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The knocking started in the middle of the night. Light and respectful at first before turning into something more heady. Something more distressed. More violent. Jude rolled her way onto her feet from where she’d been sleeping. Steadying herself and reaching for a knife for her own protection. Oak was sleeping down the hall. Vivi was sleeping too. At least, until she was coming out to see what was going on as well.
“You expecting someone?”
Vivi’s raised eyebrow was all the answer she got. It wouldn’t be Heather knocking at this time. The rest of the mortal world was meant to be asleep. It was Faerie that would be awake.
“We paid rent so it shouldn’t be that.”
The knocking grew louder. Both of them sharing a glance before Jude was silently moving over to the apartment door. She could see Vivi grabbing a weapon for herself just in case. Jude waited with her breath holding still in her lungs before her sister nodded to her.
Before she opened the door against the assaulting knocks.
Jude had expected a threat. She expected an attack the moment the door was open. Something that was coming for their lives and hunting them in the way Madoc had hunted their mother. In the way that would give her nightmares for the rest of her life. She half imagined that Cardan had rethought her exile. That he had decided it wasn’t enough for her to just be gone from Elfhame but rather that she should be gone from life itself.
He’d always tossed around her mortality in front of her when they were younger, afterall.
Instead, standing in the doorway looking more disheveled and dare she say, afraid, than she’d ever seen him before; stood the Roach.
“Jude Duarte.”
She could feel Vivi’s frown from behind her.
“Who’s asking?”
Her sister was even more protective of her since she arrived here as the exiled Queen than she was before.
“Roach?”
His eyes were intense when they met hers.
“What is it?”
“May I come in?”
She could hear the nerves through him. The tension he held through his body. Something was wrong and she couldn’t help the fear that sunk through her that it involved the Bomb. Still, Jude nodded and stepped out of the way to give him room to come in. Vivi sighing and muttering about going to make coffee for the three of them and leaving Jude to lock the door after. The Roach stepping in and moving over to the couch where she’d been sleeping for the night.
Trying to, at least.
“So? Is it—”
“It’s the High King.”
His tone held so much more worry than she thought the shadow had for the man. Cardan and Roach had been the fastest to bond between the group of them. She found them both drinking together and taking lessons more often than not but she hadn’t thought that it would get to the point that he would come here looking afraid of all things.
The burn of her exile still smarted against her heart.
She’d thought that Cardan was true when he’d asked to marry her. When they had been together swearing their vows in his bedroom. When they had gone to bed together and laid so close. When they had been kissing each other on the couch and talking about their plans. When Cardan asked how he should deduce and showed her each step of the plan to ask her permission.
She’d thought they might mean something to each other.
Something that might resemble affection.
It turned out they were only just enemies.
“I don’t see why I should care about him.”
Jude hadn’t expected for her friend to freeze.
“What?”
She scoffed. She liked the Roach but she couldn’t believe he wouldn’t understand why she was upset.
“He exiled me, remember?” He married her and then he exiled her. She didn’t want to admit to that shame out loud again. “To never come back? That was the whole point. He doesn’t want me. Why should I come running now if he can’t even ask for me himself?”
Her friend watched her for a moment. Confusion burning through his eyes before understanding seemed to click.
“You haven’t received his letters, have you?”
Jude hesitated.
“What letters?”
A frown was so clear on the Roach’s face that it made her nerves stand on edge.
“Cardan is in danger. He needs your help.”
“Roach, what letters?”
“It is not my place to tell. Cardan—”
“Cardan sent me away.”
She couldn’t keep the hurt from her voice. Not when she remembered how foolish she’d been to believe that he had actually wanted her. That he might actually love her.
“He doesn’t—”
“I have never seen him closer to drinking himself to death than the nights he believed you would never come home.”
He couldn’t lie.
All of that was the truth.
And yet somehow, it didn’t sound like Cardan.
“He had been keeping up his training with me. As you well know, it was one of the few things he enjoyed other than his wine and general debauchery. And you, of course.”
She opened her mouth to protest. The Roach kept going.
“He stopped.”
The words hung too final in the air.
“Without warning. Without much of anything. He stopped. He was still attending his duties but when I would get close to him he acted as if he didn’t see me. When he did meet my eye, he wouldn’t speak. He looked nearly afraid.”
He was the High King. He could be afraid of no one.
“I don’t see what this has to do with me. Why would I break my exile for this?”
“All of us are sworn to the High King.”
She nodded. It stung her heart a bit knowing that she should be the Queen but that she was here instead.
She wasn’t the High Queen of Elfhame.
She was the Queen of Nothing.
“I investigated. I heard him in his rooms, in conversation that sounded heated and when I heard a strike I went in. He gave me the sign to wait but I watched it happen. Jude,” the stress in his voice made her heart clench, “Elfhame is in danger. If you will not save Cardan, do this to save Elfhame.”
“I don’t understand what you need from me.”
“Cardan ordered me against saying what I saw. I can’t tell you. But I can tell you I have never seen him weep before that night. I saw his most recent letter for you be burned. I thought that I could come convince you to come back to help save him so you wouldn’t take the lack of correspondence as a slight but you haven’t gotten any of them. Which means all of them were burned.”
“Burned?”
Her friend shook his head. A hand came up to brush through the short bit of hair he had.
“This is worse than I thought.”
“What is happening? What’s going on?”
When he looked at her Jude saw his eyes pleading.
“I can’t tell you. I can’t disobey him. You know that. But I need you to come with me.”
“And break my exile?”
The silence that crossed between them was loaded. Heavy and thick and filled with too much they couldn’t say.
“For the sake of Elfhame, yes.”
“And if Cardan puts me to death?”
She couldn’t believe that he would let her walk away so freely. She could still remember the smile that had been on his face when he exiled her. The way he had laughed as all of their people laughed. She had been betrayed by him in one of the most cruel ways and she knew that he would do it again. Part of her wondered if even this was a trick. If this was some cruel twist that Cardan was trying to add to their lives so that she would break the terms of her exile and die in front of him there.
The Roach frowned at her.
“He won’t.”
He couldn’t lie. She still wasn’t sure she believed him. Jude looked over toward her sister and met Vivi’s eyes. She stood at the kitchen counter holding her mug of steaming, too sugary coffee. Jude knew the look she was giving her. Like her sister knew exactly what she was going to do before she even decided it fully herself.
“You want me to come with?”
Jude’s eyes moved back to the Roach before returning to her sister.
“No. I’ll be fine.”
She was a liar, after all.
The palace was quiet.
Jude had gotten all the information from the Roach that she thought she was going to be able to get from him. All she knew was that whatever was going on was enough to frighten her friend and he said it was focused on Cardan. He didn’t say it like Cardan was doing something against Elfhame. He said everything like it was a threat Cardan needed to be saved from.
She did what she could to plan against a threat she didn’t know. Cardan was the High King. His power was unmatched and unbeatable. He had the land on his side. If he was going to be poisoned then he was going to be healed by the land. If he was going to be hurt or attacked then the guards of the palace would be able to step in. This was a threat that Cardan himself was protecting but that didn’t make any sense. Cardan didn’t love or care for anything but himself. He wouldn’t protect another person, certainly not one that was a threat to him or the rest of Elfhame.
She’d watched him from the shadows for the day.
Jude would admit to herself that it hurt.
It hurt to watch him go about business like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like he didn’t miss her in the slightest and didn’t regret the exile despite all the pain she’d gone through after losing him. The pain that had wrenched through her heart at the loss of what she thought they shared. Their marriage. Cardan hadn’t done anything note4worthy for the day. For all intents and purposes it looked like a normal pattern of habits. The only thing she noticed was the lack of wine Cardan drank through the day. He played the part of the smooth talking King well. It was almost hard to believe that she had ever needed to trick him into wearing the crown in the first place.
Almost.
There were moments where he looked distant where he sat on the throne. Where she could see his eyes get lost on something far on the side of the room. She wondered if it was the Land speaking to him or something of the sort. She wouldn’t know. She’d barely had the time to see what he was like as a King with full control of his powers. She remembered what it was like when he was poisoned with the wraithberry. How he hadn’t been aided by the land because of her. Because he didn’t believe himself to be the King. It stung part of her that she wouldn’t know how to identify if something was wrong anymore because it turned out after that that she’d never really known him at all.
He wasn’t who she believed him to be.
That was what hurt the most.
Jude followed him when Cardan finished his meetings for the night. She kept herself the the shadows so she wouldn’t be seen. Cardan didn’t react like he felt her presence there. He barely reacted to anything. The guards that she had seen him engage with in the past were wholly ignored as Cardan breezed past them in the halls. When he made it to his room, Jude slipped into the tunnel that gave her access to see and hear into it. She could keep herself out of his sight and she could work to figure out what the threat was they were having to face. She could see what they were up against and she could make the plan. She would go back to her shadows and they would make their strategy together. They would save Elfhame and she would leave. Cardan and his rules be damned.
Part of her wondered if this might earn her a pardon.
Part of her wondered if she would accept that.
Jude expected for the normal silence of Cardan’s chambers. For him to maybe stroll to take a bath or to lounge. Maybe to call for wine in private where no one would see him or lovers so that he could entertain himself. She didn’t expect for him to all but collapse the moment he was inside. For his hand to come up to his chest and clutch at his heart like he was in pain. She didn’t expect for his expression to crumple or for the silent gag he choked on.
“Please.”
His voice shattered over the word. Harsh and weak in the same seconds in a way that Jude had never heard him sound before. Like this she could see him trembling. It reminded her so strongly of the way he had looked at Hollow Hall when he was being beaten by Balekin. Honestly he would have been her first thought again had it not been for the fact that she killed him herself. She knew that Balekin was dead. She knew that he wasn’t the one that was hurting Cardan now. Still, she had seen Cardan protect his abusers in the past.
They were all his family.
“Do you want to be a good King?”
“Mother—”
Jude’s heart skipped a beat.
She leaned a bit more from her position in the dark and watched Lady Asha step closer to her son on the ground. She hadn’t struck him. She wouldn’t be able to poison him.
“You wrote to Jude again.”
Her chest felt tight at what she was about to hear.
“She’s my wife. I miss her. I love her—”
“She made you weak.”
“She made me King.”
“You do not love her.”
“I cannot lie.”
Even despite the pain in his eyes, Jude could see his anger too. Carried in gold rimmed black. Fury that looked like coals on a flame.
“Yes, none of us can. Which is why I have needed to fix you.”
Cardan shrunk on himself at that and Jude felt her concern skyrocket. The Roach had said that Cardan was being hurt but she didn’t know how. She still wasn’t certain but anything with Cardan in visible pain and collapsed to his knees in his rooms was enough to warrant her worry. It didn’t matter how much she hated him. If Cardan was killed there would be no one to hold the throne until Oak came of age. She could hate him all she wanted, she still had to keep him alive.
“A true King does not make friends in the manner you were doing. They do not pine needlessly for mortal girls. They are strong and they have heirs and they rule with absolutes. Did you learn nothing from your father?”
Cardan trembled on the floor beneath her but Jude still saw his stubborn arrogance when he glared up at her.
“He rarely spent time with me. You abandoned me.”
Lady Asha crouched down in front of him and reached out to take his face in her hand. She held him by the jaw, restricting the way he could speak, holding him in place.
“I still named you.”
Jude swore her heart nearly stopped.
His name. Cardan’s name. His true name. She hadn’t even considered it before. A faerie’s mother would know their name in all its reality because they were the one who gave it to them. His mother would know the exact way to be able to control him and command him with no other magic or deal or spell. Only the combination of his name that would give him no choice but to act.
“You do not have friends.”
Cardan shook his head.
“That’s a lie.”
“I do not want you to even look at them.”
“Mother—”
“You do not look at them. You do not speak to them. You keep them away from your business. They are guards and nothing else.”
Cardan was breathing hard.
“I do not want you to think of that mortal girl anymore.”
“No—”
“You were distracted all day. You were thinking of her.”
Jude hesitated.
“Please,”
“Tell me you weren’t thinking of her and I’ll release the order.”
Cardan looked down.
He couldn’t say it.
He couldn’t lie.
“She hates you. Your trick failed. She has no reason to love you. She is a liar. She wants power. She hates you and everything you stand for.”
“You’re mistaken.”
His voice was broken. Like they’d had this argument in the past and he was beginning to crack on his belief.
“She will not come back. She cannot. You exiled her.”
“She is my wife.” His voice was strained. “She is the High Queen.” He sounded near tears. “She is pardoned whenever she wants.”
Jude couldn’t breathe. She felt the heat through her chest and the guilt that was there. Everything replayed through her mind in a second and she realized exactly what had happened that day. When Cardan had exiled her, the way he had worded things, the example he had been trying to make. She had missed it. She had hated him. For so long she had hated him and blamed him and this entire time she could have pardoned herself and come back. She could have come back to argue with him.
Roach had said that Cardan wouldn’t condemn her to death. She hadn’t believed him. But this?
“I love her.”
“Pity she doesn’t love you.”
“She will kill you.”
“She won’t come back.”
Cardan’s eyes burned into his mother’s.
“She will kill you for what you’ve done. She will protect me. She loves me.”
Cardan was hit.
Lady Asha struck him across the face hard enough to send him into the floor. Jude had to force herself to stay still. She couldn’t rush in or Cardan was going to be hurt. She had to make a plan.
Cardan looked up into the dark of the room. Jude swore his eyes met hers. She thought it was coincidence, that it meant nothing.
“She will save me.”
His mother stepped on his back.
“I will strip her from your thoughts.”
Jude saw tears in his eyes.
“Save me.”
He was pleading.
He was begging.
He was looking straight at her.
She couldn’t stand this.
She had to stop this.
Jude stepped out of the shadows.
Cardan shuddered. She drew her blade. She aimed it to Lady Asha.
“Get away from him. I won’t ask again.”
The lady sneered.
“And who are you to command me?”
She looked to Cardan on the ground. She thought of the begging she’d just heard. The truths from his mouth.
“I’m the High Queen of Elfhame.” She stepped closer. “Step away from my husband.”