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The goblet slips from his fingers. At his feet, a girl, with red eyes and a serpent coiled around her neck. She shrieks at the blackthorn wine splashing her skin, at the cup clanging against the ground.
The snake hisses. Cardan laughs.
At his elbow someone offers another glass, he takes it. It is not wine, but something sweeter, thicker, stranger. Ichor it is called, and it stains his teeth and tongue red. He drinks it all. Drunk, and thirsty still, he waves over a servant, a boy with silver skin and long fingers who keeps flashing him coy looks from under his lashes. He fills his cup to the brim with something. Cardan does not care what it is, as long as it makes the world blur.
Bored of just watching the revelry, he steps from the throne and into the fray. Dinner collapsing into debauchery. Wine and blood flowing freely. The music is a hypnotic thrum weaving itself through the hall. He dances with the first pretty thing that catches his eye, and another, and another, and- and when he tires of dancing he lets that servant with the fuck me eyes kiss nevermore onto his lips.
Later, as he sleeps on the floor in a nest of velvet and fox fur, he is awoken by a pressure on his ribs, Tongue numb, and dreams still heavy in his veins, he can only open his eyes to slits. She is above him; one foot on his chest. A figure in black. Dark eyes, and a mouth full of lies. His beloved nemesis.
Cardan wraps his hand around her ankle, feeling the soft leather of her boot. He lets his eyes drift back shut. And when he breathes her name she presses down; just hard enough to hurt.
He could survive off her contempt he thinks. If he could eat it. Drink it. He would never need love again.