She drags him into what was surely Dain's office, but is now clearly hers. She suits the role of… whatever she is. Spymaster. Chief assassin. Knight of shadows. She wears her scowl like a crown.
Once, just once, he'd like to see her smile. But has no idea how to get her to make one. He's not used to that. Most women of court offer him a smile whenever he flashes one in their direction. The merest smirk at Jude at her features shift into something dark and ominous.
He hates that. Hates that she won't smile, hates that he wants her to smile, hates that she still looks good without one.
"Sit down," she commands, pointing to a chair.
He obeys, slightly wobbly from all the wine he's imbibed.
Jude walks around, settling herself on the other side of the desk. She draws out a crossbow and cocks it. He draws a ragged breath.
She looks good with a weapon.
"You're going to shoot me?" He blinks, trying to stay steady. He isn't sure she'll do it, but he doesn't want to push his luck. She has enough reason to hate him. "Right now?"
Her finger caresses the trigger, and he tries not to think about it caressing other things.
"I can see why you'd want to," he continues, "but I'd really prefer if you didn't."
Whatever Jude cares for his preferences. Whatever Jude cares for him at all.
"Then you shouldn't have smirked at me constantly—you think I am going to stand being mocked, here, now? You're still so sure you're better than me?"
This surprises him, despite the role that he's been playing. He has always acted like he was better than her, because it was just that—an act. He has never been better at her at anything. And he never expected, despite his games, that he'd ever succeeded in making her feel that way.
He is alarmed by the strange, twisting feeling in his gut, and alarmed by the notion that he wished he'd made her feel other, better things.
But he can't admit that.
He holds up his hand in protest. "I'm nervous, I smile a lot when I'm nervous, I can't help it."
Jude lowers the crossbow, and he wonders if he's shown too much. That smile was his armour, his weapon when he couldn't wield a blade. It had clearly wounded her.
But he needs to keep going, in case she changes her mind about killing him. "You are terrifying. Nearly my whole family is dead, and while they never had much love for me, I don't want to join them. I've spent all night worrying what you're going to do, and I know exactly what I deserve. I have reason to be nervous." He pauses, and she seems to have relaxed a little. "I'll tell you whatever you want. Anything."
He means it. He does not want to die. And for a moment—a split second caused by wine and bad choices—he feels like she could strip off his armour entirely. He almost wants to tell her everything.
Almost.
"No word games?" she asks.
"I swear it." He puts his hand over his heart. It's thumping wildly.
"And if I shoot you anyway?"
"You might well," he says, trying to stay steady, "but I want your word that you won't."
A little trust couldn't hurt, at this stage.
"My word isn't worth much."
"So you keep saying. It isn't very comforting, I've got to tell you."
She laughs. Actually laughs. At him. His joke. It's almost as alarming as the crossbow in her hand, but curiously delightful.
Jude. Delightful. This does not bode well.
She places the crossbow down. He tries not to relax. He still feels like he's walking on a tightrope.
He should not have had so much wine.
"You tell me whatever I want to know—all of it—and I won't shoot you."
"And what can I do to persuade you not to turn me over to Balekin and Madoc?" He lifts an eyebrow, and something in Jude's gaze shifts. He doesn't know what.
She turns it into a glower. "How about you concentrate on staying alive?"
He shrugs. A play at indifference. It's worked in the past, never letting people know how much he cares. "What do you want to know?"
"I found a piece of paper with my name on it," she says. "Over and over, just my name."
He flinches. He knows the paper. Knows the book he stuffed it inside. He doesn't want to know how she found it, or what else she might have seen. The paper is enough.
Does she know?
No, surely not. She would have invented a different kind of torture for him if she did.
"Well?" she prompts.
"That's not a question," he says, in a lame attempt at deflection. "Ask me a proper question, and I'll give you an answer."
"You're terrible at this whole 'telling me what I want to know' thing," she says, and her hand goes to the crossbow.
He sighs. A moment's reprieve. At least she hasn't asked about the paper. "Just ask me a question. Ask to see my tail. Don't you want to see it?"
"You want me to ask you something? Fine. When did Taryn start whatever it is she has with Locke?"
He laughs with delight, all too happy to stir the conversation in this direction. "Oh, I wondered when you would ask about that. It was some months ago. He told us about it—throwing stones at her window, leaving her notes to meet him in the woods, wooing her by moonlight. He swore us to silence, made it all seem like a lark. I think, in the beginning, he did it to make Nicasia jealous, but later…"
"How did he know it was her window?" she asks.
He smiles. "Maybe he didn't. Maybe either of you would have done for his first mortal conquest. I believe his goal was to have both of you in the end."
He leaves out that Locke led them to believe it was Jude he was dallying with, that he suspects he did that to get under his skin, and that he finds a sick sense of satisfaction in the fact that Jude will never be Locke's, not now.
"What about you?"
He isn't sure what she means by this. "Locke hasn't got around to seducing me yet, if that's what you're asking. I suppose I should be insulted."
"That's not what I mean. You and Nicasia were…"
Cardan's jaw tightens, along with a part of his chest. "Yes, Locke stole her from me," he says, wishing he didn't have to. "And I don't know if Locke wanted her to make some other lover jealous or to make me angry or just because of Nicasia's magnificence. Nor do I know what fault in me made her choose him. Now do you believe I am giving you the answers you were promised?"
Jude nods, slowly. "Did you love her?"
"What kind of question is that?"
She shrugs. "I want to know?"
But why did she want to know? How could it possibly matter?
"Yes," he says, turning his gaze from her eyes to her hand on the desk, a warrior's hand. "I loved her."
He had, once, loved the first because who had bestowed on him the slightest sliver of affection. But it had faded to smoke so long ago he could barely remember the fires from which it came.
"Why do you want me dead?" Jude asks.
This question surprises him, and he has to scan through a dozen interactions before he can think of where she might have gotten that impression from. He's wanted her gone before, wanted her out of his sight and out of his mind, but never dead. It was scary enough with the nixies—
Ah. The nixies.
"You mean with the nixies?" he asks, putting his head in his hands. He will admit—at least, to himself—the shame he felt partaking in that. "You were the one who was thrashing around and throwing things at them. They're extremely lazy creatures, but I thought you might actually annoy them into taking a bite out of you. I may be rotten, but my one virtue is that I'm not a killer. I wanted to frighten you, but I never wanted you dead. I never wanted anyone dead."
No need to tell her that he thinks the incident frightened him more, that there was a moment he debated dragging her out himself. He dreads to think how much she'd laugh if she knew that.
He studies her reaction, but she betrays nothing.
"Valerian tried to murder me outright. Twice. Once in the tower, then in my room at my house."
He had assumed Jude had tracked Valerian down like the huntress she is, but instead he sees another version of her, a sliver of herself he's sure she'd rather not reveal.
How terrifying would it be to have someone come to your home like that?
He wonders, now, if Valerian was her first, if she's not as stone-cold as she pretends.
He's always wanted to scare her, but now he finds he doesn't like the idea of her being afraid as much as he thought he did.
"I thought when you said you killed him you meant you tracked him down and… Only a fool would break into the general's house."
She draws down her collar, and bluish black bruises line her throat. He finds his insides twisting. Anger. Valerian did that. How dare he.
He suddenly minds a lot less that he's dead.
"I have another on my shoulder from where he knocked me to the floor. Believe me yet?"
He reaches towards her, hardly knowing why, as if he can brush the bruises from her skin. She raises her crossbow, and he thinks the better of touching her at all.
"Valerian liked pain," he says. "Anyone's. Mine, even. I knew he wanted to hurt you." He pauses, hearing his own words. "And he had. I thought he'd be satisfied with that."
He wonders if she'd believe him if he told her if would have stopped him. He cannot speak a lie, so he supposes she would have to. But he doesn't think he wants her to know that.
"So it doesn't matter that he wanted to hurt me?" she says, her scowling darkening. "So long as he wasn't going to kill me."
He tries to smile, because he half-wants to hurt Valerian himself. "You have to admit, being alive is better."
Jude puts both her hands on the desk. "Just tell me why you hate me. Once and for all."
He smooths his long fingers over the wood of her desk, delaying for as long as possible, trying to find a truth he doesn't mind sharing.
I don't hate you. I want to hate you. I have tried to hate you. And I have failed.
"You really want honesty?"
"I am the one with the crossbow, not shooting you because you promised me answers. What do you think?"
"Very well." He fixes her with a spiteful look, wishing more than ever he could lie. "I hate you because your father loves you even though you're a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because you don't have a brother that beats you. And I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face after you won the tournament as the mortal who could best me."
His words sting the air between them like wounds, like the lashes on his back. Jude's eyes don't even flicker, and he realises with something between fury and self-hatred that she already new, that his scars have been exposed to her. He supposes he ought to be grateful she's never used that knowledge to spite him, but he finds he's not grateful for anything. Why should he be? The world has done nothing for him. Neither has she.
She never will.
And he hates that more than all the other things he hates about her.
"Is that all?" she demands. "Because it's ridiculous. You can't be jealous of me. You don't have to live at the sufferance of the same person who murdered your parents. You don't have to stay angry because if you don't, there's a bottomless well of fear ready to open up under you."
Fear, and anger? These are things he knows all too well, although thinking of Jude as afraid is still ludicrous. Her anger, though—she wears it like armour, in the same way he wears cruelty.
"Oh, really? I don't know about being angry? I don't know about being afraid? You're not the one bargaining for your life."
"That's really why you hate me?" she demands, entirely missing the point. "Only that? There's no better reason?"
He stills, because there's no answer for that, or at least, not one he wants to give. There's one more reason, but he can't let her know. It will utterly undo him.
"Well?" she says, lifting the crossbow again. "Tell me!"
He has no choice, but one more reason to hate her. He leans in and closes his eyes, not wanting to witness his own destruction. "Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop."
A silence stretches out between them. There's no relief, just a sick feeling of dread. He can't bring himself to look at her.
He pulls back, placing his head in his hand. "Maybe you should shoot me after all."
"You're playing me," Jude says, as if she hasn't lived amongst them long enough to know the truth they're forced to speak, that he cannot say anything he doesn't mean, much as he wishes it.
She picks up a dagger and marches round the desk, angling the blade at the bottom of his chin, forcing him to face her.
He is both afraid and revolted, at himself, or her, he isn't sure.
He can feel her breath against him, and another feeling takes over, some awful intermingling of panic and desire.
Kill me, or kiss me, he longs to say. Only put me out of my misery.
"You really do want me," she says, reading something in his eyes. "And you hate it."
She changes the angle of her blade, and before he can understand what's happening, she crushes her mouth against his.
A hundred sordid fantasies flood through him, a hundred desires made flesh at the hot fullness of her breath inside his. He doesn't want to give in. He wants to keep her out, and for one long, endless moment, he manages it.
Then his eyes close, brushing against her cheek, and he slides his hands up her arms.
The knife is no longer the threat, the danger. Jude is. She's like a chasm tearing open beneath his feet, and the longer he stares at the black hole, the more he wants to be enveloped by that void.
Many lips have touched his before, but never has anything crashed through him like this. He doesn't know who is the wave and who is the rock, but he's sure he's the one being dashed to pieces.
Which, of course, is why she's done it. There's no softness here, save the flesh of her flesh. It's all electrifying power.
And he kisses it. Hard. A devouring desperation seizes him, and his hands shoot to her hair, gathering her closer, ignoring the blade between them. It reminds him off battle, but he's never been that skilled at swordplay, and he can't work out which one of them is winning, or losing. He's fighting to crawl into her skin. He's fighting against wanting to.
She flings the knife away, and it's the sound of it hitting wood that brings him back to his senses. He barks out a startled laugh.
Jude staggers back. "Is it what you imagined?" she asks, her voice harsh.
"No," he says, because she never had the power in his dreams, he did. He never imagined being so completely and totally powerless.
"Tell me."
"Unless you're really going to stab me, I think I won't. And I might not tell you even if you were going to stab me."
He will not admit how deep his fantasies went, her surrendering to him, all might and armour and power blown away.
He will not admit how much he enjoyed what just transpired, how much he longs to do it again. How willing he would be to trade almost everything for the chance of it.
Is it possible to hate a person more, when you don't despise them at all?
A/N: This took waaaaaay longer than expected. Ugh. R&R, if you enjoyed!