Cardan knew the oblations were meant as comforts, but he didn’t want them. There was a sickly feeling in his stomach. It curdled like bad milk and guilt, and only made the consoling worse.

So the High King refused everything, even the wine. Wine was what he used when he could afford to feel nothing, and this was not one of those occasions. A twisted part of him wanted to soak in every horror of the last day—to make a tender meal of pain.

It was the least of what he deserved.

Cardan was busy wearing a faded track into the great ornate rug in the sitting room, tail lashing back and forth, when Vivienne showed up.

The eldest Duarte flew into the antechamber, face sallow with panic. Suddenly, every explanation Cardan had mulled over these many hours burst in his head like overripe fruit when he grasped for them.

How could he explain this to Vivi when he could hardly explain it to himself? How could he tell her that he’d stood by as Jude stumbled to the brink of death, yet again?

So, Cardan stood frozen near the bookshelf at the opposite end of the room, watching Vivi cross the length of it. Her hair was plastered to the sides of her face, the mortal clothes she wore soaked through as if she’d rode through a torrent to get there.

Just as he opened his mouth to speak, a heavily pregnant woman entered.

Cardan stilled. For a heart stopping moment, it was Jude coming through those doors in a gown of dusky rose that swished about her ankles like bulrushes when she walked—one hand resting protectively over her swollen belly.

A ludicrous thought, if he’d ever had one. Jude was not pregnant, at least as far as Cardan was aware. He frowned.

Always he’d been able to tell his wife from her twin. Only when his wits had been poison addled and bewitched by Grimsen’s monstrosity earrings had he ever mistaken one for the other.  Now, it was some cruel taunt his mind had spun up from its sleep-deprived and fraying edges.

A lump nestled right in Cardan’s throat. He was unable to meet Taryn’s eyes after that.

“How is she?” Vivi asked as they approached.

Cardan swept up a sprig of baby’s breath from a cut crystal vase on the bookshelf and swallowed. “I do not know.” He leaned back against the wall. “They have barred the door to everyone.”

Vivi’s mouth set into a hard line. “Even you?”

“Especially me,” he said, voice stretched taut. He twirled the stem between his fingers. “The Bomb forbade it.”

“Forbade?” Vivi’s eyebrows rose high on her forehead.

Taryn looked like he’d told her something offensive.

“Well, not expressly. But the implication was clear enough,” he told them, which made Vivi’s face turn a half-amused expression, though Cardan could not imagine why. He lolled his head back against the wall, looking down the bridge of his nose at the pair of them. “I would be too overcome by my emotions to be of any use.”

“You’re the High King, though,” Vivi said, as if he needed reminding. “If you want to be in there, you need only demand it.”

“Yes,” Cardan sighed. “But alas, I’m afraid she is right. I would only get in the way.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. A shrill, sharp pain had started in his feet.

The sitting room was not devoid of places to sit, by any means.

There were several cushioned chairs of fern-green velvet, a handful of upholstered stools dotted about, a large plushy sofa by the fireplace. In the corner, sat a divan crafted to look like a mermaid lying on its side in the waves—an opulent wedding gift from Nicasia, if not a bit on the nose.

Even the rug he’d been pacing probably would not be so bad to sit on.

Instead, Cardan slid down the wall, taking up a spot on the floor. Vivi followed suit, sitting cross-legged in her wet jeans and hoodie on the carpet. Taryn perched herself atop a small cushioned stool, surprisingly prim for a woman at her ripe stage of gestation.

They sat together in exhausted quiet. Runny green light from the wall sconces made the room seem bathed in faerie wine. A pixie with citrine hair brought a towel to Vivi, who was doing a good job of dripping a small pond onto the rug.

Cardan hadn’t cared enough to notice.

Vivi gave an appreciative nod to the chamber maid and began patting her hair with the towel. The pixie returned a few moments later with a tea tray, and placed it on a nearby bench before making her exit.

Cardan peeled at the stem in his hands. Taryn fidgeted with the tassels on her stool. Vivi dried herself as best she could, observing the High King while she worked. He could feel her curious stare as he tore off little blooms and scattered them across the floor.

“How are you, Cardan?” Vivi finally asked.

He picked another white bud. “How do I look?”

“Like death.”

Cardan furrowed his brows. “I feel much worse than that.”

In the last day, such a riot of emotions had lay siege to him, he could hardly tell one from the next. They all smeared together, like someone had swiped a hand through the oil painting of his mind.

“What happened?” Taryn said, when a moment had passed.

Unable to lie and unable to give a concise excuse for Jude’s plight, Cardan began to recount the day’s tale. How it had all started with a deceptive note and had quickly spiraled into a horror from hell.

Leaving out his personal sentiments did nothing to ward them off. The fear that something had happened to Jude, the dread he’d felt when he figured out where his wife had truly gone, the terror of finding her in her grave state. Anger, too. Flashes of it, hot and streaking across his fretful night like stars.

These feelings lingered, dripping as fresh wounds.

He felt them all anew.

“I wish it had been me instead,” Cardan said, at last.

Speaking everything aloud, he felt no less awful, but he was far less alone. The stem of baby’s breath in his hands was now just a stem; having picked off all the blooms and leaves. Silence draped heavy festoons in the air around them.

When Cardan glanced up, Taryn was giving him a strange look.

“Have I told the story wrong?” He asked her, adust. Whatever Taryn was piecing together in her head, she need not gawk. He was tired of all the gawking, the tiptoeing. As if he was a thin layer of ice and not the whole frozen lake.

“It is no small thing to offer your life in someone’s stead,” Taryn pointed out. “Especially when you could live forever. Even more so when you are bound by your word.”

“Well, and I would,” Cardan said. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Unfortunately, no amount of words or promises from me will make it so.”

Taryn folded her hands in her lap. “You must love her very much.” Then, hastily amended, “I knew you cared for her, of course. I just did not know how deeply.”

Cardan blinked. He was unsure of whether to be glad for his transparency now, in such dire circumstances, or offended that anyone had doubted the depth of his feelings for his wife in the first place.

He was saved from deciding when the doors to the chamber opened.

Cardan, Vivi, and Taryn scrambled to their feet. Two nurses exited the royal bedroom, one with great horns sweeping skyward from the crown of her head, the other with brown feathered wings sprouting from his back. They kept their expressions carefully neutral, and closed the doors behind them.

“Any news?” Taryn asked, breathless.

Cardan could barely breathe, himself.

“Her Majesty is stable, my Ladies. Your Majesty,” the horned nurse replied, giving the High King a polite curtsy. The entire room seemed to exhale, at once. “The doctor will be out shortly to oversee your visitation.” With that, the nurses quit the chambers.

Cardan’s eyes flitted to the large oak doors of their bedroom. They suddenly seemed very small and very far away.

Cardan felt a hand alight on his shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking.” Vivienne’s voice came to him. Ripping his focus from the doors, he turned to face her fully.

Vivi’s cat eyes nearly glowed in the verdant light. “This is not your fault, you know.”

“Isn’t it?” Cardan lifted a brow. “Jude is my wife. We are supposed to tell each other things. I have little doubt she knew the danger, and yet, she did not tell me of this. What does that say about me?”

“It says more about Jude, I think.”

At that moment, the Bomb slipped out of the bedroom, carrying a basket of bloody rags. She placed it on a lectern, close by. “I had to put her under with a sleeping draught,” she told them, eyes darting from face to face. “She’s still out, but she will recover eventually. You may see her now.”

Taryn and Vivi rushed for the doors without hesitation. When Cardan made to follow, the Bomb held out a hand to stop him.

“I should like to speak with you alone, Your Majesty,” she said in a low voice. Her gaze was sharp, turned shard-like by fatigue and worry. “I have to tell you something.”

Cardan’s heart sunk low in his chest. Whatever news the Bomb bore, he suspected it was not happy. She glanced toward the door, making sure Vivi and Taryn were well inside the room, before turning back to him.

“What is it, Liliver?” Cardan dreaded the answer before it came.

The Bomb pursed her lips. “It’s about something Jude said. Right before she went under.”

☽☽☽☽☽

The High Queen of Elfhame was dreaming. She was sure of it because her husband, whom she was fairly certain resented her dearly, was reading something aloud.

She heard the fluttering of pages. Perhaps it was their terms of annulment.

His voice came soft and muffled, as if through several closed doors. “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’”

That was indeed how his voice sounded. Like a downy quilt, cocooning her. Through the thick sludge of sleep, she wondered if, after everything, he could still love her as the snow did the trees.

☽☽☽☽☽

When Jude woke once more, she was too warm. A sheen of sweat clung to her skin like morning dew. Or, more probably, like a layer of dirt. A film she couldn’t quite pare.

It felt like she hadn’t bathed in a week.

She recognized the royal chambers. The great sweep of their bed; the large cherrywood wardrobe where they kept all their clothes, heaps of chiffon and lace spilling out of looking glass doors. The writing desk by the window, a mess of papers and ink pots.

On the beside table, there sat the well-worn copy of a familiar two-book bind-up she’d once pilfered from Hollow Hall.

Everything was quiet. Still. Only the crackle and low amber light from the fire filled the room. Apparently, everyone had vacated.

Everyone, except for one person.

He sat next to the bed in a chair, scooted right up close so he could hold her hand. He was holding her hand in both of his, head bowed to press against them on the mattress. His hair stuck up, every which way, as if he’d been raking anxious hands through it.

Jude felt her heart hitch in her chest.

“Your hair looks like a coppice,” she croaked.

Cardan’s head snapped up. He stared at her with bleak eyes, rimmed in red fatigue. He was staring at her, not saying anything; but he was holding her hand, and that was all that mattered.

Then, he dropped it.

Which was the opposite of what she wanted.

Jude surveyed him more closely. The dim light threw shadows across Cardan’s face that made him appear more haggard than she’d ever seen him, though still ruinously beautiful.

He was looking at her like if he blinked, she might turn to dust.

After a long moment, Jude cleared her throat. “How long have I been out?” Speaking felt sand-papery, but she had to say something.

“Three days,” Cardan murmured.

Her brows snapped up. Had it really been that long? She must have been completely unconscious for a lot of it.

Her muscles did feel stiff. She tried to stretch, but winced, remembering her leg. It didn’t hurt, not like before. Now, it was a mere dull throb.

Jude dared a look down.

Her trousers and tunic had been removed, replaced with a thin, white nightgown. Her left knee was wrapped in a heavy chrysalis of bandages and propped up by a pillow.

“The Bomb stitched it up,” Cardan informed her.

“What about my magic?”

“The magic only works if you remember you have it.”

Right. The glimpses. They could make you forget your very person. It was likely they could make one forget the powers they possessed, as well.

“What about your magic?”

Cardan shook his head. “Only you can heal yourself, Jude.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. Jude misliked the idea of her husband speaking in double. No matter how right he was.

Cardan’s eyes stole across her face. “There’s, um…” His bottom lip wobbled. “A coat of peppermint leaves under the bandages. For the pain.”

Jude had never seen him at such a loss for words. Nor so distraught. Her heart ached at the worry lines on his face, that trembling lower lip. She’d never cared overmuch about her own pain. Only his. She wanted to smooth it all away with her thumb, her lips.

Instead, she reached for his hand.

Cardan sat up straight, the wooden legs of the chair groaning as he drew back. He dragged his fingers through his hair, pulling out the curls. He seemed to be gathering himself, spooling himself back in.

Something bobbed in Jude’s throat.

“What happened?” She meant it in the sense of how they’d come to find her, but maybe she was speaking in double, too.

When Cardan looked at her, his eyes were dark, like the way it might feel to swallow a cold stone. “What happened, Jude,” he said with frightful calm, “Is that you lied.” He pulled a piece of folded up parchment out of his pocket and cast it onto the duvet.

“What’s this?” she asked, picking it up.

“Your note.”

Jude winced. She’d completely forgotten.

“A lie of omission, to be sure,” Cardan said, “But which was also very nearly a lie in earnest.” The temper in his eyes seemed to eddy, a roll of thunder through a storm cloud, pinioning her to the spot.

Jude knew which words he meant.

I won’t bore you by dying.

She’d scrawled them across the paper in such haste to depart, she hadn’t thought about the implication if she failed to return. Now, it seemed glaringly obvious.  

She pressed her lips together, then folded the paper back up. “You’re angry with me.”

“That,” Cardan scowled, “Is a gross understatement, I assure you. And entirely irrelevant to the heart of the matter.”

Her brows knitted together. It unsettled her, not knowing his meaning.

“How could you do it?” He wondered, and Jude’s eyes went wide.

Suddenly, she was back in the cave, fever dreams flitting before her eyes. Locke. Valerian. Balekin. Cardan. All looking down at her in disgust. Her stomach roiled, as if it might turn itself inside out all over the coverlets.

Jude reeled, but she was no coward. This was the conversation they ought to have. Except, she hadn’t prepared any words, and she hadn’t caught a glimpse. So how was she to explain herself?

She was wholly unprepared for this. She was wholly unprepared for Cardan to hate her again.

“I- I don’t know.” Her voice quavered. “I was so angry. So full of hatred. It just happened.”

“If I had known, Jude…” Cardan blew out a breath, looking down at the floor. “You should have said something. I did not know.”

Which was confusing. Had he somehow found out about Balekin, and what she’d seen him do to Cardan? Had someone told him of everything Balekin had done in the Undersea? There was a part of her that would feel glad if she did not have to speak to it.

But then, why had Cardan asked for an explanation?

Jude turned a wary eye on him, but found his face unreadable. “I was afraid to tell you,” she said.

The corners of his mouth turned down and he fixed her with a long look. “If you are unhappy here, Jude,” Cardan said in a strained sort of voice, “If you are unhappy with your life as Queen, or unsatisfied by your life with me in any way, you need only say it. I would never hold you against your will. I would not begrudge you or bring you harm for leaving, if that is what you so choose.”

Nothing of what her husband was saying made any sense to Jude. Her head was spinning.

“But do you truly hate me so much,” he continued, “That you would risk your life to voice your discontent?”

“Discontent?” Jude’s brows drew together. “Cardan, what are you talking about? This is my home. I am happy here.”

“You don’t have to lie anymore, Jude.” His tone was needled with such derision that Jude almost flinched. Cardan’s features turned knifelike.

She balled her fists at her sides. “I’m not lying,” she huffed, her cheeks blooming with heat. “If this is some sort of trick to get me to leave again, I swear to—”

“It’s no trick,” he interrupted. “The Bomb told me what you said.”

“And what, exactly, did I say?” Jude clenched her jaw, defiant, spearing him her most ruthless glare.

I will always be a challenge, she had promised Lady Asha many moons ago.

She might be mortal, unbeholden to her words, but that had been a promise Jude intended on keeping. She would not go quietly, if that was her husband’s hope.

“‘Tell him that I hated him. Tell him that’s why I did it.’” The words seem to grit at Cardan’s teeth as he said them. Then, his eyes shuttered, and squeezed shut. He ran a hand down his face. When he spoke again, his voice held none of the contempt it had before. “I knew you hated me, once. I did not know how deep that well still ran. You must hate me a great deal, however, for it to be your dying wish to tell me.”

Oh.

Oh, no. They had sorely misunderstood one another. There was a largeness rising like a parachute in Jude’s throat.

“Cardan,” she choked out, “I don’t— That’s not what I… Come here.” She held out her hand, reaching for him.

Cardan looked at her like she held a poison apple in her palm. Like she was a death trap. Maybe she was. She certainly felt like it sometimes.

“Please,” she rasped.

The High King assessed her for so long, Jude thought he might very well reject her. To her surprise, however, he stood from his chair and circled the bed slow.

Cardan slid onto the duvet with her but remained sitting upright, leaning back against the headboard. He’d left ample space between them. Enough so that he did not feel any closer.

To Jude, that short span of satin sheets was a wide chasm. She hated every inch of it.

It would be a small thing, she thought, to close that distance. To take him into her arms. Instead, Jude twisted as much as she could without sending a spike of pain through her knee, and scooped one of his hands into hers. She fiddled with the rings on his fingers.

“You’ve mistaken me,” Jude said, suddenly feeling very shy. “I did not go to catch a glimpse because I hate you. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Cardan gave her a blank stare. “I am not sure I know your meaning.”

A movement behind him caught Jude’s eye. The dark tuft at the end of his tail. It whipped through the air, to and fro.

Jude gnawed at her bottom lip. “I am not good at conveying the depth of my feelings.” She traced a thumb down the centre of his palm. “I am much better at showing them.”

He shivered at the touch. “I know.”

“At the revel a few nights ago,” Jude recalled, “A courtier asked me to dance, and I got flustered. You stepped in, which I was very grateful for, and you told him that I do not heed the requests of others.”

I’m afraid heeding requests, even my own, is the singular skill which evades my wife’s grand arsenal.

When Cardan did not reply, she barreled on, for Jude would rather do that than look him in the eye.

“It reminded me of one such request you made long ago—a request I was unable to heed.” Jude paused, steeling herself. “For a while now, I have been contemplating how best to explain my defiance. So when I saw the glimpsing fog, I thought it would be better to show you in a way that removes all doubt. ”

Understanding was dawning across Cardan’s face when she peeked at him. He shook his head, incredulous, then shifted so that he was lying down on his side. He laid his head on the pillow next to hers.

“I cannot fathom why I would doubt you if you told me,” Cardan said, softly. His pine sweet breath fanned over her face.

“Because I am mortal.” Jude frowned. “I can lie.”

“Yes,” he said. “You can also be quite nonsensical for so sensical a woman. Don’t you know by now that I trust your word over most everyone’s?”

“I can’t see why you would,” she muttered. “I am the most capable out of anyone of deception.”  

His eyes bore into hers. “And yet, I trust you, Jude.” Even if he were able to lie, she could not deny him this.

Through their past, Jude could see every time Cardan had put his trust in her hands so very clearly, like fulgent pinpricks in her night sky—a bright needlework of stars. And threaded through with darkness was every time she’d betrayed that trust.

How dark his sky must be, how starless.

“I do wonder, however,” Cardan said, “What I’d need do to earn yours. Tell me what it is and I will do it, if you’ll let me. For I should very much like to try.”

Jude thought about trust and all its requisites. How trusting someone other than herself felt very much like throwing herself off a cliff. Or pitching herself into a raging sea. Or falling in love with someone you’d vowed to hate.

She looked at Cardan, the planes of his face, sharp edges casting shadows in the lambency. Their fingers lay on the bedspread, laced together.

He made no move to draw away.

Maybe trust and love were the same thing. They were, at the very least, similitudes of each other. Mirrored objects. Both felt like losing control, though Jude had never been very good at that.

She thought about Cardan and how he’d oft lose himself in faerie wine and revelry. How even though he had known bare scraps of affection as a child, he’d been undaunted in the face of love.

Jude envied him, just a little, his ability to throw himself to the fray. To glory in that great tailspin.

It was certainly much braver than swinging a sword at your enemies every time they crossed you. That was brave too, but there was more certainty in it—a tangible aim, like throwing a bridle over the yawning head of fear and pulling it tight so that you might feel in control.

Jude felt a gentle nudge at her leg. Though there was still space between them, Cardan’s tail had come to curl around her calf.

There was a greater kind of bravery, Jude thought, in feeling every flayed nerve of fear, and not letting it control you. Maybe that was cutting off the head of the serpent.

“I love you,” Jude blurted.

Cardan blinked at her once, before his ink-slick eyes went globelike. “While that relieves me enormously to hear, my love,” he breathed, “I’m afraid it does little to help me understand.”

“That’s why I went to catch a glimpse,” she said, “And why I killed him.” Then, it all came rushing out of her on the crest of a breath, as if it had been living in her lungs this whole time. “I love you and I killed Balekin when you asked me not to and I don’t feel sorry for it. I don’t even feel a little bit guilty, because he deserved to die, but I hate the pain it caused you and I hate myself for being the one who caused it and I love you.”

When she finished, Jude clamped her mouth shut, not feeling the least bit comforted by her admission.

Her heartbeat a melee against her ribcage. She was both tense and heavy, at once. Saying it outright was more exhausting than almost dying. Which maybe should have concerned her more than it did.

Cardan had gone still as a stone next to her. “You went to catch a glimpse,” he murmured, “Because you wanted to show me why you killed Balekin.”

She nodded. “I knew that if I could catch one, it could show you the irrefutable truth of what I saw him do to you, what he did to me in the Undersea, how horrible he was. How all of those things made me betray you and how it was not at all out of spite.”

Jude drew a ragged breath. She felt raw, exposed. She sagged under the weight of it.

Rain tapped unsure fingers on the window. The fire in the hearth was down to the embers, consuming itself from the inside out.

“But I have not managed even that, and now…You must hate me,” she said to the coverlets, because it was easier to speculate with inanimate objects than to bear witness to Cardan’s expression.

“No.” A long, cool finger crooked under her chin, tilting it so she met his gaze again. “You’ve mistaken me, my love. I do not hate you. Quite the opposite, in fact.” Cardan stroked a thumb down the line of her jaw.

Her heart faltered. “Well,” she said, a tremor in her voice. “That is a relief.”

“Oh Jude,” Cardan said, and then he was closing that distance between them on the bed, cradling her against his chest. Jude slid her arms around him, holding him with as much fervency.

She breathed in his mossy scent and really, really hoped this was not another fever dream. Or if it was, that she would never get well again.

“I thought you knew,” Cardan whispered into her hair. “I forgave you long ago, my love. I thought you knew it was not your fault.”

Jude leaned back to give him a bemused look, but Cardan’s face was wholly sober.

“You’re serious?” She gaped at him. “Cardan. I killed him.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I drove a knife through his throat.”

“I’m aware.” Cardan narrowed his eyes. “Though, if you could be so kind as to spare me the rest of the details, I’d rather not hear them.”

She ignored that last jab, well and truly at a loss. “How is that not my fault?”

“It is certainly your doing, Jude,” he said, “But I don’t believe any of us could have shielded Balekin from his own demise.”

“You mean, because he was a traitorous bastard?”

Cardan snorted. “I daresay that’s part of it, yes,” he said. “Though, I think fate and magic had a good hand in it, as well.”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you remember the crown’s curse?”

“The one that made you turn into a snake?” She gave him an incredulous look. “Yes, of course. I don’t really like to reminisce about it.”

“Not that one,” Cardan said, a wraithlike smile tugging at his lips. “The other one. The curse that would befall the person who murdered the crown’s wearer.”

Dulcamara’s words from a time long past echoed through her pool of memory. The crown is cursed so that a murder of its wearer causes the death of the person responsible.

Jude squinted at him. “But Eldred wasn’t wearing the crown when he was murdered.”

“He wasn’t.” Cardan tilted his head to the side, considering. “But he was its wearer in every other sense of the word. Until he placed the crown on another’s head, it would have been tied to him.”

“If that’s true,” she said, “Why didn’t he do something? Why didn’t he stop Balekin?”

“My father had been ingesting poison unwittingly for months before the coronation,” he reminded her.

Jude grimaced. That particular revelation in the Court of Shadows had brought shock to them all.

“He was weak,” Cardan said. “As a result, so was his magic.”

She recalled the flowers on the throne, withering to brown and falling onto the dais during Balekin’s coup. She’d thought that it had signified Eldred’s loss of magic, but perhaps Cardan was right. Perhaps it was the very opposite.

“So you’re saying,” Jude said slowly, trying to puzzle out the meaning of what he was telling her, “That my killing Balekin was because of Grimsen’s curse?”

She was not sure whether to feel offended or relieved. The idea of being a pawn, much less when it was without her knowledge, was a dislikeful one. Worse still, if it served Grimsen’s foul design. Jude could not deny, however, that such a curse would exonerate her in a more concrete way than a glimpse ever could.

Maybe she should be grateful that her husband was so astute.

“I was only suggesting.” Cardan gave a lazy, one-shouldered shrug, his curls spilling onto the pillow. “Whether or not there is truth to the theory, I cannot be sure. But I do not fault you for his death, either way.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, quiet, into their small sphere of reality.

It was unfair, really; the way he was looking at her in all his vicious beauty.

“You scared me again,” Cardan said, taking one of her hands in his. “It was like watching you fall from the rafters all over. And then, I was afraid you hated me again.” She marveled at his touch, his confession.

“I do not hate you, Cardan,” Jude said. “And when I do hate you, it’s because I love you very much, and you have done something incredibly stupid.”

A laugh burst from his lips. “I do not have to wonder how that feels,” he said, and Jude’s heart gave a great squeeze.

Maybe sharing their fears was a little like taking off armor. They may only do it in this room, in this bed, but it was a comfort all the same. If there was anyone who deserved her unguarded, Jude knew it was him.

“I was afraid you resented me,” she told him in a small voice.

“I do not resent you.” Cardan shook his head. “Not even a little.”

“So, what you said at the revel, about heeding requests…”

“That,” he said, black eyes glittering, “Was about you being obstinate in the face of everyone’s wishes but your own. A quality which you needn’t have proved, on account of most people knowing it to be true, but which you insisted on proving, nonetheless, by frolicking straight into a Glimpsing Fog.”

“I was never actually in the fog,” Jude grumbled. “And I most certainly did not frolic.”

“I cannot express to you how much I don’t care for semantics right now.”

Jude couldn’t help the impish grin twisting at her mouth.

“Why are you smiling?” Cardan asked, beleaguered.

“I’d forgotten how fussy you get when you’re worried.”

He gave her a bewildered look. “You almost died, Jude.”

“It’s just nice,” she said, shrugging, “To be fussed over.” After a moment, she added, “We never had much of that with Madoc.”

He sighed at that and pulled her close again. “Worried and fussy are the least of what I am.”

Jude pillowed her head on his chest. She could hear the erratic beat of his heart.

“What are you then?”

“Beside myself.” Cardan said. “Driven mad. Terrified.”

“Semantics.”

“Regardless, I much prefer you terrify me in your usual ways.”

She angled her head towards him. “With knives and swords?”

“Don’t forget claws and sharp teeth.”

Her grin turned mischievous. “I don’t think I’ll have any problem heeding that request.”

“Later,” Cardan said, kissing her forehead.

“How much later?”

He arched a brow at her, fixing her with a pointed look. “You need to rest, Jude.”

“Okay,” Jude sighed, eyes lingering on his mouth.

It was most certainly not okay, but there was the small matter of her leg and her almost death to contend with. Jude reckoned she’d have to fight tooth and nail to lift a finger anywhere in the palace for the foreseeable future. Much less do anything strenuous.

So they lay like that for a long while, limbs tangled together as roots. Taking each other in like air into lungs. A tender thing floated, diaphanous and shimmering in the air between them.

Above their heads, blue bellflowers and deep plum hollyhocks blossomed, beautiful spangles of petals bursting from the loam. Cardan glanced at the wall, his mouth a crescent moon. When he regarded her again, it was slowly; bewondered.

Jude slid her gaze to his. There, she found two mirrors.

There, she was reflected.

☽☽☽☽☽

If you want to know more about Cardan’s theory, read this Jude is Balekin’s curse theory

Last Part

Liked this? Try:  You Are  |  Kiwi  |  King

Masterlist

Title Inspo: From the Woods by James Vincent McMorrow

AN: Wow, this has been such an epic journey/test of my writerly will. This final part took me more than a month to write, but I have to say, I’m thrilled with the result. To everyone who found this fic when it was still in its first stages, and sent me so much love and encouragement to see it through, I can never thank you enough for taking the time to reach out and tell me your thoughts, or just generally express your excitement. It meant the world. And to the nonnie who requested, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to write this!

If you enjoyed this please let me know in the form of comments, reblogs, keyboard smashes, messages, and/or asks. I truly do read and appreciate every single one. If you’d like to be tagged in any future Jurdan content, let me know and I’ll add you to the tag list!

Back to the forest now. -Em 🖤💫