Chapter Text
Jude
It was a good thing that there was still a part of her that was just Jude Duarte. Jude Duarte Greenbriar had, albeit slowly, developed the ability to care and be cared for - at the very least with her husband. That person didn’t assume that everyone she knew wanted to ensorcell her and make her into their mortal plaything. That person could lay in her bed with her lover and trade kisses and smiles and vulnerabilities. But she was still the old Jude - the mortal Queen of Knives - who took no faerie’s word for actual truth and cut through their trickster bullshit with her blades.
Jude had retired early from that night’s revel - a treaty squabble was weighing heavily on her mind and she had wanted a couple extra hours to draft letters to the court lords. She sat at her vanity table, which was laden with cosmetics, ribbons, pins, jewelry, daggers and a half full goblet of stale wine that Cardan had undoubtedly set down and completely forgotten about. Jude had finally pulled the last of the pins out of her hair and was massaging her scalp wearily, trying to conceive the best way to write her letters when she heard the door to the antechamber open.
“Miss me enough to tear yourself away from your adoring subjects?” she teased, not bothering to look up. She knew Cardan’s footfall well enough that she would’ve known it was him blind and dead drunk.
He didn’t answer, but Jude could sense him approaching behind her. Hopefully he would wrap his long slender arms around her and press a tender kiss to her aching head. With her luck, he’d be tipsy and would clumsily clutch her and pat her head awkwardly as he was wont to do on some revel nights.
She lifted her head to look at him in the mirror, to gauge whether he would be sweet or stupored.
She had not counted on the unfamiliar knife raised high in his hand and the blank look in his eyes, reflected in the slightly warped material of the mirror.
Jude Greenbriar might’ve been frozen with shock. Maybe she would’ve screamed in terror. Perhaps she would’ve acted, who knows.
But it was Jude Duarte who flew around in her seat and caught the plunging knife in the hilt of her own.
She lunged to her feet, pushing Cardan away from her. He stumbled, but caught himself before he could get too off-balance. Although he almost always refused Jude’s requests for him to train, he was a faerie yet, with faerie grace.
“What the hell, Cardan!” Was he ensorcelled? Poisoned? Was this some sort of magic tricking her eyes, a faerie wearing the disguise of her husband? Or maybe, a little voice in the back of her head sounded, he’s decided he’s had enough of you. You’re not worth the headache. His love for you doesn’t outweigh the hate anymore.
“You dirty mortal trash,” the voice was his but not. It was the voice of the past, of cruel memories of a cruel boy that hid behind his viciousness. It didn’t fit anymore in the mouth she knew so well. “You don’t belong here. You never belonged here.”
Jude didn’t let the words shock her into submission, but they hit their mark within her. She held her knife out defensively, but not to aim an attack. They circled each other slowly, at the foot of their bed, exactly where they had lain together that night after she had returned from her exile. They had dozed on the soft carpet above the stone floor, Cardan’s hand holding her head tightly to his chest. Now his hand gripped the dagger, slightly shaking. In fact, he was shaking all over, little trembles throwing off his stalking, his pale white skin impossibly paler and his eyes glazed over and hard.
This wasn’t her Cardan.
“Cardan,” Jude said slowly, her free hand placating. “I think you’ve been poisoned. Put the knife down. Now. ”
He growled at her in an un-Cardan-like manner, “The only poison here is you. In me and in this kingdom, killing it with your human rot. The only thing to do is to put you down, like an animal.”
With this, he lunged for her, the knife making a deadly arc towards her heart, which was woefully bared in her low-cut dress. Jude whirled out of the way and kicked Cardan’s knee out from under him. As he crashed to the ground, she restrained his right arm, trying to twist his wrist to get him to drop his weapon.
“Cardan, please, I don’t want to hurt you. Let go of the knife and we can find the antidote.”
While she was a better warrior than him and could best him in any sword fight, he still had the advantage in height and weight. Not to mention the magic of the High King of Elfhame. Dark roots shot out from between the flagstones, wrapping around her arm that held him and wrenching her away. While she tried not to fall at the sheer strength of the magic vines, Cardan reached out to grab a fistful of her hair, pulling her until she fetched up against the post of their bed.
Jude’s scalp stung, and she knew her arm was at the very least bruised, but she kept her solid grip on her own knife. She sunk into a restrained defensive position - damn these skirts - as Cardan stalked towards her slowly. Dramatically. She had half a mind to roll her eyes. At least I know for sure it’s Cardan and not some sort of shapeshifter. No imposter could’ve mimicked his kingly strut so perfectly.
“You’re not fit to be our queen,” he feinted and managed to nick her cheek. A hot trickle of blood ran down, filling her nose with the mortal scent of iron. Iron and fear. She responded in kind with an open-handed crack against his mouth.
“You’re not fit to rule Elfhame,” She blocked his next attack, but his free hand came too quickly and caught her in a blow to the ribs. She gasped sharply, and drove the butt of her dagger into his own stomach. As he doubled up, she dipped under and brought him back standing with the point of her blade under his throat. His smile was razor sharp and bloody and painfully his.
“You’re not even fit to be my whore, you pathetic bitch,” She stopped cold, the knife right at the point where his chin met his neck. Surely he would stop now that she had him bested. He would concede and she would restrain him and they would fix this. By tomorrow this would be a memory, a story to tell of yet another time she held a blade to him. They would laugh about it, wrapped up in each other’s arms. Safe.
That one moment of hesitation, that one moment that Jude Greenbriar, Cardan’s Jude, reared her head, cost her. She could do nothing as his blade appeared above her and sank into her right shoulder, right below her collarbone.
Pain exploded in her chest, setting her nerves flames, but her cry of pain was choked off by her genuine shock. Cardan had stabbed her. Cardan, who had washed the blood from her hands, who flinched every time she had a wound stitched, who stroked her many scars with care. Cardan who had married her and crowned her and sent her away even though it had almost killed them both. Cardan, who whispered in her ear when he thought she was asleep, “I love you, Jude. I love you more than life itself.”
She looked dazedly from the dagger buried in her chest to the still shaking hand that bore it. Her gaze traveled up that arm to the eyes of the man holding her in a heartbreakingly familiar-but-not hold. They weren’t her Cardan’s eyes quite yet - but there was an edge of shock and grief surrounding the flat, unforgiving pupils. Something that told her that Cardan was indeed in there somewhere, struggling to get out. It was just like the serpent all over again.
And like with the serpent, she would not falter. She was still Jude Duarte.
Quick as lightning, her dagger had moved from his throat to the back of his head, where she slammed the hilt. His eyelids drooped and he became dead weight instantly, his arms still pinning her to him.
She dropped to the floor with him, red blood streaming out past the knife still in her body, waves of dizziness washing over her like the Undersea, there to pull her under once more. She blinked hard, willing her wits to stay firmly in place, her consciousness to hold for just a few more minutes. Her forest green velvet gown was quickly turning rusty brown with her blood as it poured out of her alarmingly quickly. She had to work fast.
Using the bed behind her for support, Jude heaved herself to her feet, tipping slightly this way and that. Cardan was out cold, but he wouldn’t be for long and it was unclear if he would still be glamoured when he awoke. She dragged over the heavy vanity chair and somehow managed to shove and push Cardan’s prone frame into a sitting position atop it.
Jude leaned against the cool marble of the vanity, breathing slowly, her energy fading fast, the entire front of her dress now wet with her blood. Her chest ached hotly with every shallow breath. She shook her head against the shadows closing in. Think. There was something else she had to do before she let herself stop. Secure Cardan. Contact the Court of Shadows. Don’t pass out yet. A list of tasks. She could do that.
She hiked up her skirt and fumbled until she could rip four long strips from the hem. Rope would be better, but her head was cloudy and she couldn’t quite remember where the rope would be.
Staggering over, she managed to tie Cardans thin wrists to the armrests before sliding to the ground in front of his feet. The dagger still lodged in her chest - she hadn’t dared to remove it, it was all that stood between her bleeding to death - knocked against Cardan’s knees. Sharp pain radiated across her chest and she let out a low moan as a wave of fresh blood seeped from the wound into the sticky fabric. She sat there for what could’ve been a moment or a minute or an hour, catching her breath, pushing the pain deep inside of her.
So close. So close, Jude, come on. She wasn’t sure if it was her voice in her head anymore or Cardan’s. She wanted to hear his voice, his real voice, so desperately, to tell her it was going to be ok.
But Cardan was poisoned and passed out, and he wouldn’t be there to offer her comfort if they both died. Jude grit her teeth and curled her nails into her palm, letting the sting propel her forward to tie Cardan’s booted feet to the chair legs.
She tied the last knot firmly and her fingers shook as she grasped the fabric as hard as she could. She moved to stand again but found she couldn’t - she had lost too much blood. She was so tired, pain held her entire body in a vice and her head was swimming precariously, but her body was moving on auto-pilot, her hands and knees dragging across the rough stone to where the contact bell for the Court of Shadows was, hidden behind an old tapestry.
Jude’s vision had tunneled and she watched her hand, as if by its own accord, scrabbled up the wall, smearing blood, until it reached the bell pull and yanked at it feebly. She felt it ring silently, for it would sound in the Court headquarters.
Cardan. She had done it, ticked the boxes on her small list. All Jude wanted to do now was to lie her heavy head in Cardan’s lap and pretend they were somewhere else, that Cardan was reading in the garden while Jude sat in between his legs, enjoying the calm, the sounds and smells of their moment of peace in the kingdom they ruled.
But her limbs were so stiff and sticky, her head was aching, her shoulder was on fire and she could barely see her hands in front of her. She tried to hold on to that false memory, that dream, tried to fill her nose with the scent of jasmine and wildflowers, tried to feel the grass under her feet.
She didn’t feel the impact of her cheek against the cold floor as her eyes finally slid shut.