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‘Cardan?’
He blinks into awareness and feels rain crawling through his hair and sliding down his cheeks. Jude stands before him, her back to the long, weeping branches of a willow. She is smiling at him, her thin peach dress soaked through and clinging to her skin, her feet bare in the grass. She is a picture of loveliness.
And she is smiling at him, in the way that she never does.
‘Yes, Jude?’ he answers. A smile grows across his face, a grin really. Rain be damned, nothing could stop him from smiling back at her when she looks at him like this. Like she—
Jude cups her hand and water collects in her palm. She pouts down at it. Cardan makes his way towards her, mud squishing beneath his toes, his eyes never leaving her flushed lips. He is but a foot from her when she thrusts her hand out towards him and her honey-brown eyes peer intently into his face.
‘Can you change the colour of the rain?’ she says.
Cardan glances down at the clear, cupped water in her hand and then back to her urgent expression. There is an obvious riddle here, and an easy answer that would make use of her vague wording, but he finds he doesn't want to play the deceiver.
Cardan takes hold of Jude's hand in both of his own, and presses a kiss to the scar on the back.
‘Dear Jude, I don't believe anyone can change the falling rain.’
For once, he thinks he has said the right thing. She holds his gaze for a moment, the rain slipping down both their faces and pattering on the grass. Cardan begins to smile again, but then Jude shakes her head. A long sigh leaves her lungs, her disappointed breath skittering goosebumps along his skin. She yanks her hand from his, steps backwards, and the willow tree swallows her whole.
———
He gasps awake, his heart beating hard. Another restless dream that leads nowhere, another question reminding him that for all his power, he is powerless when it matters. He sits up in his large, ornate bed and stares at his hands. Above his head, flowers bloom and vines shudder in the ancient hill's earthen walls. He fists skin, tendon, muscle, and bone that have changed the landscape of Elfhame, and yet still can't reach the heights he needs. Even now, he is still chasing his mother's skirts, still watching Nicasia turn to Locke.
Still unfavoured, unwanted, unloved.
He sighs. There is nothing for it. Naked, he rises from bed. His closet is large and elaborate and yet he finds no joy in it. He can't remember the last time he found true joy in anything, or if he ever did.
No, that's not true.
The brief interlude so long ago when he was more spy than prince, when he believed he was within Jude’s schemes and not simply a victim of them. If that was not joy, then something very like it.
He selects clothing that is appropriately villainous, stabs earrings through the pointed tips of his ears, and tries twice to find some symmetry between the strokes of eyeliner under his lashes. No matter his efforts, the lines still wobble. Violence overwhelms him, and the kohl liner shatters on the floor. It will end up smeared in several hours anyway, and no one will criticise the King to his face.
The Blood Crown of Elfhame, the last part of his ensemble, rests like the sword of Damocles on his brow.
Guards meet him at his door – he is never alone now, and yet echoing rooms haunt him – and strides towards the throne room. As a child, the palace was never his home; he was often reminded of this fact. Hollow Hall, too, remained a place more of nightmares than comfort. For the girl who plagued his nightmares to have returned him to a palace where he never belonged always seemed oddly fitting.
The Folk assembled in the brugh turn and bow when he enters. He keeps his eyes forward, back straight, chin haughty. His tail twitches against his leg, self-control brought to almost every vertebra. The throne of Elfhame beckons him as he ascends the dais. At the base of the steps, his mother preens. Dressed in her finery and radiant in the attention she craves, one would mistake her for an attentive and deserving maternal figure. Beside her, Princess Nicasia, another cold hearted creature, gazes upon him with mistimed affection. He wonders what it says about him that he collects women who break his heart.
The right of the throne is a void, a loss, another broken piece. He thinks of a ruby ring, a riddle given, letters unanswered. He thinks of foolishness, and hearts of glass, and trust unearned. He tucks these thoughts away somewhere behind his sternum where they can burn and choke him while he drinks and laughs.
The High King of Elfhame spins to face his subjects, beautiful and vile as they are, and falls into his seat of thorns. He nods to the knights.
‘Begin the inquest.’