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“Oh, Cardan.” Her sighs echo into the shadowed trees around us.
I grip at every piece of skin I can reach. Though she is below me, I am the one drowning in her presence. Blissfully unaware to any semblance of touch except nails digging into my back, the hot shallow breaths on my neck, and her warmth I am repeatedly sinking into. Little bruises had begun to show on her collar bone and if one were to look carefully, more would be found on her inner thighs.
My stomach twisting at every little sound which escapes her mouth, urging myself on in hope to be blessed with more.
My name on her lips, I know this would be my undoing. What would finally drive me into madness. The becoming of a mere beggar, my only wish to hear her say my name. No matter whether whispered and breathless. Hell, in this nightmare, I’d settle for it being screamed in rage.
It was not always like this.
Many times, she had surrendered to him, the only words the mortal girl dare to utter being pleas. Begging for him to do many improper things to her. Acts which would seem unbefitting to any other respected prince. Yet, he was not that kind of prince, and such acts were expected of him by now.
Oh, Cardan please. She would beg. It is your mercy I am at.
Another countless consecutive night, I’ve awoke from a fitful sleep. Restful nights have become a luxury I don’t often receive without, what others would call, an obscene amount of drink or powders. But no amount drink nor powders could free me from this torment.
I’m unsure how long I lay breathless among ruined sweat-soaked sheets before I rip them from my body, recoiling from the bed. Relieved to feel the cool of the wood chain press against my back, instead of the stick of linen.
This is entirely absurd and should be the least of my worries. My supposed girlfriend is frolicking around with my apparent best friend, and I cannot even get a simple mortal to leave me in a moment’s peace.
I fail in my attempt to disregard my most recent horror, memories forcing me to recall each moment. I need to forget each one. But I cannot. I remember them all.
Breath fails me just as much as forgetting does, I cannot go on like this. I am entirely restless.
Jude. She's just a blip. Her sad short mortal life merely just a chapter in comparison to my immortal one, I remind myself. She'll be gone before I've even noticed the years have passed. Jude. Gone. Buried beneath the strange mortal soil in which she came from. Gone and everything will be as though my mind was never plagued.
And yet even now after she's vanished, she remains remembered by the land. Her mark clinging onto the earth. The earth clinging onto her. Jude. As though she's supposed to be here.
But she's not.
It is unsettling, unnatural.
My skin itches whenever her & her twins’ blanket is a foot too close to ours, but she's not even here and I feel like I'm on fire. Invisible flame biting at my skin, engulfing my heart and shooting down to my gut. An appallingly disgusting sensation that cannot be properly explained to those unknowing of the feeling.
I fear I may lash out at any moment. A tamed animal resorting back to its feral ways, and she knows.
She knows; because she is the same. Nothing more than a dog trained to not bite the hand that feeds it. But every so often, something must give.
And something has.
Despite my, as of late highly frequent, delirious state there is no mistaking the gradual slip of her façade. Unbridle rage replacing usual strategic indifference. And though that rage is evidently directed at me, I would be unable to say I’m not intrigued. Intrigued by what she could possibly be mad about? Wondering of what sets her soul alight.
It is depraved, treacherous even, and I cannot contain this. I cannot shape this into a calculated void.
The blank papers sprawled before me on the desk seem to perfectly mirror my deteriorating mental state.
I am not sure if out of sheer anger or desperate yearning for relief, I feel I must write. Attempt to free my mind of every thought it holds.
I need it gone. All of it.
Could all be fixed if she was out of my sight?
I finish one page after another, only stopping when ink begins to leak uncontrolled from the battered end of the pen. I vacantly acknowledge the distant cramping of my fingers, slowly regaining focus.
Beyond some daze, I’m aware of what I've written. Aware of what I have wasted my parchment on.
Etched in ink that has smeared along the pages, onto my fingertips and the desk below me, is her. Jude. I can only stare at her name on the paper below me. Her odd, rounded name to match her odd, rounded ears. Jude.
In spite of my overly warm skin and unruly appearance, a strange serenity clouds my previous spiralling thoughts. Calm slips into the air around me.
But I don't welcome the feeling.
I don't wish to understand it. I don't wish to see it.
Before another thought can begin to plague me, I brush the stained bits of paper in to the first book I reach for – slamming it shut so hard a few stray pencils clatter to the ground, chasing a few stay pages of truth that avoided being encased inside the book. I’d have to remember to burn them later.
Only after a minute do I read the cover of the book beneath my hands. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass.
I almost laugh, as though some sick and twisted work of fate had given me the book itself, deciding to place it in my hands personally. The mortal book I got from my sister. The book my sister got from Judes sister.
I refuse to acknowledge it.
And yet, her name lingers on my fingertips as it lingers on the lands – even after she's gone.