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Window: locked. Door: locked. The room: stripped bare of anything that might pass as a weapon. Basically, she was stuck here.
Her day hadn’t been going well. First, the Captain of the Green Guard had been prepared for their assassination attempt, and had gotten away with minor scrapes when his head was supposed to be bashed in. That in itself wasn’t a problem – but then, second, Captain Valerian Jones had gathered his forces in time to launch a counterattack on Jude’s camp. Also not a problem. She had been prepared for that. The third issue, though, had been the real kicker. It turned out that Cardan was there, not off partying in Insmoor like intelligence had told her, and him – along with the veritable army he’d brought as backup – had been the problem that had bitten her in the ass.
The guards had been kind enough to let her know that she was in his room. Not like she couldn’t have figured it out herself. Few people had such a talent for projecting decadence, that array of luxurious carpets and requisite bottles of wine.
Jude Duarte, de facto leader of the Elfhame Resistance, was bothered by her imprisonment here. She was more bothered by the wave of arousal that had run through her when firm hands grabbed her from behind, covering her mouth and holding a gun to her head, and whispered commands into her ear in the hottest, most punchable voice she’d ever heard.
She was instantly brought back to the last time she’d seen him in person, half a year back. He’d smirked during their entire exchange on the bridge, when Jude had given him back Nicasia Soumair in exchange for Taryn. A hostage for a hostage. Although Taryn hadn’t begun as one. It had chafed to yield such a powerful bargaining chip as the daughter of Admiral Orlagh Soumair, Balekin’s lover and right hand, for a traitor with zero strategic value.
When Taryn called Jude, pleading that her husband had showed his true colours and their father was too busy waging war to help, Jude would have sooner told her to lie in the bed she’d made. Vivi had been adamant that she was out if they left their sister behind, and Jude was forced to trade or else lose her most trusted lieutenant.
And negotiating against her was Cardan Greenbriar, the usurper Balekin’s only surviving family member (because he’d murdered the rest) and an infamously capricious playboy. At least that was the official line. Jude, who had grown up in the Royal Academy with him, better recognized him as a moron who stumbled into success at every turn and the bane of her existence.
It was ridiculous. Cardan, the Treasury baby who’d exerted himself to be as useless as possible in that already useless school of aristocrats, was the spymaster thwarting her at every turn. At first Jude had written him off as a nepotism hire and looked for the lieutenant who was really pulling the strings, but eventually she couldn’t deny it any longer: the boy who’d antagonized her endlessly through school was the reason she hadn’t yet made her republican vision reality.
She hadn’t always wanted to end the monarchy, despite her hatred of certain princes. Dain had been the one who got her an apprenticeship in espionage, who’d introduced her to the world of shadows she now controlled. She’d once dreamed of becoming Captain of the Green Guard under his reign. But then Balekin had put an end to all that, and it slowly emerged that Dain hadn’t been the saint he pretended at. So there were no suitable candidates for the crown, and she fought for the rule of constitution alone, a democracy as in her mother’s homeland of Mortannia. Somewhere along the way, dealing with treacherous, backstabbing Elfhamian gentry who saw her as a puppet at best and a cockroach at worst, Jude realised how vapid her childhood ambitions had been. She no longer wanted to join the club. She wanted to burn the club down.
She was debating whether chemical immolation or the traditional stake would be a more suitable method of executing Balekin’s inner circle when the door opened.
Jude scowled. Well, she was scowling all the time, but it amused Cardan how her expression became even more pointed when she saw him. Comforting, to see that he still had an effect on her.
Cardan was struck by the resolve in her expression. Many amongst the Elfhamian elite found her darker Moritannian features vulgar, deriding their neighbours as ‘mortals’ as opposed to their own supposed elvish heritage. Personally, he found her beauty...unique.
“Why am I here?” she demanded.
“You have several options,” Cardan said, figuring it best to sidestep her bait entirely. “None of them are good. One: you can take your chance with Valerian, who’s frothing at the mouth right now that you dared to make an attempt on his life. Two: you can take your chance with Orlagh, who would love to repay you for the hospitality you showed her daughter. Three: you can skip their idea of interrogation ethics and tell me what I need to know.”
“Of course,” sneered Jude. “Balekin won’t condescend to dirty his own hands, so he has a retinue of lapdogs fight over who gets to torture me.”
It was unfortunate for her, to be caught like this after having pissed off the High King’s most sadistic commanders. She was almost certainly putting up a defiant front to hide her fear. For what it was worth, Cardan didn’t personally believe in torturing prisoners for the sake of it, and if pressed to give his opinion he’d say that someone as brilliant as Jude deserved better than what his allies would do to her.
So, it was unfortunate. But it wasn’t like Cardan cared. And it wasn’t like Jude wanted or needed his concern. She always had everything figured out.
“Why are you still working for him, anyway?” Jude said casually. “He kind of killed your entire family. If he ever suspects you, or if he’s just having a bad day, he’ll kill you too.”
He couldn’t – wouldn’t – explain himself to her. She wouldn’t care to understand; like the rest, she’d made up her mind already. So he grinned instead, teeth flashing in mockery. “And you are the arbiter on moral affairs? I wonder if your little band of insurgents knows about those envoys you murdered. Or those Green Guards you starved even after they gave you your information.”
“They were terrible people,” said Jude, a twinge of annoyance creasing her eyebrows. But Cardan didn’t miss the split second of surprise on her features at realising that he knew, that he was relevant to the great game of hers. “They deserved it.”
“And you?” He stepped closer, watching for any reaction that would betray apprehension.
She glanced up coolly, undeterred. She had a well practiced poker face, he had to give her that. “I don’t deny what I am. I’m just not as bad as the lot of you.”
“You really think you can win.” He glanced her up and down, and barked a laugh. She was braver than any Elfhamian he knew, and she was delusional. He couldn’t say why he felt uncomfortable at the thought that she was holding on to her crusade like a drowning woman to a buoy, that her ideological conviction was...real?
Almost faster than he could react, she lunged. It didn’t matter that she was doubtlessly exhausted, from the dark circles underneath her eyes, that she’d been on her feet for god knew how many horus. She would have gotten her arm around his neck or worse if he hadn’t ducked just in time, his guard let down from his excitement at catching her in a moment of vulnerability.
Cardan found himself gripping Jude’s arm behind her back, both of them breathing hard.
“You’ve angered a lot of very powerful people,” was what came out of his mouth. A truth. He wasn’t sure if it was a threat or a warning. Her bare arm was warm and taut. Her whole body was tense, like a coiled spring. Feeling that contact, he couldn’t resist pushing further. “When your hosue of cards comes crashing down, you’re going to have hell to pay.”
“So give me to Valerian,” Jude snapped, a flush finally rising to her cheeks. “I’ll fucking murder him.”
Cardan slammed Jude into the wall by her shoulders. “Listen to me!”
Pain flashed across her expression in the moment she was too shocked to guard it, and he felt a twinge of remorse. That went away when Jude stomped down on his foot. He lost his grip on her, and she spun away. He was faster. He grabbed her hand and twisted, forcing her to turn back toward him.
“Swallow your pride for a moment.” Cardan was a master at the art of schooled indifference, but even he couldn’t hold back the tremor of anxiety electrifying his skin. “For your own sake. Balekin, Orlagh, Valerian, Nicasia, they want to ruin you. Killing you won’t be enough. They’ll make sure the world sees that you, the mortal girl who dared to challenge them, have been appropriately punished for your insolence. Valerian will cut the skin off you, make your sisters a gift of your severed fingers. Nicasia will drown you on dry land again and again, make you cough up the water each time so you’re alive for the next round. Worst of all, they know what you can do, and they won’t make stupid mistakes letting you get the better of them. They’ll destroy you, Jude. You can’t win .” His voice got louder as he went on, so that by the end he was almost shouting.
It wasn’t like him to be so flustered. It wasn’t his job to look out for Jude, which made it even more surprising how that outburst had just spilled out of him. If the stupid mortal girl wanted to wrap herself up as a gift to her worst enemies, that wasn’t his problem. Really.
Cardan couldn’t help her. That was why he had to get her to see reason, to give him information instead of giving the others a good argument to demand that the prisoner be transferred to their custody instead. He felt angry just to imagine Valerian’s hands on her, without any care or finesse and directed only at inflicting pain.
There were much better ways to make her scream, he thought idly, then shut that down real quickly. Slippery slope.
However Cardan had expected Jude to respond, it hadn’t been to burst into laughter. She looked exuberant. “You seem to labour under the impression that you’re the first person telling me this. I’ve run the Resistance for six years, Your Highness. Do you think that I’ve been blind to what your megalomaniac friends do?”
Cardan blinked. Was she so crazy that she’d rather consign herself to torture just to spite him? The thought that she might hate him that much bothered him more than he cared to admit.
Jude smiled, mocking and far too perceptive. “What do you care, anyway?”
There was a shock of mutual understanding that their hands were still pressed together, their bodies too close. He could smell the hints of blackberry and sage from her shampoo. He was aware of how he wanted to run his fingers through her hair, grab a fistful of her tresses and yank her head back with it.
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” Cardan murmured. He didn’t know whether he was talking to her or to himself anymore. “You can’t even meet my gaze without blushing.”
He didn’t realise until after the words were said that they had been a challenge. And like any challenge, Jude faced them head on. She looked into his eyes, so much malice and anger and determination, as she said, “I hate you.”
“Me too.” Then Cardan’s mouth came down on hers.
Jude froze. His lips were hot and hungry, demanding as she’d imagined in her wildest fantasies. By instinct her hands rose to shove him off, but she found them fisting in his shirt instead, yanking him closer.
This was wrong. On the list of things she should be doing, kissing Cardan was somewhere between letting the Roach do her hair and replying to Locke’s next offer of an ‘alliance’. If she had any sense of fair play, Jude would demand to be taken to Valerian right now, her physical wellbeing be damned.
“This won’t work, you know,” she whispered against his mouth between kisses. “You can’t get me to let down my guard like this.”
“Who said anything about work?” Cardan groused. He licked her earlobe in just the right way, sending heat straight to her core, and chuckled at her gasp. “Maybe I just want you.”
Those words ignited a whole new wave of want in Jude, and she whined as his entirely too skilled fingers ran over her skin. It didn’t matter that she was his prisoner in a camp of Greenbriar loyalists, that even though his door was shut the curtains were most certainly not and at any moment the guards drilling on the field outside could glance up and see her coming undone.
She managed to pry herself. Cardan froze. “Jude?” He said her name like a prayer.
“Bed,” she ordered, and relief washed over him. He yanked at her blouse, nearly pulling out the buttons out as he pulled it off her and tossed it to the side, backing her up toward the bed.
Then she was lying on that ostentatious thing with the silk sheets, and Jude felt a surge of thrill that she would be the one to turn it into a mess. Cardan would no longer be so untouchable, so pristine, once she was done leaving her mark. She hissed as she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, lacing her fingers into that perfect black hair. She raked her other hand down his back, digging her nails in under his long-crumpled shirt, emboldened by the moan he let out against her collarbone.
He teased her with pecks trailing down from her breasts, her navel, lower. Seeing him like this, with his collar askew and his neck flushed under it and knowing it was because of her, was almost better than having him naked. The key word being almost. “Off,” Jude commanded, ignoring how ragged her voice sounded. It wouldn’t do to let Cardan have that advantage over her.
In response, he pulled away, smirking at her helpless noise of frustration. He took his sweet time undressing in languid movements, making her drink in the sight of him even as she glared in impatience.
“Jude Duarte,” he crooned, slowly returning to lean over her outstretched body. “You infuriate me. Every time I think I’ll put you away for good, you come back stronger.”
She wanted to yell at him to get back to kissing her. But she couldn’t deny that his words were having their intended effect. They sent a dizzying, potent sensation through her unlike any arousal she had tasted before. She’d had other lovers, people in the Resistance she’d trusted to do her bidding and provide her a decent evening. She’d never had this. She was drunk on the feeling, yet her mind felt clearer than ever before.
“I can’t get you out of my mind,” he confessed, looking at her with a far too unguarded expression. His gaze was intense, but instead of judging it vindicated her. When he was looking at her like that, Jude felt as if she could do anything. “My darling villain.”
Then his mouth dipped lower, and all words were stolen from her.
Jude mewled, bucking her hips as pure need drowned out her doubts, not caring who might hear. Cardan brought her right to the edge and then pulled back, teasing her with delicate touches as he captured her mouth in another kiss.
“I’m on birth control. Stop playing around and fuck me, Greenbriar,” Jude growled in a voice she barely recognised as her own. She felt his hardness pressed against her thigh, and knew that he must be torturing himself as much as he was her.
“As you wish.” She was wet and ready when he slammed into her, filling her as no one had in she couldn’t remember how long. She could feel her juices dripping onto the duvet, her desire coating him with each thrust.
Jude clenched around Cardan when she saw the mix of lust, reverence and something else she couldn’t quite place in his eyes as he lavished attention on her body. He made a guttural sound, low in his throat, that almost drove her over the edge.
“Let me.” Tightening her legs around him, Jude nudged until she could twist on top of him. She savoured the view of Cardan Greenbriar unraveled by her, no sign of his trademark smirk as he greedily took in all of her, lips parted like sin. His hands roved across her hips with surprising tenderness, and somehow his eyes darkened even further when she touched herself.
“Jude,” he gasped, bucking against her.
She shattered, clenching around him. She felt him release inside her as she lost herself in pleasure. Like all her life she’d been drinking water, and this was her first taste of wine.
So that’s what Vivi meant , Jude thought hazily, as she rolled off Cardan. The prince hummed in contentment, and despite herself Jude had to admit that the rumours were true. That had been good. Maybe even a little better than good.
Sated, her body wanted nothing more than to drift off into a doze. She forced the gears in her mind to start turning again. There was a job to be done.
She couldn’t pinpoint when she’d decided to say this next bit, but now seemed as good a time as any. “Locke is our mole.”
It took Cardan several long seconds to respond, to the point where Jude thought that he might not have heard her. But then he stiffened next to her, propping his head up on one hand. “What?”
“Surely you’ve noticed the precision of our latest attacks on your munitions factories, and realised that you have a leaker. He wears a bug to some of your meetings, when he feels like stirring drama. It’s hidden in an acorn-shaped charm. You’ll find it if you search him.”
Cardan looked as if he were about to say something, then changed his mind. She watched the progression of understanding, betrayal, and curiosity play out on his face. He was so earnest here with her, so unlike his usual indifference. “It makes sense,” he said slowly, and Jude got the sense that there was a lot more he wanted to add, but held back because she was technically his mortal enemy.
He settled for asking, “Why are you telling me this?”
Jude had her answer prepared. “He’s outlived his usefulness. And although Elfhame may have moved on, I haven’t forgotten what he did to Taryn.” Taryn, who was back at base, preparing to raise a child without a father. Taryn, who Jude had seen cry for the first time since they were children last week. Whatever she may have done, Locke was worse.
“Cold,” Cardan murmured, and Jude knew they were shifting back into the roles of strategists, schemers grappling for control of the country.
“We’re going to have an unpleasant chat very soon, I suppose.” Jude’s frame of mind was nearly recovered. Soon, she’d be ready to go searching for her clothes. But first things first. Her throat was parched. “Before we begin, would you be so kind as to bring me some water?”
It might have been that she was tired to the bone, or that she felt overwhelmed by the inconvenient questions the past hour had raised. It might have been the fact that she’d just had the best sex of her life. For whatever reason, Jude had her guard down when Cardan passed her that refreshing glass of water, and didn’t realise until the fourth gulp that something was wrong.
When she turned to accuse him, noting the slight nervousness as he looked at her, her eyes were already closing.
As much as he would like to flip her over and fuck the living daylights out of her again, Cardan was getting caught up. He needed to think, and he couldn’t do that with the beautiful, poisonous woman who managed to look angry even in her sleep. So he’d panicked, and grabbed for the sedative, and here they were.
Jude Duarte was maddening. Cardan tried to tell himself that this entire dance of theirs had been a scheme, just a tactic to get her to reveal that bit of information about Locke. He wanted to tell them both so many lies.
But of course, this hadn’t been just an interrogation for him, if it qualified as one at all. She’d volunteered intelligence she already planned to divulge in service of her own ends, and all Cardan had gotten out of it was the sudden, horrifying conviction that having her once, with the heady current of hatred between them, wasn’t going to be enough. He wanted to utterly possess her.
Dream on, Greenbriar , he could hear her taunting. So long as he worked for the crown, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell she’d see him as anything but an enemy to be cast down. He stood for the antithesis of everything she believed in. It was a fitting punishment for his crimes: there was nothing he could do to change her mind, and no way to get her out of his.
No – that wasn’t right. Cardan could give her to Valerian, and soon enough he’d stop desiring her. There wouldn’t be anything left for him to desire.
He didn’t want to do that. He remembered the tournament at the Academy, all those years ago, when Jude had bested dozens of the children of the gentry and vowed that whatever they tried to do to her, she would pay upon their heads tenfold. Even then, when he was deserving of the lazy, useless persona he wore more by strategic expedience these days, he’d seen that she was something different. Someone sharp, a blade you took care around or risked cutting yourself on. When she fled Insmire and rallied a coalition including such diverse elements as Dain’s old allies, republicans and Mortannian nationalists, he alone of Balekin’s sycophants had been totally unsurprised. Here she was, the foreign upstart, still upending their expectations.
Weigh his fascination with all that she was against his loyalty to the only member of his family who’d seen any worth in him, and in the end there was only one choice. Cardan made it and forced himself to fall asleep next to the viper in his bed.
He woke up to Jude Duarte dangling his keys in one hand, wielding his own pistol with the other.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot you dead.” Jude hated that her voice shook as she issued the threat. She’d faced down Green Guards and generals and not flinched, but her hand trembled slightly, pointing the barrel at his heart.
He was the High King’s brother. He was the top commander of the secret police. It should feel like a victory to have him at her mercy, let alone to actually manage to kill him. So why were her eyes stinging?
“Your brother is Dain’s son,” he said, and her world stopped in its tracks.
Oak. Oak...Greenbriar? She hadn’t seen him in years, not since she fled Insmire the day that Prince Dain’s supposed coronation turned into a bloodbath. The day Balekin Greenbriar murdered his father, the prime minister and her Cabinet, dissolved the parliament and installed himself as a brutal tyrant, restoring absolute power to a monarchy that had been bound to the constitution in an uneasy balance of power for nearing a century.
“You’re lying.” Jude’s grip tightened on the gun. He was manipulating her. It was what he was known for. Alone amongst Balekin’s inner circle, Cardan was known as the trickster, the one who would sooner use a lie than a knife to extract his enemies’ secrets.
Although what he would have to gain by fabricating such a ridiculous story, she couldn’t say.
He told her exactly what she was thinking. “I have no reason to lie to you. Think of what he looked like when you last saw him, Jude.”
She barely had to. Now that she knew what to look for, the eyes, the nose, the mouth – it was a wonder he had not yet been discovered. Ice trickled through her veins. The ramifications ran through her head. If Balekin’s elite knew what Oak was…
Her horror must be plain on her face. “You see,” Cardan said softly. He shifted to move towards her, then thought better of it when she hefted the gun. “He’ll never be safe. Right now, Madoc, Oriana and I are the only ones who know. They’re not as good as they think they are at keeping secrets, or I’d not have found out to begin with. So who else will keep your baby brother safe?” He flashed Jude the same smile he used to throw taunts at her expense, but for the first time she thought she might see a trace of nervousness behind it.
“You did it on purpose.” When Cardan raised an eyebrow, Jude knew she was right. “You left me the gun. Why?”
She’d known it, from the moment she spotted his nightstand drawer slightly ajar. Cardan was no fool, despite whatever pretenses he put up. He would, of course, not be sloppy enough to leave her a loaded weapon, no matter how distracting he might find her. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it, because then she’d have to consider the million life question: Why?
More than the prospect of facing Valerian or Nicasia, the resignation in his voice scared her. “My colleagues would want you tortured and dead eventually. I disagree.”
Jude exhaled. The way Cardan was looking at her, hands open at his sides, how he hadn’t once tried to wrest the gun from her, how he spoke about Oak like he really cared about one innocent boy, sent a strange and unfamiliar pang through her heart. Suddenly the gun felt far too heavy in her hands.
But they both knew that she couldn’t drop it, no matter how much she might like to indulge that fantasy. The loyalties were clear: he was a Greenbriar; she was a revolutionary.
Killing him was no longer in the cards. Jude couldn’t do it. She could tell herself that it was because Cardan was her best chance at keeping Oak safe, that it was because he eschewed mindless torture and was therefore preferable to any successor Balekin and Madoc might appoint in his place, but she knew that even if none of the pragmatic reasons were true, she still couldn’t do it. Call it a weakness, call it an attraction, she couldn’t end his life.
“You know I still have to shoot you,” Jude said. It sounded like an apology. It was madness, that the Resistance’s de facto leader should apologize for inflicting an intentionally non-fatal wound on a commander of the secret police, but in this moment the least she could do was be honest with herself.
She was a brilliant shot. She would injure him in a way that could be believably passed off as an incapacitating wound when he had to explain why he’d lost their prize prisoner, yet avoided causing permanent damage.
Cardan grinned. “Make it good.”
Before she could lose her resolve, Jude re-aimed the gun at Cardan’s knee and pulled the trigger. Then she sprinted for the Crooked Forest, knowing she could melt into the trees before they even knew she was gone. When she recalled the flash of pain across Cardan’s face she wanted to turn around and rush back to his side, but she suppressed that instinct just as she suppressed the ache in her chest that out of the thousand easier choices he could have made, he’d chosen the one that left her free.
Later, she was thumbing Cardan’s gun as she pored over a map of Elfhame, plotting the Resistance’s next move. If she could get more support from Mortannia; if Vivi’s wife Heather, a former lobbyist, could persuade their parliament to send aid…these days it seemed that all her plans hinged on paper-thin ifs. If only it were as simple as grabbing a gun and shooting whatever the problem was.
Jude traced over the grip again, taking strange satisfaction in knowing that she was holding his gun, the spiteful prince who’d become her nemesis. And also…
Her finger brushed the metal at just the right angle, and a panel the size of her thumbnail slid back with a snick. She emptied the contents into her palm and smiled. It was a gilded charm in the shape of an acorn.
Operation Kill Valerian hadn’t been a total failure after all.