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He wasn’t born with a soulmark, which would only lend itself further to his already rejected birth, so there was a certain small mercy in his unblemished skin.
Of course, Cardan never had been the luckiest prince around - and as the most rejected, it took until he was three to have someone realize that the mark on his hand is not dirt or a scar gained through mysterious means, but a soulmark: the signifier he had a human soulmate, something to be looked down. A prince of Elfhame with a human consort? Unthinkable.
It was his mother, Lady Asha, who saw it first, on the rare occasion she cared about her son: she saw something in his hand, beckoned him over with promises of food - the gaunt look in his cheeks not a fashion choice -, and let him play with her jewelry (sullied, dirtied by the boy no one liked. She’ll give it to Cardan rather than wear it again, and he’ll take it as a gift, rather than the discarding it is) as she looked at his upturned palm.
The mark was there, bright and pretty and a sign of weakness, a sign of mortality on what was supposed to be inhuman: a tightly wound collection of lines that resembled a rose. She pushed him off her lap, and the boy cried at the sudden rejection.
This, needless to say, did not get him better treatment. Cardan still slept in hay and ate discarded food. He still was the rejected prince, and was going to be for a long time.
He knew of soulmarks - his mother had told him about it in the same way one spoke to the furniture: he was just a receptacle for her monologue, a pair of ears that did not offer answers -, and had, maybe, dreamed of love; dreamed of someone who’d accept him, who’d give him nice clothes and nice food and would kiss him goodnight.
Cardan had never seen someone with a soulmark, though, and it took listening to his mother more to know that soulmarks were for humans only; therefore, for a faerie to be soulmarked to a human was a sign of weakness, so Cardan’s dreams changed to what he imagined the world of mortals was like. It was mostly still about having clothes that fit properly and food on the table, with a caring hand on his hair.
Of course, that was just a fleeting dream: who’d love him, that wretched little creature with twigs in his hair and mud under his nails, a soulmark like a blemish on his palm?
He met his soulmate when he was nine, and she, not much younger at a mere eight: even he, slinking in shadows, had heard of General Madoc’s new charges, two little identical humans, sequestered in his stronghold like precious items. A whim of fancy, perhaps, but Cardan - curious child that he was - watched eagerly for the day they’d appear on a revel. It’s a rare event to have children near his age who won’t despise him for what he is: the little palace reject, dressed in hand-me-downs and fed with scraps, so maybe they’d want to befriend him. If Cardan never told them who they are, maybe General Madoc can take him in, too, and other fantasies that lull him into sleep, warming him up to the core, sleeping with a smile on his lips.
They appeared one night, dressed in clothes of the same fabric, two scared children that hung out in corners, clinging to each other with hungry desperation, or maybe it was fear; both were emotions he knew well. One of them had a soulmark on her left cheek - the realization was startling, made his tail swish from one side to another; it’s the first time he saw that odd ink on skin in someone other than Cardan himself -, and it’s with a grin that he realized the mark on the girl’s cheek resembles his, that same tightly wound rose.
“Hello!” He greeted, jumping from his hiding place under the table, and both of them shrieked. The girl with the soulmark put a hand - he realized that the tip of her left ring finger was missing, and wondered how that happened - on the non-soulmarked one’s mouth, culling the scream in its infancy. “I don’t bite. I mean, I do, but not you. You two seem nice.”
The girl with the mark looked at him.
“Fairy.” She spat it like a curse, and her sister (they were sisters, right? How else were they identical?) widened her eyes as Cardan grimaced. He hadn’t even done anything yet! He just wanted friendship! “What do you want?”
The other girl said something muffled. Both faerie and human ignored her.
“I just wanted to be friends?” He offered, and passed a hand by his too-long hair, catching in a stick. “Also, I, maybe…?”
“Maybe…?” The girl asked, with a huff, and Cardan raised his left hand, showing off the mark. “Oh.”
It did not sound positive in the slightest: her brown eyes were filled with mistrust, her jaw set as soon as the monosyllabic word left her lips.
“It’s real! I can’t lie about it being fake because it isn’t fake!” The girl huffed, and Cardan let his hand fall down, slightly disappointed. “But if you don’t want to, that’s…”
He wasn’t going to say it was heartbreaking. He bit his tongue instead, looking away, and the girl stepped back, clearly protecting herself from him: Cardan, the little fuck up with twigs in his hair and an empty belly that just wanted his soulmate.
Cardan smiled at her, then turned tail and fled to the safety of his hay bed.
The next day, Dain tricked him, and only Balekin accepted to take him in, lest he be sent away. He had Cardan bathed, his hair cut into a semblance of dignity, put into clothes that, for once, are not too big for him, buttoned up and clean.
He doesn’t recognize the boy in the mirror. He looks like a prince, and Cardan is so far removed from it that he might as well be human.
Balekin, of course, was ignorant of these thoughts, circling around him as if Cardan were a carcass to be eaten by a particularly hungry vulture, and the boy himself had to avoid fidgeting under his older brother’s gaze.
“Your hand.” Balekin ordered, and Cardan showed the one he guessed this matter was about: the marked one. Balekin grabbed it roughly, making Cardan stretch until he was standing on the tip of his toes, struggling to stay upright. “General Madoc’s charge has an equal one.”
“I know.” Balekin held the skin between his thumb and forefinger with two fingers, and Cardan yelped when the pain hit him.
“I know, brother.” Balekin chided, gently, as if guiding a child through a lesson, and Cardan repeated the words, the pain subsiding soon after as Balekin let his fingers go. He still had his hand held, and Cardan still struggled to stay upright. “I’ve met her.”
His brother’s silver eyes went back to the mark on his hand, a finger tracing its shape.
“But you did not touch her.” Was it a question? He didn’t want to be pinched again.
“No.” A pause. Balekin watched him quietly, which was worse than speaking; Cardan cleared his throat. “No, brother.”
“You learn fast, at least. It’s a good thing you didn’t touch her mark-to-mark.” He waved a servant closer: a woman carrying a small wooden box, which Balekin opened and took out a pair of black gloves, and made Cardan hold onto them. They felt like silk, cold against his palms. “Wear these. They’re enchanted to stay on and grow with you. You are only to take them off when I tell you to, and not a moment before or after, unless you want to feel pain. Do you understand that?”
The promise of pain made Cardan put on the gloves quickly, and Balekin said nothing at all as he did so. There was silence, as if Balekin expected something tapping his fingers against his forearm, and Cardan blinked quickly as he realized a question had been asked to him.
“Yes, brother, I understand.” Balekin smiled, but there was no warmth. Not that Cardan would’ve known what a warm smiled directed at him looked like, anyway.
“Good. Now, take off your shirt. Let me teach you a lesson about humans, yes?”
In his new fancy bed, he cradles his gloved hand and cried harder at the lack of the familiar warmth than the pain the whipping gives him when he breathes.
Rejected once by family. Rejected once by the person supposed to love him. What was, then, the point of being himself? Cardan, in pain, couldn’t figure it out. It seemed nothing he wanted became true.
He grew up fed on cruelty and pain, told to keep himself away from his soulmate lest the consequences be dire.
“It wouldn’t do for you to be seen being friendly with General Madoc’s daughters.” Balekin had explained, while Cardan listened quietly. His shirt was sticking to his wet back, a red spot blooming like a flower, and his tail felt cramped from sitting on it for so long. He hated hiding it, but he needed to appear perfect outward, lest his blemishes hinder the image of the royal family. “So, yes, be cruel, and I won’t be cruel to you.”
Pain for pain seemed like a bargain Cardan could take, so he was cruel. A schoolyard bully, but a bully nonetheless, and watched as her eyes hardened until the soft brown was steel.
Not that he ever had seen her eyes soften, actually: those were reserved for Taryn, and smiles only for her sister. Jude never showed anything to him but pure, undiluted rage and hatred.
At least those were emotions he was familiar with. Cardan would latch onto anything, hungry child he still was, even with a full stomach.
Was it love or was it envy he felt towards Jude? Curiosity drove Cardan to find human books, to read about soulmarks and its effect on the people, since Elfhame lacked those, and it wasn’t like the kept humans would ever tell him about it.
The books were all dreadfully boring: psychology treatises with too long words that he didn’t understand and didn’t feel like he could ask anyone about. Didn’t mean, however, that Cardan didn’t get the general gist of it: it was not known if the soulmark induced feelings like a sickness, or if the mark is just some sort of compatibility signal, some sort of way to signify that the two people in question are ideal mates that’ll further the genetic pool, bring evolution forward instead of backwards. All it was known, for sure, was that the soulmark needed direct, skin-to-skin contact to its match to complete the process, to make it undergo a transformation of sorts that announced to the world that the couple was mated for life, like some sort of marriage based on genetic compatibility.
What did it mean, then, when half of the soulmarked couple was a fae? What did faerie genetics even matter to human matters? Was it even relevant? He’s not human, even if he resembled the form of one. His tail swished from one side to another, irritated.
He didn’t know the answers; part of Cardan also didn’t want to know, and as such, he burned the books.
It would be better if Balekin didn’t know he had been weak.
There are few humans with soulmarks among Balekin’s pick of servants. Maybe it was for the best; it forced him to ignore that marks existed at all, since his own was covered. Out of sight, out of mind.
Until one day there’s a human brought into service, and he had a mark on his neck, peeking out from under the edge of his servant uniform: it might’ve been a swan, or some other long-necked bird, but Cardan didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.
Still; it doesn’t mean he doesn’t watch the man, curiosity burning in his hand. It was the only human he could guarantee had a soulmark; so, of course, Cardan wanted to ask questions.
The first time he tried, he realized Balekin kept his servants in a dream-like state, unaware they were working their life away for a faerie. He watched as the man stared, empty, at him, and Cardan stared at the mark as if it would solve all of his issues, before he turned tail and fled, regrouping for trying another time.
The second time he tried, Cardan made the man eat salt. He was thankful for the gloves then; Cardan could hold it without fearing it’d burn his skin when it accidentally spilled over his fingers. He made the man eat it, and watched as his eyes - a brown color that reminded him of Jude’s eyes, except it lacked the familiar brand of hatred he was getting to know so well - became clear.
“Where am I?” The man asked, and Cardan cocked his head.
“You have a soulmark.” He replied, instead. The man’s hand shot up to his neck, and Cardan kept watching. “How?”
“It’s - it’s complicated. Where am I?” He repeated the question, and once more, Cardan ignored it. “I don’t… Last thing I know, I was with some friends at a party, then this man…”
The man trailed off. Cardan blinked, slow, boorish. This wasn’t going how he planned it’d go - if he even had a plan for it, in the first place.
“I have a mark. I want to know about them.” It was the man’s turn to blink at Cardan, analyzing him. His eyes paused at Cardan’s pointed ears, and he gave him a small, quick nod.
“There’s not much to know, dude. They just appear.” Another pause, the man scratching the back of his own neck. “Sorry. Maybe I’d know more, but I haven’t met them yet.”
“Do humans know more about it simply by knowing their soulmate?” Cardan asked, and the man shrugged. “This is a waste of time.”
“My bad.” The man stared around the walls of Hollow Hall. “Man, where am I…”
Cardan was, usually, not one for guilt; however, he felt bad for taking this man out of his peaceful dreams of… Whatever, and bringing him back to reality.
“You’re in Elfhame.” Cardan replied, crossing his arms, and the man frowned. “It is another realm entirely, so there is no escape. You are to serve my brother until you die, which is more probable, or you serve your sentence’s time.”
The man’s eyes widened, and Cardan could see his pulse hitch against his mark. Cardan looked up, took a deep breath, and decided to risk being punished, anyway.
“But lucky you, I know a way out.” He did. Anyone with a functioning pair of eyes did. “Stay close to me, and pretend you’re still out of your mind.”
“Hey, thanks, little guy.” Cardan gritted his teeth, but said nothing. He would not be insulted by a mere mortal’s comment about his height. It hadn’t been his fault they had basically starved him almost all of his childhood. He still had a shot of being taller.
Maybe he should invest in some heels.
The man followed obediently, and no one questioned why Cardan had a human servant trailing after him into the forest. The door would’ve raised an eyebrow, if it had one, but sometimes human servants needed to be left in the forest to die away from the halls and that was okay.
Was it? Cardan didn’t know anymore. Maybe the others were right: maybe a soulmark was a sign of weakness, a sign he wasn’t truly a faerie, but some sort of wretched creature.
Faerie fruit smelled ripe near him. Cardan wondered if maybe he shouldn’t feed the man some, let him go back to his lovely dream.
Jude’s eyes stared at him, full of anger, and he knew he’d hate to see it clouded. Cardan trudged on.
The man whose name he never caught was the first human he managed to slip away from his brother’s grasp. He is not the last. Anytime Cardan could, just to spite Balekin. He had been told to be cruel. It was Balekin’s fault for giving an order too broad for him to follow properly.
He always asked the humans about soulmarks. None of the humans ever could answer him. One - a woman with a mark Cardan never saw - said it was magic, something or another about predestination that he didn’t catch fully, and Cardan laughed himself hoarse. If it was magic, he could have gotten rid of it a long, long time ago.
But it wasn’t magic, and Cardan was bound to Jude. He wasn’t quite sure if he liked it or disliked it, but it did not matter: that cursed rose was on his palm as much as it was on her cheek, and there was nothing Cardan could do about it.
Of course, just because he was told to be cruel, doesn’t mean he had, necessarily, to stick with it. He was a fairy: finding loopholes on promises were his speciality.
Kindness in cruelty was still a kind of kindness, right? Sure, his soulmark itched painfully when he said cutting remarks dripping in acid, but he got progressively better at ignoring it, got progressively better at wording sweet words in a way that seemed like an insult.
Alcohol, he learned, helped with ignoring the pain. It loosened him, inhibitions already even more on the ground than they already were, and it’s so easy to forget that his back had as many scars as the sky had stars, that he carried weakness in his left hand and that there was nothing he could do to change that.
Nicasia was the first to have the courage to ask him about his gloves. He barely remembers that he was wearing them nowadays, so used to their feeling - only took them off to bathe and when Balekin felt like he should have his mark whipped -, and had to pause to answer.
It was the first time in many years Cardan was caught off guard. They were both laying in an unmade bed, Nicasia playing with his gloved fingers, tapping the place where the pads of his fingers were in a rhythmic, soothing motion, and he didn’t expect the question.
“Well?” She demanded. Cardan sat up; she did the same. “Why gloves?”
No one ever asked him why: as a prince, he was in higher standing than - well, anyone else other than his siblings, really. Except that, with Nicasia, he’s standing at eye level.
“Can’t it be a fashion statement?” He blew a strand of hair away from his eyes, and Nicasia stared at him with her blue eyes full of mistrust. “Maybe I like them.”
A snort from her, unlike what a princess should do. That was part of why he adored her.
“You do not.” A statement, not a question. “Oh, please. I know you. You hate those.”
He sighed, threw himself back into the bed. Nicasia kept her eyes trained on him, waiting.
To tell the truth was to show weakness - no fairy of proper standing had a soulmark, and if they had, they hid it through glamours. He supposed Balekin just liked to watch him suffer, really, to have it hidden in such an obvious way -, but, as a fairy, he had no other option than the truth.
For a single moment, he almost wished he’d been born mortal: able to lie, to show the mark on his hand and not be bothered by the weakness it presented. To be able to love -
What a joke. As if anyone would love him back, that palace reject.
He went back to reality, and smiled at Nicasia warmly, like he only ever smiled at her. Always warm for her.
“Oh, I hate them. They’re bothersome. Too cold in winter, too stuffy in summer. A pain, truly, to live with.”
“Take them off, then.” She threw herself by his side, and Cardan laughed.
“I cannot. They’re cursed, and I am not the one who can take it off.” Because at the end of the day, what is an enchantment if not a curse? It was not a lie by a technicality, and Cardan sunk his nails into that little detail like his life depended on it.
It did. Balekin would punish him, and Cardan didn’t need to add more scars to his ever-growing collection of them. When his back ran out of space and was just scar tissue, would Balekin torture his chest? This was a question he did not want an answer to.
Unaware of Cardan’s thoughts, Nicasia’s eyes widened.
“And who would dare curse a prince of Elfhame?”
He leaned in, as if to tell a secret, and Nicasia leaned in as well.
“Why, my dearest Nicasia, who else if not a prince of Elfhame?”
Of course, it was left unsaid that the curse was his soulmark, and Nicasia accepted the information with eyes that shone like the waters of her home.
If anyone was really surprised that the only reason Cardan survived his older brother murdering his entire family was because he was too drunk to stand, would they say it? The answer is no.
If Cardan was honest, even if proposed that as a hypothetical scenario, that would be exactly what he’d be doing: drinking under a table, staring at the black glove that hid his mark, drinking directly from a bottle like tomorrow he didn’t have any class to attend.
There were some screams in the background, but it’s a faerie revel; when there aren’t screams of horror, really? So it was basically a normal night for him. He did not know he was now an orphan - wasn’t that the biggest tragedy, to lose his entire family while he was too busy drinking?
Not really. They hated him, and he hated them in turn. However, he knew nothing of what happens outside his little dark world in that moment, and to him these were not horrified screams of people watching a murder, but simply normal, background noise screams. All he knew was that he wanted some company - and Jude, in that lovely blue dress he’d had made for her, appeared like a mirage in front of him. He took a swig from his terrible wine. Her face was pale, and the mark that matches his hidden one seems in stark contrast, the mysterious ink of it making seemingly darker than usual, as if she had lined it.
“Hello, Jude.” He greeted, cheery, definitely more drunk than previously thought. She stared at him, befuddled. In a peace offering, he raised the bottle at her. “Would you like a drink?”
The disgust was clear on her face. Cardan pretended his heart wasn’t breaking a little, even if it had no right to do so; he had treated her so bad until now that this treatment from Jude was expected.
He had wanted to be nice to her - but Balekin’s whippings spoke louder than he had ever done.
“You are, definitely, the biggest mess I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.” Jude proclaimed, interrupting his thoughts, and pulled at him so he’d sit up. “With me. No questions.”
Now that was amusing.
“How do you know I’m the biggest mess you’ve seen? And how do I know that’s the truth?” He prattled instead, and had to do his best not to smile when he can visibly see her hackles rising. “Humans lie so easily. Tell me one truth, Jude. I do love to hear lies, but truths are...”
Once more, he was interrupted. Are all humans that rude, or was this a Jude thing? Maybe he should hang in the mortal world every once in a while. See the sights or whatever humans do there.
“You’re going to die if you keep speaking.” She hissed in a low voice, and Cardan offered her a small laugh. Jude did not deign to answer him with words; she instead pulled him into crawling faster, away from the dying sound of screams.
She tied him to a chair, and Cardan slumped against it. His hair was getting too long for Balekin’s tastes again, already tickling the nape of his neck; he made a mental note to cut it, refusing to get punished for not grooming himself. That had happened once, and Cardan had learned in pain to not repeat it.
“Is there anything to drink?” He asked, looking around. Jude huffed, and somehow produced a knife from her skirts, twirling it for a brief moment before resting it against his throat. “Blood, in my opinion, is not a suitable substitute for wine. Low alcohol content.”
“Has no one ever taught you to be quiet?” The knife pressed against his skin harder, and Jude’s other arm was against his chest. “Do you even know what happened?”
“Some sort of commotion? There’s always a commotion.” Another look around, pretending to not feel the blade’s edge against him, the cold metal’s edge growing warm with every passing second. “What about some cheese? Don’t be a poor host, Jude.”
“You are impossible.” Jude hissed, abandoning him, the knife back in the pockets of her dress, circling him and muttering. Cardan barely heard her, scanning the room for wine. Sure, he could be trying to find a way out, but the knots she had done were too good for his drunken hands. “Your family is dead.”
Wow, humans really did lie so easily. Fascinating to watch, really. Cardan looked at her, a small smile taking his lips.
“Poor me. Orphaned. Anyway.” He blinked, and she paused, a hand on her waist. “Who’s king now? Dain? I’m afraid I was too drunk to watch.”
A pause, again. Jude seemed to be picking words, weaving them into a phrase or several, and he let her take her time. It had been a wild revel, apparently, to make even mouthy Jude speechless.
“No one.” A quick rundown of the night, and Cardan could feel himself palling with every spoken word as his brother’s plans slowly started to make sense for him.
No wonder Balekin didn’t want him close to the general's charge; he probably had been planning this for decades, and look how well that had gone down.
Now Cardan was homeless - he knew his brother enough to know that, as soon as Cardan finished crowning Balekin, there’d be a sword in his heart, the final threat of his rule dead on the ground, forever king, with no opposition or coup.
Maybe being Jude’s prisoner wasn’t all that bad. Sure, being tied up wasn’t the best thing - he flexed his hands, trying to get some blood in them -, but it was preferable to being dead.
Jude’s dress brushed against his hand. There was a pause, inquisitorial, and he felt, rather than saw, Jude kneeling, her fingers tracing the sewing of the glove from the tip of his forefinger to his thumb.
“You know, I never knew why you wore those.” She said, as if not realizing she was speaking out loud. Her finger found the edge where silk met skin, and Cardan’s face reddened. That’d felt - intimate. Too intimate for Jude Duarte, who had said loud and clear she’d beat him at anything; she was as close to a sworn enemy that Cardan could ever get.
How long since anyone had touched his hands? Not like she was going to be able to take them off. Balekin had said so; they were enchanted and only -
A finger slipped under, touching his skin. Cardan gasped, and Jude paused, but the finger stayed there, foreign. Close. Too pressed against his skin.
“How are you doing that?” He asked, too breathless and too drunk to be able to form that sentence in a composed manner, and Jude said nothing. “They’re enchanted. Only…”
“They look like they can slip off quite easily.” As if to make a point, Jude took off his, thankfully, non-soulmarked hand’s glove.
His skin was too sensitive: he could feel the burning heat of Jude’s fingers tracing the lines of his palm, and the humid coolness of the air of whatever cave she’d brought him to. It was almost overwhelming, and Cardan was almost sure that, if it was out, his tail would be swishing wildly, trying at all costs to bat her away. He knew it was trying, at least: he could feel the end of his tail drumming a nervous beat against where it rested on his leg.
“Nothing here.” Jude said, conversationally, almost, and her hand moved to his other glove. Cardan curled his hand, and Jude gave him a mean little chuckle that sent shivers down his spine. Really hot, but not against him. Not right now. “Oh, is there something you’re scared of me seeing, Cardan?”
The way she said his name was almost tantalizing.
He thought of the mark on her cheek, the one that his hand matched, and bit his tongue, refusing to speak the truth. He couldn’t lie, sure, but he also could choose to ignore her question.
“I’ll do anything you want. Just let me wear it.”
A pause from Jude this time, as she considered his words. The air felt heavy, and his hand felt like he was holding a sword - except it was pointed at himself.
To promise anything was a danger, but it was better than the alternative of showing his soulmark.
“Anything.” She repeated, her finger teasing at the edge of his glove. “That’s a dangerous word.”
Was this how mortals felt doing deals - the thrill of having one’s entire future in someone else’s hands coursing through their veins? Someone who could send you to your death just for the fun of it making their legs tremble?
“Anything.” The word fell from his lips like a curse, and he could sense Jude’s smile, rather than see it, as her hand abandoned his, Jude going to face him.
Did she know? Did Jude know she made a deal with him, except that, unlike his faerie peers, it was Cardan tying himself up in the service of a mortal? Did Jude also feel the pull of magic, tying the two together, with no end date in his sight?
He had fucked himself over. Cardan needed to redo the deal, to give himself a way out of her clutches.
“I’ll hold you onto that.” The promise tasted like danger, and Cardan, staring into Jude’s brown eyes, swallowed dryly. He felt magic, weak, grasp onto his throat, and he bit his tongue to avoid screaming. He hated it already.
She grabbed the knife again, twirling it idly as she sat down in front of him. Cardan watched her like a prey would watch its predator, knowing it was under its subjugation and with nowhere else to run.
“Now, since you said anything… How about a fun little game of truth or truth, Cardan?”
Cardan already regretted it, making a note to beg for a revision of their terms. A year and a day under her service sounded better than the lifetime that, currently, was his only option.
Jude kissed him, and it wasn’t something he ever thought she’d do: especially not after she basically drew out of him a confession of love. His mark seemed to be on fire, but from all his research, he knew it was temporary; the skin of it needed to touch the skin of hers, and only then the magic inherent in it would be complete, whatever magic it was that ruled it.
Of course, humans did not call it magic: pheromones was their word for it, but magic, even if he did not believe it was that, sounded slightly better to him, more familiar. He still remembered all the terms he didn’t know, and that now, in this moment, he wished he did.
Jude was the one to break the kiss apart for the obvious reason that was Cardan still being tied up. She looked half-horrified, half-disgusted, and a hundred percent panicked. Cardan could barely imagine what his face looked like, and was suddenly glad for the lack of mirrors in the room.
“I kissed you.”
Cardan rolled his eyes.
“Obviously you did. Shouldn’t I be the one shocked? I thought you hated me.” He asked her, and Jude snarled wordlessly before leaving. “Hey! I’m still tied here! Jude! Are you really - ”
Jude, the kind host that she was, did not let him finish. He shuddered to think about her etiquette lessons.
“That’s your problem!” Jude shouted, banging the door as she left, and Cardan was left alone with his thoughts and his slow, certain sobriety looming above his head.
How long since he had been sober, anyway? At least six years. Drinking to forget was easier than dealing with Balekin. Made the pain bearable. Made ignoring the growing number of scars on his back easier.
Cardan flexed his hands, trying to get some blood flow in them, and groaned when his non-gloved hand touched the gloved one. It felt… Odd, to have actual skin there, instead of the usual thin layer of silk.
It also felt nauseating to know Balekin had been tricking him. That he, stupid child he had never stopped being, thought that yeah, sure, the gloves were doubly enchanted. As if his brother would spend a coin more on him than strictly necessary. Stupid little child.
He put his head on his shoulder, closed his eyes, the position familiar: it was how he fell asleep as a kid, sometimes, when he had nowhere soft to sleep but his own self, resting his back against a wall.
Maybe if he slept, Jude would come back earlier and free him.
He dozed off rather easily; it’s been a long day, after all, with more emotional ups and downs than the usual cruelty followed by getting a beating from his brother, and then promptly drowning it in whatever drug he could get his hands on.
As such, he didn’t hear Jude come back, didn’t wake from his uncomfortable nap until there were hands untying him, and the touch was familiar, even if recent.
“Jude?” He asked, groggily. She slipped the glove back in his naked hand, and Cardan hated how much better he felt with it in place - like he was a whole being again, instead of a half-feral kid with dirty clothes.
“Don’t think this means you are free to go.” She muttered, as he rose from his seat, stretching sore limbs. He still wasn’t sober by any means, and also did not look forward to that.
She had changed clothes, he realized: from the blue dress he had secretly given her, to a pair of breeches and a white tunic, strings hastily tied, and a pair of boots that had seen better days. Her hair was loose, and Cardan wondered if this was how she looked day to day.
“Oh, yes, because I’ll just stroll out of here and go get myself killed.” Another look around. “Are you sure there’s no wine?”
“Oh, for fuck’s -” A pause, a deep breath as Jude pinched the bridge of her nose, clearly losing her patience with him. However, Cardan realized one thing: if she was keeping him around, it was for some motive. “Yes, there’s wine. Just follow me.”
Like a puppy, he did.
Her companions in espionage were fun; Dain may have chosen them for abilities, but Cardan would’ve really liked to be their friend, if he could. They knew how to play cards and kept plying him with wine for locations of treasuries. That was always a good friendship base in his books.
Cardan, who didn’t care nearly enough about gold and jewels, gave it all freely. He even learned a few sleight-of-hand tricks from the Roach, which was quite interesting. Maybe in another life, he could’ve been a prince and a thief. Wouldn’t that have been lovely? So much like a book that the sweetness of it could’ve drowned him.
When he started dozing off again, the Bomb directed him to a room full of cots, and Cardan stumbled there, drunk again, feet refusing to cooperate with him. Jude was nowhere to be seen, having gone for a walk what seems like hours ago, and he half hoped that she would leave him alone enough time he’ll get a full night of sleep.
The other half hoped she’d crawl to his side and sleep with him, just to make sure he wouldn’t run, but even that line of thought makes him laugh, shaking his head as he slipped under the covers
As if Jude would ever like him. Please - she’d kill him if she ever saw the soulmark.
He does not get to be left alone to rest. He dozed off again, the cot better than any mattress in his tired state, and was dreaming of starry skies and golden fae fruit just out of his reach when Jude, rather rudely, woke him up.
“I have an idea.” She said, and Cardan, with a groan, listened. She was manic, almost: her brain definitely was firing faster than her mouth can produce words, hands moving wildly, and Cardan’s brain was definitely still too drunk to process her words and implications fully.
He did, however, process the most important fact: that he had a younger brother, that Jude wanted Cardan to crown him, then have Cardan act as his regent, and that Jude wanted him to submit to her.
Well, that’s not the wording she used, but it’s the wording he understood. He cocked his head, blinking himself awake. Did she not know of their earlier deal? Was magic unable to be felt by humans? No matter. Jude did not specify how long that would have to work. Cardan also could not remember how old her little brother (his little brother?) was. He could be, for all purposes, a newborn. That would be a long time under her thumb, and Cardan - always the free child roaming under tables - shuddered.
At least he had an opportunity to rework the terms of their rushed contract. The magic was still nestled uncomfortably in his throat, and he wanted to know it would, one day, get out of it.
“A year and a day is all you get of me.” He said, and Jude’s eyes widened.
“That’s -”
“That’s what you get.” He rattled off a list of demands, just to see Jude need to snarl and be unable to, but she accepted all of it with a set jaw and a quiet threat implicit in her agreements.
Maybe he had been fed in too much cruelty: there was something thrilling about seeing her silent anger.
Cardan vowed himself in her service, and as magic settled, finally in a formal agreement, binding his hands and feet, he wondered if Jude - her hand on his gloved one - felt it now as he did: a collar to his throat, a muzzle to his mouth, a leash that leads directly into her.
He doubted it. She was just a human girl, powerless. When the vow was done, he took his hand from hers, rose to his feet, and was about to ask her if maybe he could go back to bed when she spoke up.
“Take off your glove. The one you didn’t let me take off.” Jude said, very quietly, and his jaw set. No. No, anything but that. He opened his mouth, but magic refused him speech.
He fought against it, but the magic seized his limbs, making him a puppet inside his own body. Cardan watched, dispassionately, as he was made to peel off his glove and set it aside, revealing pale skin. The magic left him, and Cardan let his hand fall, limp, by his side, the palm pressed against his thigh. He would not let her see it. That was enough humiliation for one day.
Magic left a sticky residue on his skin. Cardan wanted a bath and a drink, with no order preferred for which was first.
“Are you done?” His voice came out strangled, and Jude cocked her head, a small smile on her lips that made him shudder. “It’s just gloves. What is your interest in my hands?”
A pause. She couldn’t remember, could she? Cardan felt foolish. He should have never approached her. He should’ve never followed her. He should’ve -
“Show me your palm.” Once more, a puppet in his own body: his hand rose as Cardan struggled against the magic, and closed his eyes, letting it happen. He had no control over it anymore, did he?
There’s a gasp, tiny and almost inaudible, and Cardan opened his eyes, seeing Jude’s hand shoot to cover her mark. He scooped out his glove from the floor, slipping it against his skin, thankful for the familiar feeling of silk on his hands, and looked back at Jude, fury a fire in her eyes.
“You.” There’s an implicit accusation in her tone. “You are that kid.”
Such disgust in her voice! He would be hurt, if he hadn’t been there, if he had not seen the way she had looked at him.
“Yes, Jude. I was that dirty, terrible kid that did the highest crime of wanting to be your friend when I was nine. Can we be done about this, or are you going to order me to touch your face?” He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms, and Jude stepped back, her hand still protectively hiding her mark. “Ah, that’s such a clear no.”
“Why? You - what happened to you, Cardan?” He blinked his eyes at her, and Jude seemed genuinely horrified. “What did Balekin… Nevermind.”
Cardan cocked his head at her, eyes half-lidded in a question he did not wish to ask right now. She couldn’t know; she’d never been in Hollow Hall.
“My brother made me into what I am. Can I go back to sleep? I did lose my entire family today, so I would like to, you know, rest.” Jude did not react for a moment that stretched into eternity, and then gave a quick nod, fleeing before Cardan could even think of going to bed.
He laughed. He couldn’t help but laugh. What happened to you, Cardan? - he grew up with cruelty for a meal and a lack of love for a companion. What else did she expect? That he was still going to be that feral child? He would never be so lucky.
There’s a few restless days until the coronation, and Cardan was Jude’s shadow. Not that he knew what she was doing most of the time, since he was sort of like a little trophy she carried around, then put away the moment he wasn’t useful anymore.
Not that he cared. That was probably going to be his fate as a regent, anyway - Jude could control him, so he was just going to be her puppet ruler. The pretty face.
Cardan knew how to read between the lines. If she didn’t like some decree or… Whatever the fuck kings did, really, she could just order him to reverse it, and Cardan would be seized by magic into doing so.
He touched his throat, distracted; it was another moment he was left alone. No one was on Dain’s little shadow court, so Cardan was sprawled on a chair, shuffling a deck of cards just to keep himself busy.
It was surprising Jude left him alone without supervision, but it wasn’t like he had anywhere to go. He was still being sought after by Balekin, so every time he was out, it was a chance more of being caught and killed.
Well, probably not killed straight away. Maybe first he’d be punished for delaying his brother’s reign, made to crown Balekin, and then he’d be killed. What an ending to his sad, pathetic life.
Cardan sighed, threw the cards on the table in frustration, but didn’t rise from his seat, his tail flickering from one side to another in anxious frustration.
To be Jude’s puppet, or to be killed by his brother: one option was better than the other, but it came at the cost of his freedom.
“You look restless.” Jude commented, putting her hair up as she walked in as if she owned the place.
Well, she did. Cardan couldn’t deny her that; she had seized the control of Dain’s court of spies and made it her own. She’d be a wonderful regent.
“I wonder why.” He huffed, and Jude actually looked at him, which was a miracle of its own. Ever since she had made him show her the soulmark, Jude’s eyes always seemed to look at some point behind him, and Cardan found it so amusing he wanted to ask if it had been worth it.
Well, he knew it had: she seemed to have a blush on her cheeks whenever she caught his eye by accident.
“Just a bit more and you’ll finally be free of this.” He looked at her as Jude rummaged around the small supply of food that seemingly sprouted there.
“Oh, yes - chained to a throne instead of to a cave. How wonderful. A throne, which I must remind you, I don’t want.” Jude picked some bread and went to make herself some tea, and glanced at him.
“Better chained to a throne than dead, I think.” He conceded her the point, grabbed the cards, and went back to shuffling them.
“Can you play cards?” He asked, and Jude shifted from one foot to the other, not turning to face him. “Oh, don’t tell me. I think I can guess this one. You can’t.”
Jude turned to look at him, cheeks puffed for a moment.
“I was more focused on learning how to fight than, you know, playing cards.” He raised an eyebrow, a few choice words about her resting in his tongue that he decided to not speak, and gestured at the chair opposite to him. “What?”
“Sit down and let me teach you to have fun. No wonder you look so stressed.” Cardan huffed, rising and going to grab some wine for both of them. “One hour of cards won’t kill you.”
“Unlike you, I have been planning a coup.” Jude said, but she did leave her planned tea aside and sat down in the chair opposite, tearing into the bread like a ravenously hungry woman as he hummed, picking up some clean-ish goblets and the best wine he hadn’t polished off yet.
“Which is why I think you should relax. No war has ever been lost because someone took some time to relax.” Jude guffawed. He poured some wine on a goblet for her and offered it to her. She drank greedily, and he watched as her throat moved. “I study, you know.”
Jude set down the goblet, and Cardan averted his eyes, sipping quietly. Hey, his grades weren’t that bad. Probably. No one was ever going to fail a prince of Elfhame, anyway.
“Yeah, sure, Cardan.” Still, he sat down, offering her the wine, which Jude took. Their fingers touched for a moment, and his mark seemed to be very briefly set on fire. “The coronation is today. Shouldn’t you be getting dressed instead of, you know, getting drunk and playing cards?”
“Coronation, my dearest Jude, is today.” He echoed at her, grabbing the card deck and shuffling it again, just for good measure. “Shouldn’t you be planning a murder in more detail?”
“Very funny.” Jude tore into the bread again. Cardan removed a card from the deck, set it aside face-down. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”
“You probably haven’t. At least, I haven’t seen you eat. The Roach is worried, you know..” He distributed the cards, one for her, one for him, one for her, one for him, and so on, until there were no more cards to give. “It’s simple. Just match pairs. Kings with kings, aces with aces, so on. The colors must match, as well.”
A pause, as if she was analyzing if Cardan was, maybe, tricking her. Rude.
“That does sound simple enough.” Jude replied, discarding a pair of red sevens. Cardan smiled at her, and she looked at him like he was something she had spat on. “Your turn.”
He did not reply; he simply started discarding his pairs, and Jude soon enough picked the pace, until she seemed to be struggling to find pairs.
“Here.” He offered his cards, face down, to her. “Pick one, and then do the same for me.”
Jude stared at him through half-lidded eyes, and picked a card at random. She copied him, and so Cardan did the same.
He looked at his cards: a seven of spades that matched the seven of clubs he had. He put it down, and smiled innocently at Jude when she grit her teeth.
“Would you like to pull again, dear Jude?” He asked, and Jude glared at him.
They keep a comfortable rhythm: she pulls, he pulls, they check for matches, rinse and repeat. Cardan barely realizes when he puts down the last pair, and it left Jude alone with a single card.
“Oh!” Cardan smiled, showing her his gloved hands, empty of cards. Jude fumed. “Seems like I’ve won.”
“Good game, Cardan. So fun.” Her words dripped with sarcasm, which was a fascinating form of lying. She rose from her seat, stretched, and Cardan ignored the slice of flesh that appeared between her tunic and breeches, averting his eyes. She would not tempt him. Not any more than he already was, anyway.
“You should get dressed.” Jude said, rolling her shoulders. He grabbed the spare card: a queen of spades. “You have to look good to be king.”
Later, he’d think about this particular choice of words - but right now, all he would do was swallow the rest of his wine and refuse to think of her in less clothing.
“Kneel.” Jude hissed, and the effect of magic he so loathed seized his limbs when Cardan refused. “Just a minute. Just kneel for a minute, Cardan. Okay?”
It wasn’t okay. This wasn’t what he’d agreed with Jude. It should be the boy - the boy carrying the fucking crown of Elfhame. A mere mortal had tricked him? How shameful.
His knee gave up beneath him, and Cardan suddenly was at a height where Jude could pet his hair with no bigger constraints than her will. Of course, Jude won’t. Jude will never touch him willingly. Mark to mark, then? Forget it.
This entire scene she planned cemented that all Jude saw him as was as a pawn to her schemes. He looked at her, and Jude had, in her brown eyes, some sort of helpless curiosity, as if he was a moth pinned to a board, ready to be studied.
The mark on her cheek seemed to be a stark contrast against her: Jude, thorny and prickly, in contrast to a rose. His mark, hidden under the gloves, itched painfully.
She was not on his side. Jude, he learned very quickly as Oak crowned him King of Elfhame, was on no side other than her own.
The magic seizing his lips dissipated like water vapor. He rose to his feet, looked at Jude for a moment, and then scanned the crowd.
“Rise.” He told his subjects - his subjects! What a ridiculous notion -, and they all did. He kept speaking, but these are words his brain won’t process for a while. No, his brain is busy processing something else: Jude, staring at him for a long moment before disappearing into the crowd, almost as if she felt guilty for tricking him.
So much for expecting her support - and how much he hated that he expected it, too.
The first morning as a king, Cardan stared at his clothes, all moved into the royal suite into the dead of the night so that it would be as if he’d always lived there.
Cardan hated it. He hated knowing he was sleeping in the same bed his own father did. He’d need to find better rooms, but for now - something simple. Something he could control.
His clothes. Neatly pressed, no tears and holes to be seen, the same it had been for years. He swished his tail in nervous anxiety, touching the fabrics and not feeling anything but the silk of his gloves.
A pause: he wasn’t just a rejected prince anymore. Did he need to hide the soulmark anymore? He was the king of Elfhame. Who was going to look down on him now? Who was going to call him filthy? Who was going to call him weak for being soulmarked to a human?
No one. No one that wanted to keep their head in place, at least. With his tail going wildly from one side to another, Cardan removed one glove, then another, staring at the mark in his palm, that cruel rose that matched Jude’s.
Did it even count? It was clear she did not want it. Maybe in the human world, they had some sort of removal for this, but there was the eternal question of if it would work on him.
The air still felt weird on his skin. He’d get used to it soon.
He was thrown over on his throne - what a fucking joke it was, still, to Cardan - when Jude strolls in, arms full. He was drunk, which was nothing new these days, and Jude raised an eyebrow at him.
He made her seneschal, and for all intents and purposes, Jude is the de facto ruler of Elfhame. Cardan, somehow, couldn’t find it in himself to care enough about the fate of it. He stared at the mark on her cheek and stifled a laugh.
Everyone had eyes. Everyone had seen the mark on his palm now, the mark on Jude’s cheeks, connected the dots, and laughed. Surprisingly, not at him; at her, pinning her as some hopelessly in love fool that took anything Cardan would give to her in the faint hope that he’d allow the completion of the soulmark, that Cardan was the one in charge of this relationship, that Cardan was not bound by magic to submit to her with a single word Jude said. That he didn’t wish for it: that he didn’t wish that Jude would tell him to stop being a mess and rule. That, maybe, Jude wouldn’t let him rule with her. That maybe she wouldn’t be the queen of Elfhame - which, for all intents and purposes, she already was in all but name.
But she wouldn’t. Something held back her vicious tongue. Did she feel guilty for what she made him do? Cardan - fuck up Cardan, rejected Cardan - never had wanted to be king, and yet there he was on the throne of thorns, drunk and hating every damned second that crown weighed on his head, like a sign of his own death.
The mark remained untouched on his hand and on her face. He wanted to touch. He did not want to touch.
“You should rule a little, you know. For a change.” She said, setting the papers she’s carrying on a small table, and he smirked. It wasn’t an order. It would never be an order, and they both knew it.
“Just order me, your highness.” He reached for the full goblet with his soulmarked hand; Cardan watched as Jude watched him, a little game they played, like cat and mouse. He didn’t know who was who. “Because I am not doing anything you want until you order me to do it.”
Jude, in contemplative silence, angrily organizing the piles of paper she had brought in. Cardan took the moment to stare at her. She was beautiful, as always, in her perfectly tailored clothes. Being a seneschal had its privileges: she looked like a battle-made queen.
“I did it -”
“For yourself. Be honest.” Cardan said, nonchalant, and took a swig. The wine tasted as bitter as he was feeling. “Just for once in your miserable little human life, Jude, be honest. You can say you wanted power. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that, if you could, you’d have crowned yourself.”
Her jaw was set. The mark jumped against her skin, that nonsensical rose. She’s not the flower: she’s the stem, thorny and prickly. These few months have told Cardan as much.
If only she’d tell the truth. Maybe the faeries were lucky in that regard.
“You are a mess.” She retorted, after a long pause, and he snorted. With every word, there’s a small step closer, threatening him, but both know Jude won’t kill him; it’s important that he keep Oak’s throne warm, and he couldn’t do that if he was dead. “You are, effectively speaking, the worst king Elfhame has ever had. I hate you. I hate how much I, unfortunately, need you. And, most of all, I hate how we have matching marks. If I could, I’d cut it off myself, but it’d just regrow somewhere else. They do that, did you know?”
He did. The books he had read had been interesting like that.
By the end of her speech, she was leaning over him: her brown hair, the few strands escaping her hairdo, are a few centimeters away from his face. He blows them away, and he gets, as an answer, a twitch to her eyes.
He set the goblet aside, an idea forming itself in his drunk mind. He would regret it in the morning, but right now, in an inebriated daze, it seemed like the perfect way to show Jude everything he refused to say. Everything he couldn’t say.
If he even knew what those words were.
“That sounds dangerously like you love me.” Jude huffed.
“I hate you. I hate everything that you are.” He looked into her eyes and smiled.
“Don’t worry, my dearest Jude.” He reached for her, and his mark finally touched hers. Her skin felt like it was caught on fire, as the two marks touched, and Cardan let the pain exist in him for a mere moment, seeping into his bones. Her eyes widened in disgust, or at least, he thought it was disgust. “It’s mutual.”
Jude stepped back, her hand covering her mark so fast he didn’t see it - but he saw the bleeding, the red blood blooming between her fingers, and he turned his palm to himself, staring at the small pool of blood that was coming from his mark.
“What did you do?” Jude asked, and Cardan cleaned his hands on his pants, staring at the mark.
“I touched you.” He replied, but his mind was not in the words: it was in the soulmark he stared at, knowing she carried around the same thing he did now.
It was not a rose anymore - and now, he doubted it had ever been. Now, instead of the familiar shape of the centre of a rose, a snake peered its head from the middle, and the soulmark looked more like a snake nestled around itself than it ever did resemble a flower’s petals.
Who was the snake, between the two? Cardan did not know. All he knew, in that brief moment where Jude looked at him in fury, was that he longed to touch her again. He wanted to see her hair loose again. He wanted to see her.
“Jude.” He looked up, and Jude, jaw still set, grabbed his hair, forcing him to look up, into her eyes. She was dangerously close - close enough he could see himself, drunken and messy, reflected into her blown out pupils. “I…”
“I hate you.” Jude hissed, and Cardan felt himself deflating for a moment before she kissed him, murmuring more I hate you’s in between kisses, pressing herself against him, her hands undoing the strings of his shirt. Cardan’s hands flew to the edge of her shirt, being rewarded with bare skin, all his.
Around the two, the throne blossomed in flowers, cloying the air with sweetness, hiding the two, but neither noticed, too busy with each other.