Holly Black

Sometimes the difference between a love story and a horror story is where the ending comes... While Jude fought for power in the Court of Elfhame against the cruel Prince Cardan, her sister Taryn began to fall in love with the trickster, Locke. Half-apology and half-explanation, it turns out that Taryn has some secrets of her own to reveal. The Lost Sisters is a companion e-novella to the New York Times bestselling novel The Cruel Prince, by master writer Holly Black.

The Folk of the Air #1.5

The Lost Sisters: A Folk of the Air Novella

Anna Stewart

It’s the kind of thing you like. The wicked are slain, with swords no less. Vengeance is had. Boldness is rewarded. But what about all those girls, all those obedient girls who trusted and loved and wed and died? Weren’t they bold, too?

Everyone makes mistakes. They trust the wrong people. They fall in love. Not you, though. And that’s why it’s so hard to ask you for forgiveness.

Or maybe it’s another horror story. It seems like the difference is mostly in where the ending comes.

Fairy tales have a moral: Stay on the path. Don’t trust wolves. Don’t steal things, not even things you think no normal person would care about. Share your food but don’t trust people who want to share their food with you; don’t eat their shiny red apples, nor their candy houses, nor any of it. Be nice, always nice, and polite to everyone: kings and beggars, witches and wounded bears. Don’t break a promise. 

It’s important that we learn the lessons our mother didn’t.

She and Dad, dead in moments. And us girls, taken across the sea to be raised by a monster. The three lost sisters. Doesn’t that sound just like another tale?

Fairy tales are full of girls who wait, who endure, who suffer. Good girls. Obedient girls. Girls who crush nettles until their hands bleed. Girls who haul water for witches. Girls who wander through deserts or sleep in ashes or make homes for transformed brothers in the woods. Girls without hands, without eyes, without the power of speech, without any power at all. 

But then a prince rides up and sees the girl and finds her beautiful. Beautiful, not despite her suffering, but 

Neither you nor I have been good at seeing the future in the skies. Neither of us can see in the dark well enough to note the movement of the stars accurately. 

Maybe if we’d been better at it, we could have seen what was coming.

She turned to me, head tilted, her expression pure confusion. As though I had no reason to be afraid of a broken heart. She had no idea how dangerous a broken heart could be. You do, though. You know.

Looking at you was like looking into a mirror and hating what I saw.

Be good, but not too good. Be pretty, but not too pretty. Be honest, but not too honest. Maybe no one got lucky. Maybe it was too hard.

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