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The wine is getting to his head.
Cardan's vision is hazy, his balance skewed, and he isn't quite sure how he stumbled to his office, but he's here nonetheless.
He thinks he could get rid of her by drowning himself in alcohol, but she's still there, she always is, haunting him with her spiteful eyes and wicked lips and—
Cardan clutches his desk for support, knees too weak to keep him standing, and his chest is aching, his mind spinning but only one thought echoes through his alcohol-addled stupor.
Jude.
He hadn't heard her name since she'd been dragged out of the throne room, Cardan's name a curse on her lips, a broken vow, a traitor's plea.
He slumps on the cold floor, and he considers lying there until someone finds him, the pathetic lump of a drunken royal that he is.
Then Jude's scream echoes his head.
“Deny me!”
Cardan closes his eyes.
Oh, what he'd give to hear her again, even with the hatred laced in her voice—it's infinitely better than not having her by his side.
He was playing a fool's game from the start.
A lump forms in his throat, and Cardan wishes he hadn't left the party so soon, wishes he could nurse this hurt and drink his longing away, but experience has taught him that passing out only brings dreams of her, and that is infinitely worse—because he always wakes alone.
So Cardan pries himself off the floor and grabs a quill, spills ink on his golden doublet, and smears it all over his neatly stacked parchment.
Jude had always done the paperwork before—he let the entire burden of the kingdom weigh on her shoulders to spite her, but she gritted her teeth and forged on, anyway, a true puppet master above the stage.
But this... this mess he'd created... This is all him.
He scratches her name on the top of the page. The shape of it sends a stab of longing in his stomach. Cardan pauses, tracing the curves of its letters, as he once traced the curve of her body against him. He feels himself flush.
Cardan misses her.
Cardan loves her.
The unwelcome thought quickly sobers him up, and his hand is moving across the parchment on its own accord, writing words he'd never dare say.
You are in no mood for games.
That's all they've ever been to each other. A game the other can win, a player to conquer, a pawn to sacrifice. But Cardan... he's drunk, and he's exhausted and every bone in his body is crying out for her, why wouldn't she just come home—
Very well. I am no mood for them, either.
He wants her back. He needs her back. He needs to hear her venomous words once more, to see her cheeks flush in indignation, to see her beautiful brown eyes flare in rage, he wants to see her see him wanting, because what magnificent torture she puts him through just by existing—
Let me write it outright. You are pardoned. I revoke your banishment. I rescind my words.
Cardan had never meant them, even when he said it. Jude is intelligent, clearly she'd see the loophole in his words, she's much more clever than any other Faerie he'd met, she'd survived Madoc, she'd survived the Undersea—
The confusion, the fury, the hurt in her eyes almost made him fall apart at the seams. Because even then, Cardan didn't know the extent of what his actions would do—how he's finally reached Jude, she had finally let him see her for what she is, in all of her treacherous, ambitious glory, only for him to tear her trust to shreds.
He had betrayed her.
And Jude is not one to forgive.
It's foolish to even try.
But Cardan does, anyway.
Come home.
He'd banished her from the only place she'd called home.
Cardan wants to tell Jude he did it for her, but some sick, monstrous part of him knows he did it to get back at her, for her to see him as the formidable opponent he always was, but even then, Cardan knows it wasn't true.
Jude had always been his better half.
Come home and shout at me.
Cardan resented her for putting him on the throne. He resented her for holding their bargain above his head, forcing him to do her bidding because Cardan wants to make it difficult for her, she shouldn't be ruling with such ease, this land has never been hers, she didn't belong—
She's a better ruler than anyone in Elfhame could be.
Come home and fight with me.
She'd do much more than just fight. Cardan knows that, and the image of Jude standing in front of him, mouth twisted in disgust, covered in blood sends a thrill up his spine. She'd kill him where he stands, if she could.
Come home and break my heart, if you must.
Cardan isn't sure if he knows how to love. Kindness, compassion, generosity aren't things he's ever been acquainted with, in his short, short life, but if this—the inferno in his chest when he thinks of Jude, the stuttering in his hardened heart when he hears her name, the desperate need to have her close, to have her safe, like she's the air in his lungs and without her he'd drown—is love, then Cardan is deeply, madly, and irrevocably in love with Jude Duarte.
Just come home.
He signs his name and seals the letter sloppily, the wax deformed and messy. Cardan has it delivered before he changes his mind.
It's foolish to hope.
But Cardan has always been played a fool.
He's learned that he doesn't mind as long as it's her.