Chapter Text
The High Queen of Elfhame was sprawled on top of her husband's body, their limbs entangled. The High King ran a hand in her damp hair, turning slightly to bury his nose in her thick locks. They stayed in their embrace in a comfortable silence, until their breath finally went back to normal after some quite amorous activities. Cuddling was the precise word for what they were currently doing. Jude would never admit it out loud, but this was nice, just basking in each other's presence, soft touches and kisses after the throes of passion. As Cardan's deft fingers danced on her skin, Jude felt the pull of sleep creeping in.
“How did this one come to be?”
“Hmm?” Jude’s eyes fluttered, fighting to remain open. She wanted to stay awake, to chatter with Cardan about the most mundane things. It was almost comical how backwards their relationship was, only starting to learn little pieces about each other after being lovers or whatever they had been before that. She'd miss having a confident, a friend, but this was not the time to be thinking about Taryn.
“This scar.” He clarified, tracing the long and raised silver line that ran up the back of her right tight.
Jude shivered, her leg hiking up reflexively to give him better access. “I fell off a horse after insisting I could spar with Madoc while staying in my saddle.”
Cardan chuckled. “Bold as always. One can never say you aren't consistent.”
He gently flipped them, so that he was now hovering over her, his eyes raking over her body, not with hunger, but with curiosity. This was something new, something Jude was still learning to accept and appreciate. He had seen every part of her, and yet, she felt the most exposed like this, looking at his expression as he traced along the marks of her past. Intimacy came in many forms, and Jude found that despite her inexperience in the arts of love, sex was not the one that frightened her the most.
Cardan’s mouth followed his fingers across her body, outlining the scars that were on their path. Every time he lingered on one of them, Jude gave him pieces of the truth she'd never share with anyone. A confession for a kiss, that was a fair trade for her writhing body: a nick of a vicious nixie’s claw on her collarbone, an arrow that flew a bit too close to her cheekbone, countless marks left by the blades of her enemies here and there, and even the impossible to ignore one on her stomach, courtesy of Madoc himself. Jude could barely think, the pain of those reminders long forgotten. If anything, their memories were being replaced by better ones with the reverence shown by her husband.
She had been too distracted by his ministrations, too starved for his next touch to foresee what was coming. When she finally did, it was too late.
“And how about this one?” Cardan’s hand had folded over her right one, lifting it to his mouth. He dropped a kiss on the dark scar still visible in the middle of her palm. And just like that, the spell was broken. Jude tensed. Of course, he noticed right away, his smile vanishing into a ghost of one. He crawled back up, searching for her eyes.
“Jude?” His voice was low and dangerous, as if sensing parts of the truth already.
She bent her fingers over her palm and looked away. If he couldn't see it, if she couldn't see him, maybe she wouldn't have to explain what she had to do for power, what she had to do to survive in his world.
Cardan didn't let go. He tipped her face back towards his, holding gently, but firmly.
“Jude, who did this to you?” It was the King's voice, the command unmistakable. He needed to know.
She could have insisted that she did it herself. That was, after all, also the truth. But Jude remembered the reflection she'd had the first time they laid together, how they ought to learn to shed their armor one piece at a time. She refused to feel small.
“Your brother.”
“Which one?” Years of practice made his tone almost nonchalant, but Jude knew better now. Cardan's calm was more terrifying than his lashing out.
“You ought to remember that before I tricked you, even before that bloody coronation, I was Dain’s spy and was under his command.”
“That doesn’t explain why he stabbed your hand, wife.”
“So impatient, my dear husband.” She chidded, channeling Cardan himself. She remembered how he always hides everything behind his insouciant mask. She ought to test out that strategy herself.
“I was a powerless mortal, humiliated by a certain prince and his awful friends.” Cardan’s expression fell, and he opened his mouth, to grovel or to argue about her terrible life choices, Jude didn’t know, but she wouldn’t be stopped. She put a finger on his lips. He wanted to know, so he’ll have to listen. Maybe parts of her still needed to punish him for the scars to finally heal. “I vowed to never let myself be glamoured again. When Dain asked what I wanted in return for my service, I asked for his geas. But as you can probably guess, it came with a twist. No one could control me, not even the High King himself. No one, except for Dain. He liked to test me, to send me out on missions to see if I was made for the Court of Shadows. One day, I was cornered by Valerian, and he tried to glamour me and ordered me to jump off a tower to my certain death. Being born mortal is like being born dead already. That’s what he told me. But you know me by now, don’t you? I’m like weed. The harder you try to get rid of me, the stronger I grow. I taunted him with my disobedience and stabbed him with my iron knife. Did you know that I thought you sent him to kill me?” Jude chuckled humourlessly, how misunderstood both of them were.
“It was the day you threatened to cut me, wasn’t it? I was taunting you when I saw you. No wonder you wanted to return the favor.”
Jude lifted her neck up, chasing Cardan’s lips. She needed an interlude to ground herself, but by now he knew her tactics to stale time, and broke the kiss, giving her a meaningful look. For someone who didn’t want to be king, he sure had perfected the effortless command in his every move. Of course, it didn’t work on her, but she would indulge him.
“You’re no fun.” She chided him, but resumed her tale. “Anyway, my survival infuriated Dain. To him, I endangered our secret by revealing to Valerian that I could resist glamour. To punish me, to remind me that he had my life in his hand, Dain ordered me to run through my hand with his blade. And you know what the worst thing was? He didn’t even glamour me, and I did it anyway.”
Jude remembered exactly what she had thought back then, that instead of being afraid, she would become something to fear. The smile she gave Cardan in this moment was not exactly a façade. There was some pride in it. She did survive, and she did instill fear in her subject. She was now High Queen, after all.
Cardan must have stopped breathing a while ago, his tail lashing back and forth. He looked like he was going to be sick. Anger and pain troubled his dark eyes. No one said that shedding armor would be easy, whether you were the one doing the confessing or the one listening.
Cardan let go of Jude. He turned to lay on his back, his stormy gaze aimed at anywhere but her.
“I wish I could tell you that I would have killed them for that, but I’m afraid I was too much of a coward.”
Jude knew from his tone how he desperately wanted to lie, to vow that he would have done anything for her. But back then, that wasn't who he was. She didn't resent him for it. She didn't need any saving, and she knew that the person she was at the time wouldn't have let anyone save her, least of all Cardan.
Jude remembered how he made the fact that he was no killer his sole redeemable trait despite his villainy, and how he'd broken his own rule to get her back when Madoc had stolen her away.
Half of my army never made it out.
He'd killed for her, and she'd run back to Elfhame despite her hurt and anger into what she thought was a death sentence to save him. How things have changed since their days at the palace school. Jude was certain that their paths would not have led them here had it not been for their wicked souls and hearts of stone. They were more alike than they both cared to admit.
Jude propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at Cardan who seemed like he was about to implode from all his conflicting feelings.
“Turn around for me, would you?”
Jude’s voice was soft, but there was an unmistakable command to her voice that made Cardan tense. She hated that Bakekin’s abuse still had a mark on him, how despite the years, his first reflex when asked to show his back was still to brace himself. But he complied. For her, he always did. Either time has worked some magic, or they have silently learned to heal bits by bits, together.
It was Jude’s turn to run her fingers on her husband’s bare skin, tracing the countless lines that marred his back. Cardan sucked in a breath, and finally turned around to look at her.
“Do not pity me, High King, for you are no stranger to pain either. These are the scars that shaped us.”
“You never asked about those. Not even once. Not even when we were enemies and you could have taunted me for it. Why?”
From the trouble in his eyes, she wagered that he knew why, or at least, had guessed part of the truth. In reality, she never broached the subject because she didn’t know how. How to bring up someone’s humiliation? Why do it when his brother is now long gone? Why force him to talk about something that was undeniably traumatic? But now she realized that she was projecting, that she would have hated to be put in that position.
There was something else, also. A budding, hopeful thing that she was still learning to accept and embrace: that there was still tomorrow, and the day after. That they had a future ahead of them, one in which they may one day share parts of themselves that had been forgotten, buried with time. Maybe that's why she'd never addressed the subject. She'd told herself that Cardan would talk about it when he was ready, that they had all the time in the world. But she guessed that her avoidance was seen as her being ashamed or pitying him. She knew she would have resented him had their role been reversed.
When the silence grew heavy, Jude could feel the muscles on Cardan’s back tensing up, his body taut like a string about to snap, both of their earlier post-coital haze and boneless contentment long gone. She shifted her position, draping his back with her body, inching up until she was close enough to see the side of his face. There was pain and anger, yes, but above all, what she saw was shame. A feeling she understood all too well, having been powerless one time too many. A new urge blossomed in her, the urge to protect, to reassure, to let him know that his humiliation doesn't define him, to let him know that there was someone else in this world who was aware of his shameful secret, that she still wanted him in spite of it.
How doomed was Elfhame to have monarchs as wrecked as them, he, the neglected and abused prince turned cruel, and her, a mortal with skin so thick she climbed out of the graves the folks have dug for her time and again. What was worse? Being a creature looked down on by almost everyone in Faerie and having to constantly prove her worth, or being utterly powerless despite being the king’s son? The humiliation felt equal to her. It was no wonder they ended up together despite all odds. Retaliation and anger were strong motivators, after all.
Jude held Cardan’s jaw in one hand, turning his face around and kissed him fiercely.
“I know what he did to you, Cardan. And I thought about it when I killed him.”
Whatever Cardan had been holding in broke then. He wrestled his way out from under her body, sat up, and pulled her up with him. He cupped her cheeks, holding firmly so she would look at him and him only. His glistening eyes bore into hers, looking for a lie, but of course, he found none. Of all the things they have discussed tonight, that seemed to be what broke him. Cardan pulled Jude in a crushing embrace, his body trembling from a feeling she wasn't sure she could aptly name.
"You wicked mortal, my wicked mortal. How I'm glad to now have you by my side."
Jude knew her early admission was a point of no return, that this was the beginning of a deluge of secrets that would spill out from both of them. She wasn’t sure she was ready to bare her heart or to face the ugly truth of his awful past, but Jude was nothing if not an overachiever. What does it say about their current situation that they were willing to trust each other with their darkest, most humiliating secrets?
She found that the implication didn’t scare her as much as she thought.
Let us spill it all.