of us and took us to Faerie as his adoptive daughters.

This is fairly typical of Faerie laws and dealings. And you wonder why I don't talk?

The sick part is, he loves us. He really does. And, in a dreadful way, I love him. He's the only father I've got.

So it hurts me to see his anxiety. I force out the words: "Nothing. I just don't want to talk."

He lets out an impatient huff of breath and paces to the window. We're in his study, overlooking his lands. Outside, Faerie spreads in gorgeous array. The island we are on—one of the islands of the High King's court—is like a glowing green jewel in a sea of sapphire. Even at my worst times—even when I feel like I will be sick at the next sight of a single faerie—I gulp down the beauty of this place. It feeds my soul, even as I shiver in disgust or shrink for fear.

Or it used to. Lately, I haven't been able to take pleasure in anything, even Faerie's beauty.

"Silence can be a good strategy," he says at last. "It can hide one from one's enemies…hide one's intentions. But, like all strategies, it cannot be used in every situation. Every campaign is won differently." He turns back to me. "What campaign are you fighting, Taryn?"

It's typical that he'd use military imagery here: he's a general, the finest King Eldred has. He's also a redcap; he loves war and hungers for it as a pixie hungers for honey. We've had a long period of peace, and it makes him irritable.

I shrug. Adolescent, I know, but there's no way I can tell him that I am campaigning for survival: that every day is a war for a human girl at the High Court, surrounded by creatures that can kill you at a snap of their fingers, and many that wish to. That, back when I was still attending class, I had to screw up my courage before I went to school with the sneering Gentry children, or even left the house. That the slightest misstep, the slightest word, could lead to disaster. And it's better not to speak at all than to say that fatal word.

There's a tap at the door, and Oriana, Madoc's wife, my stepmother, steps in. "Have you lectured her enough?" she asks him. "The dressmaker's here, with the girls' gowns." She smiles at me, and I smile back.

Madoc waves a huge, clawed hand. "Very well." He fixes me with a hard gaze. "I expect you to talk to someone at the ball tomorrow night, Taryn. At least say hello to Prince Balekin."

I stiffen at this, and Oriana comes alert behind me. Madoc raises an eyebrow. "Did you two think I hadn't noticed? How could I miss a High Prince paying attention to my daughter?" He eyes me like I'm a recalcitrant warhorse. "Be pleasant to him, Taryn. His favor could get us far."

My insides shrivel at the very idea. I look at the floor and curtsy silently.

He waves me off with an exasperated sigh. I accompany Oriana down the hallway to the stair, down to her parlor where the dressmaker is waiting.

Oriana gives me one of her gentle smiles. "He's right, you know," she says. "The Prince's attentions are a good thing, truly. Think of the wealth and influence you could attain if everyone knew you had his favor!"

She means, the wealth she and Madoc could attain. From selling me like a prize pig at the market. I look away.

My older sister Vivienne is already in the parlor, being gowned in a glorious creation of sunset-pink. "Hi, Taryn. Back from Daddy Dearest's latest lecture?"

Oriana frowns at her. "Respect, Vivienne."

Vivi rolls her eyes. "Right." Despite being Madoc's biological daughter—or maybe because of it—she's always hated him the most. There's none of the confusion or ambiguity Jude and I experience: she hates him, plain and simple, for killing our parents and kidnapping us. She hates Faerie too, and has stated numerous times that she intends to leave the minute she can persuade me and Jude that it's a good idea, and never come back. But we've tried living Ironside: it's awful. Like fish trying to live in the sky like birds.

I have no place in the human world. And Vivi's right when she says I'll never truly have a place here, Balekin or no Balekin. So why should I speak? What do I have to say?

I go behind a screen, where our lady's maid, Tatterfell, helps me on with the dress for the ball tomorrow night, a shining, silken blue dream of a gown, embroidered with silver starlight. Once, its beauty would have soothed me, pleased me. Now I feel nothing.

There's actually a word for this condition: anhedonia. The inability to feel pleasure in anything. Strange that so a lovely word describes so awful a state.

Lifting up the hem, I step carefully back out and stand like a statue on a stool while the seamstress bustles around me, making the final adjustments. She's a little old hob woman, with wrinkled bark-skin and beetle-black eyes. Her fingers flash, faster and defter than any human's. I wonder if she's so deft among her spinners, the great spiders that all weavers and seamstresses keep, as their silk is the best fixative for the light and shadow, the million shades and colors of nature that faeries draw out, bind and spin onto the silk to make thread. (Fixative. Another lovely word.)

Oriana stands back, watching critically as the seamstress makes the last few stitches. "That will do," she says at last, when I stand in resplendent array. She looks me up and down. "You will make a fine showing tomorrow night, Taryn. Even more so if you speak to someone," she can't resist adding.

"Oh, leave her alone." Vivienne's already fidgeting, yearning to get her fancy dress off. "She shouldn't have to speak if she doesn't want to." She cranes to look out the window. "What's going on?"

I lean over to look too; there's some kind of commotion out there. I hear the voice of the head of Madoc's knights, raised in respectful greeting, and I have an idea who's coming even before he steps into view.

Just as I thought: it's Prince Balekin. My stomach tightens.

"Oh!" Oriana rushes about. "Get back in your normal clothes, girls, and do something about your hair, Vivienne. Then come to the lesser parlor to greet him—and no rudeness, Vivienne!" At least Vivienne's perennial lack of manners overshadows my silence. Not that Balekin seems to mind. My guts knot themselves as I step off the stool.

Back in my normal afternoon dress, Tatterfell runs a brush through my hair. "Smile, Miss Taryn," she instructs kindly. "You want to look nice for the prince, don't you?"

No, I don't. But I don't say anything, just give her a quick, grimacing smile.

Once dressed, I head to the lesser parlor to stand with Vivienne and Oriana, waiting. There's a rush of movement, and Jude comes running in, in her own dress, still looking flushed and fit from the practice field. As always, I'm amazed by how we identical twins can look so different: her eyes sparkle and her arms and legs are muscular, while I'm thinner, my eyes darker and more opaque every time I look in the mirror. I'm also much paler, and my face is losing more expression with every passing day.

"Oh, good, he's not here yet," Jude says briskly. Indeed, we can hear Madoc greeting the Prince out in the hall. "I wonder why he keeps dropping in like this?"

She's right: it is becoming a pattern. Not every day, but often enough, Balekin visits Madoc's stronghold, perhaps for dinner, but more often in the afternoon. It's never anything important. He just sits and talks about inconsequentials, such as all the helpless animals he's killed this week.

And he always insists on me being present. Always, he finds a reason why I should be there. Even though I never say a word, somehow, his visit just isn't complete without me. And he spends more and more time staring at me, like a cat stares at a mouse.

Now the door opens and Balekin comes in, followed closely by Madoc. We women all curtsy. I keep my head down, but feel his gaze on me.

"Good afternoon, ladies. It's a pleasure to see you again." His voice, even at its warmest, still hints of cold.

"The pleasure is ours, Your Highness," Oriana says, rising from her curtsy. "Please, will you take refreshment?" She indicates the tray of teas and cakes.

"I believe I will." Balekin takes a cake and sits down, giving the rest of us tacit leave to sit as well. Oriana immediately takes up her latest lacemaking project, pulling it onto her lap in a snowy spill. "What are you making, Lady Oriana?"

She holds it up. "A veil." The lace shines and gleams in delicate traceries: it looks like frost and snowflakes and networks of ice. Oriana is very skilled at lacemaking, despite the fact that it's considered low class: she's always got something she's making. I used to spend hours with her here in the parlor, embroidery needle flashing while her bobbins clacked, both of us happy while we created beautiful things. I've always felt closer to her than to Madoc, and she's always cared for me. When I stopped going to class, she defended me from Madoc's anger, saying that much of what was taught in class wasn't useful for a mortal (very true), and she could teach me all I needed to know about running a household (also true, if only I could concentrate enough to learn).

I still spend most of my time with her; there's nowhere else for me to go, since I stopped going to class, and then stopped leaving the house. But I haven't been able to pay much attention to her home economics lessons. I also haven't been able to embroider, sew, make lace or do anything else. I just can't concentrate enough to listen, or finish anything. So I watch Oriana, or, increasingly, stare out the window.

Oriana says something else polite, while I keep my gaze down, avoiding looking at Balekin. It's ridiculous—he's not going to hurt me, not here in Madoc's stronghold, under Madoc's eye—but his stare makes me feel like filthy fingers crawling over me. I fiddle with a cake, but don't eat any. I don't have much of an appetite lately, and even less when Balekin's around.

"…And your daughters are, as ever, a delight," Balekin's saying. "Miss Jude, I saw you in the practice field. You are becoming a formidable warrior. And your sister—" My stomach clenches as his gaze burns right on me. "—Is lovely as ever, even silent."

"I've tried numerous times to break that silence." Madoc glowers at me. "But she's recalcitrant. Won't you even greet the Prince, Taryn?"

"No." Balekin waves a hand. "Let her keep her silence if she chooses." He turns more fully to me. "The mountain wisps are as silent as you, floating through the air. It makes them very difficult to stalk." He gives a hard laugh. "But I managed."

I bite the inside of my lip, hoping none of my disgust shows on my face. I hate listening to Balekin talk about the screaming animals he's butchered lately, but of course there's no way to avoid it. Balekin's the greatest hunter at Court—possibly the greatest ever. They say that Hollow Hall, his seat, is full of the pelts and antlers of his kills, and there are ranks and ranks of hunting weapons. And it's not just sport hunting, either, with horns and fanfare and an entourage spilling behind him in a big show. Balekin's very dedicated and very skilled, stalking his prey on foot, alone, through the most dangerous terrain, and hauling his kills back himself. They say that birds in the forest go silent when they see him coming. I can well understand their feelings.

So I sit, silent as the birds, while he tells us—and, more particularly, me—all about how he killed the mountain wisps. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Vivienne just barely keep herself from rolling her eyes. She may not be disgusted by talk of hunting, but she's bored to tears by it. Jude, meanwhile, actually seems halfway interested, listening attentively and asking Balekin searching, well-informed questions. So why does he keep brushing her off to talk to me? Or, rather, talk at me, as I make no response and he doesn't demand one.

"Sounds like a difficult day in the field," Oriana says while he takes a drink, perhaps in an attempt to shut him up.

He finishes his tea and grins appreciatively. His grin isn't quite as ferocious as Madoc's, but it's unnerving enough. "Mountain wisps are challenging, Lady Oriana, but they do not represent the true apotheosis of the art."

"Oh? What does?" Jude asks curiously.

He bares his teeth again at her. "The manticore."

"The manticore?" Madoc raises an eyebrow at this. "That certainly would pose the greatest challenge for a hunter—if it didn't turn the hunt around and make you the prey."

"You've seen a manticore, haven't you, General?" Finally Balekin takes his eyes from me, turning to Madoc.

"Once." Madoc takes a grim sip of tea. "From a distance. It was the most magnificent and fearsome sight of my life. I would not wish to see such a thing close at hand—at least, not unprepared."

"Still." Balekin's face takes on a faraway expression. "What a challenge, to hunt and kill a manticore. The ultimate challenge."

"Maybe not," Vivienne says, as if she just can't help herself. "I can think of something more challenging."

A flash of irritation crosses Balekin's face, hidden immediately. "Can you, Lady Vivienne? And what is that?"

"The unicorn," she says promptly. "The manticore may be the most dangerous beast, but the unicorn is the hardest to track. That makes it the more challenging hunt."

"Unicorns aren't just difficult to track," Madoc says. "They're impossible. It's no challenge if it can't be done at all; it's just an absurdity. Anyway, no one's seen a unicorn in over three hundred years."

"Oh, really, Dad." Vivienne's mouth twists. "What do you know about—"

"Enough!" Everyone jumps at Oriana's sudden shout. "It is a sin to try and kill a unicorn." Her hands clench her lacework. Her cheekbones are stained red and her eyes blaze: she's genuinely angered. "It's a sin to even discuss such a thing, even in jest. Vivienne, you will restrict your remarks to something more suitable—as will you, Madoc."

They both subside, muttering apologies. Oriana erupting in rage is rare enough that even Madoc is unnerved when it happens. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Balekin hide a smirk.

It's up to Jude to rescue the conversation. "The ball tomorrow should be fun, shouldn't it?" she says determinedly. "Can you tell us anything about the entertainments, Your Highness?"

The rest of the visit goes smoothly enough, and Balekin leaves before dinner, promising to see us all at the ball tomorrow night. As we're going our separate ways, though, Oriana pulls me aside.

"Taryn," she says, getting right to the point, "Prince Balekin was looking at you quite a lot."

I say nothing, but a flush warms my face, part embarrassment and part anger. I look away.

"He hasn't…?"

I shake my head fiercely, still looking away.

"That's good," she says with satisfaction. "There's no advantage for us to him bracing you in some corridor. When he does call for you, we want him to do it the right way."

This fills me with such anger and mortification that my tongue is freed. "I won't go to him," I say hoarsely. I cough. "He won't ask, and anyway I wouldn't go."

She sighs. "Of course you would," she says, not unkindly. "He's a Greenbriar. A Prince of the High Court. You wouldn't have a choice, any more than anyone else in Faerie. But…" She pats my arm. "It doesn't have to be a bad thing, Taryn. Think of the wealth that would come to our family!"

Oh, joy. Now I'm the family prostitute.

"And it would be good for you personally, Taryn," Oriana continues, perhaps seeing my expression. "He'd give you so many wonderful gifts…you'd make your fortune, and probably marry extremely well, to a wealthy courtier."

Yeah. Because that worked out so well for my mother. A spiteful anger forces my words up again. "What if I get pregnant?"

She purses her lips and shakes her head. She can't say it aloud—no one can criticize the royal family—but she doesn't have to point out how unlikely this is. Neither Balekin nor his two brothers, the other princes, have fathered a single child in all their combined centuries of life. There hasn't even been the rumor of a child. This represents a problem, because, for all faeries like to boast about their immortality, the truth is that they have a rather high death rate. The throne can't be left so insecure, without an heir in reserve. And the present king, Eldred, is getting weak.

"We'll take what we can get, Taryn," is all she says. "In the end, that's all we can do. So next time you see the Prince, smile. Smile and be pleasant. You're not going to get a better chance."

I stare at her. A better chance at what, exactly? What future do I have in this place? Being the mistress of a bloodthirsty prince, who will pass me around to his friends the minute he gets tired of me? Marriage to some faerie lord who will use me as a broodmare while despising me in his heart? Why would I want any of those things?

But what options do I have? I don't have the knowledge or education to operate in the human world. I can't use a sword and become a knight, like Jude. I can't carve a place for myself with magic, like Vivienne. And I'm completely powerless to stop Balekin, or my parents.

If he wants me, he'll have me. And there's nothing I can do to stop him.