"𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬, 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠"
-Cardan's Moth
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a/n
welcome back friends! it's so good to see you again and I really hope you're keeping well
thanks so much for your beautiful comments in my absence, I can assure you that each one has been seen and cherished and read and reread and basked in like finest quality catnip
i'm certainly doing better than i was earlier this year. a recent trip home to see my family for the first time in over three years really helped break down the wall i've been hindered by creatively for so long.
this chapter has existed in tattered pieces since april. it was a chaos of saved segments across multiple documents and notebooks. it felt so good to return from my holiday and weave it all back together in a clearer and more positive frame of mind. it has a darker introduction but lightens as you go along. it's quite reflective of this year in that regard. stick with me though, because i promised a happy ending and I intend to keep that promise
whether you're a recent reader or one of my much beloved regulars, i hope you enjoy the rest of snakes & lattes, and thank you as always for your time xox
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a/n continued
⚠️ art for this chapter was incorrectly 🚩'd
while still in draft format, so i will not be
including it here (sorry!!) ⚠️
it was a scary reminder that elements of this story (or the story entire) could be deleted at any time due to overzealous bots. apparently this happens all the time. if you don't want to miss out, i post on ao3 under the same username and story name (snakes and lattes), and all my art gets posted to my tumblr accounts ( cinnamonsketchdust ) and ( neon-academia ). i also made an ig ( neon.academia ) which i'd like to start posting some art and cosy city stuff to eventually
i could make a backup of this story on this site but i think it would damn near break my heart to loose all your comments :( any support or advice on this issue would be appreciated, thanks!
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Thank you for standing by.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
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𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐜
Fear. Hatred. Fear again. Both were preferable to the mask of porcelain docility Taryn finally settled on.
Madoc watched his daughter lower herself into a curtsey, affording him brief respite from being the subject of her odd gaze. It hurt to be looked at that way. By a daughter. By this daughter. Little Taryn, first of her sisters to forgive him, last to remain in the kingdom he had won for her.
'My Lord.'
Mere months had passed since last he visited. Now he was lord rather than father?
'Rise,' he bid gently.
They each possessed conflicting concepts of time. He had to remember that. She was young enough to still mark her birthdays while he had lost track of his own years entirely. Some days he sensed his years, others had them hurtling by without his noticing. To see time fly, he need only cast his gaze across the waves toward the mortal lands where millions of new lights twinkled over hills that had only yesterday been wild. But it only felt like yesterday.
Taryn rose from her curtsey without lifting her eyes. She stared at the ground as though she hoped it might swallow and spit her out in another realm. Her children scattered off indoors. Madoc dismissed his retinue. Father and daughter stood in a silence taut as a bowstring.
'I wasn't expecting you so close to morning.' Taryn's eyes dipped to her gown as she spoke. She seemed surprised to find herself in it. 'I'm sorry to have received you out here, in this state.'
Indeed, her sleeves were comically unfit for the activity Madoc had interrupted. Tree felling? At such a bitter predawn hour? The juxtaposition of the dress and the hatchet did not perplex him so much as the way in which she held the tool. Her knuckles were bone white around the handle.
'Allow me.' He offered his open hands to take the hatchet, suddenly conscious of the way his claws protruded toward her.
Ten tiny daggers.
Slowly, Taryn began to offer up the tool. Madoc took the handle, and that was where the exchange abruptly halted. The girl would not let the thing go.
That was when he noticed the swell of a bruise blooming along one row of her knuckles. Evidence of a recently-dealt punch. Good. Meek as she was, he was glad to know there was still some fight left in her. Fire, he called it. He'd only ever known it to burn so brightly in her twin-you don't forget a blaze like that.
It was all he could ever hope for in a daughter.
'I hope the fool on the receiving end of this was deserving,' he said, running a thumb along the girl's bruised knuckles, allowing pride to warm his tone. 'I hope you split his lip.'
'And knocked the prick out cold.'
The corners of her mouth betrayed her in a smile. It disappeared as quickly as it came. Neither saw a need to utter the victim's name; the "prick" she punched. It would have been wasted breath.
Taryn let the hatchet go after that. They shared a chuffing sound like laughter and relief, and some of that earlier tension seemed to evaporate. Madoc gestured with the hatchet toward the tree that Taryn had been aiming for, and she nodded.
'It's meant to be for Christmas,' she admitted, almost apologetic.
'It would serve you better as kindling.'
She looked as though she wanted to agree. 'The kids had their heart set on this one. It was Vivi's idea, she-'
'Vivienne? Is she here?'
Something like guilt softened Taryn's expression. 'I'm sorry. You just missed her.'
'Yes, yes. Missed. Of course I did.'
'She sends her warmest...' She could not complete the lie. It was a comfort, Madoc conceded, that some lies were unutterable, even for a mortal. It evened the playing field.
With a lofty sigh, he committed himself to a practical task. He lifted the hatchet and sent the blade through the tree's scrawny trunk in one single smooth swipe. The glorified toothpick fell in a whisper of needles, bouncing a little upon the manicured lawn. Then he sent the hatchet home into the stump and stood over the scene a moment, realising he had been waiting for something. Something that wasn't coming.
Blood.
There was usually blood after he swung a blade.
He closed his eyes. The blood was there in the dark, ebbing from the body he had just decapitated. Blood of many colours like strokes across a still-wet oil painting. Blood and bodies. Torn wings and severed tails and the shining swords of the fallen. He alone remained to watch it all turn to flowers and lichen as the incalculable souls he'd slain found their way to the Land of Promise.
But when he opened his eyes, the blood was gone, and he was left blinking stupidly at the tree.
Tree, not body.
Taryn was watching him carefully. She had pulled her robe more tightly about herself, and she was fussing with something in her pocket. He noticed she had taken two steps away from him. Unless he was mistaken, and he was rarely mistaken about such things, the girl had shifted into a defensive stance. He must have had a wretched expression on his face to have rattled her thus.
Slowly, Madoc moved to unclip his cape from his breastplate. This he offered to her in a gesture of peace.
'I'm fine,' she said quickly. Predictably.
'Then, let's get you inside.'
'You go, I'll be along shortly.'
He took a step nearer, closing the distance she had established. 'Will you?'
'One of the children left a doll behind in the garden. She'll cry if she doesn't have it with her while she sleeps.'
Madoc gave one curt nod, then signalled for one of his guards to come and collect the felled tree. He asked for it to be conveyed indoors; to wherever there might be excitable children. Then he refastened his cape and offered the crook of his arm to Taryn.
'Come, I'll help you find that doll.'
Whatever was in her pocket was reluctantly abandoned as she looped her arm through his. The scent of mortal-forged metal lingered on her fingers. Iron. There and gone again, and then they were walking.
☕ 🐍 🗡️ 🍄 🖤
By the time they reached the statue garden, Taryn had stopped pretending to look for made-up dolls. A weak excuse for time outdoors that insulted them both. The arm linked through his had also relaxed a little, and her pace had slowed. She seemed resigned to the walk, and the company.
It had also started snowing.
'I cannot recall the last snowfall we had here,' he thought aloud.
Elfhame's weather had grown mild and predictable with its ageing High King, and remained ever so after Eldred's passing. All the seasons lost their bite and burn. The sky never so much as borrowed a mortal storm, and the land seemed to slumber in perpetual autumn.
And yet, all of a sudden, here was snow.
'It must have blown in from the city,' said Taryn, seemingly unimpressed by the phenomenon.
'The city?'
'Vivienne mentioned it had been,' she amended quickly. 'Snowing, that is.'
'Ah.'
Madoc caught a flake of it in his free hand. An omen. For good or ill, he supposed he would have to wait to find out. Hadn't he banished Baphen, the only one who might have interpreted it for him? All the same, he wasn't sure he would have liked the outcome of that interpretation, given the quality of the astrologer's last prophecy.
Imminent death. Or, defeat.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not if he could help it.
He sought his daughter's eyes and found her expression unhelpfully obscured by hair. A peppering of snowflakes remained intact between those loose waves. He allowed himself a moment to dwell on this lovely image, letting it reside in his mind where all the blood and gore had been a minute ago. And, for a moment... For a beautiful, fleeting moment, she looked so much like...
'Your mother put on a Christmas for me. Just once.'
Taryn stilled. 'Oriana?'
'Eva.' The name tasted strange on his tongue. Two mostly forgotten syllables. A heartbeat. 'She wrapped a gift for me in a mountain of tape and shiny paper, forgetting that I had these,' here he flexed his claws, earning a brief glance and an almost-smile. 'I made short work of her efforts, she was understandably vexed.'
'What was inside?'
'A machine for music.' He spun one claw in the air, like the needle coaxing sound from the vinyl.
'I don't remember seeing it in your study.' Her amusement contorted to regret. 'Unless... the fire?'
'It would have been yours, otherwise.'
But he thought the child should still have a gift. If not her mother's record player, then something equally fine.
He told her to close her eyes. She hesitated, but complied.
And offered her left hand.
Madoc might have noticed the knife wound at the centre of that palm she offered. A near surgical entrance and exit. A familiar signature of punishment he would have known to associate with Dain. And of course, there was the missing, mutilated tip of her ring finger. A punishment of a different kind, dealt by a trusted and elevated member of his own court. They were brands of cruelty woven between the leathery patches of skin she wore. Skin that spoke of a life lived very differently to the one presently on display.
But of course, Madoc noticed none of these things. His focus was set upon one paramount detail.
The child's expression.
Her pure delightment as the hairpin landed in her hand, spooling in a delicate pile of silver chains and crystal beads.
Taryn lifted the pin to appreciate the Luna moth perched at the end of it. It had lacy green wings and a pair of beaded tails designed to make a lovely sound as the wearer turned her head this way and that. Though she was surely inundated with fine jewels, this one still seemed to impress her. Madoc was glad of that.
'A queen's ornament,' he informed her. 'Once worn in the crimson hair of Queen Annet of the Court of Moths.'
'Was the queen sad to see it go?'
Madoc stifled a laugh. Truly, she had no idea.
It was a story he would not share, for fear of frightening her back into skittishness. The story of cunning Queen Annet, who chose to withdraw her oath to him as High King, giving him no choice but to come to her court to rend the oath from her himself.
Annet had challenged him to a contest upon arrival. Archery. It wasn't Madoc's foremost talent, but the lady was a waifish thing, so crossed swords would have been too fleeting. His men were always eager for a bit of sport.
So, archery.
He and Annet were evenly matched in the task. Tied until the final round. And as he took aim at his final target, the Queen of Moths chose to make a target of him. He recalled a stinging sensation in his neck. He understood what had occurred when darkness began to creep along the edges of his vision. Poison. Poison was working its way efficiently through his veins, dispensed through the sharp end of the very hairpin Taryn now twisted between her fingers.
A secret weapon when thrown like a dart. A shimmering declaration of war.
He recalled looking upon Annet with darkening eyes, only to find her staring at him as though waiting for him to fall. As though surprised he hadn't already. Before the world went fully dark, Madoc's body moved with autonomous efficiency, sending his final arrow straight through the queen's cheating heart. She fell alongside him as their people clashed, and sleep finally claimed him.
He had woken three nights later with the hairpin left on the nightstand beside him. Not a new layer of blood on his cap, but a fine enough trophy, he supposed. He thought Taryn would find better use for it. It might spare her knuckles the task of putting her foppish husband out of action.
'See here,' he now explained. 'You pinch the wings to reveal a tiny needle. It dispenses a sleeping poison that should sink a victim of-well, let's say my size-for at least three days.'
She pinched the wings, delighted by its sinister secret. Something like recognition lit her eyes as she sniffed at the bead of poison. Strange that such a thing should be familiar to her.
'Cool.'
'Cool,' Madoc echoed. 'Yes. I thought so, too.'
How fitting that they should stand before a statue of her husband now. They each turned their eyes up to Locke, carved in finest marble, swirling an equally fine marble Taryn around in an exaggerated waltz pose.
Smug bastard.
There happened to be an owl perched atop the brat's head, and Madoc hoped it might do the world a favour and relieve itself there.
Joooood, came the bird's low call. Joooood. Joooood.
'Of course,' Madoc found himself saying, gaze drifting to the bruised knuckles his daughter still wore with her arm around his. 'Should you ever require a more permanent solution, my offer still stands.'
Taryn said haltingly, 'I'll admit, I've been considering it.'
'Oh?'
'What was my role? Just so we're clear.'
'You had no role, other than to act surprised when the task was done.'
'Ah. Of course.'
'It would be a swift thing,' he assured. 'Cunning as a secret. Your brother's band of spies would do away with the fool while he sleeps. Quick. Clean. Elegant.'
'Quick, clean, elegant.' She was tapping nervously at her ring finger, now. The hairpin tinkled distractingly with the motion. 'Wait, you said brother. Oak?'
'...yes.'
'Oak took on the Court of Sha-'
'Shh!' Being in a garden of statues felt suddenly like having a hundred eyes upon them. 'Not here.'
'Shit.'
'Fine, fine. What of a more noble fate for your husband? Might we make him a war hero? Thrust him to the front of the line during a particularly gruesome skirmish?'
'He wouldn't last a minute.'
'Exactly.'
A grim silence engulfed them, penetrated by the owl's awkward hoots. The bird sounded more insistent now.
Jooooood! Jooooood!
'That's right,' uttered Taryn, lifting her eyes to meet those of the marble Locke. 'Yes, I see how complicated my life has become.'
But it wasn't complicated at all. Madoc twisted her to face him, tipping her chin up to meet his eyes so she could see the truth in them and have no doubt of it.
'I'll slit the boy's throat myself if you ask it of me.'
'I know you would. That's the problem.' She tore her chin free of his hold, putting two steps of distance between them.
'Who would gainsay the-'
'The High King of Elfhame?' She all but spat the words. Madoc had to fight the urge to wipe his face clean of them. 'Is that what it is to be High King, then? To rob children of fathers without consequence?'
He bared his teeth. 'There is always consequence.'
'Justin. Eldred. Locke, now?' She listed each name across her fingers with stiff-jawed articulation.
'Eldred was a poor excuse for a father and his offspring were no better! They would have torn themselves to pieces without my help.'
'So sure, are you? You never gave Cardan's sisters a fair chance. You just lined them up like -'
'Lambs to the slaughter? Ha! You mistake wolves for lambs, child.'
'I was there, at the coronation.' She shut her eyes to ward against the memory. 'I saw.'
Lies. Manipulative mortal lies.
She had not seen a single speck of blood. He had taken great pains to ensure his family were far from the dais at the final unfolding of his plan. Taryn couldn't have seen. If she had, she would not have forgiven him. She would have run away.
Like her mother. Like Vivienne.
Like Jude.
'I have watched over that family for many of your lifetimes. They snarl and circle Mab's throne like starved dogs at a carcass. They put her legacy to shame. Trust me on this if nothing else, all Greenbriar blood is poison.'
'Trust you.'
'Yes, child. Trust. It is in such short supply these days, even among our own kin.'
Taryn went still. Still as the effigy before her. 'Who?'
'Oak.' It hurt to confess the name. It felt like a great defeat. And yet, somehow, it was the second name he uttered that seemed to rend the greater response from him. 'And Jude.'
Joooood! Joooood!
'She abandoned Faerie. She wouldn't-'
'Come, Taryn. Surely you cannot be so naïve!'
Taryn absorbed his admonishment with quiet dignity. 'I'm sorry. It is only that I fear for... your safety. For Oriana. For the safety of my children. I would know what you know to protect them in whatever way I can.'
'You are my last loyal child, you owe me no such apologies. I will tell you what I know.'
He sighed, sending a few passing snowflakes spiralling out of his orbit. Then he folded his arms as though to brace himself, and painted a new reality for Taryn.
It began little more than a month ago, with the sightings of Balekin in attendance at parties in the Undersea. That had been followed by the sea princess pressing Taryn for information on Jude's whereabouts; gathering photos of the coffee shop. Directions.
Not long after came the reports of the great serpent terrorising the mortal lands. Accounts that placed the beast at a walking distance from Jude's cafe. Oak's contact among the solitary fey sent hunters after the creature. Only one had been successful, and yet no remains were found. Only Balekin's bloody cloak remained at the scene.
'And this.' He held the piece of evidence up for Taryn to see. A golden oak leaf, snapped at the stem. 'A piece of the Blood Crown.'
Taryn swallowed audibly. 'Where's the rest of it?'
Madoc gave the girl a tolerant smile. 'It would have been a week ago, now. Oak attempted to send your sister letters of warning.' Code red! the first had warned. A clever way of denoting their Redcap father. Take whatever valuables you might have recently acquired and lay low. 'I intercepted each one, of course.'
Taryn wove the threads of information together, then nodded her understanding. 'What will become of them? Oak and Jude?'
'I'm not sure,' he admitted, coughing to clear the sudden tightness in his throat. He'd never been tasked with punishing traitorous children before. 'But you have your own worries,' he went on, pointing out her bruised knuckles, 'and I shouldn't burden you with mine. Just think on my offer. There's only so much poison left in that hairpin.'
She considered the ornament carefully. 'I've already made up my-'
'My Lord!'
Father and daughter turned to look upon an alarming sight. A merrow, bowing low, panting heavily, and dripping salty water all over the manicured lawn. He was still in the process of shifting. Greenish scales receded across his bare chest. Rubbery webs shrank between his fingers and toes. Truly, the creature was the very picture of urgency.
Madoc nodded for him to speak. The merrow, still gasping great greedy gulps of air, flicked anxious eyes at Taryn. A message for the King's ears alone, then.
'A moment,' Madoc hissed, then turned his attention back to Taryn. 'You said your mind was made?'
A solemn nod. 'I decline.'
'You-'
'My Lord, please!'
Madoc gestured for silence. Taryn, eyes alight with that everburning fire he'd glimpsed before, went bravely on.
'Locke is a prick, but he's not another excuse for you to kill without consequence. Killing isn't a solution. It's a last resort.'
'My Lord, Hollow Hall-'
'Your ways are not my ways,' Taryn completed, standing taller now. Carrying herself as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. 'Not anymore.'
The merrow's calls might have become more frantic in that moment, but they washed over Madoc as surely as the seawater sluicing from the creature's skin. Time might creep one day, and it might fly the next, but in this handful of seconds it seemed to freeze entirely. Maybe the snowflakes hung suspended in the air. Maybe he and Taryn were composed of marble, new instalments among the statue garden.
His hand was on her shoulder, and his eyes held hers.
'Justin was not without consequence,' he told her, imbuing every word with a love he knew no other way to define. 'You were my consequence, daughter.'
And there they were. Ten words. Ten tiny daggers, finding their mark in her heart. She made a broken sound. She shook her head and put a hand to her face. She said something he never properly heard, because he could not tarry a moment longer in that space between time.
Later, after discovering the horrors that awaited him at Hollow Hall, Madoc would return to this spot in search of a closure he wasn't sure he deserved. He would stand before the statue and find the Luna moth hairpin, left in the hand of Taryn's marble effigy.
A glittering declaration of peace.
☕ 🐍 🗡️ 🍄 🖤
𝐉𝐮𝐝𝐞
She was having the dream again.
Only, her hands were not small, ketchup covered things. They were strong hands. Scarred and callused. They could dive beneath her robe for a knife or pistol. They could catch a fall. Shield a blow. Throw a punch. Squeeze the life from a throat, if it ever came to that.
But right now they were the only things holding her together, keeping her from unravelling right there on Taryn's lawn.
It's such a human thing, isn't it? To weep away the whelm. It is the body transmuting all that the mind cannot process into nice, tangible tears. An accumulation of cracks in a wall of stone. Only once the whole structure is in pieces, and you've wallowed a while in the rubble, can you put one stone atop the other and start over again.
But Jude wasn't quite there yet.
She was a mess of snot and hot angry tears, crouched behind a conifer tree, poised directly beneath the window that Taryn had climbed through earlier. It was a good spot to let the mask fall. To wait for the trembling to subside before she could attempt that creep of honeysuckle. If all had gone to plan, Tatterfel would have her things waiting for her up there. Her clothes and her satchel, hopefully stuffed with dirt-infused teacakes. All that was left was the climb, which she couldn't quite manage yet. Not in so many pieces.
I think you're quite unbreakable. Anyone who ever tried only succeeded in making you stronger.
Cardan's words wrenched a saturated whimper from her. She tried to take comfort in knowing that there were no witnesses to her shame. Not Taryn, confined to her silken sleeping quarters for a little while longer. Not her foster father, who had shattered her without staying to pick up the shards. Not Cardan, a million blissful miles away.
But of course, there had been one witness to her unravelling. One circling, searching witness who had finally caught up with her after being spooked off by the arrival of the merrow.
'What's with the waterworks, sweetmeat?'
Jude blinked blearily at the owl. 'Snapdragon? You came back!'
'If Snapdragon is what they call me, then what do they call yooooou?'
'Well that depends,' Jude riddled back. 'Who inquires? Friend or foe?'
'Friend,' the bird decided. 'Now, whooooo are yoooou?'
'Jude. I'm Jude.'
'Jooooood! Jooooood!' Snapdragon's head rotated at an unnatural degree, taking in a view of sky and land in one turn. 'Come, there isn't much time. We must mooooove.'
'Back up, Snap. I need more information than that.'
The bird gave an impatient ruffle of feathers. 'What will have yoooou on your feet faster, girl?'
Jude considered. 'A name. A name in a full sentence.'
'Then it is Cardan whooooo has come for yoooou.'
'Bullshit.'
'I tell no untrooooth!'
'Fine,' Jude tried again, her voice giving way to the new maelstrom of emotion moving inside her. 'Which Cardan is it? Perhaps there's more than one to have ever existed in Elfhame.'
'Shreeeeewd as ever, girl! It is the princeling, Cardan. Runt of Eldred's broooood, though not so weak anymore! That one calls forth the Land with his temper. I watched from the skies! That one compels the very earth to mooooove!'
'No. Nope.'
The owl gave a long, vexatious hoot. 'I forgot how stubborn huuuuumans could be.'
'It's just,' Jude went on, caught between sniffling and laughter at the ridiculousness of it all. 'That's why I'm here. To save him. I mean, I don't even need saving! I don't. I don't.'
She stopped at the sight of the owl's growing exasperation and tried to picture herself through those huge, intelligent eyes. Here she sat, a snot-nosed mortal girl, reeking of nervous sweat and salty, sticky tears, huddled up behind the bushes in a too-tight dress she was all but spilling out of now. A mess. Surely one in need of rescue.
Dnt do annyting stupid...
Laughter felt foreign and somewhat blasphemous as it bubbled up inside her. She tried and failed to quash it. It only made it louder. And snortier.
Then it began to pour out of her like a moka pot. It shook loose the last of her tears and all the frigid tension her muscles had harboured since facing her father in the garden. None of that seemed to matter so much now.
Cardan was here.
That knowledge was a tether. A thread she could follow back to the safe life she'd made for them in the mortal world. A promise of a nightmare soon over. It gave her the strength to pick herself up and clean her sodden face on a bit of the priceless lotus silk robe.
'Ahh, I'm going to kill him.'
'Please don't.'
'I'm going to kill him,' Jude repeated, dusting dirt and grass from her knees. 'I'm going to ring his pretty neck. I'm going to grab him by the tail and swing him around and around like a shot put, then I'll launch him into the sky.'
She put one hand to the honeysuckle, testing her purchase for the climb. Her arms carried her up the wall, strong and sure. No longer shaking.
Her pieces were falling into place again.
'...then I'll find what's left of him. No really, I will! I'll gather up what's left of him to throw into the river to feed to the nixies.'
'We're burning darkness here, sweetmeat.'
Jude was halfway up the honeysuckle before she knew it, smiling wide, stomach aswarm with butterflies. The same butterflies that seemed to take up residence whenever she allowed herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, a storybook prince might care for her just as well as she cared for him.
A little more than that, even.
'I'm going to kill him.'
Right after she kissed him, of course.
☕ 🐍 🗡️ 🍄 🖤
There were smears of Locke's dubious gold powder all over her clothes.
Yuck.
Jude decided Taryn could keep them. Could burn the lot for all she cared. She didn't bother changing out of the nightgown and robe. She only tarried in the library to tug on her boots, which Tatterfel had kindly remembered to leave up here for her. Then she doubled back for Cardan's polaroid photos, fishing them from her trouser pocket to transfer into the enchanted one she still wore. She found the photos neatly folded. She hadn't remembered folding them.
'I found your runaway ragwort pony!' Snapdragon announced from the window, gesturing across the maze with one extended wing. 'Hurry now, lest the merrow and king beat us to your princeling.'
Jude swung her satchel over her shoulder. The teacakes within emanated such lovely warmth. She tucked the precious load close as she made her way back down the honeysuckle, then onward through the maze with Snapdragon gliding soundlessly overhead, sketching shortcuts in the sky. Each time she looked up she found new patches of periwinkle playing peek-a-boo between the snow clouds. The nightmare was almost behind her.
A muffled nicker stole her attention back to the path ahead. Snapdragon affirmed it was the pony; that she was close, but there was a shift ahead in the maze. Jude slowed as, sure enough, the walls of dense greenery before her began to form a new path. It is common for faerie mazes to alter at whim. Even the trees of the forest are known to draw up their roots and wander from time to time. Much like traffic lights in the mortal world, all one can do is stand at a safe distance and wait.
And wait. And wait.
She folded her arms and leaned against an exposed bit of stone wall, seizing the opportunity to catch her breath. Her wall was framed in a chaos of climbing roses. Lovely lacy things, crimson as forbidden kisses. She recognised these to be the roses whose petals had been stuffed into the pocket of the robe she still wore. A continuation of those particular petals was also strewn in a breadcrumb array along the ground beneath her feet. It was a guiding petalled path that came to a convergence at this precise point in the maze.
But why?
She was not left to wonder for long. There was a soft whisper behind her, then the wall gave way. Snapdragon turned just in time to watch her become swallowed by stone.
☕ 🐍 🗡️ 🍄 🖤
The world beyond the wall was the realised dream of a true romantic. A pocket of secret space at the heart of the maze where a pair of lovers might feel like the only two people alive.
Downy blankets were spread along the ground. Jude knew this because she had the good fortune of falling on one after that trick wall gave way. By some strange enchantment, it was warmer in here. Warmer than the winter kissed world outside. Roses bloomed in every impossible shade along the trellised walls and ceiling, admitting the merest fragments of pale morning sky, leaving only the fickle light of fireflies to give the place an uneven glow. Whenever they flew near, everything became gilded in goldish green.
Everything, including the shining surface of the blade presently pressed to her throat.
Jude didn't scream. If the wielder of the dagger wanted her dead, she wouldn't be here, lying on her back, contemplating the cool brush of metal below her chin. A conflict of warmth emanated from her captor's body, which she now found herself pinned beneath. He was a hooded fellow of about her height. Broader of shoulder than a typical faerie, though no less poised. He even spared her the torment of another shitty Taryn impression by speaking first.
'Surrender the cheeses and wine,' he began. 'We can do this the easy way or the hard way, though I confess a preference for the latter.'
That voice. She might have recognised it without all that sensual resonance. It was a soft and intimate thing. Utterly distracting. Obviously void of any true threat. Each word seemed to leave his lips to dance across her skin like liquid shadow.
She had to swallow a little moisture back into her throat before she said, 'You must be Taryn's secret swain.'
'I'm anything my lady wishes me to be.'
'Of course you are.'
'An assassin. A spy. A rogue, here to lure unwitting damsels.'
With each suggestion, the knife crept an inch lower, beginning a dangerous descent from chin to décolletage. She put a free hand to the handle of his dagger in an attempt to shove it away. A failed attempt. Committed to character, her captor would not quit.
It would be safer to remain Taryn in this particular position, she decided. To reveal herself as anything else might invite his dagger in earnest.
'Alright,' she sighed, a little breathless beneath the weight of him. 'Three seconds. One.'
'Oh? What happens at three?'
'Best you don't find out. Two.'
'Have a care, you're hardly in any position to be making threats.'
The dagger skimmed treacherously low now. Jude wondered idly if this man and her twin had a safe word for circumstances such as these, when things needed to come to an abrupt and unquestioned end. It was probably something really on the nose, like roses. Such were the turnings of her mind as she slipped a hand into her pocket and drew out her own knife. Her captor had been too sinfully distracted to notice.
'Three!'
There was a soft swish as her blade passed cleanly through his.
Wait. Passed through?
He cried out and startled backward at the reveal of her weapon, causing his hood to fall. Jude got a blurry vision of olive skin and sandy hair by firefly light, then recognition struck like a riddle answered.
'Fine work,' scolded the Ghost, all tousled and lovebitten. 'You've decapitated my favourite prop knife.'
The Ghost.
Yeah. Made sense.
Which was to say, she could appreciate what her sister saw in him. He had an unseelie sort of handsomeness. A quiet confidence. A stony composure that spoke of a life lived long enough to be broken and remade a few times. He was the furthest thing from Locke in that regard. A definite improvement.
Still pinned beneath him, Jude got a good look at the fine misting of unfaerielike sweat he wore. She marked the faint worry lines along his brow. The network of scars that hadn't healed as neatly as a full faerie's might. They were cracks of mortality peeking through his boyish mask, as though Neverland might be losing its hold of him. Hallmarks of a human heritage, she thought. She thought, and then she resented. Deeply envied.
It stung. Why did it sting?
Perhaps it was that Taryn had failed to find a faithful future in the arms of her full faerie husband. Perhaps it was only achievable with one who shared her humanity to a degree, and all the flaws that came with it. It was a lesson their mother had learned long ago. A lesson Jude might soon learn the hard way.
Clever Jude, smarter than her mommy...
Clever Jude...
Perhaps it was foolish to expect anything long term with Cardan.
She'd never felt so painfully mortal. It was like longing for the sun to stop rising, if only to preserve one perfect night. The sun has the solar system to consider. In a hundred years, the sun won't remember your name. You are but a blink in the eyes of time immemorial.
It all goes on spinning without you.
And it was this sour stream of existentialism that inspired Jude to throw the poor Ghost off without grace or warning. He landed on the blanket beside her, hazel eyes wide and affronted.
'What's gotten into you?'
She shrugged. 'I prefer to be the one holding the knife.'
'That's not what you told me earlier.'
All the same, she made him watch at knifepoint while she scrambled to her feet and hurried to inspect the contents of her satchel. At a glance, the teacakes were blessedly intact, despite her fall through the trick wall. She noticed the Ghost eyeing the satchel hungrily and snapped the lid closed.
'I'm starved!' he whined. Proof that no grand sum of years can keep a person from succumbing to hangriness. 'You made me wait all this while, what part are you playing?'
'The Queen of Spoiled Fun.'
'I much prefer the Damsel in Distress. At least she feeds me. Wait, where are you off to?'
Jude was at the wall now, bracing to pass through in the same manner by which she'd entered. She tried a testing press with one palm to the stony surface and found it unyielding. She swore.
'Wrong password,' the Ghost drawled.
Password? Right. 'Roses?'
'Wrong flower.'
'Ugh!' Jude sheathed her knife, trying another firm press against the stone with both palms free. Still no give. 'I didn't need one to enter.'
'I could smell food. I spoke it to get you in here sooner. I didn't expect you to fall on your bottom like that. Did it... were you hurt?'
'Just my pride.' Though she appreciated being asked. He was never so attentive while training her.
'Sit, sweetling. Eat. You're swaying on your feet.'
With her forehead pressed against the stone, Jude dispassionately muttered the first five flowers she could think of, then five more to no avail. Precious seconds were seeping through her fingers like melted snow. Vivienne's ragwort spell wouldn't keep much longer without her here to maintain it. That pony was as good as grass, and Madoc was going to beat her to Cardan.
'I've forgotten the password,' she whispered, only to be met with scoffing. 'This isn't a sexy bit, okay?'
'I cannot believe you. I cannot.'
'Please. Please.'
He shook his head, genuinely injured. 'How could anyone forget something so precious?'
The word must be bound in sentiment, then. Something just between him and her twin. Jude might have puzzled it out if the evening's endless twists and turns had not wrung her like a soggy towel. It would come to her later, probably while she was brushing her teeth.
'Are you well?' he asked, suddenly disturbed by something in her expression. 'You don't sound-'
'Like myself?' she finished for him, voice raw. Soul bared. 'I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?'
'I don't understand.'
'I'm. Not. Taryn.'
There was an audible swallow in the ensuing silence. Then a bite. Then a crunch.
There should have been none of these things.
'I know,' the Ghost managed through a mouthful. 'You're the Damsel.'
Jude turned from the wall. Slowly.
She was a fool. She should never have turned her back on him. Because there he sat, a thieving raccoon with one paw in the satchel he'd just swiped from her hip and the other stuffing his face with teacakes. As the Ghost brought a new cake to his lips, Jude noted that Tatterfel had decorated the treat with jewels from the pomegranate she had harvested. The scarlet evidence of them was there, staining his sinner's smile.
It was the red rag to the bull. Jude lunged.
There was a crush of bodies and a blur of limbs. A feral cry and an impish chuckle. True to his spectral nickname, the Ghost evaded her every attempt at reclaiming the satchel. He moved with a phantom grace she could never quite match, as though this were a dance and she was always a beat behind.
Then he made a game of it. She would make a grab, and he would catch her hand to steal tiny kisses along the back of it before spinning out of reach, leaving little stamps of pink along her skin. It was during one such kiss that Jude managed to finally catch the slippery bastard. He'd grown cocky and predictable, and she had stamina enough to exploit that fact. That, and the benefit of past experience in sparring with him. She feigned a sluggish grab for the satchel, dodged his lips, then sent her elbow hard and true into his unguarded oblique. Her old tutor went to the ground groaning.
'Ten years,' she puffed. 'Ten, and you're still leaving that left flank wide open.'
'Old dogs,' wheezed the Ghost, apparently too pained to complete his cliché. He flicked sandy hair from his eyes to aim a strained smile up at her. 'Next time, let's just cuddle.'
'I'm sorry,' she said, and meant it. He wasn't the first of Taryn's lovers she'd sent to the ground that evening, but he was the first for whom she felt remorse.
'Where did you learn to hit like that?'
'Funny you should ask.'
Her satchel reclaimed, Jude cast her eyes skyward. Brazen stripes of dawn could be seen between the vines and blooms. She frowned. She hadn't remembered that overarching cluster of roses being so sparse. And it could have been a trick of the light, but they seemed to be...
No, they definitely were receding.
Indeed, the trellised ceiling was coming apart before her eyes. Thorny tendrils uncoiled as though pried open by pairs of divine hands, cracking the plaited wood as they went. She shielded her eyes against the splintering debris.
'Is this normal?' she called over the creaking chaos.
Mouth agape, the Ghost looked on, every bit as perplexed by the scene as her. A strong implication of no, then.
Now an odd wind began to spill through the widening skylight. It stirred the secret space and sent Jude's hair and robe into a whipped frenzy. She thought of Snapdragon still circling somewhere up there and wondered if she might hear the owl still screeching her name. It was the last thing she'd heard before disappearing through the trick wall.
But all sounds were soon swallowed by the heightening vortex. A creature was conjuring this whip of wind, churning the air with its great wings. Not pony, nor peryton. A new beast with an unfamiliar silhouette that soon eclipsed the widening expanse of dawn. She got a glimpse of spindly legs and feathery antennae, then the sky went dark.
The air went still as the creature came to land somewhere up there. Still as midwinter. Still as held breath. A fine snowlike powder sifted down in its wake. It was only when her nose itched and her lungs gave a mighty sneeze that Jude realised it couldn't be snow at all. It was more like ash. More like moth dust.
Then someone else sneezed.
And sneezed. And sneezed.
And if it wasn't her that time, and it wasn't the Ghost either, then it had to be-
'Mind if I cut in?
☕ 🐍 🗡️ 🍄 🖤
He looked like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad. The kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him. Framed in a retrograde of climbing roses, Cardan peered down from mothback to survey the scene beneath him.
'Well, now. A little owl told me I might find you here.'
His dark eyes slid between Jude and the sandy-haired man who had hauled himself up to stand before her like a shield. At this, the dark eyes narrowed. The tail whipped left and right, reminding Jude of an agitated pendulum. The prince weighed what he witnessed and clearly found it wanting.
'I wonder,' he went on, eyes settling upon her, 'whether you wanted to be found at all?'
'Cardan-'
'Did Locke send you?' The Ghost interrupted, calling up to the prince in a manner that could only complicate his perception of things. 'What, your old chum didn't have the balls to cut me down himself?'
Cardan stifled a snort behind beringed fingers. 'I don't know which causes me more offence, the fact you think I'd sully myself with Locke's dirty work, or your archaic use of the word chum.'
'I suppose this is all storybook enough for him,' the Ghost barrelled on, drawing himself into a boxing stance. 'I'll see to it that he's disappointed by the ending when his assassin returns to him in pieces.'
The prince sighed and dismounted with all due grace, crouching on an intact bit of trellis to get a better look at the pair below. His curls spilled forward with the gesture. His tail twined about a rose branch for better balance, causing his coat to billow out behind him. New jewellery dripped from his ears, wrists and fingers, set aglow in the first true light of dawn. He looked well. Healthy and glowing with life. Utterly in his element.
Best of all, he looked unharmed.
'I am no killer,' he admitted dryly. 'But who knows? It has been a wild night of firsts.' His tone turned serious as he gave the Ghost this warning, 'Step aside, or risk making a murderer of me.'
He wouldn't. He wouldn't.
But, just in case...
'It's me!' Jude cried. She sidestepped her sister's lover to place herself diplomatically between the boys. The men. The idiots. 'And he's fine. You're both fine. Everyone just... just be cool.'
The Ghost caught her wrist to stop her. Cardan's eyes narrowed to vicious slits.
'Taryn, don't-'
'Taryn? Ha! That's Jude, you simpering son of a marshwiggle! I'd know her as well as I know my own tail!'
Jude.
Damn did it feel good to hear her name declared like that. A finger snap. A thunderclap. A true name. Jude. She wanted very much to hear him say it again, just for the hell of it. Just to bask in the short, sure sound.
'Tell me how you can know a thing that hangs behind you?' mocked the Ghost.
Cardan tapped a finger to his jaw. 'Fair point. Here, I'll demonstrate.'
With that, the prince rose from his crouch and took one step out into thin air. It all happened so quickly. Jude flinched for him, expecting him to fall the considerable distance between the once trellised roof and the ground below. But there was no fall, for Cardan had conjured himself a stair. A magical stair of woven roses. Naturally.
He took another step, and yet more roses spooled and straightened to catch his foot. It was swifter and more instinctual than any magic he'd displayed before. So obedient to his will were these plants. So eager. It was a beautiful power, raw and untamed. Ripe for the imagination. Within seconds, the prince had fashioned himself a flight of spiralling stairs, complete with a ropey, blossoming handrail.
Then the earth shuddered as he landed level on the ground before them. The burst of magic stirred every living, growing thing. It set each of the tiny hairs along Jude's arms on end. She felt her heart skip and her toes curl in her boots. Cardan marked the way she watched him and raised his brows at her.
'You shouldn't be here,' she told him in a tone that insisted the opposite was true. I was really worried about you, it said instead, but I'm glad to see you all the same.
'Pot, kettle,' he replied. A sincere reciprocation.
The Ghost cleared his throat, hardly thrilled to be removed from conversations spoken and unspoken.
'Can't you see it?' Began Cardan, presenting Jude's whole personage in one sweeping gesture. 'Look at her. If you cannot see it in her stance, nor detect it in her speech, then look to her left hand. Note the missing fingertip. The cruel slash through the palm.'
Jude raised the relevant hand, giving the Ghost a sheepish wave with the incomplete row of fingers. Her old tutor eyed her shrewdly through eyes unhazed by lust. He took in the strange mirror-woman. The rough-hewn version of the twin he clearly cared for. It must have made it all the stranger for him to witness the way Cardan now came toward her, taking her chin between his fingers to gently lift her face for better inspection. There was a dizzying weight to the attention of both men, and she felt suddenly like a prized rose being lifted so as to be better admired.
'See too,' said Cardan, hushed and reverent, 'the scar she wears along her lip. What has it been, darling? Hours? Mere hours since you invited me to discover whether it tastes every bit as good as it looks? And it does.' Then, to the Ghost, 'Don't bother checking that fact for yourself my good fellow, or I shall be forced to flay you alive with the local foliage.'
Jude slapped his hand away. 'I said be cool.'
'And I said I didn't want you to try and fix me! And yet, here I find you, no doubt--'
'I've seen enough!' the Ghost interjected. 'You're welcome to your preference, princeling, and I to mine. Be off with you then. Mend the ceiling and rid us of your silly stairs while you're at it. Taryn will have my head to see her most beloved garden in such a way.'
Jude hummed her concurrence. She cast her eyes down to ensure the satchel was still secure at her side. It was mostly intact, but the same could not be said for her flimsy ensemble, which had been tumbled, chased and windswept so awry that very little of her skin could be left to the imagination. She tried and failed to right herself. Pulling a piece of fabric over one area only succeeded in revealing another. She huffed and felt her cheeks go hot.
'Cardan, can I borrow your-'
The coat was already about her shoulders before the words had left her. It settled over her like a warm, weighty pair of wings. She breathed deep of his familiar scent and exhaled a note of gratitude.
'I only wish it were that wretched sunflower sweater,' the prince teased.
And wouldn't that just be poetry. That itchy crochet abomination in her moment of need.
'Didn't I tell you?' she returned, comforted by his banter as well as his coat. 'One of my neighbours found that sweater flapping about on her balcony. There was a note about it in the common area. I think it's waiting for us in the Lost and Found.'
'Good. You shall be punished with wearing it for a full week and a day when we get...' He seemed to stumble over his next word. 'When we get back.'
Back.
A sensible word. A safe word.
Safer than home.
'Let's go,' she said, and let him lead her up the stairs. One by one, the whole case disappeared behind them. The ceiling knitted itself back together. The roses bloomed anew, each brighter and more lovely than they had been before.
They stole away to the skies, leaving no trace upon the land they once called home.
☕ 🐍 🗡️ 🍄 🖤
The flight back to the mortal lands was silent. It felt every bit the bookend to the journey they'd taken together when she'd first fished Cardan from the river, wheeling his bare, atrophied ass along the streets in a supermarket trolley. He sat in front, steering the moth toward the fast-approaching sprawl of glass and concrete. She sat behind with her cheek to his back and her arms about his waist. The satchel was nestled somewhere between them.
Every swift susurration of moth wings should have put her more at ease. It was more distance gained between her and the nightmare. Yet she could not shake the feeling that a piece of the nightmare still pursued them.
Her mind fed her images of a shadow dipping in and out of cloud. A boat trailing along behind them. A watchful bird of prey. Lingering manifestations of Madoc's suspicion. She hoped this sense of danger would subside the moment she set foot on a sidewalk. The moment she reabsorbed herself into the familiar hum of a human morning.
You're almost home, she tried to assure herself. Home. But the word had never felt so much like a question before. Like a riddle, really.
It was one she pondered now as they came to land atop the city's tallest building, its roof peeking over a shawl of peachy clouds. With all that cloud cover, she supposed it was a discreet enough place to land a ginormous moth. She left Cardan to tend to his dusty mount and found herself a spot at the building's edge to drink in the view. And to think.
Home.
Right now, it felt like neither the concrete spool of streets and skyscrapers before her, nor the glittering strip of sea looming beyond. More specifically, the invisible speck she sensed along that blue horizon. Sensed, but did not see. Her mortal eyes could never distinguish Elfhame at this distance.
Cardan joined her a while later, clapping moth dust from his fingers over the railing. It was a matter of seconds before another slew of sneezes barrelled through him. Jude offered the handkerchief that she had found in the pocket of his coat. It had been tucked somewhere beside the crown piece, which he apparently hadn't found the time to bury yet.
'Bless you.'
Cardan took it and dabbed delicately at his nose. 'Bless you, too.'
And there they were, the first words they'd exchanged since Elfhame. They hung listlessly in the air as the pair turned their attention out across the railing. The sun had risen a hand's breadth above the horizon now. At this hour yesterday, they would have just set off from her apartment to walk to work beneath a shared umbrella.
For one month and a day,
And however many days more,
I am, and always have been...
That felt like a lifetime ago.
Jude sought her apartment amid the gilded cityscape. If she squinted, she could just make out the shape of it. Beside her, Cardan tried to follow her line of sight.
'Can you see it from here?' she asked, vaguely indicating the view. 'My sight isn't as good as yours.'
'See what?'
'Home?'
Cardan didn't answer right away. She hoped that meant he'd detected the question within the question. The riddle woven in the word. Home. Whether he answered with her apartment building, or with Elfhame, she'd have her answer, too.
'I see it,' he said, eyes straying from either option. Instead, he settled that gold-wreathed gaze squarely upon her. 'Though I need not look so far.'
She tipped her head against his shoulder, unable to withstand the weight of that lofty gaze a second longer. 'Good answer.'
'Are we still angry at each other?' he asked a while later.
'I was going to ask you the same thing.'
'I suppose there's plenty to unpack. The crown. The clover. Whatever degradation befell me, and whatever you were doing in Elfhame because of it. Not to mention everything that happened in between...' At this, he brushed his thumb along her hand. The hand the Ghost had peppered with pink pomegranate kisses. Accusation lay not far beneath the surface as he said, 'I told you not to do anything stupid.'
Jude withdrew the hand he held and balled it into a fist. A heart of stone.
'Can we not do this right now?'
'Jude?'
There were a dozen questions rolled into the way he said her name. What happened in Elfhame? What were you doing there? Why can't we discuss it now? He reached out to fix a bit of her hair the wind had swept away. She met his eyes again and tried to hold that contact. Everything was so bright and her own eyes still burned from crying.
'Jude?' he repeated. Who made you cry?
'Can we just...' Her heart-of-stone fist unfurled, becoming an open palm she braced upon the railing as though to draw courage from it. 'Can we put a pin in it?'
'Schedule a quarrel for later? Fine. What would you have us do instead?'
'We could...'
'Could?'
He angled himself to face her, leaning one elbow upon the railing as though the view beyond were a mere distraction. She withheld her answer. She let him regard her a while longer in that clever way of his. That way that suggested he could already guess her innermost desires, but took too much pleasure in watching her toil over confessing them. Maybe he liked to watch her burn as he burned.
'What would you have us do instead?' he prompted again.
'Kiss me.'
At this, Cardan's elbow slipped right over the railing.
Jude screamed. He might have screamed, too. It all happened in a heartbeat. His top half looked as though it were about to go over the side of the building, and then he was in her arms, having been dragged away from the edge by his shirt. Jude drew him to her chest so tightly that it almost squeezed the soul out of him. They panted heavily against each other, their heartbeats spurred by equal measures of thrill and shock.
'Kiss me,' she repeated, shaken and unsure. 'Or let me kiss you?'
His tail whipped frenetically behind him, mirroring her own inner turmoil. Flick-swish-flick. It was terribly distracting.
'What happened?' he asked outright.
She supposed she deserved the question. She had proven herself more than a little untrustworthy in their last moment together at the cafe.
That didn't make his question any easier to answer, though.
'What, I need a reason?' She detached herself from him and returned to the railing, leaning her backside against it, crossing her arms defensively within the folds of his coat. 'Maybe I've just had a shit night. Maybe I hurt you, and then I tried to fix it, and ended up in this bullshit upside-down reality where I'm Taryn and dad wants to murder my husband and I've got a bunch of mismatched kids and I'm sleeping with the Ghost and...' She stopped. Snapped her fingers. Swore. 'Shit, it was Bluebell.'
'What was?'
'The password to the secret door.'
'Of... course.'
'Here's another reason,' she went on, wincing prematurely for this next part. 'I kissed Locke.'
She didn't know what to expect by way of a reaction to that statement. What she got was a beautiful demonstration of controlled fire. She saw Cardan's fists go bone white before he flexed all that pent up energy from his fingers and clasped them tightly together behind his back. His face went stony. His posture followed suit. Nought but his tail betrayed him.
Flick-swish-flick.
'I did it for Taryn,' Jude quickly confirmed. 'She was in trouble. She needed me to pretend. But I can't get the taste out of my mouth now, it's disgusting.'
One day, whenever this subject resurfaced between them, she and Cardan would find comfort in the knowledge that they'd both landed punches on that fool's stupid face. For now, they merely exchanged a pair of weary sighs. It had been a long night, and the weight of it now settled upon them heavily. A shared burden, now. One they would carry home together.
'And you thought a kiss would solve all that?' he teased. It was good to hear him tease again. 'Not a strong mouthwash? Perhaps a stiff drink?'
'I guess not,' she admitted, 'but it couldn't hurt.'
'Oh, couldn't it?'
She wasn't surprised to find him aiming a stormy look at her. A look that urged her to recall the result of their last kiss. The deception. The clover.
'You're loving this, aren't you?'
He wore a grin so villainous, it almost made her nostalgic. 'Mmh-hmm.'
'Would it help if I got on my knees?'
He tsked. 'Later, darling. Not in front of the moth.'
'That's not... You know what? Forget it.'
She pushed off from the railing, making for a green, glowing exit sign. She hardly managed a step before Cardan caught her by the waist and guided her back toward the edge. Pinning her against that precipice.
'Very well,' he said. 'If it is only a kiss you require...'
With their chests pressed together, Jude felt each word as he uttered it. His resonance had her recalling that power he'd sent through the land in Elfhame, just by setting one foot upon it. Just as then, Jude felt her tiny hairs stand on end and her toes curl in her boots. The prince had grown stronger in his magic. Surer. There could be no doubt of it. She only hoped those arcane abilities did not extend beyond the botanical. What hope did she have if he could make a body bend and bloom as well as any flower?
'Take it,' he dared, closing the small distance, making a fine threat of his lips. 'Take what is yours.'
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...𝐚 𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭...
⋆ ⋅ ⋆ ⋅ ⋆
so concludes the elfhame chapters (yaaaay!). you did it. i did it. we did it. if you made it this far you deserve a drink. get on the peryton we're going to a cafe, what am i buying you?
thank you so much for reading, see you again real soon <3