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When Cardan first told her that he wasn’t feeling well, Jude had checked him over. Nodding along when he said he was tired and that his head was hurting him. They’d agreed that he would take things easier for a little while so that he would have the time to be able to rest.
Jude had found him in bed when she went to retire for the day and she woke up to him still sleeping soundly beside her as well. Cardan had his arms wrapped around his middle. His tail looped lazily around his thigh. A pinch between his brows that told her the headache had yet to go away. He was nursing himself well enough. She knew he’d woken up at least once during the night because the water that had been sat at his bedside was drained away.
Her fingers laid against his cheek. Feeling the heat that was starting to come off of him before she frowned and set the inside of her wrist to his forehead. He was warm but not dangerously so. Still, a mild fever was still a fever.
She played with his hair. Watching the tension practically melt its way out of him as he relaxed further into the bedding. Cardan rarely fell ill but she wasn’t all that concerned. They’d gone to the mortal world to help Heather after Vivi managed to catch one of the colds going around. Heather had been too nervous on how to help with faerie biology and had enlisted their help. Cardan started feeling off not too long after.
It wasn’t a hard leap of logic for her to make.
“Cardan?”
He barely stirred to her. Still asleep but some part of his brain was listening to her. He was trying. It was hard to keep the smile off her face. Losing her battle immediately when he curled a bit towards her.
“I have to get started on our work for the day.”
He whined. An actual, genuine, whine that keened from the back of his throat.
“I know.”
She pet his hair back again.
“I’ll get you some water for you to drink when you wake up.”
He shivered a bit. In a second Jude was lifting the blanket higher to better cover him.
“I’m also going to send for someone if your fever isn’t better by the time I come back later.”
His face turned toward the pillow. A frown tugging on his lips for only a moment. His eyelids fluttering like he was fighting back against a dream. She placed her thumb between his brows. Petting him there until the crease smoothed out and he relaxed again.
“I’ll check on you as I can.”
She leaned forward as carefully as she could. Placing a kiss to his temple and feeling again the fever that he’d sparked up throughout their rest. Vivi had gotten a fever as well but it stayed fairly mild. With any luck, Cardan’s would follow the same pattern.
“I love you.”
She didn’t expect for him to say it back.
Instead, Jude pulled herself out of the blankets and quietly padded around the room to get herself ready for her duties. She didn’t mind picking up the work to give Cardan the time to sleep and rest as he needed it. She knew that he would do the same in moments.
He had done it for her.
Jude set off for her study with the memories of laying weak and sickly in their bed and Cardan carefully untangling himself from her to take up both of their work so that she would have the time to rest and regain her strength. He’d tended her fevers and he’s iced her bruises. He was gentle with her.
More gentle than she’d ever thought he was capable of being for the good first part of her life. She’d thought him cruel and wicked. She’d thought he was some stone hearted creature that would tear apart anyone and everyone for the sake of watching them suffer.
She’d learned that she was wrong. Cardan was still the same person that she’d known before but all of his actions had painted into a new light with everything she learned. She saw him with his guard down. She saw him hurting and she saw him happy. She saw him in his lowest and she saw him at his best.
Cardan cared. Contrary to how he often acted. It was always a sight to see, the way a faerie could lie despite not physically being able to say it outright. How they could plan and trick and deceive. She knew that Cardan was one of the best at it. Using his tongue with the same amount of skill as she used her sword.
By the time Jude got to her desk she found it piled with documents. Papers that needed to be read and signed and sealed with the blessing of the High Court. It was going to be a day of headache after headache, she could tell as much already. The work still needed to be done and if she didn’t handle it then people would attempt to disturb Cardan and she simply couldn’t allow that.
She’d seen him with illness only truly once before. Something he’d managed to pick up after they spent two weeks circling to all of the lower courts to ensure their loyalties were secure. He’d developed a cough and a chill that left him miserable and sulking. Anyone who thought they could temper the High King with wine and a joke and offer of a revel was sorely mistaken. Cardan had snapped at anyone who tried to talk to him longer than a few short statements.
Jude, of course, was the only one exempt of this treatment.
She set into her work now at her desk. Ticking hour after hour and her thoughts kept straying back to her husband in their room. She’d told the guards that stayed at the door not to let anyone in and to leave their King undisturbed unless it was a matter of life and death. She knew that Cardan preferred his privacy when he wasn’t feeling well.
She’d thought about it in the past but the more years they spent as husband and wife the more she could identify it. Oak remarked once that Cardan was very similar to a black cat. When their people held the serpent to him and compared the two for their wit and sharp tongue. When Oak had caught the carefully neutral expression locked over Cardan’s face. He joked bout him being a cat. Marking all the similarities and drowning out the conversations of snakes.
Jude could see it.
In the way that he would practically growl and hiss at anyone who annoyed him. How quickly he could turn on someone when he decided that he’d had enough. How he was picky with the people he surrounded himself with.
How he would hide himself when he wasn’t feeling well. How he would endure in silence to lick his wounds rather than show it to be nursed.
The stacks of papers became blurs. Nothing really focusing through her attention enough as the hours ticked by. She was frustrated with all the things that needed done when all she wanted to do was go back to her room and card her fingers through her husbands hair. She wanted to help work the tension out of him and make sure he was eating and drinking enough. That he wasn’t getting worse.
Vivi had been miserable but Heather had gotten off of work and was able to stay with her pretty much the whole time. She had care from every moment of her sickness. Cardan was alone right now. She didn’t want to pull him out of the room and she didn’t want to bring the work there because she knew Cardan enough to know that he would either distract her more or take some of the work away from her out of guilt for giving her more to do.
Her thoughts were already distracted by him but at least this way she could make sure he rested.
At least this way she could be sure that—
“Majesty!”
The shout came from the hall. Jude had only enough time to look up before the door was rapidly being knocked against.
“Come in.”
She was already raising to stand. She didn’t recognize the knight that faced her. Their face flushed and breaths heavy.
“Majesty, we need you. Urgently.”
Her worry climbed like spiders in her throat.
“What is it?”
“It’s the High King.”
Jude didn’t need to hear anything else.
She was running into the hall and down the path to her room. The knight was trailing behind her but she didn’t care. If something had happened that they needed her urgently. That they needed to pull her from her work. She knew the palace staff enough to know that almost all of them feared the wrath of the High King and Queen. She knew that she was known as the violent one of the two of them. If they were willing to interrupt her and yell for her from the hall instead of waiting to inform her in the room.
It was bad.
Jude knew it was bad.
She knew when she raced around the doorway to her shared chambers with Cardan and heard the sounds of gagging from inside. Slowing herself only a fraction so that she had better control and getting to the doorway of their bathroom to see him heaving into a pail on the floor.
He was crumpled in on himself. Far too pale, even for his normal complexion. He was shaking like he was freezing half to death but Jude could see the fever flush that overtook his cheeks. She could see the haze in his eyes.
“Cardan?”
He gagged again. Heaving and holding there. His breaths shallow and rapid and Jude realized he barely looked aware.
No sooner did the realization strike her that Cardan’s eyes rolled and his body fell sideways to the ground.
Jude was with him in less than a second. Grabbing onto his wrist and pressing her fingers in to feel his pulse. How it was racing and skipping under her touch.
“You.” Her eyes found the knight that had summoned her from her study. “Get a physician. Now.”
The order was followed instantly. No chance in waiting and incurring her wrath even more. She turned her attention fully back to her husband. Pulling his limp body until he was laying flat on the ground. She held his head pillowed in her lap. Her hands stroking circles on his cheeks.
“Cardan? If you can hear me you need to open your eyes.”
He was burning up. This was not the mild fever she’d left him with earlier. This felt like an inferno focused on his body. As if an entire hearth’s worth of flame was replacing his blood.
“Cardan?”
She tried and failed to keep the fear out of her voice. She heard him groan beneath her. She kept him steady.
“It’s going to be okay. I’m going to get you help. It’ll be okay.”
His eyes opened. A sliver of gold rimmed black that still found her despite the haze.
“Jude?...”
“I’m here. I’m right here.”
“I woke up and you weren’t.”
He sounded so miserable. He sounded so scared.
“I’m here now. Okay?”
“I wanted you.”
Her heart nearly tore in her chest.
“Did something happen? Did you know you were feeling worse?”
He shook his head against her. Clinging himself as close to her as he could while she held him mostly in place.
“Nightmare.”
She understood. The both of them were prone to nightmares. They sought comfort in each other after. Especially since a good number of their nightmares involved the other. He’d had a nightmare about her. He’d tried to find her. She hadn’t been there.
“I’m sorry.”
They would get him help soon. They would nurse him better soon. With time and with safety.
The Living Council could handle their work. Jude had other, more important matters to attend to.
Queen and a nurse.
“It’s going to be okay.”
She would make sure of it.