Chapter Text
Most habits begin by accident. One broken nail leads to a lifetime of chewing on your fingers, one errant strand of hair leads to hours idly twisting locks through your fingers. So too did the habit of leaving notes begin for Cardan and Jude; by accident.
It was pain that brought about the habit of leaving missives for one another, but though it was hewn from the darkest parts of their past Jude and Cardan had come to cherish this small intimacy.
The first note came from Cardan.
Jude had always been prone to rising while the sun was still high in the sky, but in their first few months together Cardan’s memories as the serpent came back to haunt him in his sleep, waking him early nearly every day. His nightmares didn’t often drive him from bed. Most days he would reach out and curl Jude’s body against his, savoring her warmth and using her to ground himself in the present. Other times they both were plagued with ghosts of the past, choosing to take solace in each other’s bodies. Their shared breaths and lingering sighs chasing away the haunting chill clouding their minds.
On a dreary morning, nearly two months after their triumph and joint coronation Cardan was awoken by a nightmare that clung to him like thick, sticky sap. Coating his mind, making him feel suffocated and trapped. As he lay there attempting to breathe evenly and calm the thundering crescendo of his heartbeat, he became restless. The kind that feels as if remaining still forces even one’s bones to twitch and ache with discomfort. For a few moments he tried forcing himself to relax, but each moment he lay there only felt as if invisible hands were pressing down on his chest, his stomach, his arms, his head; a heavy, crushing weight as if his body were encased in stone, sinking through the sheets to the cold floor below.
When he could take it no longer, Cardan rose, dressing quietly so as to not wake Jude, and padded from their chambers to the crisp, open air of the garden, his guards in tow.
At some point during his absence Jude woke to find Cardan gone, his side of the bed empty, covers pulled up as if he were never there at all.
Jude was no stranger to fear, it had been her constant companion most of her life, and upon waking to a cold, empty bed panic wrapped its icy fingers around Jude’s heart and squeezed tightly, chilling her to the bone. She rose frantically throwing on a dressing gown and tearing from their chambers.
The logical part of her mind told her Cardan was fine, that if anything were to happen to him the guards would have woken her and not left her to slumber leisurely, but panic is seldom swayed by logic. An emotion so potent can’t be reasoned or bartered with, it digs its hooks in unmercifully until we succumb to the sea of fear leaving reason to float away like an untethered dingy amidst a tempest.
As she searched, Jude tried to appear calm despite the anxious storm thundering its way through her, but after checking the council chambers and the throne room only to find them empty she felt more than frantic. Finally, when she found him in the garden she nearly wept with relief.
Cardan saw the emotion in her eyes but said nothing simply opening his arms to her, they sat together in silence Jude kissing Cardan’s forehead, cheeks, and lips over and over, ensuring herself that he was well and whole and decidedly not a giant serpent.
Though she never spoke of it Cardan had known the cause of her fear. Knew that she needed to see him, touch him, to assure herself that her nightmares were lies; that he was a serpent no longer and she was not a lonely Queen on a broken throne. It was because of this that a few days after, when Cardan woke early again, shaken and restless, he left a note on his pillow for Jude to find.
It said simply,
Alive and well, my love. In the library.
-Cardan.
Again Jude opened her eyes to find she was alone, but this time her panic only lasted a moment before finding the neatly folded scrap of paper propped up on Cardan’s pillow. She read it twice, tracing his calming words with her finger, before dressing and making her way to the library. When she arrived, Cardan instantly noted the change in Jude and was relieved he had found a way to set her mind at ease when he was not there to do so. From then on Cardan left messages behind for Jude to find any time he woke before his Queen.
The eighth note came from Jude.
In the weeks that followed, Jude had grown accustomed to finding messages from her husband, propped against his pillow or folded carefully on her night table. She was thankful for the effort Cardan put in to make her feel grounded when he wasn’t physically there, but she had neglected to consider he might need that comforting reassurance from her as well.
One crisp, cloudless night three and a half weeks after Cardan’s first note, a scouting mission with the Court of Shadows took Jude away from the palace for the entire night and most of the morning. It was the longest amount of time she had spent away from the castle in more than a month. Jude had intended to say goodbye to Cardan in person, but his meeting with the Living Council ran too long, forcing her to hastily scribble a farewell note that she left in the Bomb’s capable hands.
Cardan,
Should be back before midday. Don’t burn the kingdom down without me.
love J
Jude didn’t spare a second thought for the note she left behind. Though she kept all the messages Cardan left for her, she hardly expected any sentimentality from him. When she finally did return the sun was high in the sky just as she predicted. Jude fully expected Cardan to be fast asleep in their rooms by that hour, but was surprised to find him awake in their large bed, a book open on his lap, the sheets pooled around his bare waist. She curled herself into his arms, chatting idly about her day as they drifted off; her hasty note, scrawled across a torn scrap of paper all but forgotten.
A few mornings later, as she dressed, Jude unintentionally knocked Cardan’s book from its place upon their shared desk. The crisp pages fluttering like insect wings before the leather bound volume thumped to the floor. As Jude bent to retrieve it, a scrap of paper she recognized as her handwritten note slipped from between the pages. The inked letter J was faintly smudged where Cardan had run his finger back and forth across the page. As if it were the last puzzle piece falling into place Jude realized it was because of her note that Cardan had waited up for her, and she was surprised by the swell of emotion that revelation invoked. She carefully tucked the note back in Cardan’s book as she returned it to the desk, smiling softly to herself.
From then on the act of leaving short messages for each other became an unspoken agreement between the two of them. Yet another brick laid in their unshakable foundation.
Six months had passed since then, closing in on a full year since Cardan’s return from his serpent form and their victory over Madoc. Nightmares came less and less frequently, though there were still bad days that crept upon them when they were worn down or overworked. As they grew and healed, the notes they had grown to cherish were left not out of necessity, but out of love.
A crumpled note from Jude hidden in the pocket of Cardan’s doublet, a few words from Cardan folded in the shape of a bird, carefully perched atop Nightfell, a long scroll of paper on their shared desk in the Royal chambers that grew and grew as they each added to it.
Secretly, they both kept every letter and each considered these short missives some of their most prized possessions.
While love letters serve a purpose for grand declarations and heartfelt apologies, the quiet everyday love shared between two hearts is harder to quantify. With each note Jude and Cardan had a tangible reminder; that they were thought of, that they were loved, that they were safe and that they would be so, for many years to come.