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Cardan walks down the massive hallway of the castle. He catches a glimpse of his reflection in the gleaming stone floor and frowns. He’s cast in shades of silver and white, the moonlight being eaten up by the obsidian of his hair, like nightfall has chosen to take residence on his head, another crown to add to his collection. The pale light darkens the hollows of his cheeks and adds a cruel severity to his face. He looks like a ghost haunting the halls of the castle. A forlorn one at that.
Even the white light that trickles in through the windows of the castle looks melancholy. The land is tied to the King and it’s moments like these where Cardan remembers it’s tied to the Queen too.
Cardan makes his way toward his bedroom, feet silent on the floor. In his hands he’s clutching two mugs of what Jude calls hot chocolate. Cardan adores it, it’s like liquid sugar. The mugs warm his fingers as he clutches their handle, the heat bordering on uncomfortable. He moves silently, shoes, slippers Jude called them, making hardly a swish as they swipe against the floor. Cardan knows Jude would tease him for dragging his feet, not wanting a drop of the chocolate to be disturbed. Her grin is painted vividly in his mind as he reaches their bedroom door.
“Jude?” Cardan says quietly. It’s odd. Faeries come alive at night, sleeping during the day. Whispering in the middle of the night as he creeps through the halls makes him feel positively mortal.
Cardan walks into the bedroom, letting the door shut behind him quietly. “Jude?” He repeats.
A tired groan is the only reply.
Carefully he makes his way toward the bed, mugs in hand. Without his Fae sight he’d be stumbling around in the dark. He sets the hot chocolates on the bedside table, steam rising from the brightly colored ceramic mugs brought in from a trip to the mortal lands. Cardan walks to the windows, pulling open the heavy curtains and light spills in, illuminating the small form in the bed.
Cardan sits on the edge of the mattress and reaches out, gently wobbling Jude’s shoulder to rouse her.
“What?” She mumbles.
“I brought you a drink,” he says hopefully.
Jude shakes her head and rolls over, leaving her back to him. “I’m not thirsty.”
Cardan feels his heart sink. “You haven’t been very thirsty lately,” he notes. He gently runs his hand through her bed-mussed hair. “Or hungry.”
“Leave it alone, Cardan,” Jude snaps. His hand stops. It’s the most emotion he’s heard out of her in days.
“A drink might do you good,” he says. “It could make you feel better.”
“It won’t.”
“I just thought—”
“Stop thinking for me!” Jude says roughly as she turns toward him. She’s half sitting, the covers bunched at her waist. “Just leave me alone! I don’t want food or water or your fucking hot chocolate! I want you to leave me alone! For once in your fucking life, Cardan, leave me be!”
Cardan swallows the lump in his throat, ignoring the sudden burning in his eyes. Outside, the wind whips through the trees, their ghastly wails eerily similar to the sound taking over Cardan’s mind. “I see,” he says, looking anywhere but Jude. “Then I’ll go. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
He lets his eyes glance over Jude once. Irritation simmers in her eyes, being quickly replaced by something he doesn’t stick around to see. Walking as quickly as his Fae feet will carry him, Cardan walks through the door and lets it fall shut behind him with a deafening click.
Jude watches him go, remorse churning in her gut, tying her stomach in knots. She tries to breathe only to find that she’s crying. The back of her hands wipes her eyes roughly. “B-breathe,” she says aloud to herself. Jude tries to stop the wobble in her lower lip, drawing in a ragged breath. It doesn’t work. She clenches her jaw to the point of pain, watching as tears stain the duvet.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Jude let’s out a broken sob, the small grip she had on her emotions crumbling. Cardan is gone. She pushed him away. In. Out comes a pathetic “please” as Jude begs the universe, the stars, Faerie itself to bring Cardan back to her. In. Jude grabs her coffee mug, blowing out a shaky breath to cool it down. In. The taste of powdered chocolate mix and milk, tiny marshmallows bumping her upper lip as she tips the cup and drinks. It’s sweet. Tooth-rottingly so. Just the way Cardan loves it. Out. A broken sob and mangled version of Cardan’s name. In. A crushing sadness, a lethargy that burrows deep in her bones. Out. A weary breath, a sorry surrender. Jude drinks the chocolate, barely tasting it but relishing in the heat that scalds her throat. She sets the mug on the bedside table absentmindedly, not noticing that it pushes the other mug closer to the end of the nightstand. The second mug is pushed too far, the bottom resting on air for just a moment before gravity takes over and drags it over the edge. Jude turns to get back in bed and hears the mug shatter on the floor.
“Fuck!” She yells angrily. The mug snapped whatever last bit of control Jude had. She finds herself weeping, heavy heaving sobs that rattle her entire body and leave her scrambling for a breath. Jude covers her face in her hands, wanting to hide everything, to hide herself from everything.
At her exclamation, one of the many palace servants comes in. “Your Grace,” she asks, “Are you alright?”
Jude mumbles something, the words garbled.
“I’m sorry?” The servant asks.
“Cardan,” Jude sobs. “Please find me Cardan.”
Cardan sits in one of the many empty rooms of the palace. It’s a guest room, he thinks, or would be if it was furnished. Despite their many visitors and nearly-never-ending parties, very rarely do people stay overnight. Most stumble home or find warmth in another’s bed. Still, he likes to sit in the empty room, just this one. He glances at the bare walls, the nondescript dresser, a tiny nightstand, the single small desk pushed against one wall. It was his bedroom once, when he still lived at the palace instead of with his brother. He supposes he should hate the room. It is, after all, the place he lived before his parents decided he could no longer live with him. And yet, Cardan takes comfort in the anonymity the room provides at first glance. It could belong to anyone or no one at all.
Only Cardan knows about the small divot in the stone floor unnoticeable in the granite pattern, from when he tipped his chair back and leaned too far, falling on his ass, the chair leg taking a piece out of the floor as it scraped across. He looks toward the window, the one that he accidentally broke once when his foot got tangled in the leg of his trousers and he hopped around on one foot before crashing into the glass and nearly falling clean out of it. As far as the official story goes, he broke the window in a fit of rage and was punished accordingly. There’s a scuff on the wall from the many times he jumped into bed with a little too mischievous gusto as a child and sent the headboard smacking back. The way the nightstand is placed just close enough to the bed that Cardan could use his tail to grab whatever he needed from it. And there’s the locked drawer in the desk that nobody will ever open again. It’s where he kept his letters to Jude, when that small space was the only privacy he had. He guarded the key like his life depended on it, fighting tooth and nail to keep that drawer shut. Now, the key sits hidden in a place he can’t remember and doesn’t want to. The key, like the time in his life when the only outlet for his emotions was to be the villain in Jude’s life, when those letters were all he had, is better left stored away.
Cardan sees all the small cracks and imperfections in the room, the only signs that anyone ever lived here, that there was life to be had in a prison such as this one.
Here, Cardan feels like somebody even if he’s not sure that person is him anymore. When he’s the King he’s not just somebody, he’s all of Elfhame; when he’s not, he trusts Jude to remind him of who he is. Despite his bouts of self loathing and the constant voices in the back of his mind telling him that even though the curse is broken, he’ll still be the ruin of the realm, he never doubted when Jude was there. She is everything kind and tender and loving. Jude is what reminded him that his beaten, scarred heart was still able to feel love. That he, as broken and damaged and healing as he was, could still do good, could still be good. In her eyes he sees all the good parts of himself and all of the bad and somehow she makes it bearable. It’s why Cardan is here now. He wants to make it bearable for Jude, needs to. She’s always been his true north and now that she's wandering and lost in whatever thoughts are plaguing her, it’s up to him to guide her back.
Cardan sits on the edge of his bed, thinking. It’s almost physically paining him to not be with Jude right now. But she asked for him to leave and so Cardan sits, thoughts heavy and heart heavier still.
A knock on the door drags him out of his thoughts. “Yes?”
One of my many servants that Cardan sees daily pokes her head in. “The Queen requests your presence,” she says.
Cardan looks at her, surprised, eyes full of tentative hope. “Jude?”
She nods. “Yes, your Highness, she’s asking for you.”
Cardan stands up quickly, nearly running to the door. He doesn’t care how it looks to her or to anyone. The hallway is a blur as he passes the familiar corridors leading to the King’s suite. Cardan hesitates, palm placed against the cool wood of the door, one small motion away from opening it. He’s...nervous. Of what Jude may tell him, of what she won’t. His entire body feels like a rubber band pulled back too tight, the tension about to snap him into pieces. As his hand hovers over the knob, he hears a strange sound. He puts his ear to the door. It’s crying. Cardan’s heart seizes and every worry is washed away. He doesn’t care if Jude is going to tell him that she hates him or that she’s leaving because she’s smothering her, all he knows is that she’s crying and he’ll do anything to make it stop.
Cardan opens the door and marches through the small antechamber and straight to the bedroom. He slows as he gets closer and stops a few feet away, not wanting to startle Jude. He sees her in the same spot she was before, sobbing into her hands. “Judie,” he breathes, his own chest growing tight.
Jude looks up at him through silver-lined eyes, eyelashes heavy with droplets that grow and fall to her lap like snowflakes. Her face is blotchy, cheeks flushed and nose red. As soon as she sees him, her face crumples and her sobs begin anew.
“Oh,” Cardan exhales, rushing to her side.
“Wait!” She says, holding out a hand as if she just remembered something. Cardan stops cold.
“What?” He asks in concern.
Jude points her gaze to the floor.
“Oh,” Cardan says, noticing the broken bits of ceramic everywhere and brown liquid quickly growing sticky. “The mug broke.”
“I broke it,” Jude says flatly. It’s her fault. There’s no point in sugar-coating it.
Cardan gives her a sympathetic look. “It’s alright, I can make you another. I doubt you’d want mine but I see that it’s still there if you do in the meantime.” He grabs a small dustpan and brush from the linen closet and begins to sweep all the pieces into a small pile.
“That was my cup?” Jude asks. She didn’t realize there was a difference.
Cardan nods, “Of course. I know you don’t like it as sweet as I do, so when I warm the hot chocolate I pour your cup first then add more powder for mine.”
Jude’s lip wobbles at that again. She wills it to stay firm as Cardan finishes picking up the remnants of the mug and dropping them in the trash, mopping the chocolate with a rag. He turns to find Jude crying, tears making tracks on both cheeks as she bites her lip.
“Jude?” Cardan asks, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
Cardan sits on the bed and Jude doesn’t hesitate to bury her face in his chest, arms wrapping around him tightly. He calls for another cup of chocolate to be made and it’s brought in not long after. It sits next to his own up, tendrils of steam gently swaying as they rise. He coaxes Jude into taking a sip. She drinks half before setting it back down and resting her head over Cardan’s heart, listening to the steady beat. He kisses her head, inhaling her familiar scent, letting it invade his lungs and wrap around him like a warm blanket.
“I think,” Jude says, “We’d be better off apart.”
“No,” Cardan says. He doesn’t care what her reasons are or why she said it. All he knows is that the thought of living without Jude makes him feel sick. Just moments ago, Cardan thought he’d feel pain, devastation, hurt if Jude ever told him this. He didn’t expect to feel only steely determination and outright refusal.
“Why not?” Jude asks.
“I love you,” Cardan answers simply as if it should clear everything up.
“Why?”
Cardan’s words die in his lips. Why? Gods, he could give her a thousand reasons why, a million. Her smile, her jokes, her skills with weapons and words, her very essence. Instead all he says is, “Before I met you Jude, all I thought about was death. I wondered when I’d die and stop having to live a life where I was not wanted. When you moved here I finally saw a break in the clouds. And when you told me you loved me,” Cardan says, voice growing thick. “I finally knew what it was like to want to live, to want my heart to keep beating and wake up every morning.”
“You don’t love me,” Jude says, choosing to ignore his words even as her heart aches at them. Cardan isn’t going to let her so easily.
“I do.”
“You don’t want me”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I-I’m chronically late to everything, I have a bad habit of leaving the lights on after I’ve left the room, I have violent mood swings a thousand times a day,” she says. Cardan almost laughs, she’s grasping at straws.
“Well it’s a good thing we have people in charge of getting us everywhere on time, I am the King so the cost of wax isn’t an issue, and if you haven’t noticed, I’m so mercurial I wasn’t allowed to live in my own house for years.”
Jude huffs. “Cardan! You don’t get it! I am spiteful and—and hateful and—
“Jude, I have a fucking tail!” Cardan exclaims, the aforementioned limb making itself known as it sways like a snake behind his head. “Nothing you saw will be weirder or worse than that, I guarantee it.”
Jude laughs, a real laugh full of surprised amusement. Cardan grins even as his cheeks heat. Jude knows his tail used to embarrass him, having been made fun of for it mercilessly by his brothers. Jude’s smile fades but her eyes look lighter, some of the shadows retreating.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so moody,” Jude says. She
brings her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. She gazes out the window and toward the sky, to the big, full moon blooming color into the dark night.
Cardan says quiet. Jude’s working through what to say. Cardan can see it as her eyebrows knit together and come apart in short intervals. Jude frowns and bites her lip before releasing it, the skin slightly indented.
A minute passes in silence. Cardan waits. Jude’s eyes bounce around the room, filling with an immense sadness that makes Cardan’s heart twist. Does she regret this life? Regret marrying him?
Finally, her brown eyes land on him. They’re not soft or tender or even hateful, just...analytical, looking at him with the disinterest he grew used to in his youth. Cardan thinks he might be sick. Jude notices and the sheet of ice in her expression cracks a little. “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if things were different?” She finally asks, eyes on the two mugs undoubtedly burning twin rings into the wood of the dresser.
Cardan shakes his head. “No.” He doesn’t allow himself to ponder the alternatives, not when he has Jude in this life. Thinking of all the ways he could have lost her makes him anxious.
Jude looks at him, almost amused. “Never?”
“If what was different?”
Jude shrugs. “Anything. Everything”. A beat passes, “If my parents hadn’t been killed.”
“You’d never have come to Faerie,” Cardan says.
“No, I wouldn’t have.” Jude’s affect is flat, emotionless. Cardan doesn’t know what she feels and it makes his stomach knot. “I’d still be living there,” she says, pointing to the horizon, toward where city lights twinkle at the edge of the forest.
“You would.”
“Do you think I’d like it?” She asks, finally turning to look at him. There’s a desperation in her eyes now, a burning need to know the answer.
“I think you would,” Cardan says. “Maybe. You wouldn’t know any different,and your mother might try to hide it but you’d figure out that there was more to the world than what meets the eye.”
“You think so?”
Cardan let’s out a soft chuckle. “Of course you’d figure it out, Jude. You always do. You figured me out in a moment, a day.”
“A decade,” Jude says, and for some reason her smile is the saddest of them all.
“What’s this about?” Cardan asks, taking her hand and gently twining his fingers through hers.
“There will come a day,” Jude says, “That I will no longer be able to enter the mortal world. Here, in Faerie, I’ll be young but out there time won’t stop for me. We leave for mere moments now, hours, days maybe but they age me nonetheless. You will look at me here and see me as you do now, but will see an old crone as soon as the boundary is crossed. I’ll be weak, frail as all humans are in old age. Slowly I’ll grow older in the human world and there will come a day when I’ll leave and never be able to go back. The world I was born in, the world I lived in and belong to will be gone to me forever. And I wonder if I could have been spared that pain. Maybe when my parents were murdered or maybe when I was exiled, or any moment in between.”
Cardan sits, the sounds of their breathing horribly loud in his ears. It’s a deafening sort of silence in his mind as he tries to wrap his mind around the pain Jude is describing. He didn’t know. He didn’t realize she felt this way, didn’t think she cared all that much about the human world. But some part of her must call to it as his own soul calls to Faerie. “Jude—” Cardan begins.
“But more than that,” Jude continues, cutting him off. “I wonder if you would be better off.”
Every thought empties out of Cardan’s head. “Me?”
Jude nods. There’s apology in her eyes as she gazes at him. Her brown eyes are sorrowful, asking forgiveness for a crime that was never committed.
“Why would you think I’d be better off without you?”
“For the same reasons. If I hadn’t shown up, hadn’t manipulated you, hadn’t made you my servant, hadn’t killed you, maybe you’d be happier.”
“Jude if you hadn’t killed me I’d be a giant snake in the dining hall,” Cardan deadpans.
Jude gives the ghost of a smile, so brief it was barely there but it gives Cardan hope. “If I hadn’t made you my servant that wouldn’t have happened!”
“If you hadn’t, then I’d be dead. Someone would have undoubtedly killed me for the crown.”
“I spied for your brother Dain and helped him steal the crown! I helped get him killed!”
“Dain was a fool,” Cardan says coolly. It makes Jude’s cheeks burn, flushed with anger. Why won’t he let her wallow in peace?! “He would have found a way to die sooner or later.”
“I tricked you into becoming the king, I used you as a placeholder for Oak!”
“And Oak has changed his mind about being King,” Cardan shrugs. “If anything you cemented my reign.”
“By marrying you I prevented any sort of useful alliance with other courts,” Jude says. Cardan doesn’t miss the way she spits the word “useful.”
“What alliance? Nicasia? She would have killed me if we were married, or I her. And besides, she definitely would have manipulated me to do her mother’s bidding. Elfhame would be in ruins by now. Or at the very least underwater,” Cardan jokes.
Jude lets out a short, wobbly laugh. She looks into Cardan’s eyes, the black as gentle as she’s ever seen it. His eyes are the night sky, every star lovingly moved into place. “Since I arrived in Faerie I’ve done nothing but torment you.”
Cardan takes her hand and kisses her wrist softly, feeling the way her blood thrums faster under his touch. “And what a beautiful torment it has been.”
Jude scoffs.
“Jude,” Cardan says, tilting her chin up with a finger. “If anything, I’m the one that should be apologizing. I truly tormented you for years without any motive. Don’t pretend you didn’t suffer at my hands or that there were no consequences for you after our fights.”
“It built character,” Jude says.
Cardan shakes his head. “No. It didn’t. It made you miserable. For years, Jude, I made your life hell. Everything you did after that was more than deserved.”
He wraps his arms around Jude, pressing her back to his front, looking out at the stars with her.
“Then why do I still feel so bad about it?” Jude asks.
Cardan shrugs. “I’m very charismatic. Most people, especially mortal girls, have apologized to me for simply gazing upon my beautiful face when they weren’t worthy.”
Jude laughs, real this time. She twists in his arms to look at him, “And just how many other moral girls are you seeing?”
“Hmm,” Cardan says, “Let’s see.” He begins to tick off names silently on his hands, getting through four before Jude scoffs, indignation on her face.
“You know what?” She says as affronted as possible, which is difficult to do considering the heaps of amusement scooped on top, “This really isn’t going to work between us. I’ll have to leave Faerie anyway.”
“Why’s that?” Cardan asks.
“Because I’m about to commit regicide.”
Cardan’s laugh bursts out of him, unexpected enough to leave his throat feeling raw even as he continues laughing. Out of all the things he expected her to say, she still finds a way to surprise him. He squeezes her tighter. “You’d kill me again? I’m hurt, Jude.”
“You’re not hurt,” she says, matter-of-factly, “But you’re going to be as soon as I find a dagger. One stab for every name.”
Cardan laughs and reaches across her to the nightstand drawer. From there he produces an elegant dagger, the hilt decorated within an inch of its life, diamonds and other soft, blue stones making it look like a cloudless sky. It’s beautiful. And Jude briefly wonders how she never noticed it there before.
“Take it,” Cardan tells her, holding it out. “Take this dagger and stab it into my heart. You’ve stopped my heart a thousand times before with your beauty and your wit, your laugh and smile. Every time I look at you, you stop my heart because I still can’t believe I’m yours. So take this knife, Jude, you’re the owner of my heart and I won’t mind if you stop it once more.”
Jude rolls her eyes, ignoring the tears burning at the corners, and grabs Cardan’s hand that’s wrapped around the elegant weapon. She moves it to the same drawer where Cardan let’s the dagger fall. She pulls their hands back, lacing her fingers with his. “You really should stop being so romantic,” Jude says, leaning back against Cardan. “What if I fall in love with you?”
Cardan chuckles against the skin of her neck, where he’s placing soft kisses that make Jude break out in goosebumps. “What a tragedy that would be,” he mumbles, kissing the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
Jude gives an exaggeratedly-weary sigh that makes Cardan snort. He recognizes it as her I'm-being-dramatic-on-purpose sigh. “I guess I can’t kill you. If I did, I’d have to leave Elfhame and I don’t know if I could make it in the human world. You were right, I don’t fit there.” Jude pauses for a second. “I guess I don’t fit here either, that’s been clear since the first minute I got here. I suppose I’m doomed to be the one that doesn’t fit in anywhere.” She lets out another over the top sigh and she can practically hear the amused grin take shape on Cardan’s perfect face.
“I don’t know about that,” Cardan says, holding Jude tight against him, resting his chin on her shoulder. “You seem to fit just fine here with me.”
In the smile Jude gives him Cardan can see the fog dissipating, that dark cloud that’s been hanging over her head retreating. And when they look out together into the night, Cardan swears the moonlight shines just a little brighter.