The Cruel Prince

He is the most beautiful creature she has ever seen — and the most dangerous. For Jude, that distinction makes him her enemy.

Stolen from the human world at age seven after witnessing her parents' brutal murders, Jude has spent a decade fighting to carve out a place in the glittering, treacherous High Court of Faerie. She is mortal in a world that worships immortality, human in a realm that despises her kind — and she refuses to be broken by either fact. What she wants is power, respect, and belonging. What she gets is Prince Cardan.

Youngest son of the High King, Cardan is as wicked as he is breathtaking, and he has made it his personal mission to remind Jude exactly what she is: an outsider who will never truly belong. The cruelty in his eyes should make her hate him. It does make her hate him. So why does every charged encounter between them feel less like war and more like something far more dangerous?

Holly Black constructs a lush, razor-edged fantasy world where political intrigue lurks beneath every courtly smile and survival demands that Jude play games she barely understands. The push and pull between Jude and Cardan crackles with forbidden tension — two people who should be enemies discovering, with equal parts fury and fascination, that hatred and desire share a dangerously thin border.

Some battles cannot be won. Some enemies cannot be resisted.