#greenbriar

Cardan hadn’t wanted kids, his own childhood made him fear what would happen. He was scared he wouldn’t know how to be a father or care for a child because he had no role model growing up. The Living Council didn’t seem to care about that though and insisted he produce at least one, preferably two or more, heirs. He felt lucky every single day you were his wife and you would be the mother of his children, though. He felt like maybe, just maybe, he could do this with you.

He was nervous throughout your entire pregnancy about failing as a father, but his fears instantly melted away when your son was born. He was a carbon copy of Cardan, as if your genes didn’t even fight at all. Almost instinctively what he was supposed to do just came to him. There was of course stuff he had to learn, but the basics felt natural. It made him hate the way he was raised so much more. He knew the second he heard his son’s first cries that he would do anything to hear him laugh.

You both had so much to learn, parenting wasn’t easy when you didn’t just hand your child off to someone else, but you both found loving your son to be the easiest thing you have ever done. You were both incredibly protective and neither of you were fans of raising him ‘traditionally’. That was code for the council thinking you two coddled him too much. Cardan couldn’t possibly care any less what they thought. Maybe he did coddle his son, but he didn’t care, not one bit. He’d rather raise a child who continued to need him than one forced to learn to survive without him. Your son was learning to walk now and constantly wanted to be held when he got too tired and Cardan would never say no. Cardan stopped whole meetings to appease his son. The second his bottom lip quivered and he stuck his arms up, Cardan would stop what he was doing to scoop him up if you hadn’t beat him to it.

“He’s a baby!” Cardan would say angrily when he was scolded by the council for not letting him just cry it out.

No High King, and rarely mothers of princes or princesses, took such hands on roles with their children. Neither of you cared if you were going against tradition, too over protective, or coddled him too much. You would teach him right and wrong and how to be self sufficient and humble, but you wouldn’t teach him not to cry or ask for help. You weren’t trying to raise a king or soldier, you were trying to raise a baby who might one day become a man who happens to be a king or soldier.

There was another revel tonight and dinner had only just finished. Your son played at the foot of your throne with a human toy dump truck he had filled with pebbles and Cardan was busy speaking to a few guests. You watched your son carefully and gasped when he stood to get more pebbles from where he had previously dumped them and stepped on his own tail and toppled over, tiny hands and knees smacking the ground. He was clearly not hurt, but his face instantly went red, pacifier from the human world falling from his mouth as his first cry came out silent. You immediately jumped up knowing he would be crying loudly in a few seconds, but one of the ladies in court got to him first. She roughly placed him back on his feet and rolled her eyes at you. High Queen or not, some still didn’t get past the fact that you were human and treated you poorly, especially because of how ‘human’ you were raising the only current heir to the throne, as if you weren’t a human on the throne.

“If you don’t let him learn the hard way, how will he ever be a good king?”

“I’m not raising a king or a soldier, I’m raising a baby. He will have eternity to learn, because unless you think something will happen to Cardan and I, which I might take as a threat, he has a long time. Unhand my son.”

“M—ma—mama!” He wailed reaching out to you desperately. His tail snapped behind him like Cardan’s did when he was in distress and his tiny fingers grabbed at the air. His nose was already running and tears were streaming down his face.

“You have five seconds to let go of my baby before you lose your fucking arm,” you snapped. She instantly let go at the sight of guards closing in at the commotion and your face immediately softened to a wide smile as you crouched down, not caring how graceful or queen-like you looked squatting to pick up your child in a gown that wasn’t the most practical. Typically, Cardan would gladly carry your son around for the night to give you chances to wear your favorite impractical gowns, but he was across the room. “Come here sweetheart, you’re okay, we all fall down sometimes,” you said, holding your arms wide open. He was still learning to walk and hadn’t quite mastered running, so he awkwardly toddled very quickly into your arms. He wiped his nose and eyes on your dress, but you didn’t care. You scooped him up with one last glare at the woman before turning sharply to carry him back to your throne.

By now, Cardan was already pushing through the crowd at the sound of your anger and your son’s crying. You unceremoniously curled up on your throne nestling close to your son who was hiccuping now.

“It’s okay, see?” You said, showing him his hands that weren’t at all scraped up. You kissed his palms anyway, “All better!”

“What happened?” Cardan asked, finally approaching your throne where you sat curled up with your son on your lap.

“He fell, he’s okay, it just scared him. He stepped on his tail and it startled him to fall, but that woman was rough with him and said he won’t learn to be a king. I told her she’d lose the arm if she didn’t let go of my baby.” You said before turning your attention back to your son, “Isn’t that right? All better? Show Dada your hands!”

He proudly showed Cardan his hands with a grin that showed off his sharp baby teeth, “Dada!”

Cardan’s heart practically melted on the spot. Had it been him as a child, no one would have even noticed he had fallen, and if they did, they wouldn’t care. He was relieved to see his son happily curled up with his wife. He was relieved that the pain of being a child no one cared about ended with him. He turned to where the guards were escorting the woman out, “Never let that woman back into the palace. No one withholds my son, the Prince of Elfhame and heir to the throne, from my wife, the High Queen of Elfhame. She will be obeyed because she is the High Queen, and she will be obeyed because he is her son.”

“My king, isn’t that a little harsh?” A man in court asked, “He is your heir, what do you think? We know what your wife thinks.”

“I could be a lot harsher, you forget who I was before I was the High King,” Cardan snapped, “He’s our heir because like so many of you seem to forget, we are both rulers of Elfhame, my wife is your Queen. My wife and I agree on how we raise our son, you don’t have to because he’s not your son. You will listen to me, but you will especially listen to my wife because she’s the one who carried him for nine months and went through hours of labor. Last time I checked, you aren’t his mother or a part of this marriage, so your opinion is irrelevant. If you want to have an opinion on raising a child, find a woman willing to spend an uneventful minute with you,” Cardan then turned to the quiet gathering around him trying to see what would happen next, “Many of you are old enough to remember me in court as a child, you saw how I was treated and didn’t see a problem, so I wouldn’t expect you to understand why I am going to such lengths to raise my son differently. I may be the High King now, but you are all too comfortable forgetting the prince I used to be and the series of events that made me that prince. Go back to your revelry and the next person to touch my son loses their arm as my wife, your High Queen, stated.”

The party slowly started back up and Cardan looked back to where you held your son and he was practically asleep. His eyes were drooping, but he was fighting to stay awake. You were rubbing his back in soothing circles while his tail twisted around your wrist. Cardan wasn’t really in the mood for more revelry and didn’t want to chance someone risking their arm to further upset his son.

“Do you want to go?” Cardan asked.

“We can stay,” you said.

Cardan wasn’t convinced, “I don’t want to stay either, we don’t need to stay.”

You sighed with relief and stood up. You readjusted your son’s sleepy body so his head rested on your shoulder with his arms wrapped around your neck. You held him tightly against your chest and he wrapped his tail around your arm again. He yawned one more time before closing his eyes. Cardan had a possessive arm around you as he guided you through the crowd as if challenging someone to test the rest of his patience. You had been humming quietly the whole time, but Cardan only heard when you entered a quiet hallway. He watched as your son slept in your arms, drool dripping down onto your shoulder and his dark eyelashes against his pink cheeks. You were humming a human lullaby Cardan had originally thought was a Faerie lullaby because of the brutality of the subject. Now, every time he heard it, it reminded him no one ever sang to him and he had no way of knowing it was just how humans used to write songs. Cardan had snuck a few human fairytales though, so it didn’t surprise him too much because those weren’t pleasant either. This particular one was about a baby falling out of a tree and Cardan thought he might simply burn the tree down and find something horrible to do to the ashes if that happened to his son. Why the humans were putting babies in the trees, he didn’t know, it sounded truly Faerie to him. You had explained that it was simply a lullaby you picked up from your human parents.

“You’re alright?” Cardan finally asked, quietly.

“Of course I am, we both are,” you whispered back.

“Thank you,” Cardan said, his voice cracking more than he had hoped.

“For what?”

“Everything,” Cardan sighed, “For loving me, for loving our son. I didn’t think I was going to be allowed to be happy and I definitely didn’t think I’d get to be happy and have a family— a functioning family.” It was Cardan’s turn to have tears streaming down his face. He was glad you two had made it to the area restricted to your family— he loved that word now.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Cardan shook his head, but he spoke anyway, “I—I… he looks like me. When I look at him, he’s the most precious thing I have. His life means more to me than my own. I can’t put into words how much he means to me and I know my own parents looked into a face like this and didn’t feel nothing, they felt hate and disappointment. I would give anything for him, I’d gladly put a dagger through my heart if I had to die for him to live.” Cardan seemed to have more to say, but he stopped there and your heart ached.

“Is there anything he could do to change how you feel? Anything?”

“No, nothing,” Cardan said instantly, “I would still love him if he was the one to put the dagger in my heart.”

“Then you must know it was never your fault. It was never anything you did.”

Cardan didn’t reply, instead he followed you through the doors of your royal chambers. You sat down on the bed while Cardan excused himself to wash the running kohl off his cheeks. When he returned, you had fallen asleep fully dressed holding your son at the foot of your bed. Cardan took a deep breath. It might always hurt that his parents and siblings didn’t love him, but he had his own family now. He had a wife and son he loved more than life itself sleeping soundly on his bed. He smiled. While his son physically looked exactly like Cardan, it was clear he would grow up to be just like you. You both had fallen asleep in the same position, but your arm was over him protectively and his tail wrapped around it.

Cardan very gently began talking off your shoes and unlacing your dress. He got it most of the way off before you woke up and sleepily helped him get it off you. He replaced it with a shirt of his to sleep in and removed all your jewelry and hair pins before moving on to getting your son ready for bed. Cardan only got his shoes off before he woke up, but he was also exhausted and he didn’t put up much of a fight until Cardan brought out the sleep pants.

“No!” He exclaimed, it was ironically one of the few words he knew.

“Well, would you prefer pants with feathers? That probably wouldn’t be comfortable or practical, but I could see the decision making process there.”

He just looked at Cardan confused until Cardan retrieved his favorite onesie. It was getting too small. It had been made with a human pattern, but it was spidersilk with trucks stitched on. The tailor had been shocked to say the least at the request, but even more shocked when Cardan asked for one in every size that would work until at least five years old. It was close to the time to switch it out again because it was getting to be too snug. It didn’t take much to wrestle him into the pajamas and he smiled as his son reached for his tail with his own. Cardan had been the only one with a tail, so having a son with a tail was new territory. The first time his son did it was only hours after birth and Cardan just about melted on the spot. Cardan intertwined his tail with his son’s and carried him to bed. He had a bassinet close enough to the bed that you guys could reach him, and you were also in denial that he was outgrowing that too. He would soon need a proper bed and bedroom.