Chapter Text
Cardan Greenbriar, son of Eldred, High King of Elfhame, lies on his side on a particularly firm, uneven bed, in an apartment leased by his sister-in-law in the mortal city of Portland, Maine. Jude Duarte, mortal Queen of Elfhame, sleeps curled up against his chest. Salty tear trails dry on her cheeks. She is completely unclothed.
He is fascinated by her mortal body in a way that once shamed him. As she is now his wife, he supposes he has come to terms with finding Jude so alluring that he wants to crawl out of his own skin. It has both everything and nothing to do with how she looks—she has a twin, of course, but Taryn is not nearly so lovely. Jude is something other, something else. Cardan could get drunk on the swell of her breasts, the roundness of her hips, the softness to her belly that disappeared when she had returned starved and gaunt from the Undersea and has now been restored. He has sometimes gotten very drunk to try and put those things out of his mind.
She allows touching so seldomly. He relished it, and relishes it still, even though he feels he shouldn’t.
Bedding her was not his sole purpose in coming here, but if asked, he would not have been able to say he hadn’t thought about it. And then she pulled him into her room, and it was all he could think about. That, and saying whatever it took to keep her from flaying him alive. He had teased out about the right things to say and the right ways to say them for a long time before journeying to the mortal realm.
He had not thought about kissing her out of her anger. That wouldn’t work. But then she was standing before him and kissing was the only thing that seemed right. Honestly, he is still a little surprised she didn’t knee him in the gut. Perhaps he goes to her head in the same way she goes to his.
But she spent a long while weeping on him, so perhaps not.
This is not going at all as Cardan had hoped.
He feels tears prick at his eyes and squeezes them shut against her hair. He didn’t even know that he could still cry. The Folk don’t often give themselves over to bawling, in his experience. At least not in public.
If things grow where my blood falls, he wonders, what will my tears do? He isn’t sure he wants to find out, and doesn’t think Jude would appreciate a saltwater pond springing up in her bedroom. Not even a very small, decorative one. Nothing to remind her that he was ever there.
Then again, Jude didn’t seem to want him to leave, which confuses him, because he must have made her cry. There was no one and nothing else that could have done so.
Cardan does stay a while, lingering in bed with her as long as he dares, looking at her until he can no longer stand it. When he rises, he draws the covers up over her shoulders so she won’t get cold.
He doesn’t particularly want to dress, but mortals seem a bit precious about that sort of thing. Jude probably wouldn’t appreciate her sister coming home to find Cardan sulking naked in the common area, even though he and Vivienne have been swimming together. And admittedly, such a thing would be undignified conduct for a king. But the jeans, as they’re called, are much too restrictive. So he pulls his white undershirt on and borrows a pair of soft cloth trousers that belong to Jude, which are short but sinfully comfortable.
When he leaves Jude’s room, he realizes that he has no idea what to do with himself. He sits down on the sofa that is this new room’s centerpiece. It, like many of Vivienne’s possessions, is well-worn but comfortable. This dwelling he would deem humble, and indeed it is small, but he doesn’t feel stifled. He doesn’t feel much of anything past the bruising ache he’s been left with, concern and regret and—shame, if this is what shame feels like.
It must be. He can’t even remember how she felt beneath him without his stomach clenching up.
Cardan flops down on his side. Better to rot here than think of any of it.
He is still on his side, staring at nothing, when Vivienne returns with little Oak. Oak is bundled up in a puffed coat, like mortals wear, and he tarries warily behind his adoptive sister, still not sure what to do in the presence of his High King.
Before Vivienne can even speak, Cardan looks up at her from the sofa, utterly miserable. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything to drink, would you?”
“Only mortal stuff,” says Vivienne, taking this in stride. “It’s not strong.”
He nods. “All the same, I will have it.”
Displeasure flashes across her features, and he thinks she might actually try to deny him, protesting the early hour or some other meaningless thing. But with a single glance toward little Oak, and then a sweeping look around the room like she thinks Cardan might have concealed Jude somewhere, she produces a dark bottle and a wine glass from a high cupboard in the kitchen.
She sets them both on the low table before Cardan, then settles herself in a chair to watch him with disapproval.
Cardan reaches right for the bottle, forgoing the glass entirely. A single swallow tells him that Vivienne is right, though: this mortal wine is not nearly strong enough. He could down the whole bottle and not feel a thing.
“Where’s my sister?” Vivienne asks.
“She’s asleep,” Cardan says, setting the bottle back on the table. He wants to say that Jude is as Vivienne left her, but those words won’t come—they are untrue. He cannot even say with certainty that no ill has befallen her. “Whole and hale,” he adds instead.
Vivienne’s cat-slit eyes, so like Madoc’s, narrow as she studies him, trying to piece together what happened. She looks as though she might be on the verge of asking him what he has done.
I should like to know that myself, he thinks.
But he does know. He made Jude weep.
Although not until after. Cardan doesn’t know what to make of that. He’s certain he didn’t force her. He would like to believe that perhaps she was in pain, although he wouldn’t like to believe that because he’s not such a selfish monster that he’d wish her hurt simply to ease his own conscience.
He had known she was a virgin, even liked it a little. Oh, he was under no illusion that she was saving herself for anyone or anything in particular, but thought it a mark of her seriousness that even being raised among debauchery, she had never embraced the chance to lose her virginity during a random encounter. Cardan had done away with his a long time ago, having found no conceivable use for it. He was glad to be rid of it, and gladder still that all subsequent encounters had taught him a thing or two about pleasuring people. Especially now.
And while he did not remember well what it was like to be inexperienced, he tried to make her experience as pleasant as possible without coddling her. He thought he had succeeded. She seemed to enjoy it. She even kept her eyes on him this time. So the likeliest possible reason for her weeping, then, is regret.
Cardan can’t begrudge her that.
“I’m going to check on her,” Vivienne announces, pushing up from the chair.
“Do.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission.”
Cardan waves his hand. “Do anyway.”
Vivienne does go, with a glare so fleeting Cardan may have imagined it. When she is gone, Oak sits at the other end of the sofa, by Cardan’s feet. He has already grown taller since Taryn’s wedding, his horns longer. He looks at Cardan as though he has a question but doesn’t know how to begin it.
Growing up, Cardan had no good example of how to speak with children, no loving parent or brother to model. So he talks to Oak as though he were anyone else, high-handedly. “Yes? Speak if you wish.”
“Umm,” says Oak. He squirms. “Do I have to say ‘Your Majesty?’”
Cardan scoffs. “I shouldn’t think so. We are far past formality here. You’re family, aren’t you? I suppose you could call me ‘uncle’ if you wanted.” He pauses, and frowns. “‘Older brother’ would also suffice. That’s very confusing. Are you confused?”
“Yeah,” says Oak, who certainly sounds bewildered.
“Well, I was never much for propriety, or family. Call me whatever you like. You’re a prince. I suppose that’s your right.”
Oak frowns. “I don’t know a lot about being a prince.”
Cardan rolls onto his back. “That’s a lucky thing,” he drawls. “You should cherish it. Nothing good comes from being a prince.”
“But.” Oak frowns harder. “People want to be princes, though.”
“They don’t know any better. You and I know better, don’t we?”
“Stuff’s changed a lot since I was a prince.” Oak scuffs his foot on the carpet. “I live here now.”
Cardan picks up his head. “You’re lucky you live here. It’s much safer. And you have big sister Vivienne looking out for you. Big sister Jude teaching you how to swing a sword.”
“I miss my mom,” says Oak.
“Ah.”
“Do you have a mom?”
“Barely,” Cardan replies, rolling his eyes. “But everyone was born of someone else. That’s how it works.”
“Do you miss your mom?”
Cardan says, in no uncertain terms, “No, I do not.”
He is relieved to be able to say it. Sometimes he does miss a mother, the idea of one, but not the one he has.
His statement quiets young Oak, who seems unable to imagine anyone not missing their mother. He spends a minute or so gnawing on his knuckle. Then he asks, “Are you really married to Jude?”
This piques his interest. He sits up halfway. “What has Jude said?”
“She says she’s Queen.” Oak pauses. “And you’re King, so.”
“Yes, yes, that is good reasoning,” says Cardan with a little impatience. He sits up all the way now, sideways on the couch. “Has she said anything about me?”
“Uh, I dunno.” Oak mulls it over. “She’s sad a lot.”
Somehow, this is not what Cardan was expecting to hear. “She’s sad?”
“When she first got here she cried so much that her eyes were red all the time.” Oak says. “And she… sometimes she gets real quiet.”
“There are some who have quiet dispositions.”
“She never laughs.” Oak sounds insistent. “Happy people laugh.”
“Unhappy people laugh too, sometimes,” Cardan points out. “Sometimes laughter is a lie.”
Oak chews on his thumbnail, which is just as well. Cardan wouldn’t expect him to understand, being reared in a house with three sisters who embrace him and a mother who weeps at his leaving. It is petty to resent a child, although difficult not to.
“Do you love Jude?” Oak asks, quite suddenly.
Cardan’s first three very clever deflections refuse to be spoken aloud. He shuts his mouth and frowns. “Ah,” he says at last. “That is a weighty question. Why ask it?”
“Mrs. Simmons says that people get married when they love each other.”
“Mortals and common Folk wed when they love each other,” Cardan corrects, with a chuckle. “You and I are not so lucky. We are royalty. You may be wed to some prince or princess when you’re of age.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You won’t have to,” says Vivienne, from the far wall. Cardan isn’t sure how long she’s been standing there, listening, with her arms crossed. “You don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to.”
“Well,” says Cardan, enjoying Oak’s reaction, “he may have to.”
Vivienne rolls her eyes. She knows the game he is playing—he is miserable, so everyone else must be as well—but she opts not to play. “If you’re going to mope on the couch, at least turn on the TV.”
“What is a TV?” Cardan asks.
“What!” Oak exclaims, loud enough that his sister shushes him. In a curious whisper, he asks, “You don’t know what a TV is?”
Cardan shakes his head.
“It’s that box that shows moving pictures,” Oak says, pointing. “It’s the best. Vivi says it’s not magic but it has to be.” He thinks for a second. “Do you know what a microwave is?”
“No.”
“A fridge?!”
Cardan scowls. “No.”
“Wow,” says Oak. “You don’t know anything.”
“That is truer than you know,” Cardan says, and his thoughts wander again to Jude, sleeping in her room, curled up toward a body that’s no longer beside her. He pushes his hair back from his face. “But I think I am finally willing to learn.”
