A Conspiracy of Charming Monsters

Book 0: The Folk of the Air

by Holly Black

Genres: Sword & Sorcery

Synopsis

From the brilliant mind of #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black comes a collection of short stories, gorgeously illustrated in full color and set in the Faerie world, where beauty can be monstrous and love can be capricious….

A reluctant king is thrown into turmoil when the girl he loves to hate is stolen by the Undersea.

An exiled redcap, trapped in the mortal world, must rediscover his inner monster.

A mortal girl sacrifices the other half of herself for an unworthy faerie lover. 

A tiny sprite’s determination to prove herself puts the entire High Court in danger.

In this collection, #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black combines her signature wit and lush world-building with stunning full-color art by Frostbite Studios in six irresistible tales that return readers to the world of the Modern Faerie Tales and Elfhame, including two never-before-seen stories: one revealing the interior life of Madoc while in exile and the other featuring the moment that High King Cardan realizes what he most desires.

Release date: November 3, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 432

Sample

MADOC KNOWS BETTER than to dwell on losses. In war, loss is inevitable. No matter how strong or clever you are, there’s a chance you will encounter someone stronger, cleverer, or just luckier. Loss is a setback. If you plan well, it lands you on what is only a longer and thornier path to victory.

But right then, in exile from Faerie, trapped in the baffling mortal world, in a depressing apartment that stinks of iron, away from everyone he loves and everyone he commanded, he can’t seem to stop dwelling.

He schemed to take over Elfhame for years, only to have victory snatched from his grasp by his own ruthless child. A child he raised and trained, and who, had he taken her into his confidence sooner and manipulated her better, might have handed him the goddamn crown instead of taking it for herself.

Part of him can’t help being proud of his little Jude. There’s even some satisfaction in knowing his family commanded both sides of the battle for the throne.

But Madoc still lost.

So now he paces the fake-wood floor, feeling old and tired. Maybe he has no more schemes in him.

Redcaps like him are supposed to die in battle, yet along with his banishment came an admonishment to never so much as lift a weapon again. He is doubly disgraced, denied even the dignity of a worthy death, his failure complete.

Grinding his teeth, he takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. There are already three holes in the wall from where he put his fists through it, and he doesn’t need to make another. A gossip-seeking neighbor who introduced himself as “Kevin, from across the hall” came nosing around complaining about the noise after the second punch broke through the drywall.

The same neighbor who goes up on the roof, where he is explicitly not supposed to be, in order to grill. Not that Madoc minds a little rule breaking, but if he’s held to the ridiculous “no noise after ten PM,” then surely the rest of the tenants ought to be held to the other equally ridiculous strictures. Not to mention that the woman in 5E has a tiny, yappy dog that barks all hours of the day and night, and yet no one seems to be complaining to her.

Madoc told Kevin he would keep it down and did not snap the man’s neck. He isn’t sure if he’s proud of resisting committing murder or if it’s evidence of how far he’s fallen.

A tapping on the window startles Madoc from his musings. A bird, not one of his falcons looking for strips of meat they aren’t allowed to hunt. A white raven. As he walks to open the window, he notes that a piece of parchment has been tied to one of the bird’s feet with blue thread.

The raven, as pale as moonlight, flies into his small kitchen area as soon as the sash is up.

“What have you for me?” Madoc mutters, following it.

The bird pecks at a few crumbs on the counter. Alas, Madoc’s cupboards are largely bare. Since leaving Elfhame, he’s taken his meals in shops. He does, however, have a cardboard container of chicken eggs, one of which he breaks directly onto the metal of his sink.

The raven picks at the yolk delightedly, making it easy for Madoc to free the message from its foot.

I will come to your dwelling tomorrow around dusk. We have much to discuss.

Oriana

He stares at the note before crumpling it in his fist.

Oriana, second wife. Their marriage was a practical one; she wed him for Oak’s protection, and he wed her because he wanted a wife who would take care of the children he already had. Now he wonders if she considers him a burden to be shed or whether she’s found a new use for him.

He knew she was clever—she had to have been to survive the internecine politics of the High Court when she was a consort to the former High King—but he’s impressed that she’s managed to stay in Jude’s good graces while never quite leaving his.

And now she’s coming here.

While he’s been wallowing in self-pity, the idea that his wife might pity him is too terrible to contemplate. And yet, looking around at the broken walls and empty rooms, he fears that if she sees him here, she won’t be able to help it.

He has treated his exile like a military campaign. Everything temporary. Sleeping on blankets on the floor, as though he were camping for the night after a march. No furniture. Nothing in his refrigerator but eggs. Using glamours instead of buying mortal clothing. He has been unwilling to acknowledge the truth: He is stuck in the mortal world. And he may be stuck here a long time.

But if he wants to avoid pity, he must seem to have settled in by tomorrow night.

He writes a brief note acknowledging that she is coming: I AWAIT YOUR VISIT.

Madoc knows what he has to do; he just dreads doing it.

He chose this apartment because it isn’t far from where his eldest daughter, Vivi, lives. He hasn’t visited her, though. He doubts he will be welcome. She’d found him only barely tolerable even before he nearly gutted one of her sisters.

Well, now he will have to find out. His daughter knows the local Folk, after all.

And the sobering truth is that there is no one else to whom he can turn.

He goes down the stairs, his doublet and leather pants obscured by a heavy glamour. His keys rest lightly in one clawed hand.

The elderly woman from 5E—Ruth Kaplan—has a small Pomeranian dancing around her feet, barking, tongue lolling out of his mouth, dripping with foamy drool. As Madoc watches, he darts to the mat in front of 5F, then pisses on it.

“No, Puffball!” Ruth calls. “Get away from there.”

Puffball doesn’t listen, though. He stops to eat what looks like a scattering of dog treats, perhaps an offering from the equally ancient Lydia Holloway in 5F to keep him from further depredations.

“He hasn’t been well,” Ruth tells Madoc apologetically when she sees him noticing.

“Poor creature,” he says, leaving the object of his comment vague. He isn’t sure what the residents think of him. He has attempted to remain civil in his conversations, but has shut down any invitations to get to know them further. He hopes they do not think of him at all.

Four more floors down, he passes 1F, which has a wooden ladder leaned up against a dresser sitting outside the door, along with a rusty-looking bike. Across the way, someone has jammed open the trash chute with a bag that’s leaking something foul.

He continues to the ground floor. On his way out of the building he passes the mailboxes. Over them are several notices—a flyer offering a couch for sale, another with a photo of a missing sphynx cat named Slinky McEgg, and a notice that the tenants’ association is holding a potluck barbecue on the lawn two days hence. But larger than those is taped an obviously handmade sign: STEALING MAIL IS A FEDERAL CRIME!!!

A woman with a walker is making her way inside. She has a bag of groceries balanced in the basket in front of her. Lydia’s sister, Vanessa, also a resident of 5F. Maybe she’s the one buying dog treats.

Madoc opens the door for her. “What’s that about?” he asks as she passes, nodding toward the sign.

She squints at it, then turns to him with rheumy eyes. “You better not order anything important; especially don’t get those discount drugs from Canada. They disappear! Everyone suspects one of the teenagers, but I know it’s Leon in 1F.”

Leon Watkins. The one with all the stuff in the hall around his door. “Why do you think it’s him?”

“Because he’s a wanker!” she says with surprising volume, then wheels off toward the elevator.

Madoc stares after the woman, realizing that despite her gray hair, stooped back, and delightful spark of hostility, she is younger than him. Elderly mortals horrify some of the Folk, while others find them fascinating. Madoc can’t help thinking of Jude and Taryn and wondering if someday he will hold one of their withered hands in his.

As he crosses in the direction of Vivi’s apartment, he recalls seeing Jude lying in the snow, bleeding out from the wound he gave her. Too grievously hurt to survive, even if he carried her back to camp, and camp too far anyway. In that moment, he would have given much for her to have grown old.

She lived. He reminds himself of that. He does not like to think of the moments after, trudging back to his army, when he knew in his bones that the game hadn’t been worth the candle.

And that’s why you lost.

Had he still been standing in his apartment, he would have smashed the place to pieces.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” Vivi says when she sees him standing outside her door.

Madoc opens his arms and gives her his toothiest smile. “I intend to make the most of my exile, child mine. And that means visiting my favorite daughter.”

“Jude’s your favorite daughter,” Vivi says.

“Not at the moment,” he reminds her, letting the weight in his voice carry his sincerity.

Vivi snorts at that. She has his eyes. Sometimes he’s thought that’s all they have in common, those eyes.

“You can’t see him, you know,” she says, hands on her hips.

Oak. He wonders if his youngest child is in the apartment, if he can hear Madoc’s voice. If he’s frightened by it. “I came to see you.”

She narrows her gaze. She knows he cannot lie, nor can she, but there are miles and miles between something that’s not a lie and the actual truth.

“I need your help,” he tells her.

Her mouth turns up at one corner. No doubt she just likes the idea of him being at her mercy. “This should be good. What do you want?”

“Oriana is coming tomorrow, and I require provisions and furnishings such that she thinks me well situated.”

“Are you?” Vivi raises both brows. “Well situated?”

“I am not ill situated,” he says cagily. “I have a dwelling, but it is bare of comforts.”

“You have anything to barter?” She opens the door wider, beckoning him inside. He supposes Oak isn’t there after all.

Madoc walks in, following her into the kitchen, where she puts a kettle on. He hasn’t been in her apartment before and cannot help the analytical part of his brain that takes in the details. Heather’s artwork on the walls. A mishmash of cheerful furniture.

“There’s a phooka, Bryern, who can get you pretty much whatever,” Vivi tells him, getting out a selection of teas that don’t look as though they come from the mortal world. Interesting. “But not for a handful of glamoured leaves.”

“What about gold?”

Vivi nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, he’d probably like that. He can get some brownies and silkies over and make your place look nice.”

“If you can broker that, I would be most appreciative.”

“Sure,” says Vivi, eyeing him as though she’s trying to discern a sinister intention. “But we’re going to have to get some other stuff, like food.”

Madoc sees the truth of it as she puts a mug in front of him. It contains a familiar blend of mint and nettle, the scent like one from the kitchens of his own estate. He lifts the cup in acknowledgment of her words. “I suppose I will have to offer her something.”

Vivi begins to smile. “We’re going to Costco,” she says, cat eyes bright with what might be mischief and might be malice.

Costco turns out to be an enormous, high-ceilinged warehouse filled with racks and racks of… everything. As Madoc enters, he’s immediately confronted with televisions tuned to different channels, showing a kaleidoscopic range of images and producing a cacophony of sound. Helmeted athletes crash into one another atop startlingly green grass on one screen while women painted with shimmering cosmetics scream at one another on the next. On a third, dwarves face down a dragon. Madoc stares at it in horror. Were the mortals watching this?

“Dad,” Vivi says, putting a hand on his arm. “It’s cool. It’s just a movie.”

Right, of course. Eva had shown him films, but none of them had looked so real.

He turns away from the screens, embarrassed. Jewels glimmer in cases, beside electronic watches advertised as having intelligence, cameras, and a love seat that a placard insists is made of memories. Madoc is nearly sure that mortals have no magic and that they are liars, but he still eyes the seat warily.





Once, humans were different. The oldest of the Folk tell stories of how the mortals scrabbled in dirt and stank, their bodies rotting away nearly as soon as they came into the world. And yet, they grew stronger and cleverer and more inventive. Now their songs are sung even in Elfhame, and their world of iron and steel is so vast that this warehouse of treasures is commonplace.

Truly, fate seems intent on humbling him.

“Come on,” Vivi says impatiently.

Madoc follows her, past plastic jars of pe. . .