Cardan continues to torment and bully Jude. She tries to free an enchanted mortal girl from Faerie, but the girl drowns herself.

Jude’s frustrations mount as the coronation grows near. She and Locke become close and begin a secret romantic relationship. Hurt by Taryn’s secrecy and afraid that Taryn will marry one of the many faeries Jude despises, Jude distances herself from her twin. Taryn confesses that a faerie, whom she refuses to name, will ask Madoc for her hand in marriage at the coronation of the new monarch. She begins an intense juggling act of her various roles as student, spy, and Madoc’s trainee. Jude performs her first mission, which yields a secret letter describing poison, and she meets Dain’s other spies in an underground lair. Although it’s not knighthood, Jude feels that it will still help her gain protection, and she agrees. After the tournament, the King’s son and chosen heir, Dain, is impressed by Jude’s performance and asks her to become a spy for him. Jude settles for simply participating in the tournament, an act that earns her the ire of Cardan and his friends, who tried to dissuade her from entering. Jude wants to use an upcoming tournament to offer her candidacy for knighthood, but Madoc doesn’t think she’s ready. The King of Faerie announces that he is stepping down from the throne and will choose one of his children to succeed him. One of Cardan’s friends Locke, however, begins paying special attention to Jude. Their schoolmates, led by Cardan, bully them repeatedly. Jude feels that becoming a knight will give her the protection she has always lacked she and Taryn were humans growing up in the magical land, and they are looked down upon for their mortality. Jude has grown up with Madoc teaching her combat and military strategy, and she wants to be a knight in one of the courts. In Faerie, Jude and Taryn are tormented by one of the King’s six children-the arrogant prince Cardan-and his group of friends. Jude and Taryn attend lessons with their peers from the families of the faerie King’s court. Madoc takes a second wife, Oriana, with whom he has a son, Oak. Jude grows up in Faerie and the story resumes when she is 17. He takes all three girls back to Faerie with him.

Now, as Madoc has come to find her in her suburban home, he kills her and her husband to avenge the dishonor they brought him years ago. The girls’ mother, who was once married to Madoc, ran away from Faerie with another man, the twins’ father. Their mother has a tense encounter with Madoc, who claims not only that he is a faerie from a magical land called Faerie, but also that he is Vivi’s father. Jude and her identical twin sister Taryn are seven, and their older sister Vivi is nine, when a mysterious man named Madoc shows up at the door of their house in the American suburbs. This guide cites the 2018 Hachette Book Group hardcover edition.

The cruel prince book