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Cardan stared at the empty wall in front of him. It was so different from everything else in the palace that it helped him now. A captivation that he wasn’t sure would actually make sense to anyone if he tried to explain it. He had always had an eye for things that were different, he supposed. In a world where everyone was flashy and beautiful and striking, Cardan had found his eyes attaching to a mortal. Not the pleasant ones and not the kind sweet ones that talked to the folk like they were gods or the ones that treated them like they had every power in the world. That was typical, that was expected. No, he’d fallen for the one that was human girl who was so angry with everyone and everything around her she became a threat.
Jude had had no powers and no true means of defense, Cardan had seen to that, but she had always been strong and unafraid to their faces. He knew now that she had indeed been afraid on more than one occasion. She had hated him so truly that if she was one of the folk she would have been able to say the words with ease. She despised him and she had no qualms about using him and tricking him into the crown that was now his.
Cardan knew that. He’d known that from the beginning. He’d known that when he asked her to marry him. He’d known that when he felt himself falling in love with her.
A real love that wasn’t mistaken with the perverted version of it Balekin had offered to him. The corroded type that his family had all but breathed from their lungs.
He loved her when he bent the knee to her brother and she commanded him not to move. He loved her when she held a blade to his throat and threatened him. He loved her when he obeyed her commands and when they argued and when they turned vile words into something that looked close to endearment. He loved her. He wanted to trick her in return. He wanted to play the game that she had set for the two of them so brilliantly and he wanted to do it well.
The blank wall stared back at him and all he could think of was the fact that he had exiled Jude. He’d thought that she would outsmart him as she had done every other time. Everything they had been through and she had always been steps ahead of him even though he was meant to have the upper hand against her. She had always been the smartest in the room. The strategist that planned for everything and the combatant that backed away from no fight. She was brave and intelligent and she was stubborn and steadfast and Cardan thought she would understand. He thought that she would look at him and she would see the way he worded it. He thought that she would understand. Everything they had been through, he thought she would understand.
She was the crown.
She could grant her own pardon.
She could remove her exile.
She could have stayed if she would have just—
She hadn’t.
She could have done so many things but she hadn’t. She had gathered her things in moments and she was gone. He’d been nervous to tell his trick. Nervous to see how their people would react when everything came to light. He’d laughed. He’d smiled. Jude knew his tells, he thought she would see it then. He thought that after what they’d been through together that she would know that he was afraid. He’d seen her thoughts in her eyes. They’d been through too much for him to not begin to know her. How to read her. He was her husband now. They were married and of course he would know his wife. He knew the betrayal she held in her eyes when she looked at him. He knew the anger and the hurt. He knew that she believed he was nothing but cruel and a monster the same way the rest of his family had been.
She left.
He hadn’t stopped her. He couldn’t have stopped her. He didn’t.
Elfhame was watching, their people wee watching. Everyone was watching them and he had had not choice but to stand there and let it happen. To watch her leave and hold the ground on what he’d said.
It wasn’t until he was back in the palace and sitting for her until the sun was rising and then later high in the sky that he realized she truly wasn’t coming back. That she had left him on his command and she wasn’t going to come back.
He was alone.
He was alone and he had been alone.
Through everything, it seemed. He had been alone for every part of his life and now that he was married and committed to another person, it was this. he had sent her away. he had exiled her. He had let her leave without explaining himself. She was gone and she thought he was a monster. Cardan could chase her, logically yes he knew that. He knew that he could go to the mortal world and he could argue with her and he could plead with her to come back with him. To rule as his Queen. He could explain that he hadn’t meant what he said in the way that she thought. He could explain his trick in his words.
He’d been sending letters.
He thought that she would understand.
He thought that she would know what he was doing. That she would see it and she would read it and she would come back and just yell at him. She would be angry but she would be near to him and he wouldn’t feel like his heart was tearing out of his chest. He wouldn’t feel like his ribs were caving in on themselves or that the air around him was hard to breathe. He wouldn’t be seeing her in the corners of his vision like she was some ghost or apparition there to haunt him for eternity.
Cardan craved her in a way he’d desired nothing else in his life. He stared at a blank wall imagining her in front of him and yelling at him and cursing him up and down because he had sent her away. He imagined her there in front of him so that he might feel slightly less lonely but it did nothing but carve him deeper inside.
He’d been having trouble thinking recently. There was something so dearly wrong with him but the only solution he could think of every time was the fact that Jude was no longer at his side. He was meant to rule with her there. He was meant to have her with him. They were meant to be united as one. He had given her the ring as a show of human custom and he’d read about it. He had story books about it. He knew that human couples would be bound to each other through everything until death was the only thing to separate them. Jude would not have to face that here in Elfhame. She would get to stay with him forever and he wanted that.
He needed that.
He did not know how to rule. He did not know how to strategize the way she had.
The Roach had been trying recently to bring him out of his rooms and have him participate in training with the rest of the Shadows. To have him working with them and learning strategy and how to rely on them and act on plans if there were ever to be an attack on the palace. Cardan couldn’t think through those meetings. He couldn’t focus when he was approached by his people. He would get dizzy when he stood and he would struggle to keep his breathing even when every time he would look to his side and she wasn’t there.
It was like her absence was a disease.
A sickness of isolation from the one thing his heart desired.
Humans would call it heartbreak.
Cardan was loath to say that he was broken but for her, he would admit it felt something like the word.
His people thought him a drunk.
His reputation from before didn’t help matters in the slightest and Cardan wasn’t doing anything now to persuade them that there was something else amiss. It wouldn’t do him any good to inform them that he was simply wounded through the heart and not drunk on the wine they’d all seen him enjoy on numerous occasions. It was better if they assumed it was his indulgence of drink that was making him as weak and pathetic and miserable on their throne. They had pledged their allegiance to him but that could be worked around if they really wanted to overthrow him. It didn’t matter that he was their last royal to lead. It didn’t matter that they needed him alive in order to keep the order and the crown. It didn’t matter about anything at all if they wanted to overthrow him or track a way to revive one of his family to give it to them.
If he gave his people a cause to fight against, a weakness to pull, it would be taken.
Cardan knew because it was what he would do.
He didn’t care for power and he didn’t care for what the world had to offer to him beyond the ability to live comfortably and merrily. He hadn’t wanted the throne or the crown or the responsibility that came with it.
His people didn’t know that he had drunk himself into blindness in the wake of Jude’s absence and since then not touched a drop. He wrote to her that he would stop drinking and be a proper King for her to rule beside in the hopes that it would convince her to come back. that he might have a chance to see her again even if it was for her to curse at him.
The pain in his chest doubled. Cardan struggled to take in a full breath of air and he fought with his body to cooperate with him. His hands were turning numb. He wasn’t sure he could entirely feel his legs. He hadn’t thought he’d been sitting here for so long but he supposed he wasn’t entirely thinking straight either. He was at a loss for what he wanted to do. He was wanting something impossible.
Jude had always been impossible.
With her stubbornness and her rejection of everything he’d done in the past. He wanted to make her happy. He wanted to make her come back. Part of him thought that she would be back if he were gone. She was the rightful Queen of Elfhame. He wrote it out himself and kept it on his desk. He needed their people to know from him.
He could maybe announce it? He could tell Jude that he’d told the land that she was truly their Queen and that she was pardoned by the crown and she would come back and rule with him and they could argue and she could yell at him for being so stupid and tell him how much better everything would have been without him there and he would listen. He would listen because he missed hearing her shout at him. He missed having her at his side. He missed getting to see her and he wanted to hold her and he wanted to tell her to her face that he loved her.
He loved her so much it drove him mad.
He loved her so much he felt like he could tear his heart into his hands and offer it to her.
The longer he sat here the less he could breathe. His vision was narrowing down on the edges and he knew for certain that he should call for help. He should get up. He should do something other than sitting here and wallowing in his own misery. He was sick of not having her. Of chasing for her ghost.
The door opened behind him but he didn’t bother to turn. He knew which door was there. The one to the secret tunnels that his shadows so often used to move around. It wasn’t until he heard the dim humm of The Roach’s voice that he realized he couldn’t make out the words. His hearing had turned distant.
His heart was beating wrong in his chest. It was skipping at random and the pain he was feeling had expanded around his chest and shifted into his arm. He couldn’t lift it. He couldn’t move it.
He couldn’t speak.
Cardan looked up at the imagined image of Jude before him on the wall. He pictured her smiling as she watched him. As she commanded the world with all her power as its Queen to tear his heart in two so that it would be safe for her to return.
It made him want to laugh. To reach for her and apologize. To tell her that he loved her. He wanted her to know.
He tried to move and reach for her only for his body to crumple to the ground as his legs failed to hold his weight. The Roach was in front of him. He felt him more than he saw him. He was yelling but Cardan couldn’t make out any of the words. He just looked around his friend before him and he found the wall. He found Jude’s face. He found her watching him and the smile there.
He thought he saw her worry. He thought he imagined her concern. The softer side of her that he’d seen when he was poisoned and she was telling him to stay awake. That she had been the only one to notice that something was truly wrong with him and she had protected him and gotten him away from his people before he destroyed himself out there as their spectacle the way his brother had planned. He imagined her worrying for him. If this was more than simply a sickness in his heart from his isolation from her then she might be. She might show worry for him. The fact that she needed him to hold the throne until Oak was of age to take it over himself.
He tried to reach for her. He wanted to know. He needed to know. If they were still married in her eyes, if she still loved him at all, if she could forgive him for trying for a trick that had turned out so wrongly. He needed to know.
But he couldn’t breathe. His heart was beating wrong. He was in pain.
“Jude…”
The Roach lifted him into the air. Cardan let his head fall against his shoulder. He could feel his friend respond but he couldn’t make him out. He only hoped that his call for his wife made sense. That The Roach might act on it. That her exile might be lifted by his beg for her being taken as her pardon.
He could hope.
He wanted to feel hope again.
Cardan let his eyes close. He stopped fighting against the tearing in his heart.
“Jude…”
He wanted her. He called for her. If he died to this sickness he wanted her to be the last plea he ever begged.
“Jude?”
Like every letter he’d written that was just scrawls of her name. Begs and pleas that she did not answer. His heart was shattered. But it was hers. Forever. The eternity they promised.
He felt a tear slip on his cheek.
“Please.”