Title: The Royal We
Genre: Romance / Drama
Rating: M
Pairing: Cardan x Jude
Spoilers: The Wicked King
Summary: I'm near her always, even when I'm far away.
Word Count: 1,739
Warnings: N/A
Disclaimer: The Folk of the Air Series by Holly Black is not mine. Summary is a quote from Faust by Johann van Goethe.
A/N: My kink is things from the male POV. I live for it. IDK.
The view outside the Palace of Elfame is bright and airy, everything a mortal would expect of a Faerie Court. The trees are bedecked with leaves as green as absinthe, as yellow as poison, as red as blood, the sky is impossibly blue and distant dotted with cloud, the fields are a riot of blooms in colors too numerous and vivid and bright to name.
But the face reflected in the glass is sick with misery.
A soft noise behind him makes Cardan turn, snapping to attention like a hunting dog on point, just in time to watch a timid maid carry a tray of tea into his foyer. A mask slips over his face as he watches her bob a curtesy at him, his eyes shaded and dark. He watches with impenetrable eyes as she without comment removes the untouched tray of tea and food someone else had brought in hours earlier and replaces it with the new one. Her eyes dark to the mantle where a crown is haphazardly displayed, a delicate match to the one gracing his brow. Even though he knows she's going to ask, the question still startles him.
"Will your lady being returning soon, Your Highness?"
He blinks before he can stop himself, but it is not quick enough to stop the maid from seeing the starburst of pain in his ink-dark eyes. "She's not my lady," he answers instead, ignoring the ache of regret the words cause and forcing a disaffected smile onto his face. "She's just the Queen." His voice is sharpened steel.
The maid swallows nervously. "Yes, Your Highness, of course." There is another question brewing there… "And will she – "
He feels the hold on his temper slipping. "She will not be returning." Even saying the words hurts. It touches a raw place deep inside of him that aches with emptiness whenever he thinks of honey-brown eyes and hair as thick and soft as rumpled russet velvet. "And I will remind you that it is none of your concern, in any case." His voice is cool and crisp, but the edge is hard, like winter frost.
The maid is pale with terror. "Yes, my King. I beg your forgiveness" A bobbing curtsey and she vanishes out the door, a cold cup of tea clattering on the tray held in her shaking hands.
For long, still moments, Cardan watches the door she'd exited, lost in his own thoughts, his eyes distant and far away. In the mortal realm. Where a girl with messy hair and glittering eyes is sitting, imaging that he didn't care. That he had exiled her because he is silver-tongued and charismatic and conniving. Where she is scheming to come back. Where she is hating him. The very thought sends a spike of agony piercing through him and he turns away from the room, turns away from the dusty crown on the mantle.
But the view out the window no longer hold any appeal for him. It is too perfect, too forced, too fake. There is no danger or intrigue, no excitement. His feet wander to his bedroom before he can stop them and that is worse, it is so much worse. Because in here is his bed. And in his bed are memories.
He still cannot believe the plan he had contrived. To marry Jude. To make her his Queen. He tells himself it is a strategy to rid himself of the compulsion, but the fae cannot lie and he knows what it really is. No woman, faery or mortal or otherwise, had ever occupied his thoughts, his dreams, the way she had. He never felt his eyes so drawn to another, never found himself repeatedly watching someone. He hated it. Resented it. Wanted more.
"Become my Queen." His eyes are as hard and glinting as chips of dark diamonds, his smile his predatory and fey. "Become my wife." But there is a slight shake in his voice that he cannot control and it maddens him.
While she stares at him, he has the distinct thought that she will say no. That he will have asked, and then he will be denied and the thought creates a twisting feeling low in his stomach, like worms are coiling through him.
Jude is staring up at him, her tawny eyes owl-wide and glittering like gemstones as she blinks her golden-brown lashes at him in confusion. "I –"
The need to make her agree rocks him, so he steps closer, tilts her face up to his, and breathes his request against her lips. His eyes are bright with yearning and destiny. "Marry me, Jude." The nod of her head, when it comes, is small, but it is a nod and it is all he needs to close the last hairs breadth of distance between them and seal their lips together. The touch ignites within him a feverish energy and a desire to feel, to touch, to see more. She makes a noise at the motion and it immediately makes him want to hear more.
The next while is a blur of motion, of wandering hands, of inquisitive touches, of rumpled clothing, and panting breathes. His heart is a staggering tango, his heart and mind are a frantic see-saw that his mind is quickly losing. Jude is too unlike any of the fae at court. She is too bright and real, sunlight encased in flesh, mortal and fleeting and intelligent and her mouth tastes like cool water and her skin tastes like flowers. Her calloused fingers leave trails of fire whenever they touch his skin.
Knees hit the edge of a mattress and they go tumbling into the bed. For a moment the world tilts dizzily, but when it rights itself, Cardan finds himself sprawled on top of a woman he would have gladly told anyone on earth that he hated up until mere minutes ago. But staring down at her now – hair wild from his clenching hands, mouth reddened, cheeks flushed, breaths heaving – he cannot image why. He might adore her, her strength and cunning. He might very well love her beyond anything a mortal could imagine. "I have been longing to sleep with you," he says suddenly, the words torn from somewhere deep inside. "As if I were drowning and you were the very air."
Her eyes are impossibly wide. When she blinks up at him it is slow and languid, her lashes brushing her cheeks like shadows. But even as he watches, a smile steals over her face and it is like looking into the sun. The very sight of it makes his heart swell and bloom. The branches rustle like living things, flowers burst into blossom. He aches with it.
Then there is only touching, only heat, only sinking so deeply inside of someone that it is perfect and real and wonderful. And he is the only one, the first, will always be the first. The first to make her sigh and writhe and clench her hands white-knuckled in the sheets. He will be the first the taste and savor and feel those legs wrap around his head, his shoulders, his waist. He cannot help learn new ways to hear her say his name over and over and over.
He shudders with the intensity of this instant, this moment. It coils in him, serpent and visceral, tighter and tighter, like a noose, until he can't breathe with how tight he is wound and there are nails scratching lines down his shoulders and teeth are clenched in the skin of his neck and the thighs around his waist are so vised it is painful and they are shuddering and she is groaning out on a ragged exhale in his ear and it is too much – too much – too much
Cardan jerks himself back to the here and now with a jerk, ragged with loneliness and aching now in more ways than one. His lips burn with the memory of Jude's mouth, her taste. They are branded with her. He is ruined with her. And now she is gone. Sent away. Far from here. Far from him. A surge of shame burst though him like a starburst.
She had smiled in her sleep that night, her mouth so tempting and close, he could not resist. She had been happy. And then he had sent her to the mortal world, where she was even now, so far out of his reach it was laughable. Was she happy there? Was she with her sister and her brother? Having had one night with him, had she gone and found a new lover to occupy her nights and fan her desires?
The word "lover" provokes an icy jolt of jealousy through him it is paralyzing.
But he has no right to be jealous. He banished his Queen. His bright and fiery adversary, quick-witted and intelligent and more amusing to him than all the others combined. His wife, who sighed his name when she came down from her release and who gave as good as she got.
A sudden weariness sweeps over him, weighing down his shoulders. His eyes are as hollow as an empty grave. He knows she will be safer in the mortal world, away from those that would see her humanness as weak and easy, who would see her as a target. He knows he is protecting her, saving her. But it is hard to feel like it is the right thing to do when this room is flooded with her scent, these walls are filled with memories of her. He feels empty and bereft.
He knows it is the right thing to do. But that doesn't make it any easier.
A sigh. And he squares his shoulders, lifts his chin, lets that cocky and sure expression settle over his features. But others cannot know why, cannot sense the weakness of her in him, cannot know of the emotional attachment and the feeling there. They can only see a King.