Chapter Text
Cardan knows she sees her ring on his finger. He hears the grind of her teeth, but petty theft is one of his more harmless habits and he was very drunk one night when he realised he didn't own anything of hers but she owned his entire kingdom. And many depraved fantasies - or nightmares.
If Jude can implant her face so deep into his mind - and heart, but he won't stop to dwell on that line of thought on this night of revelry - then he can at least steal away her ring.
Cardan is alone in a world he does not know.
There are lights, everywhere. Flashing past him in a blur, ever-changing pictures glowing from buildings so tall he can't see the tops, weakly illuminating the cracked and dirty grey path he stands upon.
It's too bright, far too bright. The scent of iron is everywhere, threatening constantly to bite into his skin and poison him. The air he breathes is so far from clean he's amazed he isn't coughing.
"So what does Locke have planned? He's certainly staked his reputation on this evening." Jude half-whispers as he attempts to steer her towards the edge of the woods.
Cardan doesn't know, not really. He just knows it won't be good. For either of them.
"I don't worry my pretty head about that kind of thing." He replies, spinning round to meet her piercing gaze. "You're the ones who are supposed to be doing the work. Like the ant in the fable who labours in the dirt while the grasshopper sings the summer away."
He can't remember where he heard that story, and perhaps he wants to do more than sing, but nobody needs to know that.
"And has nothing left for winter." Jude reminds him, brows furrowed as if she can see his true feelings behind his eyes. He imagines she would be far more surprised - or disgusted - if she could.
"I want for nothing." He sneers, wishing it were true.
The wind blows straight through him, bringing with it a scent of metal and meat and everything manmade. This is not his home.
Is it Jude's? The mortal lands? Ironside, he heard it called once. It seems a fitting name.
His hand slides to her hip as if pulled by a force he cannot control, and he can smell something on her skin. Strawberries?
Cardan wants to kiss her. For a moment, he thinks he might. A stolen kiss in the shadows, a secret confession.
But nothing is ever really hidden in the Court, and if he thinks he sees a brief flash of desire behind the hatred in Jude's eyes - well, it's nothing but wishful thinking.
What are the things that speed past him, kicking up dust and puffing out clouds of smoke? They make red and orange tracks around him, a portrait of light he doesn't understand. There is nothing like this in Faerie.
He feels the air change. A distant hum, then a roar. A - he doesn't have the words, a bigger... moving thing? - rushes past him, sending a great cloud of dust into his eyes. When he wipes it away, he is no longer alone.
"You ought not to be here tonight, little ant." He whispers, taking his hand away when all he wants to really do is pull her closer. "Go back to the palace."
Yes, he thinks as he makes his way through the crowd, away from her and everything he's afraid for. Back to where it's safe.
But nowhere in Faerie has ever been truly safe for her, has it?
They surround him, a sea of grey faces lit by the bright lights in their hands. Drinking from strangely-shaped cups that smell bitter and strong, a hushed hum of voices swelling over the noises of the night he is so accustomed too back home. They wear puffy coats and move around him, never once looking up, so sure of their place here.
He is an outsider, in clothes that now seem strange and gauche, with his smeared makeup and gold piercings. But yet they take no notice of him.
Jude stares at him, as Locke declares her queen. As the court cheers at his perfect little game, as he brings out that rotting dress.
She isn't begging. Perhaps she thinks it wouldn't work - it would. She isn't ordering him either, but that does seem to be the trick she wants to keep hidden most.
He is so angry he feels he is made of glass, and one more cruel laugh from Locke will break him clean in two, cracked all over.
Cardan tries to look at the lights they cradle in their hands, but he can never make out more than a flash of colour and words as they hurry past. How can they all be so busy?
Some of them talk into the things, holding it up to their ear or attached by some kind of white wire that snakes out of the side of their head.
Everything moves so quickly he barely has time to breathe. Every time he turns the pictures on the side of the buildings have changed. Paintings that cannot be paintings because they look far too realistic, promising things he doesn't understand. Books, bottles, objects that don't make sense, words he doesn't know.
He is surrounded, and yet he feels so deeply alone he can almost taste it.
"Tell us what you think of our lady." Locke grins, staring at him with pointed malice.
Cardan stiffens, just for a moment, but his once - or perhaps never actually - friend catches it.
What could he say?
Beautiful, far more so than all of you. Enchanting, a siren, a truly dangerous puppeteer. The protagonist of so many of his dreams and nightmares. The poison he wants, craves, but cannot have.
He doesn't tell them she is a brave and broken woman, who he wishes he could take away from all of this. Of course he doesn't.
If he did, Jude would certainly kill him.
Loneliness tastes like warm water, bitter fruit - faint discomforts you can still ingest if you need to. Loneliness smells like iron and looks like the eyes of his family as they lay bleeding out beneath the throne. Loneliness sounds like the empty night as you stand, swaying with drunken energy and imagining her beside you. Loneliness feels like a curse that can't be broken.
Cardan is not a person made for melancholy poetry, but the words are hard to shake.
He suspected something like this, when Locke announced his revel. A twisted take on an already twisted game that makes him seem creative but really exposes his lack of imagination if you look close enough.
It is all a pointed question; the dress, the title, the dance. This mortal, your queen? This rotten, dying creature?
But he looks at Jude, standing there as hateful words and barely-concealed insults spill from his lips faster than he can stop them, and all he sees is life.
He looks at the Court, greedy for hunger and sorrow, and all he sees are long-dead things that are so desperate for life they must steal it away to their forgotten lands.
He can't remember when he sat down, but that is where he finds himself, hands on the cool, dirty surface that feels almost like stone, people still moving around him.
His every moment is slow in comparison, and he wonders if this is what mortality does to you. Makes you run everywhere, trying not to waste a single second. Cardan always thought the Fey were a hedonistic, careless people, but they seem so sluggish now, taking a step for every human mile.
No wonder their society has progressed so quickly. Their time runs out so fast and they do not take a second to look up and savour the night.
He looks up, but no stars can be seen in the empty sky.
Jude is daring him, pulling him in like a moth to a flame. Even in a dress of rot and decay she is still the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
Does he hate it?
"I hate you." She glares as he catches her chin in his hands, pulling her dreadful gaze up to him. He knows, he knows.
"Say it again." He whispers against her ear, still smelling strawberries even under all the mould.
Cardan moves through the city. The people are everywhere, and he tries to imagine how it must look from above. He wonders if this is a true picture of mortal reality or the best mockery his subconscious can create for a place he's never seen.
Everything feels too real and too fake at the same time.
If this were a perfect world, he could pull her close and try to kiss the pain away. He could order Locke dead for such a humiliation, keep her away from the claws and teeth that pull her into their never-ending dance. But this is not a perfect world, and lately, his nightmares seem a better place to be, for at least their pain is obvious. At least they only try to hurt him.
"Will you dance with me?" Jude curtsies low, acid dripping from her tongue. And how could he ever say no?
He tries to imagine Jude here, but she fits in even less than she does back home. Well, his home. Does she have a home?
The thought hits him with a sudden wave of sadness as he realises she doesn't, not really.
Could he make Faerie her home? Or would she just run back to this full, empty world bursting with light and leave him like so many others have before?
Moths swirl above them, and Cardan tries not to think of his father. Not now, with Jude in his arms. He shuts his eyes for a single second, imagining that the Court, the dress and the stupid cruelty of this game are all gone. He imagines them dancing through an empty wood, a golden hall - not because they are forced, but simply because they want to.
"Whatever you do to me, I can do worse to you." Jude whispers, and the fantasy shatters.
Is this a nightmare?
If so, he cannot decide if it's genius on the part of his subconscious or a very lazy attempt to make him confront the reality of his painfully meaningless life. The Folk always say that it is mortals who do not matter, but at least humans make their mark.
Maybe none of them matter, and everyone is just terrified of that black, empty sky and the nothingness beyond it, so they try to ignore it with revels and bright lights and torture and pleasant company. Humans and Fey aren't so different, if you look at it like that.
"You played me for a fool," Cardan says, staring down at her and feeling like he's lying. "And now I am the King of Fools."
"The High King of Fools." Jude sneers, their bodies pressed close. He feels overwhelmed by the scent of her - but that might just be the rot.