#folkofthefic

Chapter 2. Blow this town

Cardan POV

I have never given death much thought. As an immortal, death is quite an abstract concept—and though being royalty should theoretically make me a target of assassination attempts, who would bother? Not for High King Eldred's youngest. I have been dismissed by courtiers often enough to know that I would never be considered a threat to the throne. So I was surprised by how quickly I accepted Death when faced with the bite of her blade at my throat.

Not Death—Jude, the creature who has been haunting me for years. She has killed someone and, faced with her imminent death sentence, has decided that I should die too.

Quite understandable.

More logical than what I did, which was to beg her to kiss me. And when she spat on me and my blood rushed to my cock, I would have done anything to convince her to let me have a taste of more.

I have no regard for self-preservation.

Now, we lay side to side and I clench my hands to keep from touching her more. My lust-clouded brain, like it does when I feel low, imagines all sorts of scenarios where we leave the Court together.

“Let’s leave,” I blurt out.

I immediately regret it.

“What?”

Of course, she will not make this easy for me—or ignore my stupid proposition, for that matter.

“Leave Elfhame,” I specify. “Unless you do really want to kill me, in which case I will kneel and let you slit my throat.”

I hear her shift and know she is looking at me. I keep my eyes on the ceiling, however.

“They will track me down.”

The thought of my father wasting resources to send soldiers after a mortal girl is ludicrous, I tell her as much. “I doubt it—you’re mortal, you will die soon enough.”

With a grunt, Jude sits up. “You never stop being a jerk, do you?”

Confused, I narrow my eyes. Jude gets up and starts pacing, naked from the waist down. I allow myself to take her in, from her tangled hair to her toes. For the first time, I notice the blood on her clothing, and my heart twists. Is it hers?

Finally, she stops pacing.

“Fine,” she says. “You can leave with me.”

I snort. She is acting as if I was asking for permission. Nevertheless, I get up with a stretch. I cast a quick look around for my robe, in vain—it must be tangled somewhere in the sheets. No matter, the servants won’t care.

“It is decided, then,” I say as I walk towards the door. “I will get supplies from the kitchens. You should bathe, the bathing room is on your left.”

Jude rolls her eyes, ire practically oozing from her every pore. She crosses her arms.

“I did not hear you complaining about my smell earlier,” she snaps.

“Oh, sweet Jude,” I grin at her before pointedly looking at her stomach where traces of me linger, “it has nothing to do with how you smell.”

The reminder of what we’ve done, mixed with the wretched possession I feel seeing my seed dry on her, has my cock stirring again. I leave my rooms before she can notice.

As expected, none of the servants so much as look my way. Balekin is out, so I do not need to sneak around.

It is no great heist to slide into the servants quarter and locate a backpack. Balekin keeps servants’ belongings stashed in a closet, cluttered and forgotten. A pile of clothes and bags, whatever they had on them when they foolishly bargained their short lives away.

I grab the largest bag and empty its contents. Digging through other bags, I manage to find a phone, a plastic bottle and wallets. I sift through the wallets to find whatever money lay inside—not much. I stash my findings in the bag and shoulder it. I close all the doors behind me, though I doubt my brother keeps track of anything in this room. After all, he does not keep track of the servants themselves. They disappear often, without him being the wiser. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Do I want him to care when I disappear?

On the way back to my rooms, I stop by the kitchen. I grab as much dried meat as I can and a loaf of bread. The blank-eyed kitchen staff barely looks at me.

When I come back to my rooms, Jude is drying her hair with a towel, another one tied around her breasts. The towel is too small for her and it splits to show a tantalizing expanse of light brown skin and scars.

I see her lips move, yet I hear nothing but the rushing of my blood in my ears.

I cannot think past how easy it would be to pull on the knot of that towel and feast my eyes—

I shake my head, willing my tail to stop swinging.

“I got some supplies. Food,” I specify when she lifts a brow. “A phone. Some money.”

“Wow,” she says, raising both her brows now. “You have thought this through”

I have. I am unsure which part surprises her more—that I have thought of leaving, or that I know of phones.

I suppose she would not understand my desire to run away, she who has everything.

“We will need a change of clothes,” I say, trying to talk my way out of thinking about her naked body, “and Nevermore. I should have some around.”

My vanity is where I keep my powders: the cosmetic ones as well as the fun ones. I grab a kohl liner, then open the first drawer. It is full of jars of powders and herbs, completely without labels. The nevermore is easy to find, however: it’s still in the plastic bag the human I bought it from sold it in. I shove the baggy in the backpack.

“These clothes are fine,” she says coldly.

When I turn around, she is dressed in the clothes she came to kill me in.

“If you want to wash them off your back, sure,” I swing the doors to my dresser open. “We can stop at your house to grab some, you know.”

“I can’t go back,” her voice is low, but I hear her clearly, “they might have found the body.”

I frown. They? Is she talking about her family? How would they find it so fast?

“Where did you hide it?” I ask, pushing aside the more extravagant clothes to get to the boring pieces.

“I didn’t,” she simply responds. “It’s under my bed.”

My mind is reeling, completely ignoring the fact that she did not bother hiding the body. The corpse is under her bed? Did she kill this person in her room? Why was her victim in her room?

Was she… were they…

Wasn’t she seeing Locke?

Did Jude kill Locke?

Did she catch him with Taryn?

Did he try something on her which gave her no choice but to killed him?

My blood boils and I am unsure if it is the possibility of my friend’s murder, or the fact that he might have tried to bed her.

I shouldn’t care about her reasons. I should call the guards and have her arrested.

I don’t.

I breathe deeply, trying to calm the storm brewing in me.

“You can borrow some of my clothes,” I say as I grab a simple white linen shirt for myself and my favorite pair of plain black leather pants.

She snorts. “I thought the point was to hide, not put a target on my back.”

I roll my eyes, though she cannot see my face. I find a long black skirt and a red shirt similar to the one I picked for myself. With a slight pinch in my chest, I bunch the clothes up to put them in the bag, wrinkles be damned. I then pick out an outfit to wear today, a pale blue coat, dark blue silk pants and an off-white shirt.

We have clothes, some food, a phone and as much money as we could possibly get here.

I have daydreamed of running away often. Most of the time, I fantasized of disappearing to a lower court and spend the rest of my days drinking. Other times, at my lowest, I dreamed of this. Running away to the Mortal World with the only person who has ever thought of me enough to hate me.

All of these, however, were fantasies. A way to cope. I have no idea what to expect.

“We can catch the next boat,” I tell her as I shoulder the bag. “Hopefully it hasn’t left yet.”

Jude snorts again, more scornful than the last. “We would have to bribe the whole crew if we take the boat. A prince eloping with a mortal is valuable gossip.”

Eloping. That’s not what this is, of course, but the thought stops my heart for a second.

I ignore it.

“Fine,” I snap back. “Grab that bottle and follow me.”

She glares at me, but she does. I nod towards the window, indicating our way out.

“Don’t boss me around,” she barks as she hops onto the patio.

I can’t remember a time in my life where I fought anything as hard as she fights me.

I will definitely regret this.

I sneak out after her, flinging myself down from the railing onto the earthen ground. I take the bottle from her and take a swing before leading Jude in the direction of the forest.

“Of course, you can’t spend an hour sober,” she says, voice dripping with contempt.

“It’s not for me,” I snarl.

Jude tramples behind me so noisily that she must be stepping on every branch on purpose.

“Sure.”

When we get to the clearing, Mother’s giant moth is there.

“My dear Jude,” I say, gesturing to the moth, “our way out. Cup your hands.”

Surprisingly, she does as she is told. I pour the wine in her cupped hands. The moth’s feathery antennae twitch and it starts walking towards her, all six legs working in tandem.

Its long proboscis extends, prodding the earth and trees until it finds Jude’s hands and starts slurping. Her gasp is one of wonder and I look away from her smiling face.

While the moth is distracted, I hop on its back. When it finishes drinking, Jude walks to its side and I hold a hand out to help her up. She frowns at it, grabs hold of the moth’s fuzz then hops in front of me.

Immediately, I get a whiff of her smell. Her hair, loosely flowing down her back, smells like pine and citrus—my soap. When I offered her to use my bathing room, I did not think this far ahead. Now, with every breath, I am assaulted by images of her hands lathering her curves in soap, of her hands gliding between her muscular thighs to the place I had only imagined until today.

I don’t know what to do with my hands. I probably should hang on to the moth, but what other opportunity will I get? Furthermore, I would not want her to fall.

I wrap my hands around her waist.

“Do you know where you want to go?” I ask her.

Jude kicks the side of the moths and it spreads its wings in a scatter of shedding scales and dust. With a great beat of its wings, we’re off. Two pairs of wings working together to carry us across the ocean, to freedom.

“To the only place where you will look normal,” she says, “New York City.”

-----