The Queen of Nothing

At Prince Cardan's birth presentation, the Royal Astrologer Baphen delivers a devastating prophecy: this youngest prince will destroy the crown and ruin the throne.

At Prince Cardan's birth presentation, the Royal Astrologer Baphen delivers a devastating prophecy: this youngest prince will destroy the crown and ruin the throne. High King Eldred, shaken, turns the child over to his mother, Lady Asha, who craves courtly attention more than motherhood. She leaves the infant to a cat's nursing, then to the empty corridors of the palace. When his elder brother Dain tricks Cardan into seeming to murder a mortal, the already-unloved prince is given to Balekin, the eldest and cruelest sibling. From that childhood of manipulation and neglect, a reputation is made. The prophecy hangs over Cardan like a blade—and like all prophecies spoken aloud, it begins working toward its own fulfillment.

A retired redcap general reveals Madoc's coming coup

Jude Duarte, the mortal High Queen of Elfhame exiled to the human world, spends her days watching daytime television and her nights doing odd jobs for local faeries. When a contract sends her to confront a cannibal terrorizing the Folk in Portland, Maine, she discovers her target is Grima Mog—the legendary redcap general, recently expelled from the Court of Teeth. Rather than risk a hopeless fight over the blood-lacquered cap Jude threatens to burn, they agree to spar on Grima Mog's warehouse roof. Jude wins through audacity, hurling the cap as a distraction and striking with a metal pipe. As payment, Grima Mog reveals that Madoc—Jude's foster father and a traitor to Elfhame—has allied with the Court of Teeth. They plan to dethrone High King Cardan before the next full moon.

A murdered husband and a pregnant twin's impossible request

Jude returns home battered to find her twin sister Taryn waiting at the apartment she shares with their faerie half-sister Vivi and their young brother Oak. Taryn, dressed in a gossamer court gown, announces that her husband Locke is dead—and that she killed him. After months of his indifference and cruelty, she snapped during an argument and drove a jeweled letter opener into his throat. An inquest has been called by the High Court, and since Taryn cannot lie under glamour, she needs Jude to impersonate her and deny the murder. Taryn also reveals she is pregnant. Despite Vivi's warnings that discovery means execution, Jude agrees—partly to protect her sister, partly because the prospect of returning to Elfhame, of seeing Cardan, quickens something she refuses to name.

Dain's geas lets Jude deny Locke's murder to Cardan's face Dressed in Taryn's bronze gown, Jude enters the High Court for the first time since her exile. When High King Cardan applies a glamour intended…