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Chapter Text

“And today I will dispense justice. Jude Duarte, do you deny you murdered Prince Balekin, Ambassador to the Undersea and brother to the High King?”

As I speak, I try to seem the composed, haughty king I am meant to be, but my eyes are alight with excitement. I know Jude sees it, because her voice comes out careful and uncertain in a way I have never heard from her.

Still, she lifts her chin. “I do not deny that we had a duel and that I won it.”

Such careful words from a mortal girl who grew up surrounded by warped speech of the Folk.

I pull out the silence, stretching it until it thins and I can feel the Folk around me begin to shift in excitement and anticipation.

“Hear my judgement.” My words echo obscenely in the hollow air of the brugh. I can feel Jude’s fawn brown eyes searching my face, trying to anticipate what I am going to say, trying to get her footing. It takes everything in me to keep my voice to a lazy, regal drawl and hold back a smile as I damn her. “I exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world. Until and unless she is pardoned by the crown, let her not step one foot in Faerie or forfeit her life.”

What I expect her to do is to narrow her eyes at me and pardon herself right then and there. I expect her to snap at me, maybe, or to huff in irritation. Or maybe even to smirk with a glint in her eye as she sees my next move in our years-long game of cat and mouse. What I don’t expect her to do is suck in a breath as her eyes flicker with hurt—all of it directed at me.

“But you can’t do that!” she blurts.

I stare at her, waiting for her to get it. Surely, any second, she’ll realize my careful wording. But she only stares back at me, long enough that I start to feel uncertain. The Folk around us are eating our duel up with beetle eyes and sharp teeth.

“Of course I can,” I say, slowly, confused. Why isn’t she calling my bluff?

“But I’m the Queen of Faerie!” she shouts, and I let out a breath. Finally. I wait for her to go on to pardon herself, to laugh, to acknowledge my cleverness.

But that’s all she says.

After a beat, the brugh erupts into laughter. I’m still staring at her, puzzled, when her eyes turn red and rainy. When I finally begin to laugh along with them, it is more in disbelief than anything. Come on, Jude. Play with me.

She doesn’t. She keeps staring at me, full of fury and hurt, as a pair of knights drag her down from her horse and I start to panic. It wasn’t supposed to get this far.

“Deny, it then!” she screams at me. “Deny me!”

I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, so I say nothing. Some part of me is still waiting for her to pull out her trump card. Or at least try to fight back, to push me and pull my hair and hurt me for how I’m hurting her. I think my uncertain smile is still twisted on my face as she glares at me with all the hate she’s ever held for me, that I’ve ever deserved, and more of it.

I am still confused when Sir Rannoch takes her away. When the mocking laughter of the Folk fades from my ears as I stare out at the new island I’ve drawn from the sea. When I start to think that maybe this is Jude’s way of punishing me after all—leaving me when I so desperately wanted her to stay.
***

My first day without Jude is unbearable.

She plagues my thoughts, as always, but it’s worse now, because I thought for one beautiful minute that she was mine, that she would stay. For one minute, she was my queen, and I was enough, and I wouldn’t have to do this alone. But she left. Like everyone does.

Locke suggests a revel, to celebrate getting rid of the girl of dirt, as he calls her. He congratulates me on my cleverness and says things like finally, and thorn out of your foot, and now you can be a proper king without all of her diplomatic fussiness in the way. Why did you keep her around so long, anyway? Taryn keeps her eyes down, but I think they are red and puffy.

I wave my hand dismissively at his proposition and he throws one anyway. I have to go, for appearances, but the mischievous eyes of my subjects burn my skin like iron where they land.

I miss Jude.

I drink. A lot.

Somewhere between then and now, I stumble down the halls, hopefully heading towards my rooms, when a very displeased Lilliver finds me and leads me… somewhere. What part of the castle am I in, anyway?

Her eyes are hard and her arms are stiff when she opens my door for me and practically shoves me inside. I fall onto the packed earth floor by the foot of my bed with a grunt of pain. The Bomb doesn’t move to help me up. I deserve worse.

“Goodnight, Your Majesty.” She makes to leave.

“Lilliver,” I mumble into the floor. She pauses. “Why didn’t she come back?”

“Your Majesty?”

“Jude,” I say. “Why didn’t she come back?” The earth is wet beneath my face, for some reason.

The Bomb pads over to me so silently that when she tugs my arm to get me up, I flinch in surprise. “You exiled her, that’s why,” she says shortly, practically throwing me onto my bed.

“But she was supposed to come back. She was—” I retch, and Lilliver takes a hasty step back. “She could have come back. But she hates me. And now she never will.”

The Bomb throws a metal bucket at my feet with a clang. “Sleep well, Your Majesty.”

Chapter Text

I wake the next day with vomit on my shirt, a pounding headache, and no Jude in my bed.

She is just doing this to punish me, I decide as days pass without her. She is mad at my trick, so she’s staying away to hurt me back.

Well, it’s working. Locke insists on throwing revel after revel. At each one, I drink as many bottles of wine as I can as quickly as I can and then retreat to my rooms to throw them all up. Sometimes I cry. Every morning, I wake up alone.

After a week of this, I fold. I decide to write her.

Jude, my letter reads,

You are perhaps only being overcautious, but running a kingdom is dreadfully boring without a Seneschal.

No, I can’t say that. I try again.

Jude,

You are perhaps only being overcautious, but I am writing to inform you that all is settled between the Undersea and Elfhame. The treaties are signed in sea-foam and blood.

Forever yours,

Cardan

I can’t say that, either.

Expectantly, Cardan.

I send it off and wait.

And wait and wait and wait. Another week passes, and she doesn’t come back. Or even write me back. My mood sours enough that my council stops pestering me about my duties to the crown and such boring things as these. It snows on Insear. I am never not hungover or drunk.

My pride has the structural integrity of a dandelion and withers quickly. I write her again.

Jude,

I have to admit that I am disappointed. You’ve never been one to avoid a chance to spar. Frankly, I’m insulted that you’ve turned up your nose at the perfectly good battleground I’ve provided. I will be waiting if you change your mind about a match.

Yours,

Cardan.

I scratch out “yours” and frown at the letter in front of me. If she had wanted to come home, she would have. If she had wanted to reply to my last letter, that, too, she would have done. Jude doesn’t wait for permission. The only explanation this leaves for her continued absence is that it’s my fault—I’ve pushed her away, and this was the last straw for her.

Perhaps she likes it in the mortal lands. Perhaps she is enjoying her vacation from me and my nuisances.

I shove the letter to the back of my desk drawer and open a bottle of wine.

***

That night, the nightmares begin.

“And today I will dispense justice. Jude Duarte, do you deny you murdered Prince Balekin, Ambassador to the Undersea and brother to the High King?”

“I do not deny that we had a duel and that I won it.” Her words have been burned into my head since the second she said them. Everything about this scene is infuriatingly clear—I can make out each face in the crows, hear every individual huff of breath as the audience to Jude’s humiliation listens with bated breath.

“Hear my judgement.” I try to stop the words from coming out, but they do, every single time. “I exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world. Until and unless she is pardoned by the crown, let her not step one foot in Faerie or forfeit her life.”

This is the part where Jude deviates from the script.

“Finally,” she sneers. “I hate this island. I hate being a mortal in a world full of monsters. And I hate you, most of all.” She tears her ring off of her finger and drops it into Nicasia’s hands. “Here. Have him.”

With that, she turns and takes one step onto the soil of the mortal lands.

The second her foot touches the ground, her form begins to shudder. Before my eyes, she withers and decays, rotting her way to the ground, where what is left of her body erupts with maggots.

I try to go to her, but I slam into an invisible that separates our worlds. The watching Folk laugh at my display, at how desperately I try to reach for her.

Jude, I scream, Jude Jude Jude, until my voice is hoarse and she is nothing more than a smear dirt and fungus on the ground.

Sometimes, in the dreams, Jude isn’t angry. Those are worse.

“Cardan,” she sobs, and my heart snaps in two at the sound of my name in her mouth. “Please,” she begs, but I can’t move, can’t speak, can’t help her as she is dragged away from me.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jude cry in real life. The sound of it in my dreams is so painful that I wake up gasping futilely for breath, throat swollen closed and face wet with my own tears, reaching for her and finding only cold, empty sheets.

How thoroughly she ruins me, even in my own head.

After a week of such nightmares, I can stand it no longer. I swallow what’s left of my pride and write her again.

Jude,
Since I cannot imagine there is much in the human lands to interest you, I can only suppose your continued absence in Elfhame is due to me.
I urge you: come be angry at a nearer distance.
Cardan.

Predictably, I hear nothing but silence from her. Predictably, I am still devastated.

The council tries to warn me of war, telling me of unrest in the court of teeth, of Madoc’s inevitable plan to try to usurp my throne. I snap at them to quell it and storm away. I wouldn’t care at all if this wasn’t also Jude’s throne. It will always be hers, even if she refuses to ever claim it.

My mind decides to throw in some variety with the nightmares, and one night, we are no longer in the throne room where I sentence myself to a slow and agonizing death, but rather in a wavy room of cool blue light. The undersea. My body feels heavy and slow in the water, so when I notice Jude, tied with thick ropes of kelp and floating unconscious in the water, my attempt to lunge for her is pathetic at best.

Nicasia is there, of course, and she laughs at me. “Such a fragile thing to choose to love, Cardan,” she tsks, and reaches up with a long finger to pop the bubble of air that encases Jude’s head.

I can do nothing but watch for the long minutes it takes for Jude to drown in front of me while Nicasia laughs.

I wake up with a scream still lodged in my throat and a hand shaking violently at my shoulder. I flinch away and suck in a shuddering breath that feels like the first one my lungs have taken in too long.

The Roach is on babysitting duty tonight, apparently, and he stares at me while I lie there, prone and trembling.

“Go on,” I rasp when he doesn’t speak. “I’m sure I deserve whatever you’d like to say to me. I exiled Jude, after all.” Something leaves my mouth, but I can’t tell if it’s a sob or a laugh. The Roach stays silent. He hands me a bucket.

I empty my dinner of wine into it the second it passes to my hands.

“You were screaming her name.”

How unfortunate that he, too, cannot lie.

“That does fit the circumstances, does it not?” The circumstances being, I made a terrible mistake and I exiled her and I dreamt that she drowned right before my eyes and the last thing I said to her was something cruel.

“You want her to come back.”

“Yes.”

“You exiled her.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought she would come back.”

He stares at me while I calm my breathing. I slump back onto my pillows. Mine, not Jude’s, because I haven’t touched the side of the bed that I deemed hers far too long ago.

He sets a glass of water on my nightstand. “Goodnight, Your Majesty.”

I blink and he is gone.

Chapter Text

Jude,

You are in no mood for games. Very well. I am in no mood for them, either.

Let me write it outright: You are pardoned. I revoke your banishment. I rescind my words. Come home.

Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must.

Just come home.

Cardan.

It’s the third letter I’ve written that morning. Believe it or not, the first two were worse, so they lie crumpled in the back of the desk drawer.

If she does not respond to this letter, I don’t know what I shall do. I have already drunk myself half to death, have already practically begged her to come home. Must I go and fetch her myself? I hate that world of iron and gasoline and asphalt. And I banished her there, to that horrible, acrid place.

There is always the chance that she likes it there. Maybe she’s settling in just fine, happy to be far from me and my games and my faerie inconstance. Maybe she has found a mortal boy who loves her as humans love each other—openly, loudly, affectionately. Maybe he gives her things I cannot. Maybe she will stay there and have round-eared mortal children with him, and I will live here, eternally bound to someone who does not want me and eternally alone. It certainly would be fitting.

Four nightmares later, I’m writing her again.

Jude,

Not even responding to my missives is ridiculous and beneath you and I hate it.

Cardan.

Every few nights, I will awake with a raw throat and one of Jude’s spies from the Court of Shadows silently standing over me with a glass of water in hand.

I keep up appearances, attending revels and council meetings. I snap angrily for no reason and am cruel to folk who don’t deserve it. I am cruelest to Locke, because I have to take it out on someone, and he hurt Jude nearly as much as I did. Although he didn’t drive her from Faerie, so perhaps I am far worse than I thought.

I am writing her a letter nearly every night, but never sending them. They pile up in my desk until I have to shove at the drawer to get it to close. There is more unrest in the Court of Teeth, and the council has begun to speak of marriage alliances. I want to scream that I am already married, but what will that do? I am married to a human, and we don’t need an alliance with the mortal world. Besides, my wife would be nothing but my enemy if she had to choose.

I suppose she already has chosen.

I cave again and send out spies to report to me on how Jude is doing. They tell me she works for a solitary faerie, who gives her odd jobs here and there for human cash. Most of these jobs, appropriately, involve her swinging around her sword and being violent, as usual. That, at least, is comforting. She is well enough, then. Perhaps this means she has found enough excitement in the mortal lands to sustain her.

I desperately hope this is not the case.

On a particularly bad night, I drink more wine than I ever thought possible to fit in my stomach. I am so drunk that I’m not sure if I’m alive, or if I’ve died and gone to some version of a mortal hell.

The latter feels far more likely.

A pen finds its way into my hand, as it often does when I am drunk, and I stare at another blank piece of parchment before me. What can I do, Jude? I want to scream. What can I do to escape your punishment? To bring you home?

I start the letter a few times before my vision, blurred with drink, clears enough to see what I’m writing.

To the High Queen of Elfhame,

Perhaps reminding her of her station will do… something. At this point, I am unsure of the point of these letters, as they are clearly not working to bring her home.

My gaze drifts to the window, where the moon sinks down to make space for the sun. Its white glow is watery, warped, even when I squint. My eyes feel hot.

Above me is the same silvery moon that shines down on you. Looking at it makes me recall the glint of your blade pressed against my throat and other romantic moments.

Indeed, it was those moments in particular that made my heart thump with thrill and terror in equal parts. She is so sharp, and yet so soft, and I miss the way she hated me, hard and furious and wicked.

I do not know what keeps you from returning to the High Court—whether it is vexation with me, or whether, having spent time in the mortal world, you have come to believe that a life free of the Folk is better than one ruling over them.

More than anything, I want that to be untrue. My sentence is an appeal to her ambitions, but it barely hides the panic I feel at the ever-growing possibility that I am the reason she has not come back.

My pen moves with my thoughts before I can stop it.

In my most wretched hours, I believe you will never come back.

Why would you, save for your ambition? You have always known exactly what I am and seen all my failings, all my weaknesses and scars. I flattered myself that at moments you had feelings for me other than contempt, but even were that true, they would be watered wine beside the feast of your other, greater desires.

And yet my heart is buried with you in the strange soil of the mortal world, as it was drowned with you in the cold waters of the undersea.

It was yours before I could admit it, and yours it shall ever remain.

Cardan.

I decide this is the last letter I will send. There, I have poured every embarrassing part of my heart into these words, and if that does not convince her to come home, then I will let her go. The thought of it makes my throat burn. I had kept a sliver of hope tucked tightly to me, but it is slipping out of my weakened grasp, and I will soon have to give it up completely.

Of course I knew she hated me, but I thought it was part of the game we were playing. I thought her contempt was laced with something finer, some sweeter wine. My biggest mistake was assuming she would want to keep playing indefinitely. Surely, she was bored of me anyway, and I simply provided her with an out. She is probably thanking me for it now, as she laughs at my humiliating pleas for her to return to me.

Let her laugh at this one as well, then. I have already lost everything worth having.

I stumble my way across the packed-earth floor to my doorway, and shove the letter into the hands of the nearest guard standing watch. He says something to me, and my wine-addled head cannot pick the words apart from one another. It is all a garbled string of syllables to my ears.

I hiccup. The guard’s mouth tightens, and he repeats his message. I squint, as if I could read the words coming off his lips. Something about… the council. Emergency. Needing the high King. I wave him away, turning back to my chambers and contemplating whether to open another bottle of wine. The council can come to me if they’re so desperate to speak to me.

The guard speaks again, exasperated, and this time I catch a word that clears a little of the fog in my ears.

Jude.

“What?” I slur.

“The council has news of her,” the guard says. His mask of professionalism is cracking, impatience leaking through. I must look like a child to him. I laugh bitterly and sweep my arms out, unbalancing myself and sending my shoulder careening into the doorframe.

“Lead the way,” I order, steadying myself and rubbing the skin where I smacked into the wood.

The guard nods and hands my letter off to someone else as he leads me down the hallway, away from my room and the wine stash therein. I should have brought some for the road, I think to myself as we near the dull, dusty council chamber.

The room is full of tightened mouths and beady eyes, crossed arms and wings snapping with impatience. I slump into my seat and close my eyes. “Go on.”

“Your Majesty,” says Randalin, with a clearing of his throat. It sounds disapproving, and I’m sure he wears an expression to match. I don’t care. “We have news of the mortal. Of Jude.”

My eyes snap open. Right. Jude. I sit up. “Well?”

“Our spies report seeing her leaving the dwelling of Grima Mog. We fear she may be working with the Court of Teeth—with Madoc.”

I frown. My mind is working too slowly for anything to make sense. “Why would she do that?”

“Well,” a councilor begins timidly, “you did exile her, Your Majesty. Perhaps she is angry.”

“Of course she is angry.” She hates me far more than usual after that stunt.

“Well,” he says again, slowly, “perhaps she wants some sort of revenge.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I scoff. “She is the—”

I have to cut myself off before my tongue gets me into more trouble than it’s worth to say the words I’ve been wanting to scream for months. Even at my drunkest, I know better than that. I know not what the council would do if they learned that I had married her. Made her High Queen. Given her more power than any of the Folk in this room could ever dream of having.

So I say, “perhaps,” and close my mouth.

“What now?” the councilor asks.

“What do you mean?” My mind is still lagging, still swimming up through honeyed wine.

“Would you like us to… take care of the liability?”

“No,” I snap, far too quickly. All eyes fix sharply on me. I sigh. “Monitor the situation. Until we are certain that she is working with Madoc, make no move. Understood?”

The councilors murmur their agreement and disband, filtering out of the council chamber one by one until I am the only one left there. I fall asleep in my chair, thinking of long brown hair, tanned skin, rounded cheeks. Jude, I call to her as I slip into my dreams. Come home. Please, Jude, come home.

Chapter Text

The next day, the day that Locke is found dead, washed up on the beach and in multiple pieces, I am miserable.

Not that I have been in any other state for the past six months. But sending that final letter sent me into a mood that has even Randalin scurrying away from me at every opportunity. I have been a menace at recent revels, and I hardly even noticed when they stopped abruptly and I didn’t see Locke for a few days.

Good riddance, I think, because I’m sick of the way my heart leaps in false hope every time I see Taryn, and I’m sick of him narrowing his eyes at me every time I push away the advances of one beautiful faerie or another that I would have usually taken to bed without a second thought. Before Jude.

Of course his death is an unpleasant pang in my chest. We were friends of a sort, after all. But after what he did with Nicasia, then Jude, and the way his arrogance bloomed fully the second I gave him charge of the revels, it is almost a relief. I almost feel bad for thinking that.

But there is very little room in my heart left for feeling, with all the numbing alcohol and nevermore I’ve been pumping into it.

Taryn’s trial, set for the day after Locke's body is found, is more for amusement than anything. The folk have been left without a revel for a few days too long, and making a spectacle of a mortal is always good entertainment. It’s not as if anyone truly thinks she killed him. Taryn is far too soft for that; my money would have been on Jude, if there was any way she would have come back to Elfhame. But of course, she did not.

I take a small break from drinking for the trial—after all, I have to seem like a competent ruler every once in a while. As the comforting blanket of drink seeps away, I feel exposed, naked, without it.

I dress in an outfit that is, surprisingly, unrumpled and un-wine-stained. A rarity in my closet these days—but then again, it is difficult to rumple a golden breastplate. As I settle myself onto the throne, drumming my fingers impatiently on the armrest, I dread seeing Taryn again. She looks far too much like Jude for the state of my health. I hate that they are twins.

I catch my leg bouncing and still it as the doors to the throne room open and Folk spill in. It is only a minute before I catch a glimpse of Taryn pushing through the crowd, being guided towards the petitioners’ stand, her mortal body so out of place in this brugh.

She looks so much like Jude.

She keeps her head down in deference as she steps onto the stand and makes a deep curtsy. The dark bronze fabric of her dress swishes loudly in the waiting silence, and her dark blue gloves bite into the folds of her skirts like she is hanging on for dear life. I suppose she might feel as though she is.

“Taryn?” I prompt, when she doesn’t look up. And then her eyes meet mine.

I blink, because surely I’m mistaken, surely my mind is still recovering from its nightly barrage of wine and nevermore and is playing tricks on my eyes. Because it’s Jude who stands in front of me, hand clasped tightly, standing far too stiffly to be Taryn.

A dozen emotions hit me at once. Disbelief, relief, joy, anger, wariness, confusion. She’s back, my heart sings triumphantly, foolishly. She’s come back to me.

I cover it all up with a lazy smirk, one of many in my arsenal, and force myself not to react. Force myself to play the game. Because it must be a part of the game, if she’s here now, pretending to be Taryn, of all things.

“Your Majesty,” Jude says, and her voice, so like Taryn’s but so different that it’s a wonder no one has noticed it isn’t her, slides happily through my ears.

I can’t keep my smile off my face. I cover it with a regal air. “We recognize your grief,” I say. It is such an effort to keep my tail from lashing excitedly, but surely Jude knows my tells, and would gain some sort of upper hand from knowing how she affects me. If it wasn’t already obvious. “We would not disturb your mourning were it not for the questions over the cause of your husband’s death.”

And everything is so much more interesting now, because if Jude is here, that means that Taryn—sweet, meek Taryn—must have actually done it, and needs Jude to lie for her. I can barely contain my glee. What an entertaining night this will be, indeed.

Distantly, I hear Nicasia speaking behind me. “Do you really think she’s sad?” she asks, and I tilt my head to see she’s speaking to my mother. I nearly roll my eyes. She’s been nothing but a thorn in my side ever since I allowed her to rejoin court.

I watch Jude bite her tongue from snapping a retort at Nicasia. It’s impressive restraint for her.

“Did you kill Locke yourself? Or did you get your sister to do it for you?” Nicasia sneers. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Jude returned to murder Locke for her sister. Or in spite of her sister. I am put out that she put murder ahead of coming to see me on her list of priorities, but I feel as though that’s not the case. I would have known if she was back in Elfhame for a week. Somehow, I would have known.

“Jude is in exile,” Jude says. “And I’ve never hurt Locke.”

Her voice is like a clear mountain spring. Her eyes are bright and uncertain, but steely as ever. Does she realize she’s taken a fighting stance as Nicasia has spoken?

“No?” I drawl. I lean forward, my prompting her an excuse to get closer, to get a better look at her. There are dark circles under her eyes, and she looks unwell. She looks so beautiful.

“I lov…” Jude tries. She forces a sob, and I nearly roll my eyes at the performance. How no one notices her terrible acting is beyond me. “I loved him.”

Somehow, although I know she is pretending, hearing her profess her love for Locke still hurts.

“Sometimes I believed you did, yes,” I say, trying to sound airy, unconcerned. But my heart is speeding and my tail twitches, betraying me. “But you could well be lying. I’m going to put a glamour on you. All it will do is force you to tell the truth.”

I cast the glamour, knowing she will be able to lie through it anyway, and clear my throat. “Now. Tell me only the truth. What is your name?”

“Taryn Duarte,” she recites with a curtsy. It’s a terrible curtsy, and it’s never been more evident how unsuited she is for kneeling under others. “Daughter of Madoc, wife of Locke, subject of the High King of Elfhame.”

“What fine courtly manners.” I smile at how it must chafe at her to act so subserviently when she has the entire kingdom in the palm of her hand.

“I was well instructed.”

Enough of this. Onto the fun part. “Did you kill Locke?”

The Folk around us quiet, waiting to see if Taryn will confess. This is the true entertainment.

“No,” she says, glaring at Nicasia. “Nor did I orchestrate his death. Perhaps we ought to look to the sea, where he was found.” A little more fire than Taryn would have had, but her performance is good enough.

I can feel Nicasia’s annoyance. “We know that Jude murdered Balekin. She confessed as much. And I have long suspected her of killing Valerian. If Taryn isn’t the culprit, then Jude must be. Queen Orlagh, my mother, swore a truce with you. What possible gain could she have from the murder of your Master of Revels? She knew he was your friend—and mine.” That she puts Locke’s court title before his position as my friend is annoying, but not untrue. He hasn’t truly been my friend for a while.

But he has been hers, and she truly does seem upset by his death. More so than I am, anyway.

I turn my attention back to Jude. From my angle, she must tilt her head to look up at me, making her eyes appear wider, more innocent. But she cannot hide the cunning gleam, the hint of hatred she holds for Nicasia, from those fawn-brown eyes.

“Well, what do you think?” I ask her. “Did your sister do it? And don’t tell me what I already know. Yes, I sent Jude into exile. That may or may not have deterred her.”

I watch ire flash across her expression as she struggles to keep her mask. So, exile is a sore subject. Noted. “She had no reason to hate Locke. I don’t think she wished him ill.”

“Is that so?” I challenge, because there is no way Jude of all people didn’t wish Locke any ill.

My mother’s songbird voice interrupts. “Perhaps it is only Court gossip, but there is a popular tale about you, your sister, and Locke. She loved him, but he chose you.” She looks down her nose at Jude. “Some sisters cannot bear to see each other happy.”

I finally deign to look at Lady Asha, trying to keep the annoyance from my face. I don’t want her interruptions and her gossip. I don’t want her and her obvious distaste for Jude poisoning this scene.

“Jude never loved Locke,” Jude blurts, snapping my attention back to herself. Her cheeks are red—in anger? “She loved someone else.”

I suck in a breath.

“He’s the one she’d want dead.”

That breath catches in my throat, and I can’t hold back my flinch. It’s not the words she spits that hurts—I’ve known she wasn’t fond of me for ages—it’s that in the same breath, she confessed to loving me, and said it with such grief and hurt and raw honesty. It’s that she hasn’t forgiven me. That I’m not entirely sure she is playing the game anymore. That she loved me once, past tense, and I sent her away. I ruined it.

Else, she was confessing to loving someone else, the thought of which hurts even more.

“Enough,” I snap, trying to keep the shake from my voice. “I have heard all I care to on this subject—”

“No!” Nicasia shouts, and I want to strangle her right here and now. The crowd shifts and murmurs like a wave—she acts out of turn. “Taryn could have a charm on her, something that makes her resistant to glamours.”

I glare at her with all the anger I feel in that moment, all the hurt that Jude has hit me with again, and it feels good to be angry even if it is under the false pretense of her having undermined my authority as the High King. But the moment quickly fades as I realize the opening she has given me, and excitement roots itself once again. I smirk again at Jude, slowly and poisonously. “I suppose she’ll have to be searched.”

Nicasia smiles cruelly along with me, because she thinks the game is humiliation—she doesn’t realize that my heart is beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings, my palms are sweating, my breaths are skipping in anticipation of being alone with Jude. Will she hate me? Will she stay? Will she—

Jude sniffs. “My husband was murdered. And whether or not you believe me, I do mourn him. I will not make a spectacle of myself for the Court’s amusement when his body is barely cold.”

This is exactly what I counted on her saying, practically begging me to take her into a room alone. “As you wish,” I say grandly. “Then I suppose I’ll have to examine you alone in my chambers.”

Chapter Text

I can hear Jude stomping along angrily behind me. I haven’t been in such a delightful mood for months.

I want to ask her so many things. If she got my riddle after all; what she was doing in the mortal lands for so long; what on earth she was doing meeting with Grima Mog, of all people; if she missed me; if Taryn actually killed Locke; if she’s come back to rule or to break my heart again…

But we are escorted by guards, so I keep my mouth shut. I wish they would walk faster. My rooms have never seemed as far away as they have when the promise of Jude lies within them.

A servant swishes past me, a tray of glass in her hand, and a split second later there comes a loud crash and the shattering of glass. I whirl to see Jude staring at the serving girl in surprise, then bending down to help her gather the glass. The serving girl waves away her help and a guard tugs Jude along.

I can’t help but notice the odd expression on her face. Did the servant say something when they had their heads bowed together over the mess? Perhaps that is another question to add to my growing list.

Finally, finally, we reach my rooms. The guards open the doors and I practically jump onto the sofa as they shut them behind Jude, closing her in with me.

Jude. Me. Alone.

I swing my feet up to rest on a stone table by the couch.

“Well?” I say, unable to hold in my grin any longer. Jude is here. Jude is here. She came back to me, and all is right.

She stares at me uncertainly, still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. I pat the couch beside me, scooting over a bit to exaggerate the room I left her. “Didn’t you get my letters?” I prompt when she says nothing.

“What?” she asks. She is still standing there. She looks so uncomfortable in Taryn’s gown.

“You never replied to a one.” I am getting nervous as she continues to stand there, to say nothing, and my tongue rambles along without me. “I began to wonder if you’d misplaced your ambition in the mortal world.”

She stares at me like I’m mad. “Your Majesty,” she says, with a formality that does not belong to her. “I thought you brought me here to assure yourself I had neither charm nor amulet.”

This is an interesting direction to take the game. I raise an eyebrow, and my cheeks hurt from all the smiling I’m doing. I turn it into a smirk. “I will if you like. Shall I command you to remove your clothes? I don’t mind.” A thrill runs through my spine at the thought of her stripping away that horrible gown and revealing miles of tan skin, flecked with white scars.

“What are you doing?” Jude demands, letting her hands fall to her sides in exasperation. “What are you playing at?”

“Jude,” I say incredulously. Maybe this isn’t part of the game. “You can’t really think I don’t know it’s you. I knew you from the moment you walked into the brugh.” Now I am the one who’s confused. Did she really think I wouldn’t recognize her? Does she really think I can’t tell her apart from her sister? Did she not come home for me, but for something else? Was I a convenient stop on her list?

Jude speaks before my mind can run any farther. “That’s not possible,” she insists, shaking her head furiously. She looks so apprehensive, almost… afraid of me. Why would she be afraid of me? No, she wouldn’t be. I must be misreading her.

I study her. She is so tense, although that is nothing out of the ordinary. Jude is always poised to fight. Her eyes are wide, small wisps of hair are peeling away from her bun, and what I can see of her neck and chest peeking out of her dress are slightly flushed.

I stand. “Come closer.”

She steps back. Away from me. Always away from me. I don’t understand. I thought she wanted to come home, I thought she wanted to see me, I thought… I thought so many things, and now I am not sure of a one of them.

I feel my smile melt off of my face as quickly as it had appeared there. “My councilors told me that you met with an ambassador from the Court of Teeth, that you must be working with Madoc now. I was unwilling to believe it, but seeing the way you look at me, perhaps I must. Tell me it’s not true.”

She scoffs at me, as if it’s truly such a preposterous claim. “I’m not the betrayer here,” she tells me, and the barb hits true. I hold back a flinch.

“Are you angry about—” I study her face again. Angry, she is not. Her eyebrows are not furrowed together in that way they usually are when she is irked or furious. Instead, her eyes dart around the room, as if looking for an escape. As if she doesn’t already know every inch of this room, from when she scanned it to deem it suitable for me to live in.

The emotion that leaves is… fear, then. I study her harder. “No, you’re afraid. But why would you be afraid of me?” If anything, I am the one who should be afraid of her, for all the power she holds over me.

“I’m not,” she says, and I see her thumb run over the tip of her glove, where her missing finger should be. She must have stuffed it with something, for the glove doesn’t sag. She is lying, then, but which part is the lie? “I hate you. You sent me into exile. Everything you say to me, everything you promise, it’s all a trick. And I, stupid enough to believe you once.”

I shake my head. “Of course it was a trick—” my sentence snaps off when I see the blade snake into her hand.

I am so confused.

A loud boom shakes the room, sending us both stumbling across the room and shaking books and trinkets from their shelves. Something shatters. I brace myself on the couch, and my eyes meet Jude’s, wide and surprised.

She might be working with Madoc.

My eyes narrow. She hesitates. Swords begin to clash in a dissonant symphony from down the hall—too close for my taste.

It is as if Jude never left. She slips easily back into the role of my bossy Seneschal, unsheathing her knife and saying in a voice that is not to be argued with, “Stay here.” She heads for the door.

I, of course, argue anyway as she approaches the only thing separating the safety of this room from the chaos outside of it. “Jude, don’t—”

She slips into the hall. I hesitate, only for a moment, before starting after her. I’ve learned enough in the Court of Shadows to keep myself alive out there.

Right?

I slyfoot to the door and ease it open, a knife in hand—only to see a hallway full of dead guards and a sudden, eerie silence. Jude is nowhere to be seen.

I’ve lost her, again, and this time, I don’t even know where to look to get her back.

I want to get her back. I don’t want to lose her.

In my panic, my magic reaches for her. I can feel the land responding, curling in on itself, life and growing things surrounding the brugh in an attempt to seal her in, to keep her with me. Vines close every door. Roots seal every window. But even as my magic spreads and reaches and grabs for her, trying to keep her close, I can feel that it is no use.

Jude is gone.

Chapter Text

I dart through the tunnels to the Court of Shadows, where the Roach and the Bomb immediately attach themselves to my side. How annoyingly loyal of them to worry about me keeping my life, even after what I’ve done. I wish they wouldn’t. Maybe things would be easier if Madoc just killed me already and called it a day. Not maybe—they certainly would be. For everyone involved.

Nonetheless, they are determined to keep me alive, so alive I stay, playing hand after hand of cards with the Roach until the Bomb deems it safe to reenter the castle. They’ve “dealt with” every one of Madoc’s guards that I trapped inside the castle with my magic. I find myself unable to care less how their miserable lives ended.

All I care about is Jude.

My thoughts chant nothing but her name.

The minute I get the chance to slip away, I do, using the skills the Court of Shadows has taught me against them. As I summon a ragwort steed and take off over the sea, I think to myself that the castle guards need much better training if it is so easy to smuggle myself—their High King—out from under their noses. Or perhaps I am simply exceptional at slyfooting.

The mortal world stinks of iron and exhaust, and I wrinkle my nose against it the second my ragwort steed touches down and crumbles into dust. Despite the smell, I am still entranced by the strange trappings of this world—the metal carriages drawn without horses, the hard asphalt, the wires suspended in the sky that serve no use I can see. It is unsettling. I do not understand why Vivienne chooses to live here over Elfhame. I do not understand why Jude did not want to come home.
I know which apartment building they live in, but not which door. I pace outside the building for a few minutes before someone approaches me on the sidewalk, and I stop them.

“Excuse me,” I say with a brilliant smile, “would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of the dwelling of Jude and Vivienne Duarte?”

“Uh,” says the mortal. “I don’t know who that is.” He scurries away from me as fast as his legs will take him.

I resort to knocking on each door in the building until I find the right one. Luckily it only takes two wrong doors before I’m knocking on the third door and hearing Vivienne’s hushed voice behind it as her footsteps pad closer.

The door opens a fraction of an inch—then a yellow cat eye widens in surprise and Vivienne opens the door a few more inches to glare at me frostily.

“Your highness,” she greets me, although her tone lacks any and all respect that my title demands of her.

“Vivienne.” I incline my head. “I—”

“Jude’s not here,” she interrupts coldly.

I grit my teeth, patience thinning rapidly. “Do hospitality customs in the mortal realm preclude inviting visitors inside one’s home? Or is that a personal habit of yours?”

Her eyes narrow. “Jude isn’t here,” she repeats, “and I doubt you’ve come for anything more. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

I shove my boot into the gap between the door and the frame as she tries to slam it closed.

“If not here, then where is she?” I snap. “If she’s gone with Madoc, you must have some inkling of where she is. She is your sister.”

Vivienne’s glare retwists itself into a look of confusion. “Wait, Jude’s gone with Madoc?”

“Yes,” I say impatiently. “Now if you would just—”

A thud and a muffled curse from behind Vivienne make her stiffen, and through the crack in the door, I see a flash of brown hair and a pink dress. Taryn Duarte.

“Company?” I say icily.

“No business of yours,” says Vivienne.

I sigh. This is all so convoluted, and for what reason? I couldn’t care less at this point what Taryn is doing here in the mortal realm, if she killed Locke, if Vivienne is harboring her. “Look. I swear to you, I won’t hurt Taryn for whatever murders she did or did not commit while I am here. Or ever, probably, seeing as I don’t particularly care how Locke ended up how he did. I just need to speak to you. Now will you please let me come inside and have a civil conversation?”

Vivienne stares at me for a moment longer, then reluctantly swings open the door and gestures for me to come inside.

The first thing that hits me when I enter the apartment is the smell of her. The human scent of salt and pine musk that I’ve tasted on her skin. It makes my heart crawl up somewhere high in my throat to lodge itself until I clear it forcefully, lowering myself onto the sagging couch in the living room. I ignore all the other small traces of Jude I see in the apartment—Oak’s drawing of himself, Jude, and Vivienne holding hands, the mortal coat hanging on the hook next to Vivienne’s, the third cup in the sink. It’s all so… mortal. Maybe she truly is happy here.

Taryn stares at me from the kitchen with wide, frightened doe eyes as she prepares tea. Vivienne paces back and forth in front of me. She’s making me dizzy.

“So,” she begins, almost tentatively. “You saw Jude, then? In Elfhame?”

“Yes,” I say evenly. “How any of you thought I would mistake her for Taryn, I will never know.”

Taryn lets out a noise that sounds suspiciously like a whimper that she quickly covers with a cough.

“Oh, relax,” I snap. “I don’t care if you killed Locke. Few will care who did it and fewer still will miss him. I pardon you, alright?”

Taryn averts her eyes anyways.

“Regardless,” I continue, “Madoc staged a coup during the trial.”

Vivienne sucks in a breath.

“He escaped, and I think he took Jude, and—and I need to be sure she’s alright. I must speak with her.”

“What, so you can punish her for going back to Elfhame under exile? You’re mad if you think I’ll help you find her.”

“So you don’t know where she is.”

“No, and it seems better if you don’t, either.” Vivienne sounds worried about Jude, and wary of me.

“I swear to you, I won’t punish Jude for breaking her exile,” I grit out. “I can’t understand why you’re all so afraid of me. It’s quite flattering, though.”

Taryn hands me a mug of dandelion tea as Vivienne snorts. “Flattering.” The mug is shaped like a unicorn, although its horn is exaggerated and fat, and its hooves are not cloven, as they should be. I frown at the anatomical flaws and wonder why Vivienne would own such a thing.

The more I talk to Vivienne about Jude, the more worried I become. Everything is coming together in the way I’ve been dreading. I didn’t want to believe Jude would do such a thing, but there is no other explanation for her actions, considering what Vivienne knows.

“So you did not know. About Jude working with Madoc, and the Court of Teeth,” I say. I burn my tongue on my tea.

“About what?” Vivienne exclaims. “Jude would never do that. She hasn’t even spoken to Madoc since… well, since you exiled her from Elfhame.”

“She met with Grima Mog.” I am only getting more confused, the longer we talk.

“She would never do such a thing,” Vivienne protests. “She’s been taking work from the solitary fae. Maybe it was part of a job.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“She would never betray Elfhame like that,” Taryn adds in a wavering voice. It is strange how alike she is to Jude in looks yet how comparably lacking in bravery.

“She wouldn’t,” Vivienne says vehemently. “She was very… upset, when you exiled her. But no matter how upset she was, she would never betray you. I think she only ever wanted to get back to you—to home, I mean.”

I know they are right. I know in my heart that Jude would not betray me—I do not think she is capable of such a thing. Her heart is too human, too loyal, to even think of it.

“Well, then,” I say. “We seem to have solved nothing.”

“No,” Vivienne agrees.

“Have you any idea where she might go?” I plead. I look at Vivienne, then Taryn, in one last ditch attempt to get even a small clue about Jude’s whereabouts.
They shake their heads, and my heart hits my stomach. “You’ll tell us if you find her, though?” Vivienne asks.

“If you’ll do the same,” I assent. I place my barely-touched tea on the low table in front of me and stand up. Somehow, I feel worse than when I arrived. Perhaps Taryn poisoned my tea, I think hopefully. “Enjoy your freedom, Taryn.”

Chapter Text

My visit to the mortal world leaves me in a bad mood, on top of the perpetual bad mood I’ve been in for months. But I’m putting it to good use this time—I spend the next day speaking with my councilors instead of drinking, getting affairs in order, acting, for once, as a High King is meant to act. I won’t be able to find Jude if my head is stuck in a wine bottle, I suppose. It’s truly a matter of practicality.

I’ve just dispatched a second round of scouts to look for her when the strangest trio bursts into the throne room and pushes faeries aside in their path to my throne. Taryn is breathing hard, and even Vivienne looks a little rattled; but the most striking thing in the picture is the third person of their trio.

Grima Mog smiles up at me with too-sharp teeth. “Your Majesty.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I ask, successfully keeping my voice relatively even despite the anticipation and worry flooding through me.

“We bring news,” Vivienne says. “Best discussed in private.”

“Leave us,” I say to no one in particular, and everyone floods out of the throne room save for Taryn, Vivienne, and Grima Mog. I could enjoy being High King, I think, if it didn’t make me feel so alone, so… apart from every other faerie. Even Nicasia defers to me now, when before she would have pushed back.

“We received a note from Oriana,” Vivienne says the second the door slams behind the last straggler. “We aren’t sure if it’s a trap.”

“And what, exactly, does Grima Mog have to do with any of this?” I ask, reaching for the note. I use all my concentration to keep my hand from trembling.

“Jude challenged her to a duel,” Vivienne explains. “She isn’t working for the Court of Teeth—neither of them is. Grima Mog works for us now.”

“Not quite yet,” Grima Mog says. “I’ve been promised quite a sum for my help, and I intend to collect first.”

The look on Taryn’s face makes it quite clear that they are counting on me to pay that sum. But I can hardly bring myself to care, because my body is too busy basking in the relief I felt when it was confirmed Jude has not been working with Madoc.

I turn my attention to the letter clutched too tightly in my fist. I smooth out the paper and read it once, twice, again.

“It must be a trap,” I mutter. Oriana beseeching Vivienne to come pick Jude up from the Court of Teeth? There’s no way it’s a genuine letter. Madoc is probably planning to capture Taryn and Vivienne the second they get there. “And I think,” I say, as a smile spreads across my face, “we must fall into it.”

***

The rest of the day passes quickly. We send a letter in return. I argue for an hour with the Roach until he finally agrees to let me come, on the condition that I wear my cloak that Mother Marrow gave me.

“I don’t know how you managed to acquire that thing,” he mutters, “but don’t you dare take it off for even a second. Do you hear me?”

“I thought being High King was supposed to mean that everyone follows my orders,” I grumble. “I’m fairly certain you’re not meant to order me around.” But I agree anyway, because even I am not stupid enough to make myself extra vulnerable out of spite.

The plan is this: the Roach and I will sneak into camp to grab Jude, and Taryn, Vivienne, and Grima Mog will go to the spot Oriana asked them to meet at and keep her and Madoc occupied long enough for us to get out. If everything goes to plan, Grima Mog will be enough protection for all three of them, and we’ll meet back at the brugh. I am almost certain that all will not go to plan, but I refuse to let myself dwell on things and instead focus on making sure as much goes right as possible. I miss Jude. I cannot even be grateful for the dreamless sleep I’ve been getting lately—it has robbed me of the one chance I have to study her face. I’ve become afraid that her features are ephemeral, that I will soon forget the lighter flecks of brown in her eyes, the three freckles at the left corner of her mouth, the soft, light hairs that cover the expanse of her skin.

Too soon, it is time to leave. I am made to change, because, according to Vivienne, “You’ll never sneak out of the castle successfully wearing that.”

“What’s wrong with this?” I frown, looking down at my outfit. It is one of my more moderate ones, a tunic decorated with velvety black raven’s feathers.

“You look like a High King. You need to look normal,” she tells me. I grumble as I wipe the glitter from my face and the kohl from my eyes, slide the rings from my fingers, and don a boring, brown woolen outfit along with my impermeable cloak.

“Better,” she says when I emerge.

“How nice that I have your approval on my choice of attire, Vivienne.” I scowl. “If ever I have need of it again, I’ll be sure to come to you.”

“You already have it,” she mutters in a strange voice. I look at her again but she is already mounting her steed.

I hardly register our journey to the Court of Teeth. I follow the Roach blindly, unable to think of anything but Jude. I think I am more anxious to see her than I am to sneak into an enemy camp where Madoc awaits, most likely itching to take my head clean off my shoulders.

We arrive early to scope out the camp. The Roach has us perched in a tree for the best vantage point, and it isn’t long before my legs have gone stiff beneath me and I have decided I would not be so accomplished as a bird. I bite my tongue before a complaint can sneak out and try to shift my weight without rustling the leaves.

“Look,” the Roach hisses, and I think he’s reprimanding me for a second before I see her. Jude’s brown hair and curvy figure are unmistakable to me, and it doesn’t hurt that she stands in contrast to Oriana’s pale blue skin as they exit a tent together. I hold my breath as we watch them exchange a few words; then Jude waves farewell and ducks into another tent a few yards away. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until my chest starts to burn and it comes out shakily.

I can feel the Roach staring at me, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the tent she has just disappeared into. Would that I were a dragon or a giant bird, that I could swoop in and fly her back home in my arms. I am impatient to have her back, to just see her, to hear her voice and smell her mortal scent of salt.

“We must wait until the camp sleeps,” the Roach reminds me.

“I know,” I snap. How my legs ache.

“Peace, Your Highness,” the Roach murmurs. “Jude awaits.”

***

It feels like a hundred hours pass before the Roach finally signals for me to climb down from the tree. We drop to the ground as silent as spiders and begin to creep across the camp, towards Jude’s tent.

It is easy, too easy, and I can tell the Roach is unsettled by it as we slip into Jude’s tent.

In the dim light, she looks peaceful for the first time in her life; there is no anger, no tension, coiled in the set of her expression, ready to spring. Her lips are slightly parted, and her face is smooth from wrinkles. Her hair is splayed about her like a dark halo.

She gets more beautiful every time I see her.

I take a step forward, and the Roach catches my arm. “Be careful how you wake her,” he whispers. “Don’t startle her. We don’t want to draw attention.”

I shake him off and approach her bedside. For one second, I let myself imagine we are a normal husband and wife, and I belong in that bed alongside her. Then the second is over and I press my hand over her mouth.

Her eyes fly open and her body jerks. My side explodes in pain and it’s all I can do to stop myself from swearing loudly. How could I forget her propensity for violence, even in sleep?

The Roach, of course, laughs at me, snickering in a way that should be very inappropriate in the presence of a king. I glare at him in the dark.

“Jude,” he says, “we’ve come to save you. Screaming would really hurt the plan.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t stab you!” she hisses, and I’m so happy to hear her voice—too happy.

“I told him to watch out,” the Roach says, striking a match. In the dull yellow light, her skin looks gold. “But would he listen? I’d have ordered him, if not for the little matter of his being the High King.”

“Cardan sent you?” Jude asks, blinking blearily. I realize that with her mortal eyesight, she hasn’t seen me yet, doesn’t even realize it was I who awoke her.

“Not exactly,” the Roach says casually.

I grin at her as her eyes finally adjust and slide to me. She looks at me like I am a ghost, eyes wide and mouth open, like I am the last person she would have expected to see.

It hurts, a little.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

That hurts too. I can’t tell what that tone is that runs under her voice, and it makes me nervous.

“I said that, too. Really, I miss the days when you were in charge. High Kings shouldn’t be gallivanting around like common ruffians.”

I force a laugh and hope neither of them notices. “What about uncommon ruffians?”

And then Jude pulls back her blanket to get out of bed and every coherent thought falls out of my brain.

She’s dressed in what can hardly be called a nightgown, for all it covers. The fabric is so sheer that I can see the rosy peaks of her breasts rise and fall with her breathing, the dark triangle at the juncture of her thighs. I can see every curve I’ve ever dreamt of touching. And it’s not like it was in the small, green room by the throne room where I tasted her for the first time; this is somehow incredibly more intimate, and I have never been gladder that the Roach has the sense to look away, unlike I. I finally squeeze my eyes shut when her cheeks flush in embarrassment under my scrutiny.

“How did you find me?” she says evenly as she pulls on a dress and reaches for her knife. The Roach glances at me and I steel myself to answer, scrambling to pull myself together and think of a way to answer her question. It’s easiest to just tell the truth plainly, even if we aren’t fully sure if we can trust her.

“Your sister Vivienne,” I explain. “She came to the High King with a message from your stepmother. She worried it was a trap. I was worried it was a trap, too. A trap for him. Maybe even for myself.”

“Vivi went to you?”

Every word out of her mouth gives us a little more information about where she stands and confuses me even more.

“We spoke after Madoc carried you off from the palace,” I say slowly. “And whom did I find in her little dwelling but Taryn? We all had quite a lot to say to one another.” I can’t quite keep the bite out of my tone. I think I resent Taryn and even I don’t understand why.

“I can’t go with you yet,” Jude says, pulling on her boots. “There’s something I have to do. And something I need you to give me.”

Ah, my Jude. My lovely, entirely frustrating Jude. I roll my eyes. “Perhaps you could just allow yourself to be rescued. For once.”

“Perhaps,” she counters, “you could just give me what I want.”

What would she do, I wonder, if she knew I want nothing more than to give her everything she’s ever asked for?

The Roach replies before I can open my mouth to say something stupid aloud. “What? Let’s put our cards on the table, Jude. Your sisters and their friends are waiting with the horses. We need to be swift.”

Jude straightens at that, and her tone sharpens. “You let them come?” she demands.

“They insisted, and since they were the ones who know where you were, we had no choice.” The Roach is clearly frustrated, and it’s leaking into his voice. He’s worried we’ll get caught. He’s worrying about the plan going awry. Every second we spend arguing with Jude in this tent is precious.

“This is dosed with a sleeping draught,” Jude explains, holding up a small vial that gleams in the matchlight. “I was going to take this to some guards, steal a key, and free a prisoner. We were supposed to escape together.”

“Prisoner?” asks the Roach. I must admit she’s lost me as well, but she doesn’t slow for us—her mouth runs on.

“I saw the maps in Madoc’s war room. I know the formation in which he means to sail against Elfhame, and I know the number of his ships. I know the soldiers in this encampment and which Courts are on his side. I know what Grimsen is making in his forge. If Cardan will promise me safe passage to Elfhame and lift my exile once we’re there, I will give all that to you. Plus, you will have the prisoner delivered into your hands before he can be used against you.”

I stare at her as she speaks as though I am not there in the tent with her, barely a full pace away. Lift her exile? Is she serious? I study her face and cannot tell if this is some kind of mortal jest. Surely, she cannot be serious; surely, after all this, she has realized that she was never truly exiled.

“If you’re telling the truth. And not leading us into a net of Madoc’s making,” says the Roach.

“I’m on my own side. You of all people should understand that,” Jude replies.

The Roach gives me a look but I’m too busy still staring at Jude to decipher the meaning in it. You were never exiled, Jude, I want to scream at her. You were supposed to pardon yourself. You were supposed to understand my trick. You were supposed to stay with me.

I say none of that. I clear the words out of my throat and lift my chin.

“Since you’re mortal, Jude, I cannot hold you to your promises. But you can hold me to mine: I guarantee you safe passage. Come back to Elfhame with me, and I will give you the means to end your exile.”

The look on her face is murderous and it makes me heart beat harder. “The means to end it?”

“Come back to Elfhame, tell me what you would tell me, and your exile will end. I promise.” If Jude still wants to play this game, then play it we will.

Jude regards me carefully, dissecting my words for a loophole, and nods. “Madoc is keeping the Ghost prisoner. Grimsen has the key we need—”

“You want to free him?” the Roach interrupts. “Let’s gut him like a haddock. Quicker and far more satisfying.” I must agree with the Roach’s logic, and open my mouth to say as much, but Jude is quicker.

“Madoc has his true name. He got it from Locke. Whatever punishment the Ghost deserves, you can dole it out once he’s back in the Court of Shadows.” She takes a breath. “But it’s not death.”

“Locke?” I sigh. I am so sick of Locke and the problems he causes me, even while dead. “Yes, all right. What do we have to do?”

“I was planning to sneak into Grimsen’s forge and steal the key to the Ghost’s chains.”

Of course she was. We truly should have anticipated some sort of death-wish heroics from her when formulating our plan.

“I’ll help you,” the Roach says. I am about to offer my help, but he turns to me before I can. “But you, sire, will absolutely not. Wait for us with Vivienne and the others.”

I grind my teeth. I am sick of being treated like I have the fragility of a rose petal. “I am coming,” I say imperiously, mustering all the High Kingliness I can. “You cannot order me otherwise.”

The Roach shakes head. “I can learn from Jude’s example, though. I can ask for a promise. If we’re spotted, if we’re set upon, promise to go back to Elfhame immediately. You must do everything in your power to get to safety, no matter what.”

My hands curl into fists and I look to Jude, hoping she will be on my side for once. If anyone would be willing to put me in a slightly unsafe situation, it would be her; but she says nothing. I frown. “Although I am wearing the cloak Mother Marrow made me, the one that will turn any blade, I still promise to run, tail between my legs. And since I have a tail, that should be amusing for everyone.” I cross my arms across my chest. “Are you satisfied?”

The Roach grunts in approval and we sneak from the tent. Some soldiers are gathered outside, playing games, drinking, and singing; but we slyfoot away easily. As we creep along, I cannot stop thinking about the heat of Jude’s body at my back, her soft breathing. I want to hold her so badly it hurts. I want to speak with her, candidly for once, alone for once; there is so much that needs to be said. When we get back to Elfhame, I promise myself, I will do everything in my royal power to make sure we can have just ten minutes alone. It is so long overdue.

“So you’ve seen this key?” the Roach asks when we approach Grimsen’s forge. He wipes away grime on a windowpane to peer through it, but even with our fae eyesight, I doubt it is easy to make anything out.

“It’s crystal and hanging on the wall,” says Jude. Her shoulder presses into my elbow. “And he’s begun a new sword for Madoc.”

“I wouldn’t mind ruining that before it’s put to my throat,” I say. No one laughs.

“Look for the big one. That’ll be it,” Jude says instead.

Roach frowns at her, waiting for some elaboration.

“Really big,” she offers.

I snort.

“And we ought to be careful. There are bound to be traps.”

Ever so insightful, my Jude. A smile lifts the corner of my mouth before I tamp it down quickly.

“We’ll go in and out fast,” the Roach says decisively. “But I would feel a lot better if the both of you stayed out and let me be the one to go in.”

Neither of us speaks, even though a tiny, unrealistic corner of me holds hope that Jude will suddenly find some sense and change her mind about going in. She does not, of course, and the Roach purses his lips in a way that says it was worth a try and gets to work picking the lock. It’s only a moment before he gets it unlocked, oils the door’s hinges, and swings it open.

There is so much to see in this forge—it’s cluttered with gadgets of every shape and size. The sword, as it turns out, did not require much more of a description than Jude supplied—it is huge, and lies prominently on the worktable before us.

The Roach heads directly for it, moving swiftly and quietly. Just as he reaches the table, a noise like a clock chiming splits the silence and a door opens in the wall across from us, revealing a round hole. For a split second, I am frozen—and then Jude shouts in warning and I lunge to get in front of her, holding up my cloak to shield the both of us.

Darts clatter against my cloak and fall harmlessly to the ground. Jude stares at me, like she can’t believe I actually meant to help her. I stare back at her, because I can’t believe she is so surprised that that was my first instinct. It will always be my first instinct, I think, to go to her.

A metal bird pokes out of the hole in the wall and begins to cry, “Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!”

And everything catches up with me at once—the implications of it all, of the alarm, of Jude insisting we come here—

A few feet away, the Roach is sliding to the floor, face pale and drawn, and for the first time I notice the darts peppering his skin. On their own, they should do little damage; but it’s clear they’ve been poisoned.

Jude picks her way over to him. “What was he hit with?” I call.

“Deathsweet,” she replies, her voice even despite the slight tremor in her hands. “The Bomb can help him. She can make an antidote.” She’s speaking too fast, nearly tripping over her own tongue.

I come to her side and lift the Roach into my arms. “Tell me this wasn’t your plan,” I beg her. “Tell me.” Please, Jude. I can’t lose you again.

“No. Of course not,” she insists, and maybe it makes me a fool to believe her, but I want to. “I swear it.”

“Come then,” I urge as the bird keeps up its chant. We have seconds, maybe, before soldiers are upon us. “My pocket is full of ragwort. We can fly.”

Jude shakes her head.

“Jude.” I can’t be separated from her again. I just got her back. My lungs feel small and tight in my chest.

“Vivi and Taryn are still waiting for me,” she says. “They won’t know what’s happened. If I don’t go to them, they’ll be caught.”

I know she’s lying, I know it, but the Roach is dying in my arms and there’s no time to argue. All I can do is try to make sure she gets back to me.

I undo my cloak clumsily and shove it into her arms. “Take this, and do not stop.”

Soldiers swarm the forge as we run in opposite directions, and I lose sight of her for the second time in a week.

Chapter Text

As soon as I get back to Elfhame, I leave the Roach in the Bomb’s arms and slip away as fast as I can. Everything is too much and I don’t think I can handle much more of it.

An hour of pacing in my rooms later, I am only more panicked than when I began. Jude should have been back by now. Vivienne and Taryn are nowhere to be found.

The knock on my door nearly makes me jump out of my skin. In rushes Baphen, a note clutched in his trembling fist. “Your Majesty,” he says, bowing shallowly and shoving the note at me. “There’s been a threat on your life.”

I sigh, unsurprised, because of course there is. It’s not any surprise that Madoc is out to kill me. We’ve known that for months. “There are many threats on my life, Baphen. Such is the nature of being High King.”

“Read it,” he insists, adding a quiet, “Your Majesty,” when I glare at him.

The note is short and simple. It reads,

Expect an assassination attempt, most likely in the great hall. Keep the High King in seclusion.

I recognize her handwriting. Of course I do—she was my seneschal, after all, and we did go to school together. I must have read hundreds of pages of her neat scrawl over the years we’ve known each other.

“Alright,” I sigh. “I’ll take care of it.”

“My lord, we should really—”

“Tonight’s feast will proceed as normal,” I interrupt. “I will have an extra guard and everyone will be screened at the door. Is that enough?”

“My lord—”

“Great. I will see you tonight,” I tell him, and slam the door behind him.

***

When I enter the great hall that night, against all better judgement, I am redressed as a king, the blood crown atop my head and glitter back on my cheeks. I can feel my edges hardening as I enter the hall behind Nicasia. I had expected to have Jude at my side, tonight, and now that she is not here—is likely a prisoner in Madoc’s camp—I find myself less than pleased to be here. It seems a waste of time, but Baphen insists it’s a necessary part of diplomacy, to show up to these things, to be seen.

I slip back into my familiar role as the uncaring, hedonistic High King. Everything seems as it was, save for the fact that my favorite wine tastes like dirt. Nicasia hangs on my arm and I resist the urge to shake her off as though she were a too-curious inchworm.

I am choking down wine when Randalin comes running full speed at me, waving a paper in his hand. “Your Majesty,” he pants. “You’re in danger. You—”

“It’s been taken care of. Thank you.”

“But—The note said—The great hall—”

“Leave me,” I snap, severely enough that he does, even if it’s only to go complain to Baphen about my contrariness.

I take a long sip of my wine and Jude falls out of the rafters.

I can’t believe my eyes—I try to blink away the haze of the wine, but Jude is still there. Jude is still here. A stunned silence follows her crash onto a banquet table, and for a horrible second, I’m sure she’s dead. I can do nothing but stand and stare as the Folk crowd her in a ring of guards and onlookers.

“Jude Duarte,” someone says in a hushed voice. “Broken her exile to murder the king.”

“Your Majesty, give the order,” Randalin urges, and I belatedly realize that if he’s awaiting the order to have her killed, Jude must not yet be dead.

Faster than I realize I can move, I’ve strode down to the table where she lies. I stare down at her drawn face, tired eyes, the blood soaking an entire half of her body. Jude. Jude. My Jude.

“I lost your cloak,” she croaks, so quietly I can barely distinguish the words from her heavy breaths.

And then I am so angry, angrier than I think I’ve ever been. It rises in me so unexpectedly that I nearly sway on my feet.

“You’re a liar.” The first words out of my mouth when Jude is half dead are cutting and harsh and I can’t take them back. Don’t want to take them back. “A dirty, mortal liar.”

Telling me she’d go straight to Vivienne and Taryn so they wouldn’t worry about where she was. Assuring me she’d be safe. Looking back, maybe she hadn’t said any of that explicitly—she’s learning too well from the fae—but it doesn’t abate my fury. Her eyes flicker with fear.

“Clap her in chains,” Randalin orders.

A guard reaches out and takes her arm. I don’t even try to hold back my snarl. “Don’t touch her,” I snap. There’s so much blood, on her hands, swiped across her forehead, mingling with the crushed pomegranates on the floor.

“Whatever can you mean?” Randalin asks incredulously. “She’s—”

“She is my wife,” I interrupt, and it feels so good to finally say those words I’ve been holding in for months on end. My wife. My Jude. Mine, mine, mine. “The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.”

Shock settles in Jude’s eyes as the crowd erupts with the same sentiment. She tries to sit up, but I watch unconsciousness take her under, and all I can think as I stare at her is how furious at her I am, how much I love her, how much I want to strangle her, how afraid I am that she’s pushed herself too far this time.

I gather her into my arms as gently as I can and the crowd parts for me without even a word. I move as quickly as I can without jostling her, my only comfort the weak puffs of her breath on my cheek. She’s still alive, I remind myself. She’ll make it. I can fix it.

I snarl at anyone who tries to approach me as I near my rooms and snap at the guards at my door to find me Taryn and not to let anyone else in, then kick the door closed behind me as hard as I can without hurting Jude.

I lay her down, painstakingly gently, onto my bed, and her blood immediately soaks into the covers underneath her. There’s so much blood. Far too much. I don’t think anyone, least of all mortals, is supposed to bleed so much.

I throw off my coat and roll up my sleeves. Already my shirt is stained with red.

“Taryn’s on her way,” a guard calls, muffled from behind my door.

There’s too much blood. I can hardly tell where her wound begins and ends—how did she get hurt so badly? What happened when I left? I gather a tub of water and a cloth and begin to clear away the blood from her face, her arms, her hands. I am almost afraid to touch her—she has never looked so fragile. I didn’t know Jude could even break, and now I am painfully reminded of her mortality.

It feels like a hundred years and also like no time at all has passed by the time Taryn arrives. “Shoo,” she tells me. “You’re hovering like a mother hen.” I know I’m supposed to be insulted by this, High King that I am, but the words barely register. “She can’t heal if you’re fretting about like that,” Taryn adds, and it’s the threat to Jude’s health that gets me out of the room, even if it’s probably a lie.

I make my way to the gardens and drink in the cool night air. Wisely, no one approaches me. My head clears a little bit, and an hour later, I dare to head back to my rooms and see if Taryn will let me back in.

She does, but only to show me that Jude is stitched back up and sleeping deeply. She has cleaned away most of the blood and dressed her in fresh clothes, and I am suddenly very glad that I was not in the room for that part.

I sink into an armchair across from the bed and put my head in my hands. I am afraid that if I look away for even a second, I’ll look back at Jude to find her dead.

“So,” Taryn begins. “Married.”

I stiffen. “Clearly.”

She cocks her head. It is disorienting to see one Jude dying on the bed and one almost-Jude standing beside her, scrutinizing me. “I don’t understand you,” she tells me.

“I don’t particularly care,” I reply.

Taryn purses her lips. “Will you stay with her?”

I almost say, Always, of course I will, before I realize she’s talking about Jude’s recovery. “Yes,” I say shortly instead.

She sets a vial of something honey-colored on the bedside table. “Give her this when she wakes. I’ll be back tomorrow with Vivi to check in.”

“Alright.”

She gives me one last long look before she leaves.

***

It is well into the next day when Jude awakens again. Taryn and Vivienne are long gone and my eyelids are protesting their long vigil, threatening to send me straight to sleep.

But then Jude groans and shifts on the bed and I am wide awake again.

I practically fly to her side. “Jude?”

One eye cracks open. “Cardan,” she says with the softest smile. It cracks my heart straight down the middle. She’s never spoken to me like that—with such blatant affection.

“How are you feeling?” I ask softly, reaching for the vial.

“I’m feeling… ow,” she says, and I smile despite myself.

“Here. Taryn said this will make you feel better.” I offer her a spoonful of that syrupy liquid from the vial. Jude frowns at the spoon but lets me guide it into her mouth.

“Cardan,” she says again, once she’s swallowed it down with a grimace.

“Yes, my Jude?”

“Do you want to break my heart?”

I freeze. My tongue fumbles around in my mouth for something to say. “What?”

“You could, if you wanted to,” she says, so matter-of-factly that I’m half-certain this is a dream. “Do you?”

I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. It doesn’t matter, because Jude keeps talking.

“Would hardly take anything,” she mumbles, closing her eyes. “’S why you scare me so much. But I would never admit it.”

“Of course not,” I breathe.

“I’m tired,” she says.

“Sleep, Jude,” I tell her. But her breathing is already deep and even.

She wakes again, more than a day later, and I’m so afraid of what she might say that I make sure the Bomb is the one to feed her the medicine when she does.

I cower in the armchair as the Bomb fills the spoon with medicine.

“Where’s Cardan?” Jude asks.

“Shh,” says the Bomb. “Go back to sleep.”

“I miss him,” Jude says, and I can smell the salt of welling tears from across the room. I flinch and turn away.

“Goodnight, Jude,” the Bomb says firmly, and sure enough, Jude’s sleeping not even a minute later.

I make sure I am gone before she can wake up a third time.

Chapter Text

When Jude wakes for the final time, I am not there. 

I’ve barely spent any time apart from her, but I made time to have dinner with Jude’s sisters and their mortal friend because I suppose that now that they know we’re married, they want to get to know me, or make certain of my good intentions, or whatever mortal tradition requires for vetting a new brother-in-law. 

I am itching for the dinner to be done with—not because the company is lacking; in fact, I quite enjoy spending time with Vivi and Heather, at least—but because I know the last dose of Jude’s medicine will be wearing off soon and I need to be there. I need to catch her and finally talk to her before she starts running about and trying actively to tear her stitches in the process of running the kingdom and playing spy and whatever else foolish things she’s hoping to do right now. 

It is for that reason that I practically sprint down the halls to get back to our rooms once dinner is over, walking as fast as a king can get away with. When I finally reach the doors to our rooms and gently push them open, my heart is hammering from exertion and my eyes are ready to drink their fill of Jude tucked into the bed. 

But the bed is empty. 

My heart promptly climbs up into my throat and I skip all logical thought to go straight to panicking. My gaze darts across the bed and the room as if I’d have somehow missed seeing an entire human right in front of me. It must have been Madoc. He’s taken her, and he’s going to keep her from me, and her fragile mortal life will be even shorter in his hands—

I swallow and scan any feasible hiding spots in the room—under the desk, in the wardrobe—and oh fuck, how had I forgotten there’s an entire secret passageway in this room? 

I hesitate before going to it. I’ll check the bathing chambers first, although I doubt she would have been strong enough to get there by herself. 

I burst through the door to the bathing chamber and skid to a stop as I take in the scene in front of me. 

Jude is sitting in the bathtub, frozen halfway out of it with a death grip on the rim of the tub. Steam and a warm, flowery scent waft up from the water, and rose petals cling to her skin—her bare skin. I realize I’m staring the moment she does and we both flush as she folds her arms over her chest. 

I suddenly wish I could paint so I could capture this scene forever. Vivi told me once that mortals have machines that do that—they make instant, near-perfect paintings for you on demand. What I wouldn’t give to have one right now.

“What the hell are you doing?” she snaps. 

She breaks the spell and I rush to kneel beside the basin, holding her face in my palms and searching for hurt. She is surprised enough to let me. 

“Jude,” I sigh in relief. “Are you alright? Are you—”

“Cardan. What are you doing here?”

“These are my rooms,” I point out. “Focus, Jude. How are you feeling?”

“Get off of me,” she says, pushing my hands away. “For fuck’s sake, Cardan, I’m naked!”

I’d forgotten that mortals are far more sensitive about things like nakedness and bathroom privacy, and that the red spreading down Jude’s neck and flushing her chest is probably a sign that she’s… less than comfortable. 

“Right,” I say, straightening up and turning to face the opposite wall. I clear my throat. “I suppose if you are well enough to snap at me, you’re recovering rather nicely.”

I can practically hear Jude roll her eyes from behind me. “Don’t pretend at modesty now, Cardan. You’ve already seen… well, it’s too late now. Turn around and stop mumbling at the wall.”

“Is that an order?”

“Cardan.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I say dramatically, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth as I turn to face her once more. 

“I’m alright,” she says before I can ask again. “To answer your question.” She still looks so wary of me; her muscles are still tensed like she’s preparing to jump out of the bath and make a break for it.

“You nearly died, Jude.” My tone ices over as I remember her lying on the banquet table, surrounded by mangled pomegranates, red juice and blood smearing unevenly across her brown skin.

“Yes, well.” She has the audacity to shrug. My desire to kiss her wars with my desire to strangle her. “Perhaps I was trying to make things easier on you.” 

She is speaking in riddles. I frown at her as I try to parse the meaning of her words. “Maybe you should lie back down, Jude. You seem tired.”

“No,” she snaps, tensing even further. “I’m done dragging this out, Cardan. Let’s get this over with.”

Do you want to break my heart? Cardan. Do you want to break it? 

Jude, I think. You’re breaking mine. 

“Yes,” I say stiffly. “I think that would be best.” I wait. She looks at me apprehensively. 

I have never claimed to be patient, and I break our silent contest first. 

“What the hell were you doing up there, Jude?” I demand. “Hanging from the rafters half-dead?” 

She seems to shrink away from me, curling herself into the steam.

“I thought—I thought there was going to be an attempt on your life.” I don’t think I have ever heard her sound so small. 

I soften the edge of my voice and take a strand of her wet hair in my fingers, winding it around my fingers. 

“It was terrifying, watching you fall,” I admit. “I mean, you’re generally terrifying, but I am unused to fearing for you. And then I was furious.” I fix my gaze to a purple petal plastered to the side of her neck, where it meets her shoulder. “I am not sure I have ever been that angry before.”

She is speechless for a moment but I don’t dare look into her eyes. “Mortals are fragile,” she says quietly. 

My next words slip out before I can think better of them. “Not you. You never break.”

I look at her then, and she is staring at me in some sort of quiet disbelief, lips slightly parted in a small o. 

I press my own to them. 

It surprises me how quickly she leans into the kiss, turning it more demanding. She buries her hands in my hair and I moan onto her tongue. I have never experienced a kiss like this in my life—all-consuming yet tender, raising the hair on my arms and twisting something inside my stomach. Hunger, or something more.

Jude makes a soft sound as she shifts in the tub, nearly sloshing water over the side, and I jerk back as I remember that she’s still recovering from near-death. Hurt flashes in her eyes and she snatches her hands back.

“What is it?” she asks in a small voice.

“You’re injured,” I say. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be kissing you right now.”

“Shut up,” she says, kissing me again.

“If you tear your stitches, Vivi will kill me,” I mumble against her lips. But I don’t stop her. Because I am selfish and horrible and if this is the only chance I ever get to kiss her like this, I am going to take it.

“Don’t tear them, then.”

That’s fair enough.

My elbows dig into the unyielding porcelain of the tub. “Tell me you’re done bathing. This is one of the less comfortable situations we’ve found ourselves in and I’d like to remedy it.”

She pulls back from me. “Hand me a towel.”

I don’t think I’ve ever obeyed an order so quickly in my life. I wrap it around her shoulders as she steps out and press a kiss to her forehead, her temple, her cheek as I wring out her hair.

Jude stills then, under my gaze, and I remember once again that she is human and more modest than I and doesn’t want to unwrap it from her chest in front of me. I step behind her to braid her hair as she finishes toweling off the rest of her body, keeping my eyes down. It is the most intimate privacy I have ever known. Yes, I’ve seen nearly every inch of her body before even today; yes, I’ve glimpsed most of it while helping her step out of the bath; but this is more intimate than any of that, in a way, because it is the most vulnerable she has ever been with me. I finish the braid and step out of the bathing chamber to give her a minute alone.

I pace while I wait. I don’t know why I am so nervous for her to come out, but I am, hands trembling like small birds. I have so many questions for her. I want to know if she meant what she said under the influence of Taryn’s medicine. I want to know why she’s so afraid of me.

I hear her quiet footsteps cross the threshold of the room and pause. I think I am afraid to turn. I do anyway and am not sure if I regret it.

There was a shift laid out for her in the bathing chamber, presumably by Taryn, but it seems Jude has decided to forego it. She wears nothing but miles of tan skin, marred with flicks of white scarring. On her abdomen is an angry dark gash lined with stitches in a lake of green bruising. She bites her lip and curls her hands into fists. A stubborn strand of hair has already escaped her braid and it makes a dark stripe down her cheek.

“Jude.” My voice is strangled.

“Cardan.” She steps forward, into a shaft of rising sunlight, and I nearly choke on my own tongue. It turns her entirely to gold; her skin, her eyes, even her dark hair, which turns to a halo around her head. She frowns when she catches the look on my face, and falters. “Is something wrong?”

I clear my throat and shift on my feet, trying very hard not to seem as though I’m adjusting my trousers with the movement. “I would request that you put me out of my misery.”

A quick smile flits across her lips. “And how would you like me to do so?”

“By sword or by hand, it matters little.”

She steps forward again, then again, in and out of sunlight, until she is nearly pressed up against me and my body is caught between the urge to back away and lean into her.

“Hmm.” Her breath puffs against my chest, making me shudder. “Such a tough decision.”

But it’s not a tough decision at all. I know already that she will choose whatever way is more painful, so when she tilts her chin up, I am already leaning down to meet her.

This kiss, being made to torture me, begins impossibly softly, slowly, sweetly. I press my palms to her cheeks and pull her closer, and she presses hers into my chest to brace herself as we become more eager.

I push her back towards the bed and she undoes the fastenings of my trousers as she steps back into a shaft of sunlight. I pull back from her mouth so my eyes can take their turn devouring her, drinking her in. “You are undoubtedly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You cruel, lovely thing,” I breathe. “My queen.”

For a second, her eyes are bright and soft, and she looks so at ease that I know I would crawl to see her look at me like this again—but it’s gone before I can truly process it, the lines of her mouth hardening, eyes shuttering. 

“Don’t mock me.” She takes a step back, away.

“I’m not mocking, Jude.” I eat up the distance she tries to put between us until the backs of her knees hit the bed, and she sits on the mattress.

“This is some kind of trick, then.” She’s breathing heavily, searching my face for some loophole in my words.

“No. No trick.”

I kneel before her. She can look down on me just slightly from this angle, and she takes advantage of it, pinning me with a death stare down her nose.

“What, then, Cardan?” she whispers. She doesn’t take her eyes off of me, not even to blink, as I wrap my hand around her ankle and press a kiss there. She shudders. “Why are you doing—saying these things?”

My lips travel up, kissing her shin, her calf, the inside of her knee. “Because I mean them.” She stumbles over a breath when I push her thighs open and begin laying soft, sloppy kisses there, slowly making my way closer to her center.

“You said—you said you wrote me letters.” Her voice is strangled. “What was in them?”

 “Pleading, mostly. Beseeching you to come back. Several indiscreet promises.” I protect my truths with a mocking smile as I look up at her. It’s reflexive, to put on that armor, and I can’t seem to take it off.

She closes her eyes, and when she speaks again, her words are short, even though her body is still pliable in my hands, her legs falling further open of their own accord. “Stop playing games,” she snaps.

I take her at her word and lick a broad stripe up her center. She jerks, but I hold her thighs firmly, tasting her with small kitten licks.

“You sent me into exile,” she gasps. Her fingers tangle themselves in my hair and I let out a pleased purr.

“Yes,” I say, speaking through my gentle exploration and acutely feeling the effect the vibration of my voice has upon her. “That. I can’t stop thinking about what you said to me, before Madoc took you. About it being a trick.” My finger circles her entrance before pushing in, pumping slowly. “You meant marrying you, making you queen, sending you to the mortal world, all of it, didn’t you?”

She yanks my head up and glares at me. “Of course it was a trick. Wasn’t that what you said in return?”

“But that’s what you do,” I insist. “You trick people. Nicasia. Orlagh. Me. I thought you’d admire me a little for it, that I could trick you. I thought you’d be angry, of course, but not quite like this.”

She stares at me, gaping. “What?”

“Let me remind you that I didn’t know you’d murdered my brother, the ambassador to the Undersea, until that very morning.” I add a second finger and watch, pleased, as she bites back a moan. “My plans were made in haste. And perhaps I was a little annoyed.” I pause to put my mouth on her again and groan at the taste of her. I can tell she’s close, that she’s trying to hold herself back.  

“I thought it would pacify Queen Orlagh, at least until all promises were finalized in the treaty,” I continue. “By the time you guessed the answer, the negotiations would be over. Think of it: I exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world. Until or unless she is pardoned by the crown.” I pause. She tightens her grip on my hair even further. She still does not get it, and I need her to understand. “Pardoned by the crown. Meaning by the King of Faerie. Or its queen. You could have returned anytime you wanted.”

Jude breaks on my tongue before I’ve even finished saying the words. She grinds into my face and I lick her through her climax, through short, breathy whimpers, until she’s gasping and pushing me away.

I don’t even have time to enjoy the sight of her coming undone around me before she’s standing up and yanking me with her by my hair. I can’t hide my self-satisfied smile as I wipe her slick from my chin.

Jude opens her mouth—then her eyes glass over and she clamps it shut. This time it is not gentle when she pushes her hands into my chest; she shoves me, hard, and I land on the mattress with a grunt and the terrible realization that she’s holding back tears.

I’ve made her cry.

Panic swells in my throat, and I reach out to catch her hand as she turns to leave.

Quicker than should be possible for a mortal, she spins around and slips onto the bed, straddling me with her hands around my throat before I can even open my mouth to say something.

She stares down at me, angry and beautiful and blinking furiously, pressing her fingers under my jaw. Not enough to hurt, but a warning.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I rasp. I want to reach for her but think better of it. She’s shifting slightly on my lap, creating a torturous friction against my already-hard cock.

I squeeze my eyes shut to compose myself. When I open them, I study her face. So beautiful, I think, unfairly so. More small strands of hair have come undone from her braid, framing her jaw, and I reach up to tuck them behind her ears. Those strange, round, mortal ears.

“No, it’s not that, not exactly,” I babble, trying to fill up her silence, trying to get her to say something. “I didn’t think I could hurt you. And I never thought you would be afraid of me.”

One of her hands releases my throat and trails down my chest to the waistband of my trousers, still hanging open. She pulls me out of my pants and finally speaks, almost too casually, as her hand begins to move up and down.

“And did you like it?”

I realize my fingers are still stroking the curve of her ear. I look away. I wish I could lie more than anything. I want to tell her I hated every second of it. But I did enjoy it, a little. The strange pride in being able to best the most unbeatable person I know. In being able to compete with someone as clever as her.

“Well, I was hurt, and yes, you scare me,” she goes on, still stroking me. I grip her waist so tightly that I’m afraid I’ll leave bruises, but I need to keep my sanity somehow, and she’s steadily unraveling it with every touch. “You’ve always scared me. You gave me every reason to fear your capriciousness and your cruelty. I was afraid of you even when you were tied to that chair in the Court of Shadows. I was afraid of you when I had a knife to your throat.” She lifts herself up, positions herself over me, lets the head of my cock glide through her still-wet center. “And I am scared of you now.”

With that, she sinks onto me all at once.

Her face screws up in pain, and somewhere in the back of my mind I remember belatedly that she hasn’t done this before, but I’m too busy battling twin waves of surprise and pleasure to process anything at all right now.

“But sending me into exile, that made sense.”  She lifts herself up and slams back down, but she moves too quickly and hasn’t let herself adjust. She winces but still tries to move again, and I squeeze her waist to hold her still.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” I grit out. “Go slowly.”

She ignores me but allows me to hold her still until I feel her relax around me. When she starts moving again, she places her hands back onto my neck, squeezing softly in a way that leaves me light-headed and more aroused than should ever be possible.

“That was an entirely right-side-up Cardan move,” she continues, moving faster now. “And I hated myself for not seeing what you’re going to do to me next.”

“Fuck, Jude.” I slam my eyes shut. I’m losing control too fast. Everything Jude is saying hurts so badly, because I hurt her, and I can’t stand myself for it; but with the way she’s moving on me, I won’t last another five minutes. Maybe the circles I make on her clit are in retaliation for it, but it doesn’t much matter, because she moans and I forgive her for all of it.

I take a deep breath and open my eyes, meeting hers steadily. I hate hating how vulnerable she has made me in every possible way: somehow, I have let her squeeze my very life in her hands, fuck me more thoroughly than anyone ever has, and draw out the most honest words I have ever spoken, all in less than an hour. “I can see why you thought what you did,” I admit. “I suppose… I am not an easy person to trust. And maybe I ought not to be trusted, but let me say this: I trust you.”

Jude comes hard once again, tightening impossibly around me and pushing me over the edge with her. She falls onto my chest and I hug her to me, spilling into her, basking in the heat of her skin and the scent of her freshly-washed hair.

She undoes me, so completely. And I love her with every unthreaded stitch of me.

“Jude,” I pant. “Jude, Jude, Jude.”

She slides off of me and I pull her into my side before she can get any farther away. Her hand traces idle patterns on my chest; maybe words, but I can’t focus enough to decipher them.

“Do you mean that?” Her voice snaps me out of my head.

“Hm?”

She hesitates before repeating herself. “That you trust me. Do you mean it?”

“I do.”

She sighs and seems to relax infinitesimally. I press a kiss to the top of her head.

“I thought—When I woke up, and you weren’t here—”

I capture the rest of her sentence and swallow down her worry in a kiss.

“I missed you,” she confesses when we break apart.

I know, I almost say. Instead, I pause.

“I would never break your heart, Jude,” I say after a long while, so long I think she might have fallen asleep. “If you were ever to trust me with it, I would keep it safe within my own. I would do anything to keep even a single crack away. I would tear the whole world apart with my bare hands and eat it raw if it would make you happy.”

“You are what makes me happy, Cardan,” she confesses. She’s drawing hearts on my chest, dozens of them in an endless loop without picking up her finger. “And maybe it makes me a fool, but I trust you to the marrow of every bone in my body.”

We fall asleep tucked into each other’s arms and I dream of the slow round curves of mortal ears and golden skin.

Chapter Text

When I awake, I stretch my arms across the sheets to find them empty and warm.

The sun is setting now, and its dying rays cut into my eyelids. Somewhere off to my right, papers shuffle quietly.

“Jude?”

There comes a loud bang at my desk and Jude swears in a whisper. I peel open my eyes and take her in.

She’s wearing a long tunic—one of my tunics, the fact of which makes me half certain I’m still dreaming—that nearly passes her knees. Her hair is loose and wavy from the braid she slept in. As it did during sunrise, the sun paints her in a deep gold once more, making her into a pillar of honey. She stands by the desk, rubbing her elbow, holding an unwieldy stack of crumpled papers in her hands with a strange look on her face.

“Come back to bed,” I say. I wish once more that I had one of those mortal instant painting machines so I could keep this exact moment forever. I want her back in my arms. I want her hands on me, and my mouth on her.

“You didn’t send them.”

“What?” I blink at her. It’s too early for my mind to think any coherent thought beyond Jude, beautiful Jude, Jude in my head and my hands and my heart.

“You never sent them. The letters.”

Oh.

Sobriety slams into me and I am more awake than I have ever been. My entire body stiffens and I wish desperately that I had had the foresight to avoid this scene. To burn those letters instead of stuffing them in a drawer where she would easily, inevitably, find them.

“I did.” Fuck, this is painful to admit. “Those are the ones I wrote and never sent. For obvious reasons, as you’d know if you read them.” Fuck. I bet she’s read them. “Did you read them?”

She looks down at the stack in her hands. “I… yes.”

“Well,” I say in a thin, strained voice. “That is… unfortunate.” My face burns and my stomach twists as I remember bits and pieces of the things I’d confessed in those letters, in my barely-lucid state. This is quickly turning from one of the best mornings in my life to the worst. I squeeze my eyes shut and wish for a quick and painless death.

Papers rustle again; then the bed dips under her weight and Jude settles herself on top of me again, reminding me too vividly of the night before.

“You really meant it,” she says. She brushes her fingertips, feather-light, over my eyelids until I open them. “You really wanted me to come home.”

Home. She may have lived in Elfhame for most of her life, but when she says the word like that, she makes it sound as though I am her home.

“Am I not allowed to miss my wife?” I ask with a crooked smile, and she swats at my chest.

“I… I really wish I’d gotten the other letters,” she admits, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

I reach out and smooth her lips with my thumb. “Are you not satisfied with the seven hundred far more embarrassing letters you found snooping in my desk this morning?”

Jude slides off my lap to tuck herself into my side. “You’re exaggerating by about six hundred letters.”

“Let’s stop talking about the letters,” I suggest as her hand trails down my bare chest, lower, lower.

“I trust you, Cardan,” she confesses as I seal her mouth to mine, slide my hand over her soft curves, bury my nose in her hair. “I trust you,” she tells me as I take her again, far more gently than the last time, spilling over with hope and light instead of confusion and hurt.

I am home, I think for the first time.