#because baby Cardan is keeping me up at night right now

[deathsweetblossoms]

And so he grew up in the palace, cherished by no one, and checked by no one.

I shudder, imagining the loneliness of that life, the anger.

That desire for love.

[mmvalentine]

The Pianist pt 10 | Jurdan

Modern AU. I know I've been lax on the smut warnings; I've been reluctant for spoilers but this time you already know where we're going ;) Part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 The bed frame hit the back of Jude's calves, and then she was going down on her back. It was all happening so fast it made her head spin, and then suddenly Cardan's mouth left hers and she was gasping for air while the ceiling tilted above her. While Cardan's lips made their way down the side of her neck and onto her chest, while his gorgeous fingers fumbled over the buttons at the front of her dress, while a black curl of his hair tickled her between her breasts as his face moved lower, Jude tried to catch her breath, and took stock of Cardan's movements. The frenzy of it all, the shake in his hands and his unfocused eyes might have another time made her think he was drunk again, had he not just delivered a flawless performance. Besides, she could taste his breath and he was just all vanilla and oak, and nothing of the expensive vodka she knew him to be so fond of. So what had gotten into him, then? And why did he look like shit? Cardan had all the buttons down her dress opened now, and he pressed a kiss to her stomach that had his tongue flicking into her navel, and the questions emptied out of her mind.

"You're back," Cardan murmured. "I've missed you."

"You said that," Jude panted, as his hands reached up her body to palm her breasts while his teeth hit her hip bones.

"I meant it," Cardan said, and pressed his lips to her underwear before hooking his thumbs under the waistband and dragging them down. Jude shivered. Cardan dropped down between her knees, at the edge of the bed, and carefully lifted her legs over his shoulders. His hands curled back around to stroke at the tops of her thighs, and when he spoke Jude could feel his breath against her bare pussy. "I fucking missed you," he said, and then, surprisingly slowly, licked his tongue up all the way up the centre of her.

Jude arched up off the bed and bit back the moan that clawed in her throat. Cardan's lips moved unhurriedly, languorously over her clit and inside her and then back again. Her fingers tightened against his scalp, hips moving to seek more friction, but he would not be rushed. Just moved at his own pace until Jude was writing beneath his lips, her body begging him for things she couldn't find the words for. And then, when she thought she might have to actually beg, Cardan moved back up her body and she whimpered at the loss of contact.

"And you, Jude dear?" he asked. His fingers found the spot his tongue had left, and Jude would never admit to him that after weeks and months of hearing him play the piano she had always wondered what his hands might do to her.

"Me what?" Jude gasped as his fingers slid inside her. Cardan watched her face intently as he moved in and out of her. Her head tilted back on the mattress, and he put two fingers of his free hand into her mouth. She sucked against them automatically, and Cardan shuddered. It had not escaped Jude's attention that he had now gone down on her twice and not gotten off himself.

"Did you miss me?" Cardan trailed his fingers from her mouth down to her nipple, the wet trail they left down her chest suddenly cold on her naked skin. He rolled the hardened tip as his other hand moved between her legs, and Jude's answer was a moan. Cardan placed a suckling kiss against her collarbone. "Did you think about this, about the last time I made you come?"

"I..." Jude's mouth moved but the words didn't arrive. Cardan put his chin on the top of her sternum, and the heel of his palm grazed her clit with every stroke of his fingers.

"Did you think about me, when you were gone?"

"Yes," Jude groaned.

"Yes?"

"Yes, oh god, yes..."

Cardan's eyes hardened, and he seized her lips in his.

"Tell me," he said against her teeth.

"I missed you," Jude said, falling apart in his kiss. "I missed you, I missed you, I missed- oh!" Her eyes flew open as Cardan pinched her nipple, and when he sucked it into his mouth straight after to sooth the hurt with his tongue she was coming suddenly on his fingers. Her nails dug into his shoulders, and only half a moan escaped her before she was screaming silently, throat working but no sound coming.

Cardan eased her down, and then rolled them so that he was lying on his back and she was catching her breath against his chest. He pulled her chin up with the crook of his finger, and making eye contact was so intense it ached in her chest. Jude bore it for just a minute before letting him tug her lips back to his.

////

Cardan was dizzy with the taste of Jude. With her straddling him like his, her hair fell over her shoulder and the scent of her surrounded him. His hands traveled down the length of her body and squeezed handfuls of her backside. After weeks of sleep eluding him and food tasting like cardboard, Jude was warm and rich as the sun.

Jude sat up a little and pulled at the buttons of his shirt, but Cardan was in no mood for delicacy. He yanked the fabric open and sent buttons skittering under the bed. Then immediately he was dragging her back down to him, and when her bare chest hit his, soft breasts on his too pale torso, he shuddered hard against her. This much was new territory.

Cardan pulled off the rest of his clothing as Jude kissed him, reaching for more and more skin contact. Their stomachs breathed against each other, their legs tangled, their hips kissed. And then the soaking heat of her pussy slid over his cock and Cardan choked out a groan.

"Cardan?" Jude asked. He could barely answer. He was unraveling and she was asking idle questions.

"Uhh?"

"What did you mean when you said you couldn't sleep without me?"

Jude's hips rolled above him, and it seemed the more Cardan was losing control, the more she was at ease.

"What?" Cardan panted. He couldn't keep more than one word in his head at once, and right now the word was her name.

"I said," Jude's fingernails trailed down his chest. "What did you mean, about not sleeping without me?"

Cardan swallowed, as his cock twitched hard between Jude's legs. He was slick with Jude's wetness and it made her slide smoothly up and down the length of him.

"I... Jude..." His hands fluttered over her thighs and backside, torn between craving more touch and being so over-sensitized he'd snap if she didn't start fucking him right this second.

Jude leaned up and pulled a condom from her bedside drawer, tearing it with her teeth and sliding her hand over him a couple of times before rolling the latex down. Cardan was breathing hard at the feel of her fingers moving over him. And then she was sliding down onto him and Cardan gripped Jude’s knees a little too hard to prevent himself from grabbing her waist and shoving her right down on his cock.

“Fuck you’re tight baby,” Cardan groaned, and indeed Jude was pausing on the way down as she adjusted to him. It was the sweetest torture, and by the time she was sitting all the way down on his lap, he had left purple crescents where his nails had dug in to her thighs.

Cardan looked up at Jude, and found her flushed and lust-glazed as he was. She breathed there for a second, and then started moving on him. Up half way and then back down, and Cardan hissed through his teeth. His hands slipped up to her hips, pulling her back and forth while he lifted his own hips to meet her, and finally Jude moaned for him and the sound was heaven.

“Ride me, Jude,” Cardan panted. “You look so good up there.” Jude’s hands fell against his chest, and her eyes closed as she started to rock on him the way she needed it. Cardan reached up and hooked his thumb on her bottom teeth, and Jude looked at him as she bit down.

“That’s it,” he breathed. His other thumb hovered over her clit, and moaned again as her hips moved faster, trying to rub against the small pressure he put there.

“Cardan,” she groaned, and that was better than even her lullaby. Cardan fucked up into her harder.

“Say it again,” he begged.

”Cardan.”

He sped his thumb on her clit, and when her fingers curled into claws on his chest the pain was delicious. “Keep moving just like that,” he told her. “Say my name and come on my cock.”

Jude pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and her breaths were coming in sobs. Cardan tugged the lip free.

“Come on baby, say it,” he crooned, and then Jude started to shudder and Cardan fucked her faster as her movements lost cohesion.

”Car-dan holy fucking shit Cardan, Cardan, Cardan...”

Cardan didn’t wait for her climax to slow. He surged up and kissed his own name from her lips and then flipped them around so he could pound her until she was screaming and he was coming so hard his head spun.

Cardan slid his tongue against Jude’s while his hips stuttered and she pulled his hair in her fists. When he finally slid out of her and collapsed on the bed, he rolled her into his chest so he wouldn’t have to stop touching her.

Jude pulled the condom off and then nestled into his neck. She sighed contentedly, and Cardan’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest. Things had never been this good before.

"Cardan?" Jude mumbled.

"Yes?" he whispered.

“Why couldn’t you sleep when I was away?”

Cardan glanced down, and Jude had her eyes closed like she was falling asleep.

“Because,” he said very quietly. “I had no one to sing me to sleep.”

“But I never did,” Jude said.

“Every night,” he confessed. "I always heard you."

“Oh,” said Jude. She opened her eyes then, and the melting chocolate of them was to die for.

“Shall I sing you to sleep now?” She asked.

Cardan could have wept. He tightened his arms around her, and managed to nod his head.

And Jude, lovely, sweet and fiery Jude, started to hum his favourite song. Cardan buried his nose in her hair as the words slipped over her skin. He couldn't quite make them out, and then he realised that they might not be in English.

Cardan didn't have many thoughts on the matter beyond this though, because for the first time in weeks, his brain had slowed and quietened to listen to the song, and by the miracle that was Jude, he was falling asleep with her in his arms.

"Jude?" Cardan said, consciousness slipping fast.

"Yes?" she said, pausing the lullaby.

"Can I keep you?"

"Only if I can keep you, too," Jude whispered. And then she started singing again, and the last coherent thought in Cardan's head was how strange it was that Jude didn't know he was already hers.

****

And that's the end x

Yes, yes this was just a chapter of pure smut and after writing Fifty-Six I feel like this blog needs a bath or sth. My deepest thanks to everyone who has stuck with me through this one, I love these two dummys. Also everyone who reblogs is an angel and you make my life.

JURDAN MASTERLIST

TAGLIST: @asteria-of-mars @swankii-art-teacher @loosingdreams @feysand-loml @cityofbookish @story-scribbler @thebonecarver @realbookloverproblems

[saltyshade2912]

Jurdan Secret Pregnancy

Summary: One year into their marriage Jude had started to feel sick. She had gone to the mortal world visiting Vivi and Heather. They convinced her to take a test to be sure. Only one problem for Jude, she is now a queen on the run with an hotheaded husband on her trails.

One year after the end of Queen Of Nothing

Chapter 3

[Jude’s POV]

I had been sitting on my couch watching some crappy reality show when it knocked on the door. Not thinking too much of it and being heavily pregnant I didn’t get up to open the door. But when it kept knocking on the door, I hauled myself upwards and out to the worn-down door opening it.

“Hello wife.”

The last one I ever would have expected to see here was Cardan, in all honestly over the last few weeks I have wished for nothing more than for him to find me, but now when it is happening, I cannot process it properly. It is like going into shock.

I immediately shut the door in his face, but before it closed entirely Cardan put his foot in between the door and himself, effectively keeping it open.

He pulls me outside and the door shuts close behind me. I try to wrist myself away from him, but he just tightens his grip on my waist. He lifts me up in bridal style carrying me down the stairs and the entire way out to the leaf covered ground.

“PUT ME DOWN CARDAN!” I scream at him, trashing around but being careful not to let the bump touch anything.

He looks down at me with a sceptical eye, before looking down on my swollen stomach. He almost drops me there, and I was convinced that if he hadn’t been carrying me, he would have dropped to his knees.

“Cardan, put me down.”

He just looks me in the eyes and narrowing his so slight wrinkles appear around his beautiful black eyes. “I don’t care what you want anymore Jude, you are coming with me and that is the end of the story. You hear me?” Fuck he can be scary when he is serious, and he rarely ever is.

 ***

 When we had arrived at the palace Cardan had put me down to the ground, dragging me towards our bedroom chambers in a bruising grip.

For once the palace was dead as the night, and it was highlight daytime.

“Get in there” Cardan said throwing the doors open and dragging me towards me glorious bed.

“You. You sit your ass down right here and don’t you dare move a fucking inch! Understood?” He took my head between his warm hands, cupping my cheeks looking at me with loving eyes. He can make me go soft with just the tiniest emotion from him. He was my everything. He still is.

He always will be.

“I don’t need to listen to you.” At that point he was fuming, and I could almost see smoke coming out of his ear, and in rage he grabs my waist and pulls me towards him, careful not to crush the baby.

“Listen wife, I don’t care what you want because no matter what you say you are queen and you are my wife, and you need a goddamn lesson because you have been a bad little girl, but I will not give it to you now considered your current condition.” He roars out, almost like he still was a deadly black snake.

Who knows, it might even be his spirit animal.

With that he walked out of the door, closing and locking it behind him.

That was when I realized that he had planned to do.

He was going to hold me a prisoner in my own home.

[wanderingpages]

All Human, Rockstar AU (Part 5). Cardan is in a band on the cusp of fame, and Jude has been there from the start. They fall fast and hard, but sometimes love just isn’t enough.

Trigger Warnings: Language, Sex, Drugs, Death (and the word ‘cunt’ sometimes I guess.)

Prologue, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 ∞ Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13

∞

Jude’s POV

Acquainted - The Weeknd

I hear Cardan’s laugh through the phone, “You’re amazing,” he says. I had just sent him the video I took at their first show on the tour. It was during a more sultry song, where it looks like Larkin is making love to his microphone. His eyes are half mast, staring at the crowd, pausing somewhere up front, trying not to smile, yet he can’t help the stretch of his lips. Without missing a beat or lyric, singing about “I got them touching on their bodies…” he reaches a hand out, catching the soaring bra before it hits the stage.

He laughs through the music, dangling the lacy pink thing by the straps, walking over to Cardan. He drapes it on the mic stand there, Cardan shaking his head as they both lean in for the chorus of the song.

I’m at the little breakfast nook in Vivienne’s apartment, trying to edit another video, except I keep going down little rabbit holes of older videos I’ve taken. As soon as I found that footage, I didn’t even think twice about sending it to Cardan. Since that night of epic phone sex I will remember when I'm a fifty year old spinster, we haven’t gotten more than a few words in here or there and I have yet to accept an offer to one of his shows. It’s not that I don’t want to, because I most definitely do, but all the stops are so far from home, I know Uncle Madoc would have a coronary.

Cardan had phoned just two minutes after I sent the video, and I’m now double-checking dates on DeathSweet’s tour. I finally give him a date to a show playing a few hours from here when Rhyia walks in to ask if I want more coffee. “Is that my sister?” Cardan asks. “Tell her I said hi!”

“Your brother says hi, Rhy.”

She pauses pouring a cup, her brows furrowed. “You’re seeing Dain? Are you old enough to see Dain?” having heard that, Cardan makes a scoffing noise on the other end.

I roll my eyes, “No –”

Her eyes widen, “No, you're not old enough or no, you’re not seeing him?”

“Uh…both? I think. What’s the age of consent here?”

“Jude,” Cardan warns on the other end and the sides of my lip twitches.

“Seventeen,” Rhyia says after checking her phone. “Good on you, Jude.”

I laugh, “No, not Dain. Cardan.”

“Oh,” Rhyia says more confused than previously. “I can’t even get a text back and he’s on the phone with you right now?” she shakes her head and adds cream and sugar, “The audacity. Gets in like one TMZ article and suddenly he’s too famous for his big sister.”

“You were in a TMZ article?” I ask Cardan.

“Not that I know of,” he says, “I didn’t think we were that famous, to be honest.”

I make a noise of disbelief, “Have you…have you googled your band name yet? I can’t believe I have to break this to you now, but you’re famous, Rockstar.”

“No way. We barley have the EP out.”

“Yeah but you're all attractive, Larkin can hit notes, everyone loves the covers and the few original songs you’ve played are hits. Have you even seen the streams on your EP?”

He pauses, then, with a grin in his tone, “You’ve been keeping stats on us, baby?” and my heart just about flutters at the endearment.

“Shut up,” I mumble.

“You’re cute.” My cheeks flush.

Rhyia wiggles her brows at me as she sets my coffee down. She sees the tab that I have open and says. “Oh, I think Cae is going to that one,” she points to the date I had planned on going.

That’s how a few weeks later, I’m on the passenger side of Caelia’s very sleek new car Cardan had gifted her after his first check. She’s bubbly and sweet, but I already knew that. She talks about absolutely everything she could think of then asks me about school and friends. It feels like I’ve known her all my life instead of just in passing. Almost like Cardan. I film the scenery on the drive and she asks why.

After explaining, I muse, “I may be obsessed with filming things, but Taryn has been absolutely enthralled with capturing the moment. We’ve had maybe a handful of photos before our parents died. Now Taryn has to pay $10 a month for extra storage on her iPhone. Vivienne is kind of more into doing things in the moment. She’s scared she won’t have time.”

Her brows furrow and she looks thoughtful, “That’s really interesting, actually. It’s very sweet too, the three of you. Makes you wonder what other people would take up after you die.”

“Vivi was pretty close to doing drugs,” I admit. “I guess it just so happened that before she could actually give in, she met your sister.”

Caelia’s eyes widen then she gets a small little smile on her face, “Maybe love conquers all, huh?” I shrug, not offering up an answer. She reaches over and pats my leg, “Okay, now tell me how you met my brother.”

The family room is packed by the time we make it to the arena. Serpent Gold is already on stage, but DeathSweet are lounging backstage, chatting with workers. A ginger haired man I recognize as the lead singer of the band greets us first.

“And who might you two lovely ladies be?”

Caelia smiles politely but juts her chin towards the stage, “Family.” He grins wider, eyes dancing from each of us. Caelia narrows her eyes, “I'm taken, and she’s way too young for you.”

I definitely don’t tell her that according to Rhyia, I am actually, just the right age, it seems. But I do store away the whole ‘I’m taken’ bit. Something Cardan has said to me ages ago makes its way forefront. I tilt my head to the side, watching her. Is she seeing Larkin? I glance to the stage, looking from the side view we have, catching the man in question.

“Noted,” the man laughs, “I’m Locke, by the way. That’s Valerian over there,” he points out the silver haired boy tuning a guitar next to a woman with teal hair, blue and green strands reminding me of the sea. “His girl, Nicasia, and Yorn,” a big burly guy talking to a very lanky boy with bright green hair, “Edir.”  Locke leans in like he’s sharing a secret. “Between us, Nicasia is just here for the clout. I don’t even think she likes us all,” he snorts, “Maybe she’s sticking around for one of those two,” he nods over where Larkin and Cardan croon into the mic together. Something gross twists in my stomach. Locke either doesn’t seem to notice the discomfort or is all too pleased by the reaction, because he says, “They sure are close, Lark and Cardan.” He glances back to Nicasia whose resting her head on Valerian’s shoulder. “Makes a girl, I assume, wonder how far she can go with the both of them. At once.”

I lean back, pressing closer to Caelia. “That’s…interesting?” and just a tad sickening thinking about Cardan with another woman.

Locke shrugs, “It’s always the young up and comers doing the craziest most explicit shit. But hey any publicity is good publicity, right? Plus, I think they deserve some fun,” he points out, as if he’s trying to make a case, despite Caelia and I never actually speaking against it.

Caelia hums, “Right, if you’ll excuse us, we’d like to watch our guys and gal.” She grabs hold of my hand and leads me closer to the stage. I turn back just in time to catch Locke grab Nicasia’s hand and tug her from Valerian’s side on to his lap. She giggles and kisses Locke’s jaw, wrapping her hands around him. I can’t help but put Larkin and Cardan’s faces in their stead. I look back at Caelia, confused. She watches the scene with contempt before giving me a shrug. “It’s how it is.” She doesn’t look too pleased, even when she turns to watch Larkin. If anything, her face grows a bit more pale.

A group of girls are let in just a few moments after. I turn to see the commotion, eyes widening at the gorgeous women, covered in band merch not just from DeathSweet but from Serpent Gold as well. “Groupies,” Caelia explains with a frown, watching them dissipate towards each member of DeathSweet, as well as Nicasia, before turning me back to the show.  

The lights start to flash and on instinct I turn my camera on. Larkin steps away from the mic and Cardan walks closer, making sure Larkin doesn’t fall as he climbs on to Van’s drum set. The most rock and roll shit I’ve ever seen; Larkin, suddenly strumming his guitar solo viscously, fingers flying over chords, Van drumming to the beat of the lights flashing, Liliver and Cardan on either side. The lights from behind showcases them as silhouettes, as enigmas. The crowd is absolutely eating this up, yelling and screaming and I don’t realize how loud they actually are until Larkin jumps off and the gaudy melodies mend into a softer closeout to the song, almost non-existent and Larkin find his mic to sing the last few lyrics.

“I got ‘em wanting to embrace their sins,” Larkin sighs into the mic, his face turning that exact moment to catch Caelia’s eyes. “These girls born in… the nineties are dangerous.” He grins wide, if not a little wary, like he’s exerted himself on that guitar solo. The hitch in her breath beside me tells me she’s somehow exerted her energy too, just watching.

I hide the smirk I’m fighting and the dark lights flash on. When I look up from my camera, I see Cardan staring at me with the biggest smile. I return it, raising a hand to give him a thumbs up. After their final song, they trail in, Van and Liliver first, then Larkin. Caelia is unable to help herself as she launches at him, giving him a hug. He returns it, smiling down at her softly. “Hey you,” he says.

She pulls away almost reluctantly, and his eyes follow her as she gives her brother a hug next. Larkin’s gaze shift from Caelia then, to the group of women behind me with a sort of frown on his face.

I don’t think on it much because suddenly it’s just Cardan and I. He takes his bass off and almost absently hands it to a roadie. I bite my lips and meet him halfway. “Jude,” he says.

“Hey, Rockstar.” He pulls me by my hips, tugs the camera attached to my neck and turns it so it dangles towards my back rather than my front, then his hands are franticly moving up my sides and to the base of my neck, pulling me in for a kiss, so wet and hot and consuming as all hell. My hands are at his neck, weaving into his hair, my toes push up – had he gotten taller? He must get the hint because he hoists me up and my legs go around him.

He’s breathing deep and fast and I can’t tell if it’s because of the show or because of me. He pulls away and his dark eyes search mine, “Hey,” he says.

“Wow…” someone says behind us. My eyes widen and I quickly scramble off of him, cheeks flushing to face Locke and Valerian. Locke looks amused, “Look at you go, kid,” he says to Cardan who hauls me by my hands closer to him. Our fingers interlace but I still feel uncomfortable. Valerian eyes me with interest, noticing me for the first time. He doesn’t say anything though, just gestures to the stage before he walks over. The crowd erupts in cheers when he walks on. Yorn and Edir follow and garner much of the same reaction. Locke gives us one last smile before sauntering off in front of the crowd. If I thought the audience was loud before, they are seismic now.

Nicasia eyes Cardan with a grin before following behind Locke, “You guys were good up there…Rockstar.”

I look at her confused before looking to Cardan then back to the stage. Lock hadn’t mentioned her being part of the band in his little biography lesson. “She likes to…work the crowd up.” I understand what he means when I see her drape herself around Locke and give him a kiss that makes me blush.

“I thought…isn’t she with Valerian?”

Cardan grimaces and leads me towards the exit, not before nodding to the girls in his band’s merch, giving them sincere smiles. “He’s into that…the watching.” He glances back to the stage, then to me again, eyes wide, “Wait, did you want to stay and see the rest of the show?”

“No, silly.” I bite at my bottom lip and he tugs it out of my mouth without really second guessing his actions. I don’t mention it either. “Are you into that?”

His eyebrows shoot up high, “Are you asking if I want to share you? Because the answer to that is no.” He brushes hair from my face tucking it behind my ears. “I’m the kid brother to five siblings. I don’t get to be selfish much, but I really want to be selfish with you.”

“Oh,” I say stupidly. He smirks and leans down to kiss me again. It’s chaste this time, but just as hot and demanding as before.

“Come on, I want you to meet my band.” He pulls me from the room, waving to the girls and the roadies, and we follow halls until we’re outside in the back of the arena. “When we stay in a city for more than a day, we splurge a little and rent hotel suites for the night or two that we’re staying.”

I grin bashfully, “Are you taking me back to your room, Cardan?”

He looks down at me with a face so tender. “Yeah. I am.” Before he leads us to the tour bus, he takes a detour, slipping in towards the lobby where a few people are in line at the stands for merchandise and food. “I’m hungry,” he tells me with a small shrug.

I pat my stomach, “I was too nervous to eat. I could go for a hotdog – ooh, ice cream!” I point out the soft serve menu and he bends down to kiss my cheeks.

“I really missed you,” he says, pulling me to the line. He hauls me in front of him, lifting me up until my feet are perched on his shoes. My hands come around his neck to steady myself and my eyes widen, but before I can protest, he bends down to kiss me again. “I can’t believe you’re here.” He rests his hands on my hips, fingers flexing, testing out my realness.

“You’re kind of cute,” I tease. His grin only widens as he ducks his head into my neck, nuzzling his face into my skin.

“There’s glitter on your skin,” he mumbles, lips tickling my neck.

I squirm and he walks us forward with the line. “It’s body mist,” I explain. “There’s fine glitter in the spray.” Not very noticeable unless in direct light, so when he pulls his face away and I see that, due to the spotty lighting, I’ve transferred the glittering dust to parts of his face where sweat had been, I laugh. “Don’t you guys have a personal chief or something?”

He rolls his eyes, licking his lips, then furrows his brows, “You taste good?”

I snort, “Uh, it’s edible perfume.”

“Kinky,” he leans his head and to my shock, licks down the side of my neck to the base of my shoulder.

“Cardan!”

He chuckles, “No, we don’t have personal chiefs. Sometimes DeathSweet invites us to dinner, sometimes Van cooks for us, but most of the time we’re eating out. Usually it’s healthy, but Liliver still forces us to detox with green juice every few days.” He makes a face, “And Van forces us to the gym.”

“Ah,” I slide my palms from his neck to his shoulders, kneading at the muscles there, “No wonder you look a bit different. All fit and stuff.” He rolls his eyes, but like he’s unable to stop himself, he pecks my nose, then he guides me off of him, holding me by my hand as we finally get a chance to order some food. We walk slowly now, towards the back of the arena. I only eat half the hotdog, way too excited for the melting ice cream in my other hand.

“You’ve got,” he motions to the side of my lips, watching him watch me as my tongue darts at the sweet, licking away the remains.

“Did I get it?”

He nods, “Yeah,” he says roughly.

Cardan grabs hold of our garbage and trashes it in the bin right beside the tour bus. He knocks on the door and it slides open, then he helps me up before following right behind me. Caelia is already there, sitting on a sofa beside Liliver. Van is grabbing bottles of water and passing them out, Larkin is sprawled on the sofa opposite the girls. The bus moves as soon as we enter. Larkin spots me and quickly scrambles up, making space for me to sit.

He grins charmingly at me, and I smile back, taking the offered seat. “So, you’re Jude, huh?”

“You know me?”

Van answers with a snort, settling beside Liliver, “It’s more like we thought Cardan made up a girlfriend he just so happened to call Jude, probably because we had The Beatles playing at one point, but now we’re all shocked that you’re a real girl after all.”

Caelia busts out with a laugh and I have to hide my own snort. Cardan rolls his eyes, holding out his hand for me. I take it with furrowed brows and a pout, until he hauls me up and takes my seat before resting me sideways on his lap.

“Aw,” Liliver coos, “I’m so happy you made it, Jude!”

Caelia smiles at me before her eyes flitter to Larkin then to the bottled drink. “Jude, why don’t you show them what you filmed?”

“Oh!” I exclaim and Cardan is already adjusting the camera strap so that it swings in front of me. I open the screen and lean forward, showing Larkin first, seeing as he had been the center of the most amazing part of their set. Cardan rests his chin on my shoulder, arms around my waist as he watches the video. I feel him rummage in his pocket, and in front of me, right by my stomach, he has a pack of Sour Patch Kids. I slip off the camera strap so I could hand it over completely to the lead singer. Cardan shakes the bag of candy in front of me and I pick out two red ones.

“Damn, this looks incredible,” Larkin says with a grin. He passes the camera to Van and then Liliver and Caelia put their heads together to watch. Caelia takes the liberty of going back into my history, and I smile at her soft grin towards whatever I must have captured. “Aw,” Liliver gushes again, “He’s so cute – your brother?”

I figure she’s talking about Oak. “My cousin. He’s a riot. He’s only three.” We talk amongst ourselves for the ten-minute drive to the hotel, bonding mostly over our home town.

“I can’t believe we’ve lived so close to each other, and I only met you a little less than a year ago,” Cardan murmurs.

“Ah well, we lived closer to the bay before our parents died. I miss it, but I love the city as well. Still, what I’d do to wake up and have breakfast on the back porch, eating mostly sand the breeze blew in.” I let out a soft breath and to my surprise, Cardan kisses my neck gently.

At the hotel, Liliver declares a nightcap in her and Van’s room, but sends a wink my way when Cardan tugs me down the hall from hers to his room instead. “Sneaky,” I say with a laugh.

Cardan grins and gestures me inside. One lone bed at the center with sheets so fluffy I want to immerse myself in them. “Let me shower first.” I nod and toe off my sneakers, before sitting carefully on the mattress. When the shower starts, I lean back, sprawling on the bed. I tug my camera off and set it to the side before closing my eyes. I probably should be a lot more nervous than I am, but in truth, I’m giddy. It doesn’t feel like we’re strangers and even though I’m alone in a room with him, it doesn’t feel like he’d ask for more than I’m willing to give.

Cardan exits the bathroom moments later wearing a white shirt and gray sweats. I grin lazily at his ensemble and he makes his way towards me. He hovers over me, hands on either side of my face. Wet tresses of hair tickle my skin. I lift my hands to trace his face. The room is so quiet, I wonder if he can hear how hard my heart is beating, see it in the pulse at my throat. “Hi,” he whispers when my fingers trace his lips. “Can I try something?” I hesitate before nodding. He nudges my knees apart, settling between my legs and resting his elbows by my head. I feel him even through the material of his pants and my skintight jeans. I let out a shuddering breath and he says, “Part your lips for me.”

Slowly, I open my mouth just the slightest for him. He presses a kiss to my top lip then my bottom lip. I close my eyes and let his mouth work mine.

He kisses the sides of my lips then tugs my bottom lip into his mouth. My hips buck at the sucking sensation, feeling the swell of blood gather to where he’s holding my lips captive. Cardan presses down on me and I gasp, my back arching. “Okay?” he asks in a whisper. I nod, hooking my legs around him. He lets out a soft groan, then lowers his face to mine again. He traces his tongue along my lips, teasing and tickling just at the edge of my nerves. My hips undulate, my body reacting on instinct to him. He tongues my upper lip before sucking it into his mouth and my hands find his hips, fingers digging into his skin. He slides his tongue against my own, teasing me.

I respond, lazily caressing my tongue against his. He slides one hand down between us, slithering it up my shirt. His hips start to move against mine, and I gasp out when he softly tugs at the cups of my bra. He sucks at my tongue and heat pools between my thighs. His fingers find a nipple, circling it taught before he pinches at it softly.

“This okay?” he mumbles, lips grazing mine.

“Mhmm,” I hum, sliding my hands to his neck, pulling him closer to me, returning his kiss in earnest, trying to copy the motions he’d done until it feels like second nature. My legs are trembling so I hold him tighter to me. He squeezes my breast and I moan, arching my neck. He places sloppy kisses down my throat, hips rutting against me a little harder. I want to pull my shirt up, want his lips lower, his fingers where his hips are, want him more than I can comprehend. “Cardan,” I breathe out. “Oh…”

“You’re so fucking lovely,” He groans into my skin. He lifts up just to see me, eyes blown out, skin flushed, hair askew, a mirror of him. “You feel so perfect.” His hard length is settled over my soft center. My eyes flutter close when he strokes his hips harder, takes me that much closer. “Open your eyes for me,” he says. “I want to see you. Please.”

My eyes fly open, holding his until they go cross. “Missed you,” I mumble out, vision blurring. “feels… so good,” I manage. “Tell me dirty things, Cardan,” I beg.

“Fuck,” he moans, “Holy fuck Jude. You’re so fucking sweet,” he whispers. lips skim my jaw to my earlobe. He sucks the soft flesh into his hot mouth, teeth grazing. “Bet you taste as sweet too. Want to tongue that pretty pussy of yours, baby.”

“God – yes,” I cry, fingers digging into his skin when he pinches and tugs at my nipples hard and I feel it all the way to my core, pulsing and in need of more of him.

“Want to give it to you all soft and sweet,” he grits, pace getting rougher, harder, but slower. Words emphasized as he pulls away. He takes a hand from under my shirt and brushes my hair back, the soft look on his face has my blood rushing. “Then you go and look like this, all fuck-me-eyes and kiss-me-lips. And I want to turn you over and fuck you hard, want you screaming my name, want you begging for more, want you drowsy off my cock.” My hands clutch at his shoulders, my mouth parts, I let out a soft cry when he goes faster. My back arches and his hand comes to my hair. His lips are at my neck as he holds me in place, hips stroking like waves. “Say it, baby…”

“Cardan…” I'm absolutely delirious.

“Say, ‘Cardan, make me come.’”

His voice is a vibration in my skin and heat rolls off of me in waves. “I… oh…please – fuck, Cardan… make me come.” His hand still at my breast swiftly moves to the button on my jeans, his movements halting as he pulls back to watch me. His fingers are in my pants, seeking that pool of arousal. “Cardan,” I gasp and he pauses, eyes questioning. Mine are frantic, pleading, “Don’t stop. Keep… touching me…” He strokes two calloused fingers up to my clit, and my body is shaking, my hands are gripping sheets and clothes and skin, scrambling until they find perch on his biceps. He rubs me there, quick little circles, pressing deeper and deeper into me until I’m stars and dust.

Cardan bends his head and places a kiss right above my chest, my heart beating against his lips.

My fingers finally move from their grip on him, my palms trying to soothe the red marks I’ve made. “Cardan?”

“You okay, Jude?”

I nod, and press at his skin. “I want you to come on me,” I say, stunning myself at my brazenness.

“What?” he asks hoarsely, disbelief in his voice.

I press at his chest and he quickly moves off. I sit up and tug my shirt off, then unhook my bra. He lets out a curse and a praise. I eye him, my gaze falling to where his hand is now in his pants, stroking. “Let me see,” I beg. He bites at his lips the nods, tugging his pants down just under his jutting cock. My eyes widen but I spread my legs and motion him closer. He settles between my thighs, wrists working his length harder, tighter, faster. “I want you to come on me,” I say again. His eyes are lidded, staring at me in wonder.

“Jude,” he groans out roughly, just as sticky white liquid sprays against me, my breasts, my chin my lips, my cheeks, “Fuck, baby.” His chest is heaving, then he drops to his knees in front of me, head resting on my thighs as he peers up at me.

“This is for your eyes only,” I tell him, voice thick and raspy. I lick at my lips, tasting him, then I take a finger, still trembling from aftershocks and I wipe along a nipple, my eyes on him as I take the coated digit into my mouth and suck him clean off of me.

∞

@cute898, @monawa, @afexiss, @somebodysqueen, @nish247, @andromeddea, @avenrebekah, @gamer670, @daddycardan, @outofstyles13, @vi0let-femmes, @babyillyrian @queenofdorkville, @courtofmadness, @queengreenbriar, @stormymeow,@goldbooksblack, @littlemergirl4779, @lalunaswhisperer, @archerons-arrow, @illyrianundercover, @atla-lok143, @fangirlinghard-spoilerson, @soup-that-is-too-hawt, @3am-reading, @tangledraysofsunshine, @readmeaway, @gently-say-aha, @breezyfreezey, @soup-that-is-too-hawt, @fi-fi-firefly, @alongwiththewindd, @an-teo520, @dracolovelaceisinlove, @sleeping-and-books, @city-of-fae, @inejghxfaa, @franticlittlegeek, @darlingod, @ame233, @feysand-dot-acotar, @l0sts0uls1128, @tswaney17, @shadesoflondonxoxo, @rapunzel1523, @hoegreenbrair, @lost0nline, @vera0124, @afexiss, @pala-done, @blackbirdswords , @sjmsstuff, @tintinnabulary, @flashytrashy, @the-unicornspoop, @books-and-sleep, @cailleach-na-speirtha, @acourtofstudyingandsuffering, @nitrot150, @foundtheavacados, @justccstuff, @goawayi-mreading, @kickassunicorn, @hoegreenbrair, @sjmsstuff, @feelthismom3nt-blog, @feeoly, @faefromthenorth, @queenofxhearts, @lovemollywho, @velarian-trash, @tessas-herondales, @alissa-kirk, @sophiespievak, @galllatea, @georgialeighc13, @clockworkgraystairs, @pilesofriles, @queentearss, @mustangsally913, @pilesofriles, @fangirlforever0704, @dayanna-hatter, @empress-ofbloodshed, @izou1204, @tintinnabulary, @13luecloud, @furiousflowerponypizza, @bamchickawowow, @ireallyshouldsleeprn, @hizqueen4life, @thebookish-fangirl, @judehatescardan, @cardanslittletail, @burninjurdan, @rowaelin-percabeth, @amapformyjourney, @ghostlyrose2, @nephilimlove, @judexcardanxgreenbriar, @charincharge, @flowersinvegas, @selcouthdream, @lizzzziebear, @sleepybabything, @ysitsohardtofindaname, @lahistoriaquenoteconte, @blackjacks-donuts, @sincerelymetoyou, @brit-alltoowell, @poeticbrownmermaid, @aelin-queen-of-terrasen, @flamingliterature, @whatafuckingbabe, @thesirenwashere, @drewstarkeyobx, @dorkzrul, @an-ironic-pisces, @sluttyskeletonss, @ironic-noodles, @ireallyshouldsleeprn, @kittkatandbooboo, @superrfk, @infinite-cats, @highlady17, @gloriouspaintercreatorbandit, @suchaspeciallittlesnowflake, @mar2203, @ireallyshouldsleeprn, @mis-lil-red, @clockworkgraystairs, @pig-on-acid, @owl0y0s, @sanctalina, @cardan-s-tail, @st00pid231, @courtofjurdan, @booksofthemoon

[quillify-tries-to-talk]

Some of my favorite tropes in media

1. Found family

Welp. Why am I surprised?

In addition to a ton of platonic relationships, there's also a bang-on hilarity in each one of these groups.

Six of Crows (the progression in Kaz and Wylan's dynamic??? Nina and Inej being besties??? Jesper and Inej having a running joke of scheming face lol??? Matthias forgoing his prejudices to team up with Jesper and Kuwei???)

The Hargreeves siblings??? (We're not gonna talk about what's going on between Luther and Allison 💀 but the rest of them 🥺🥺🥺)

2. Ballroom dance scenes

Oh, to be twirling across the dancefloor in the arms of your partner (bonus points if it's your enemy💖) and you can't decide if your heightened breathing is due to the music's tempo or the 🌟tension🌟

Whyyyyyyy did we have to stop balls!?!?!? Whyyyyyyyy???? Are you telling me that we lost the opportunity to wear our most artful dresses and have a night of elegant dancing and food and it was replaced by nightclubs??? T_T

3. The sunshine character actually has problems.

Love, love, love it when the sunshine, always joking, always kind character opens up about their own issues and insecurities yet they don't stop being kind and don't lose their heart just because the world is going to hell

Prime examples: Ron Weasley (au contraire, HP fandom, this guy has one of the best characterizations in the books and y'all just sleep on him because you want your special ones so much), Leo Valdez (my boy repaired a whole dragon alone, dealt with losing his mom, was homeless and yet keeps the atmosphere light and happy and makes hilarious jokes T_T), Inej Ghafa (horribly traumatized, has done things to survive in a brutal world, deserves the world, and yet is so, so, so fiercely kind and compassionate and always there for her friends💖)

4. When the tough, scary one is soft for kids or animals

Nothing is more wholesome than watching a stone-cold badass softening towards a kid or adopting a baby animal or just showing love for their family (Five Hargreeves 🥺). Shows that they still have a bit of their heart unguarded wnd hopeful.

5. Wholesome friendships that just stay friendships + siblings being siblings.

My ace ass hates love triangles with a fiery passion and it's really tiring to see every friendship being shipped left and right or being pushed into love triangle *side-eyes CC*

Lucie Herondale and Cordelia Carstairs are my favorite parabatai duo and I need more content of their friendship and antics pleaseee. I need more of them being a chaotic duo.

Alastair and Cordelia are my favorite brother sister duo, just with the way they address each other and how Cordelia thought about killing him during the demon attacks in ChoG.

Percy Jackson and Grover Underwood. The guy sailed across the Bermuda Triangle to rescue his best friend.

Also the potential we lost with Hermione and Ginny because R*wling couldn't write more than one PoV -_-

But on a happy note, Ron and Harry are my favorite and I love these dorks so much. They really become brothers by the end *gross sobbing*

Aru and her Pandava sisters and the two braincells they share🤦‍♀️😂

Once more, the Hargreeves family going from strangers to dumbass chaotic family in TUA s2😂🤦‍♀️

6. Enemies-to-lovers

Bonus points if they're also academic rivals. Why is this trope not used more? We could explore some great themes on the shit education system.

No one? Fine I'll write a fic myself.

Also, enemies to lovers =/= abusive relationships. Keep that trash away from me where the love interests are manipulative, abusive towards their love interests and then later fall in love with them. My favorite progression goes like this:

Ugh pretentious ass, look at them==>ugh why are we working together?==>why do we work so well as a team!?==>goddammit why are they so nice!?==>I guess we're friends now==>what is this tension!?!==>*notices something pretty about them* uh oh. 😳😳😳

Prime examples: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Kallias and Alessandra from The Shadows Between Us. Jude and Cardan from TFOTA (I know they're toxic. Would not stan that relationship irl but I loved their development in the trilogy)

7. When the best friends go to an event as each other's date and are mutually pining over each other but are oblivious dumbasses.🤦‍♀️

Bonus points if other people mistake them for a couple and they can't even get out a proper explanation ;)

*whispers* Harry and Ron should've asked each other to the Yule Ball

8. More thoughtfully-written boys in YA

Please move on beyond the bad boy and broody, immortal, muscular warrior trope. Give representation to my PoC, neurodivergent, trans and fat boys. Give boys dark features (I promise they are as entrancing as blue eyes or blonde hair). Make them emotional, make them something other than stoic, make them like teenagers (and not adults playing teens). They deserve the world and well-written role models as much as girls do.

Prime example: Ron Weasley, Jesper, Wylan, Enrique and Hypnos from TGW, and Julian Blackthorn.

I could write essays for Ron but all I'll say is that r*wling did a good job by giving the role of emotional support (that's usually considered a feminine job) to a boy and made him funny and kind-hearted🥺

As for Julian, like I said before ruthless characters being soft for their family make me go T_T

9. Showing feminism with an equal society (as Tricia Levenseller does it), wholesome f/f and m/f friendships, normalizing the presence of LGBTQ people, without trashing men or femininity.

If you have to deliberately create a highly patriarchal society to show off your progressive views and badass female MC, then you're doing feminism wrong :)

Oops my saltiness leaked out in the end 😳

[clockworkgraystairs]

Letting Go

Rating: M

Warnings: Major character death. Angst. Mentions of sex. Angst. Accidents. Did I mention angst?

Summary:

Cardan thought he and his family were meant to live happily ever after.

He was wrong.

Extra comments: I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me.

Extra comments 2: If you’re masochist as me and wish to read this listening to some music, I’ll leave my spotify playlist “Don’t touch me, I’m angsty”

Thank you to the incredible @sweetlyvillainous for holding my hand while I cried because of this, for betaing later and for giving the extra boost to the angst. YES YOU DID, AND YOU’RE AS GUILTY AS ME. I love u. 

Masterlist   •   AO3

As dawn went on, Cardan looked through the window with hooded eyes. It snowed outside. How typical, he thought. 

Not long ago he would’ve been excited about it. The perspective of spending the day building snow castles and angels. Never a snowman, since his daughter had always claimed that was too cliché. He would mock her for it and build tiny figures around her castle. ‘The invasion of the fae snowmen’ he’d called it, despite the insistence of his wife about that being pure nonsense. 

He laid on his bed, staring at nothing in particular. From that position he would normally be able to look at her, snoring softly in the opposite pillow. That used to be his favorite moment of the day. Few minutes that he could spend watching how she slept, calm and unbothered. At least until he couldn’t help it anymore and woke her up, trailing her neck with soft and playful kisses.  

Cold sheets coiled around him now. A reminder of the empty space next to him that haunted Cardan at the beginning and end of each day. Screaming into the silence she’s gone.  

The morning it happened, Ivy wanted pancakes an old store sold a couple of blocks away. Cardan was reluctant to get up. All groggy because he and Jude had spent the night before rolling on the sheets, barely moaning in each other’s mouths trying not to wake their 7 year old. He didn’t want to get up. But his daughter was as stubborn as his wife. So Jude gave him a long sweet kiss and told him to go back to sleep while she fetched breakfast. 

He did. 

He shouldn’t have.

He should’ve gone with her. He should’ve gone instead. Or better yet, he should’ve convinced her to stay and make the bloody pancakes himself. Anything.

Anything except letting Jude go out alone. She was supposed to be back in a matter of minutes, but she didn’t. And he didn’t notice it because he fell asleep again. 

He missed the first phone call. And the second. 

It wasn’t until a tiny hand woke him up and handed him the cellphone. Frowning with dizziness at Jude’s two missed calls he was about to dial back when it rang again. 

“Hey babe, sorry. What’s up?” He mumbled, ruffling Ivy’s hair.

The voice that answered was not Jude’s, instantly startling him awake.

“Yes, he’s speaking.” Loud voices and sirens muffled the voice, making it hard to hear. “I’m- I’m sorry I’m not understanding, where is my wife? Give her the phone so I can speak to her plea-”

He didn’t record the moment when he put on the first clothes he found, nor calling his old college friends that lived two doors away to come and watch little Ivy. 

He didn’t watch for the red lights or cared if he’d parked the right way in the hospital’s parking lot. The world seemed to spiral around him, an unending parade of walls, doors, people in white or blue suits. Voices filled him with details but he could only partially hear them. Something about a kid crossing the street unsupervised and Jude running after him. His heartbeat roared in his ears.

“We’re glad we could reach you Mr. Greenbriar. It’s always better when the patient doesn’t have to go through it alone.”

“Through it? What are you-”

“I’m really sorry. The internal damage is too much...” 

The doctor’s voice faded away as they entered the room. Fighting to bite back a sob he approached the resting figure on the bed. She looked like his wife, but something was deeply wrong. Her face was awfully pale and her lips dry and bruised. Wires rested along her body. The monitor connected to them matched the aching slowness in her breathing. There was no trace of the playful Jude that teased him mercilessly day after day, stealing kisses from his mouth and knowing he’d let her do whatever she wanted to him. 

He found himself still standing centimeters away from her, paralyzed. 

The doctor leaned to touch her shoulder and whispered something to her ear. Her eyelids fluttered a moment before opening, not with the fierceness they carried everyday but tired, wandering. 

Pulling out of his frozen state he reached for her hand, covered in bandages and stroke it softly. “Jude.” 

Her eyes found him and a weak smile curved her lips. “You made it.” She said with a raspy voice. He kneeled, fully taking her hand in his. The door knob clicked as they were left alone. 

“Of course I did.” He choked out, trying to match her smile. It felt as if a thin string was keeping him together. “I’m here to take you home.”

Jude looked at him the way she did every time he promised to bring the stars down for her. She squeezed his hand with a nonexistent force that physically hurt in his chest. “You were always a terrible liar.”

Cardan opened his mouth to joke back but wasn’t able to make more than a suffocated sound. That’s when the first tear rolled down his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, opening them as he felt her thumb wiping away the wetness under them. “It’s ok.” 

The string snapped. 

“No, it’s not Jude, gods I’m- I’m...” He sobbed, incapable of stopping himself anymore. “I’m so sorry, it was all my fault. If I’d gone with you, If I’d…”

“Hey, no. It’s ok.” She cooed, holding him as he buried his face in her neck apologizing over and over. “Cardan, this was not your fault. Please.” 

He let her hold him as his body trembled with broken weeps. Cardan shut his eyes close, hoping he would open them and be back home. Not here. Not in this nightmare. They had so much to do, so much to live. He was meant to be with her through everything. He was meant to protect her. And he had neglected everything for five more sleeping minutes instead. If Ivy hadn’t woken him up…  If he’d missed another phone call… 

If he’d answered the first damn time he might have had more time. There was an ache in his chest making it harder to breathe, to think. 

They laid together for several minutes, hearing nothing more than their breathings and the beeping machine.  

“Stay, my love.” He begged, the knot in his throat making it harder to speak. “Fight. I can’t do it without you, I’m not strong enough. I need you, we need you… Ivy...”

Something wet landed on his cheek. Only then he realized she’d started crying too. “You’ll take care of her. You can, you’re the strongest man I’ve ever known.”

He felt her breathing falter and he backed up a little, afraid he’d harm her but Jude didn’t let him go. “I love you. I always have, even when you used to make my life a living hell all those years ago. I love you and our daughter so much.” She said. Cardan sobbed again. Don’t, he wanted to answer, don’t say goodbye. Not yet. “And know that even when you can’t see me, I will be with you always.” 

“I know,” He whispered back, now wiping her tears away and leaning to kiss her. “I love you, Jude Duarte. You are the best gift life could give me. You saw the best in me when nobody else could and for that and everything else, I’ll be eternally grateful. I’ll... watch out for Ivy, and she will know her mom is a hero, I promise.”

She breathed a laugh and asked him to hold her again. He did, he clung to her as tightly as he could without hurting her, breathing ‘I love you’ on her hair until her hand lost strength around him. 

Until the monitor gave out one long final beep and took his heart with it. 

He’d kept his vow. He’d continued with his life, dedicating every second of it to take care of their little girl. To make sure she was happy and wasn’t that affected from her mother’s passing. 

Ivy was strong, and most of the time more mature than her age suggested. She tried to carry on as well. Even if sometimes Cardan caught her staring longingly at that spot on the living room where Jude used to sit and read his old books. 

But even now, months later, it was hard for him to get up from bed sometimes. To wake up from a bad dream only to realize it was real, he was alone. Jude wasn’t coming back.

Some nights nightmares got worse, not because his mind created new scenarios. Quite the opposite, it revived his worst memory.

Hands touched his shoulders, probably seeking to comfort him. But he barely felt them. He barely heard the nurses enter the room after Jude’s pulse stopped. 

He was aware of the uncontrollable way his chest shook between sobs. Pleading her to stay, to open her eyes just one minute more. 

Of how he clutched her hand as if it would squeeze life back into her. He felt the softness of her hair as he caressed it, clinging to her the moment the doctors tried to pull him away. The nurse started to remove the wires.

He dreamed of his throat tearing apart as he roared them to let go of his wife. Later begging to allow him to hug her for a moment more. Just a second. Just a lifetime. Please. 

Just a moment.

Cardan always woke between gasps those nights. Sometimes leading him to stay awake until morning, afraid to fall asleep again. 

It was on days like that that he closed his eyes and let time rewind. 

He returned to the year before, to the mornings when they decided who prepared breakfast with rock, paper, scissors games. 

To years before that, when still half asleep he reached for her and curled his arms around Jude’s swollen belly. Barely weeks away from welcoming their baby.

To the day when he’d held his girlfriend in his arms and waited for her to open her eyes to finally ask her to marry him. 

He knew he shouldn’t. In fact he was sure Jude would beat his ass for doing it. But sometimes he just wanted to feel her close only for a couple of minutes more. Some days he refused to accept she was not there anymore. 

A loud crash startled him, bringing Cardan back from his daydreaming. He sat up to look at the clock and frowned. It was still early for Ivy to be awake. 

He got up and walked to the kitchen, only to find the floor covered in white flour and his daughter on the opposite side with the face of someone that just got caught with a hand in the jar of cookies. 

“Ivy, what are you doing?” He asked. Gods, there was a mess. His mental energy didn’t want to deal with it at the moment.

“I...” She darted her gaze to the right, the same thing Jude did whenever Cardan found her doing something she wasn’t supposed to. 

He crossed the space, to crouch next to her and started picking things up with an exasperated sigh. 

She let out a breath in defeat and murmured. “I was trying to make the muffins.”

“The muffins?” 

“The muffins mom cooked for us every Christmas.” Ivy said as if he’d missed the most obvious thing. 

Fuck. He looked at the calendar hanging on the wall behind him. December 24th. Fuck, fuck. How had he overlooked the date? They’d received an invitation to celebrate Christmas with their friends and another one from Jude’s family. He had intended to answer back. 

“Oh honey…you needn’t.” Cardan turned back to her and took her little hand between his.

“I know. But I wanted to cheer you up.” Ivy’s voice was low. “You’re sad all the time, dad… I thought... maybe mommy’s muffins would help.”

A pang of guilt stung in his chest. Fuck, he tried so hard to keep his emotions at bay around her. Washing his face with frozen water hoping it would take away the redness around his eyes. He swallowed the lump in his throat and opened his mouth but no words came out so he just pulled his child into a tight hug. 

“I’m so sorry, I-”

“Don’t be,” She interrupted him, clinging to his neck. “I miss her too.”

Blinking back the tears, he pulled back to cup her cheeks. “There is nothing that cheers me up more than you, sweetie. You know that right?”

Ivy’s chocolate eyes shimmered as she nodded. 

Cardan took a deep breath and pulled her up so she was sitting on top of the counter. “Now, you know I suck at cooking those infamous muffins,” He grimaced. Ivy chuckled and bit her lip, totally not denying his statement. “So how about if instead of those, I prepare you my ultra special pancakes?”

Her gaze widened. “With whipped cream and fruit??”

He nodded. The excited squeal of his daughter warmed his heart in that unique way only she could achieve. 

With Ivy’s help, the pancakes were made in little time. Even if all she did was jump around  the kitchen singing Christmas carols. 

Just as he was about to serve the table, she stopped him. “Dad, can we go eat breakfast with mommy?”

Cardan paused, not sure if he’d listened correctly. “With mommy?”

“Yeah, you know, like those days when we went out on picnics.” She said. Excitement floored from every single one of her pores. “She loved Christmas, I’m sure she’ll be glad to see us too!”

He wanted to say no, not knowing if he would make it. It’s too soon, the words hug there in the tip of his tongue. But looking at Ivy and her puppy eyes, he couldn’t. 

~

Covered in scarves and warm coats they arrived at the cemetery. It was a beautiful place, if he was honest. Tall trees and some flowers grew along, giving it the appearance of a valley despite the cold weather. It looked so peaceful. Even if snow covered some parts of it.

Cardan carried a bag filled with the food and a blanket to use as tablecloth. Ivy played with the snow as they walked, and gasped at the sight of her mother’s tombstone. Letting go of Cardan’s hand, she ran towards it. A big smile shining on her face. 

He stopped meters away from it, unsure of his decision. His heart hammered on his chest and he could see the steam formed by his shaky breathing. 

Ivy turned and motioned him to come closer. 

As he approached, he heard the cheerful chatter of his daughter, making him frown. 

“...so I tried to be as quiet as possible, but then the flour fell!” She laughed and darted her gaze to him again. “That’s why daddy caught me, right dad?”

Cardan hesitated. “Uh, yeah… that’s when I found you covered in powder.”

He peered at the marble figure, intentionally avoiding the picture under the letters forming her name. 

After setting the food they ate. Ivy barely chewed her food between words, since she was deeply invested in whatever conversation she was having with her mother. Cardan just listened. She spoke about her school, her exams with almost perfect grades. About aunt Liliver announcing she and uncle Van were expecting a baby, a thing Ivy wasn’t so sure to like since that would probably remove her from ‘the favorite’ position. She talked about the blanket forts Cardan taught her to build and the new books he’d read to her. Occasionally, she would laugh as if she’d listened to something incredibly funny. 

They built a snow castle with the few snow that was gathered around, at least before Ivy accidentally threw a snowball to his chest. The snowball war that unleashed after had them growling and squealing for several minutes. It ended up with both of them lying down on the blanket, tired and giggling. 

He sat up to ruffle her hair and sighed. “It’s time to go, little one.” 

Ivy whined. “So soon?”

“We can return some other day…” That lit her face back up. “But your aunt Lil invited us to a party today. Do you want to go?”

She yelped. “With Christmas gifts?”

“Yeah.” Cardan winked. 

Once everything was back in the bag Cardan started walking, but a tug on his sleeve stopped him. 

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to mommy?” 

He didn’t answer. 

“C’mon dad, go. I’ll wait for you over there.” She signaled a big space where rocks made an odd figure. That said, she was gone.

Haltingly, Cardan turned back to face the tombstone. 

Air seemed to have flown out of his lungs. What was he supposed to say? He looked down and shuffled his foot in the snow. His grip tightened around the bag’s handle. 

He used to spend the nights thinking of all the things he would’ve liked to say to her. But as it was, all of them apparently had vanished into the air. Should he say he loved her? That everything was okay?

“I hate you.” Was what came out. Cardan scoffed and swallowed. That was definitely not what he was thinking. “That is a lie. But I guess you already know it, don’t you?” 

“Sometimes I wish I could hate you though... Maybe it would make it easier. Because sure as hell it’s not.” His voice was hoarse. “I’m trying. I promised you I would but… I miss you all the fucking time, Jude. I can’t go to bed at night without thinking you’re not there by my side anymore.”

He paused and rubbed his eyes. Cardan flashed quick glances to Ivy, trying to find the strength. But once he faced Jude’s picture again, the pressure on his chest was nearly unbearable.

“Everyday something happens that I would like to tell you. When Ivy or any of our friends do something I find hilarious I turn to make sure you saw it too just to find an empty space and I… I hate it.”

“I hate not being able to hug you, I hate not feeling your hands playing with my hair in the morning. I hate not being able to tell you everyday how much I still love you. I hate that Ivy notices how much I struggle with it. I hate not being as strong as you were.”

He spilled the words so fast they were probably intelligible, but he didn’t care anymore.

“Ivy… she’s an amazing little girl, you know? Everyday she does something new that is clever, or brave… and she reminds me so much of you.” A sob broke through him. He turned to look at her, auburn curls bouncing everywhere. Taking a steadying breath he brought back his gaze to the tomb.

“I just hope she’s not as good with  lies or I will be totally screwed.” He let out a low chuckle. “You should be proud of her.”

Before he could say something else something warm spread down his shoulders to his arms and chest. If he was drunk he would say it resembled the feeling of a hug. The pressure on his chest slowly disappeared as tears rolled down his cheeks. 

Not knowing exactly how or why, a weight on his shoulders he hadn’t realized he had, was gone from a moment to another.

“I love you, Jude Duarte.” He breathed. “You will have my heart always, and when this life ends I’ll find you again to give it to you once more.”

Giving a final look to the picture he’d been avoiding since they arrived, he gave a weak smile, wiped the tears away and turned to go find his daughter. 

“Goodbye, my sweet villain.”

A Christmas party with his family (because that’s how he considered his friends), awaited. He found Ivy marching on top of the rocks, claiming it was a conquered fae castle and she, the new Queen. He chuckled and motioned her to return. 

As they walked back to the car, she grabbed his hand and gave him a knowing look. Even when you can’t see me, I will be with you always.

The next morning when he opened his eyes the empty spot was still there. But for the first time in months, he welcomed the memories of his Jude with a longing smile. 

----------------------------

Tags: @sweetlyvillainous @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @aesthetics-11 @thesirenwashere @jurdanhell @demydreamer-otaku-and-book-lover @nightbringer @b00kworm @mysweetvillain @jurdannet @thefolkofthefic @yafandomsdotnet @vanessa172003 @booksandothersecrets  @thewickedkings​ @ireallyshouldsleeprn @fuzzypineapples (tumblr couldn’t find your profile to tag you hun sorry! ☹️ )

If you wish to be tagged/untagged (or if I forgot to tag you like an utter idot) please let me know!

[aelin-queen-of-terrasen]

Could you write something about how Jude is trying to hide a wound from Cardan but of course, our Cardan baby founds out and dotes/freaks out... your an amazing writer 💞💞

The Stubborn Queen

Pairing: Jude × Cardan

Genre: Fluff

Word count: 2441 words

Summary: Against Cardan's wishes, Jude goes on a mission and injures herself there. She is determined to hide the injury from Cardan but that is not easy.

Jude was an absolute fool.

When she and her husband had been informed that one of the lower ranking lords from the Court of Termites was visiting Elfhame, her first instinct had been to go after them as she always did and see for herself what business the Lord had, coming here unannounced.

As if he heard her thoughts, Cardan had said to the Bomb, "Keep an eye on him. Jude and I will be busy today."

Bastard. He knew she wanted to go after him, had probably made plans to keep her away already. Jude had grumbled under her breath, much to The Bomb's amusement and then huffed away, no more than a child who had been denied her favourite toy. Now, Jude was playing with a dagger in her hand with one thought in her mind, even if she knew it made her a fool because Cardan was right. There was no reason for her to risk her life. She was not expendable anymore and yet, she was restless.

Cardan sat beside her on their bed, sheets still rumpled since he had turned the servants away. He placed a cautious hand on her shoulder, only for it to be brushed off by his wife, his queen. "Jude," he whined.

"Can I help you, Majesty?" Pissed. She was pissed and restless and worried.

Cardan rolled his eyes, then took her hands in his own. He shifted so that he was facing her now and said, "My sweet villain, you can help me by staying out of trouble. You are Queen now—"

"I know. But I need to be doing something other than this paperwork. Something real," Jude said.

If she had known being Queen would be so miserable, maybe Jude would have remained a spy.

Cardan stared at her for a few seconds. "If you insist on risking your life, Jude, you will have to take me with you."

The Queen of Elfhame pressed her lips into a thin line. "You are untrained. You would raise suspicion," She argued. "And one of us needs to stay alive."

"Then why go at all? Why not let someone else do it, Jude?"

"Because I do not trust anyone else, not when your life is concerned." There. She had said it. The memory of a fanged beast that had haunted her sleep every night since that day. Now that half the truth was out in the open, Jude saw no reason to hide the rest. "Sometimes, it feels like these last five months didn't happen—like I cut the serpent's head and you didn't come back. It reminds me what it felt like to lose you and I don't think I can survive it again."

Cardan gently wiped the tears off her cheeks. "I came back, Jude. And I will never leave again."

"But what if-what if you did? I would gladly risk my life a thousand times if it meant saving yours once. Elfhame needs you. I am the expendable one." More tears rolled down.

Ire flashed across Cardan's face—ire not at Jude but at her words. He breathed deeply at the thought of something happening to Jude but the anger did not quite leave his eyes when he said, "Never say that again, Jude. You are not expendable, not to me. If something happened..." He did not let himself finish that thought.

Jude curled up beside him silently, her eyes falling shut and breaths soft and steady. Only once the High King's breaths matched hers and she was sure he was asleep, Jude snuck out of the bed. With how exhausted they had been recently, she doubted he would wake up any time soon. Thus, Jude grabbed Nightfell and a few wicked looking daggers before she was sneaking out of her own home, all while the thought of Cardan in his serpent form still lingered in her brain.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

If Jude had thought sitting on her ass and letting someone else keep an eye on the minor lord had been foolish, she thought what she was doing now was worse. She had not planned to engage in a fight, not when she spotted the mercenaries the young Lord had hired for protection. If anything, the absence of usual guards had only made her more suspicious.

She had been right to follow him to a discreet location near Hollow Hall, had heard clearly in her own human ears the order he had made of his acquaintance. "Slip a small amount to his food, enough that he would weaken enough to convince the Queen-bitch to trade with me for antidote."

Anger flared inside her chest, visions swarmed with blood—Cardan's blood on her hand. Jude had unleashed herself upon the men.

Now, as she sloppily stitched up the gash across her abdomen, Jude wished she had listened to Cardan. If nothing else, she wished she had brought someone with herself. She had managed to kill every single one of them but ended up with this wound, the stitches itching mercilessly at her. The wound on her thigh though... She refused to even look at it. With magic in her veins, it might heal in a day or two.

There was no way Jude was going to admit to Cardan what she had done or how he had been proved right.

That was why she was limping to the throne room now, her body screaming at the pain even as she willed her expression to remain calm. Fortunately for her, Cardan's attention was directed towards one of the lesser nobles as Jude settled down beside him.

Her breathing had almost turned steady by the time Cardan turned to her. "Where did you disappear to, darling Jude?"

"Taryn," Jude said in a calm voice. "Taryn called to meet her at her estate."

Her thigh was throbbing badly and her head was pounding. Jude wondered if Cardan could hear the pounding of her heart against her chest over the sweet music that flowed out of a faerie's lute. Cardan placed a casual hand on her thigh, far too close to the wound and Jude tensed.

Cardan frowned. "You look pale, love. Would you like us to retire for tonight?"

Oh god, her leg was going to kill her. She twisted in her seat to face him—a bad move since it pulled at her stitches. Jude reined in the urge to wince, shook her head. "No. I didn't get much sleep. I would-I would like to lie down. You should stay." She hoped her words came out more confident than she felt.

Cardan watched warily as she rose from her throne, face carefully blank. She wanted to cry out in pain but if Cardan knew, she would not be sneaking around again. He would make sure of it.

Jude took a step ahead, then swayed on her feet. Cardan was instantly at her side, a hand placed on her lower back. "If you were so tired, you shouldn't have come here."

Then they were making their way through the ballroom, each step an agony. They had made it to the hallway, a few faeries lingering there when two of the stitches ripped out beneath her dress. By the sharp sniff beside her, she realised Cardan knew too. He had smelled the blood on her, even through the ridiculous amount of scented herbs she had rubbed herself with to cover the scent.

Cardan halted, then turned to her, panic written over his face. "What happened, Jude?"

Blood had seeped out through the purple tunic she wore. So much blood. Cardan barked out a string of curses, calling for the healers. Pure wrath glittered in his crow black eyes, even as he kept his voice soft. "Who did this, Jude? Where were you?" Then realising she was in no position to speak, Cardan said, "This is going to hurt but we need to make it to our chambers. I am sorry." And then he had lifted her in his arms, gentle as he could be.

This time, Jude could not keep the cry of pain inside. Perhaps this was hell. The pain blurred her vision, even as Jude realised she was in her room.

Cardan held onto her hand as the healers first ripped out her own stitches. She screamed every time, holding her husband's hand in a crushing grip. He had taken to wiping the sweat on her face, around her neck with a wet cloth as the healers worked. Panting through her teeth, Jude said, "I was right. He was planning to injure you so I would trade for your life. He knew... He knew too."

Cardan tensed, fighting to keep his voice steady as if her pain hurt him just as much, if not more. "What did he know, sweet Jude?"

"He knew you were the one to attack too," She said between her shouts, still breathing heavily. "My mortal life is not half as significant."

Cardan's hand stopped rubbing circles on the back of her hand. "We will talk about this later, love." She knew they wouldn't. They never did.

Jude shook her head. "You can avoid the topic all you like but even the high king of faerie can not fight nature."

Cardan looked like he wished she had struck him instead. He sat beside her silently as the healers worked, then left the chambers. Jude drifted off to sleep, hand still clutching his. When she woke up, Cardan was sitting at his desk, a steaming bowl of soup beside him.

He was beside her the moment she tried to sit up, snarling, "Don't move."

Jude might have moved then, just to piss him off if she hadn't noticed the concern in his face as he surveyed her, then thrust a bowl of steaming hot soup in her hand. "Eat."

"Stop giving me orders," Jude growled.

Cardan was not taking any of her shit today. "Perhaps if you had heeded my request before, I would not need to."

She deserved that.

Heat flushed Jude's cheeks when Cardan sighed exasperatedly and took the bowl, feeding her himself with the spoon. It reminded her of a certain mortal woman who had sat at little Jude's bedside and cared for her similarly. The memory warmed something inside her.

"Why do you do this, Jude? What did I do to deserve this torture?" She hated the way his voice broke, as if her pain overwhelmed him.

She rasped, "I am sorry."

"Do you know how scared I was? Do you have any idea how much it hurt to hear you scream, to see you in pain? You say your life is not significant and yet every time you put yourself in danger, my heart stops dead inside my chest! It does not matter whether you are spy or queen, I will never forgive you for risking your life, Jude..." Tears rolled down Cardan's cheeks, washing away the glitter that had been painted there.

Jude was stunned into silence. What could she possibly say? Her own face was damp as she tried to sit up again.

Cardan glared at her as if to say, I told you not to move. If Jude would not stop for her sake, she stopped for Cardan's. She had never fathomed someone could love her as much and yet, it must all have been true it it came out of his mouth.

"You are absolutely terrible and reckless and you have no regards for the pain you cause me and I hate you for this!" Cardan scolded, though the words held no bite.

She made a show of sighing, "I am fine, you bastard. Stop fussing."

"I will not. This is your punishment. For the next few weeks, you will not so much as leave your bed without my permission, not until you are healed."

And despite herself, despite the agony ripping through her, Jude smiled.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Cardan lived up to his words. Jude was completely forbidden from leaving her bed for the whole week that followed. It drove her insane and she might have escaped, had Cardan not spent every waking moment with her.

"I am not hungry," she told him now.

Cardan raised an eyebrow as if to say How dare you presume you have a choice. When Jude made no move to accept the bowl of soup he extended towards her, the High King sat down beside her on the bed and raised the spoonful of steaming hot soup to Jude's lips.

Jude shook her head but let him feed her. It was only when the bowl was almost finished that she said, "You worry about me too much."

"Since you do not worry about yourself, someone will have to," Cardan said.

Jude might have bit back some sarcastic remark, might have insisted he should stop fussing over if she hadn't heard the hurt in his voice. The disappointment.

She sighed. "I am sorry. You can't deny that I was right though. If I hadn't gone there, you could have died."

She needed him to understand that it had not been some twisted urge to cling to her independence or some whim she had had. She had needed to go there and assure for herself that her husband was safe.

Cardan cupped her cheek in his hands. "Anyone who hurts me would be a fool, my sweet villain. Your wrath is something that should not be provoked."

She hit him in the shoulder half-heartedly, then leaned towards her husband, her King. "Sometimes it doesn't feel real, that this happened." Only here, in the privacy of their chambers could she admit the nightmares that plagued her in her sleep. Most of them involved Cardan ending up dead.

As if he could see it in her thoughts, Cardan leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Jude's forehead. "I have given you my heart, Jude. You are not doing a very good job at protecting it."

She couldn't promise to not go off on missions again but—"I promise to learn from my mistakes."

Though that resolved things between them and the tension in Cardan's shoulders released, it did not keep him from fussing over her all day. "Where do you think you are going, Jude?" He said.

Jude rolled her eyes. "Bathroom. Will you accompany me there too?"

The smirk on Cardan's face had Jude throwing an obscene gesture his way as she made her way to the bathroom. He was waiting right outside for her when she finished, hand outstretched. Jude debated telling him she could walk but maybe it would not be the worst thing in the world to be pampered by Cardan.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Tags:

@judexcardanxgreenbriar

@thesirenwashere

@nite0wl29

@queenofgreenbriar

@jurdanhell

@mysweetvilllain

@clockworkgraystairs

@blog-lady-vi

@the-dark-swan

@faerielauren

[moprocrastinates]

Sit By My Side, and Let the World Slip:

||| Chapter Three |||

Chapter Rating: T

Summary: If Jude had had her own way, her own wedding, it would’ve been different. Part II of the Best Friends AU.

(Read on A03!)

The most deplorable thing about weddings is, absolutely, the dresses.

Frankly, Jude could’ve done without the huge, poofy tulle, the puffed sleeves, and the stupid, ever-insufferable heels. She could’ve done without her hair pinched with hundreds, if not thousands, of pins, her cheeks pinched and layered with pink rouge, and thick kohl lining her eyes and sliding down into her tear ducts as the day goes on. She isn’t as dainty as Taryn, either, so the heels blister and knock her off balance; when Jude walks, she walks. Thunders, Cardan would tease. The Earth feels her footsteps as she moves; flowers bloom opposite the sun, just to hide from her shadow, creatures hear the stomp of her boots against the grass and scatter to their hidden homes, and the trees sing their own warning with the bustle of the breeze: Jude Duarte is coming. Stay out of her way.

But Taryn’s wedding is the product of Elfhame’s finest: sweet, dark wines served in glittering chalices, chocolate truffles dipped in jams and jellies, and fresh veggies and fruits piled so high atop a silver tray that Jude isn’t completely sure she can see the top. A silver walkway leads the way to the altar, and a beautiful arch, resplendent with blue and purple flowers covering every opening, stands proudly in the middle, awaiting the moment Taryn and Garrett say, “I do.”

If Jude had had her own way, her own wedding, it would’ve been different. For starters, her dress wouldn’t be white, perhaps a dark gray that sparkles when touched by the moonlight of the eve. It would be slim fitting, long enough to hide the bruises and scabs on her knees from her MMA classes but short enough for her to move in. She would dress as herself as much as she could (as much as Taryn would let her): comfortable boots, maybe, or a pair of dusty black Converse with ‘JUDE’ etched by Cardan in the soles. There wouldn’t be a need for the hairpins, or the bits and bobs that glittered now in Taryn’s hair, because if Jude were marrying someone, she’d marry them as she was, as open and herself as she wanted them to be with her.

Not that Taryn and Garrett weren’t marrying each other. They were.

It just seemed—well, too much, if Jude really had to put a word to it. Too glamorous, like they were covering something up.

But this is Taryn’s affair, gawdy and shiny and royal as it was. Jude doesn’t get to have an opinion.

“How many more pins?” She asks, pressing yet another pin into Taryn’s updo, the thing coiffed and polished and far too stiff for her own liking. “Vivi or Heather’s going to have to run to the store to grab more if I try to fit anymore in this... beehive.”

“Don’t rope me into this!” Vivi’s voice comes from across the room where she is fruitlessly trying to tie a Windsor knot around her neck. Her suit, a deep blue with black lapels, matches Jude’s own dress, another tulled monstrosity that sweeps out around her hips like a bell. The upper half is a corset (Jude curses the day Taryn chose these dresses—how the hell is she going to breathe?) immaculately and painstakingly detailed with a few fake diamonds. When she’d seen it on the mannequin, Jude thought it was the night sky personified.

Her own eyes, her twin’s eyes, stare back at her in the mirror. “I don’t know. Perhaps a few more?” Her sister brushes away an errant flyaway, the corners of her lips turning up in a half smile. Jude can’t help but smile back. “I want to make sure it doesn’t move if the wind blows.”

“That’s what you get for having an outdoor wedding,” Vivi says dryly, arching a brow. Jude hears her snort as she comes up behind them and eyes Taryn’s hairdo. “Taryn, if she puts any more pins in there, it’s going to look like the trees you’re going to be standing under.”

“Fine, fine!” Taryn huffs, her eyes rolling in tandem with her words. Her wave off is a smidgen patronizing, but she does manage to stand without falling over. Hands shaking, although Jude can’t tell if it was from nerves or from something else, Taryn brushes down her gown and looks at them both. “How do I look?”

“Like a princess.” Jude blurts out. Taryn really does, like in one of those fairytales, someone who marries their prince and lives happily ever after.

Vivi’s cat eyes flicker up Taryn’s gown and then back down again. “I guess if Garrett’s intention is to marry up, he’s doing pretty well.” She shrugs as a sly smile forms on her lips.

Taryn turns a beet red, coughing lightly, and brushes yet another hand down her dress, stopping this time on her abdomen.

In the last few years, given their rocky relationship, Jude hadn’t had much practice reading Taryn’s facial expressions. But now, the paleness and fear crawling up her face is unmistakable. “Taryn—” She starts.

“When does this shindig start?” A voice rises from the doorway. “If it’s going to be any longer, I’m going to start day drinking.”

All three turn to look at the mass of curly hair that appears around the corner, its owner’s face popping around just seconds behind. Jude can’t help that her eyes immediately seek out his own, or that they drift across his face, taking in every bit of him. Should she ever lose him, at least she’d have this memory. Cardan is like a marble statue, carved exquisitely, polished to a shine. How he walked down a street without every single person stopping and gawking at him, wondering if he’d deign to spare them a glance, Jude doesn’t know. Cardan’s jaw—oh, his jaw— is smooth as glass, and Jude can see how his long lashes lift from his face to stare at her. Half-lidded, his dark eyes meet hers only momentarily, flicking down to her dress, from the high heels to the tight bodice. When they find hers again, there is something there, something dark and deep and tinted with fear.

She thinks she might have seen him swallow. Hard. But—no.

Jude has no idea how much time passes in those moments, only knows that she can’t move, couldn’t move, couldn’t look away. The wind could’ve turned into a hurricane, blistering, violent, and devastating, and it wouldn’t have moved her. She wouldn’t have moved for anything. Cardan’s eyes root her to the spot.

But what’s in them scares her far more than anything she’s ever felt before.

“Cardan!” Taryn yelps, darting over to him and throwing her arms around him. Cardan’s face pales; his mouth drops open a little in surprise. He hugs her back tentatively, eyes wide as Taryn swings him a little with the force of her hug.

Help me, his eyes beg.

Jude smirks, and shakes her head. No way. It’s her day.

Behind her, Vivi snickers.

Taryn pulls away from Cardan, again smoothing her dress down and letting her hand stop ambiguously to her abdomen. “Guess I should go, eh?” She smiles at them, although it wobbles.

Jude steps forward. “Taryn—” She tries. Taryn meets her eyes, pausing.

Not now, her sister’s eyes say. So Jude nods, and watches as Vivi steps forward to link arms with Taryn.

“We’ll give you five minutes before we walk,” Vivi whispers to Jude, nudging her with a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Remember—the bride goes last, Jude.”

Taryn’s lips curl in the tiniest of smiles. Her gaze flickers once to Jude, then Cardan, who had stepped forward to stand next to Jude. Then, with Vivi tugging her along, they disappear around the corner.

“So, uh,” Jude swallows. Her skin feels suddenly sticky, as if slathered with a thin sheen of honey. If the temperature of the room rose, she probably wouldn’t even notice. “Is everyone else ready to go?”

“Yes.” Cardan murmurs, eyes looking up to hers. “They’re all waiting.”

“Oh.” Fuck. She swallowed again. This is too much. “We should go; no use in keeping everyone waiti—” Her feet stumble towards the door, unused to the height of the heels.

I’m like a baby deer in these, Jude thinks just before the tip of the heel catches in a crack in the floor, and she falls forward—

—landing right into Cardan’s arms. He had moved quickly, silently, but catches her surely, long fingers wrapping around her wrists and holding her steady.

Jude looks up at him for what feels like the first time, held securely in his arms. For all of Cardan’s faults, he would never drop her.

“You’ve been avoiding me.” His voice is brusque, sharp, when it comes out. She hasn’t heard that tone from him in a while, not since they’d become friends.

“No, I haven’t.” She hears the slippery slope that is denial die on her tongue.

“Really? Are you certain? I seem to remember you taking one look at me this afternoon and bolting without even a hello.” Cardan furrows his brows, face darkening.

Jude remembers that. Cardan had been standing outside the venue when Jude arrived, looking absolutely dashing in his tuxedo. Crisp and pressed, it had lain against his body at all the right places, and it had taken damn near everything in Jude not to march up to him and smack a kiss to his lips.

Just as she had last night at the bachelor-bachelorette parties.

Which he had been so drunk during.

Which had caused him to smile at her goofily and her heart to nearly explode in her chest.

Which was why she kissed him.

A kiss he didn’t obviously remember. Because if he had, he would’ve said something, because Jude’s stubborn in a way he is not. She is not going to lose her best friend over something as trivial and stupid as her unrequited feelings, no, no. If she’s going to lose Cardan, it’s going to be for a significant reason, like they had fought over a way of writing or illustrating that didn’t fit their book, or that Cardan started dating Nicasia again, or, she doesn’t know, something else. Not something this bloody stupid. Not her damn feelings.

So she bolted.

Damn, she’s waited too long. Her words slide out of her mouth as she replies, “Taryn needed me,” which was true. A half lie, one of obfuscation and omission.

Cardan arches a brow. “Taryn walked in ten minutes after you.”

“That’s beside the point!” Her sputter is pitiful, and both of them know it.

She can’t look at him. Unlike Cardan’s, anyone can read anything on Jude’s face. (“Usually anger!” Vivi’s cheerful voice says in the back of her mind.) A stranger could take one look at her face right now and know the depths of her feelings for Cardan.

Well, except maybe Cardan himself, because if he loved her or even remotely reciprocated her feelings, surely he would’ve said something by now.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. She’ll just have to keep her gaze on her shoes for the entire wedding, damned as they are.

“What did I do?” Cardan asks softly. The softness is something Jude wants to curl up in, cloak herself and surround herself with, but if Jude didn’t know him so well, she would have thought she had also heard heartbreak in his tone.

“Nothing.” With a jerk, she is out of his arms, putting one foot in front of the other as she tenuously stepped out the door. The hallway outside was clear of any people, and that was good—she could keep her head down and not bump into anyone. No one needs to hear this conversation. “It’s all me, this time.”

“What are you talking about?” Before she takes any more steps to the outside doors, Cardan strides in front of her, blocking her path. “You haven’t done anything to me.” He looks wild now, desperate in a way she’s never seen. His eyes might even be a little blurry if she squinted.

Jude opens her mouth. To rebuff him, she reminds herself. This friendship can only be preserved if she never admits to her feelings. And she can’t lose him. He’s her best friend. The only one she can even trust.

But Cardan’s eyes, deep and focused on her, are fierce with that... thing, that emotion she can’t quite place.

He’s begging me.

So she takes a breath. It is a deep one, full of lethargy, reluctance, and fear. Resignation, too, all wrapped into one.

Because he’s her best friend, because she loves him more than anything, she’ll tell him.

“I haven’t done anything to you yet,” Jude says. “But I will. Once I can’t hold it in any longer. You’ll not forgive me, and I’ll lose you.” She sighs and lets her shoulders drop, relaxes the instinctive fighting stance she’d found herself in. “I always knew I would, because everyone falls in love with Cardan Greenbriar. I’d hear the whispers about it when I first moved here, the outsider in this strange place, and they whispered it again when you and I became friends and I found myself always at your side. You always laughed when people asked you out, or smirked when someone flirted with you, and I knew then you didn't want that. Might never want it with anyone, because you were so content just to be yourself, and the only person I knew you'd dated was Nicasia, who I was nothing like. I swore to myself I wouldn’t fulfill the prophecy, because you’re my best friend and I couldn’t—can’t lose this, but here I am, all these years later.”

She feels rather than sees Cardan breathe, as close as he is to her, but Jude doesn’t dare look up. Brown eyes drift to his hands, clasped together so tightly and unmoving they look made of marble.

“I love you. That’s what I’m trying to say.” The words dance from her lips into the air, a gentle puff of air she feels she might want to snatch back.

“Jude…” A voice, almost ethereal in tone but firm in its volume, drifts to her. But she knows it, would know it anywhere.

It’s not Cardan’s voice.

She looks up, away, over Cardan’s shoulder to see Vivi standing there, resplendent in her suit and with a sad expression on her face. “It’s time to go,” Vivi says, the quietest Jude’s ever heard her. She looks a little devastated, too, much like how Jude feels.

Cardan hasn’t said anything.

Jude nods to herself once. Then again, jerkily. “Okay.” She glances up once at Cardan, whose mouth is half-open, face pale and impenetrable—well, she can’t really read his face. For once. Maybe she never has.

All she knows is that he doesn’t say anything as she follows her sister out to where Taryn waits to walk down the aisle. He doesn’t say anything after the wedding is over, or at the reception, or even the day after.

She feels his gaze on her nearly the entire time.

But he still doesn’t say anything.

[angrylittletrashpanda]

It was a Trick!

Summary: Locke tries to show his superiority and fails to.

Madoc hates when his political activities make him pay a visit in the Hollow Hall, this notorious, repugnant den of vice. A man of honor, in addition married, ought to avoid even looking at this goddamned manor, let alone attending Balekin’s parties. The Grand General has enough the tiresome company of boozed courtiers, audaciously trying to take liberties with him. And all those drunken woos are not even the worst part of this bloody revel! The redcap wonders how on earth did he manage to keep his cool when Eldred’s firstborn son suggested  Madoc to take his wife and daughters with him the next time he comes to visit his, as the prince said, humble abode. Over his dead body! The Hollow Hall is definitely no place for children. Devil knows what idea might come to Balekin’s warped, depraved and repellant mind. Conceivably, he might even ask the Grand General to give him one of his lovely daughters for a consort, although they are still little girls! What a dirty lecher!

Oriana also shouldn’t tarry in places like the Hollow Hall. All right, she used to be King Eldred’s consort, but now she’s a woman of great modesty, mother of Madoc’s children and, long story short, the best wife a man could possibly imagine. Attending such a scandalous revel, in fact a veritable orgy, would indubitably be an offence to her lovely eyes. Blessed or rather cursed with such beauty, Oriana would be particularly exposed to great distastefulness with Balekin’s courtiers, drunk or high on nevermore. Even Madoc himself feels more than a little uncomfortable, surrounded by shameless women and perverted men sharing Locke’s tastes.

Having enough the too relaxed atmosphere of the party the redcap decides to walk right out to the yard to get some fresh air and wait until the revel expires and Balekin’s guests, at least the ones who’ll manage to remain sober enough to walk straight, start to disperse and go home.  The dawn has begun to break when the Grand General hears mirthful laughter and soft sounds of kisses, coming from an arbor. Nothing extraordinary in the Hollow Hall, and yet he freezes, hearing someone say his name. The redcap silently sneaks up to the bower, close enough to see a disgusting display of immodesty. Locke, partially dressed and completely wasted, lays on the ground, holding Prince Cardan, also half-naked, in his arms. Here is the picture of the most bestial debauchery! Liriope’s son wasn’t even officially deemed the prince’s consort! Those guys are setting such a bad example. All right, Madoc’s birth daughter Vivienne broke more female hearts that all Eldred’s sons combined and does not want to marry, but the Grand General cannot do anything about the fact that no one is able to resist her. Cardan stretches, runs his hand across Locke’s bare chest and whispers:

“I guess maybe I am a little jealous of you and Lady Oriana. Is it true you slept with her?”

“I did it more than once, but it was nothing serious,” – the ginger-haired lad giggles, “Well, at least if it comes to me. You need to know I made her wet the way Madoc never did. You should have hear how sweetly she talked to me. She called me her sunshine, her baby, her dear… All nights long she held me to her bosom and undressed me literally  in the blink of an eye!”

“You made me very, very jealous,” -the Prince hisses, putting his fingers in Locke’s hair. “You must apologize me right now,” – He didn’t have to repeat twice – Liriope’s son eagerly kisses him on the mouth, slipping his hand inside Cardan’s pants. It is just too much. Madoc looks away and runs towards the stables. The fact he wants to vomit is the least of Grand General’s problems now.

“There is no fool like an old fool,” – the redcap thinks bitterly, mounting his horse. Admittedly he married Oriana only because he desperately needed someone who’d help him to raise his little girls, and Eldred’s former consort had a secret to hide inside his stronghold, and yet everything changed in recent years. Madoc still remembers his second wife burst into tears on their wedding night. He placated Oriana then by assuring the fairy lady he didn’t intend to force himself on her and a rumor that he had lost his interest in women the day Eva had left the Isles of Elysium was true. During the first year of their marriage the Grand General actually treated Eldred’s former consort as though she was his sister. He even averted his eyes from Oriana when she was breast-feeding baby Oak, although it was gradually becoming more and more difficult for him. The young woman, holding her firstborn son in her arms, was a flawless picture of ease and grace Madoc desired to feast his eyes on. She glowed, radiated with love and serenity what made her so different from Eva – his hot-headed, trigger-happy, impish Eva, able to stir his blood with one ardent gaze… And yet the redcap realized he yearned for something completely different than burning passion, pushing him to the brink of pure madness. He wanted to worship this  embodiment of the highest ideal of love and loyalty, look at Oriana with awe just like Taryn did, revel in the sound of her soothing voice... No, common courtesy, respect and even cordial friendship were not enough for Madoc – the Grand General decided to win his wife’s heart. It took him almost two long years to finally make Oriana truly his, but the juice turned out to be worth the squeeze. The fearsome old warrior was beaming with joy when his lawful wedded wife finally admitted she reciprocated his feelings. She was so beautiful, so exceptional, so fragile and at the same time so steely, so stout-hearted and yet so meek. Even the scars on her belly, a silent testimony of Oriana’s loyalty, were beautiful.  The Grand General, blinded with  love, confided in his lady and it was a grave mistake. He should have demanded her fidelity! Even now he refuses to believe Oriana – his sweet, fond Oriana, devoted wife and dedicated mother, (not so) secretly dreaming of having another child betrayed him. Dreaming of having another child… That’s a point. Faeries’ blood is thin and Madoc certainly isn’t in the first flush of his youth. His treacherous lady probably concluded that eighteen-year-old Locke is more likely to give her a child she wants than her middle-aged lord husband. But if Oriana had any shred of decency, she would have asked him for divorce! Didn’t she promise to be honest with him? And yet a fairy woman, supposedly unable to lie, turned out to be more deceitful than a human. When Eva stared to dally with Justin, she became cold for her rightful husband, while Oriana still shares Madoc’s bed and pretends she likes to fall asleep cuddled up with him. She clings to him, playfully nips his collarbones, pouts her lips like a petulant little girl and in a sulky voice commands: “Make me a baby”. How could he find such vulgar behavior amusing? And yet Madoc wholeheartedly laughs at his wife’s drollery, laughs and kisses her smooth eyelids, telling Oriana he loves her. Old fool! There is only one way for the Grand General to maintain his dignity.

The redcap reaches his stronghold at break of day and silently heads for his bedchamber, clutching the hilt of his sword. First thing Madoc sees is his treacherous wife, aglow with joy. In her hand the fairy lady is holding a small, rectangular object, evidently brought from the Mortal Realm. The Grand General freezes. He saw something like this twenty years ago. So his infidel wife and this little mischief Locke conceived a bastard and Oriana intends to make him believe the child is his! When the Sun rises  in the west!

Since children are such a rare blessing among the folks, fairy custom does not allow anyone, even a betrayed husband, to raise their hand against a woman in the family way. However,  no power in the world is going to make Madoc acknowledge the fruit of Oriana’s treachery. The redcap glares at his infidel wife.

“You have  fifteen minutes to leave my house. I can't be held accountable for what’s going to happen if you stay,” – He barks. The former courtier puts the pregnancy test on the bedside table and makes a step towards her husband.

“You said you were not going to drink,” – She says with dignity. Madoc remains silent, just gnashes his teeth. His split-pupiled eyes glisten with fury. Oriana frowns and gently touches her husband’s forehead. The redcap pulls away.

“Don’t dare to touch me,” – He hisses.

“Gods, what got into you?” – She breathes, startled.

“You can even asked me that? I heard with my own ears you had slept with Locke. To his surprise, Oriana tilts her pretty little head (the head he could easily crack like a walnut) back and bursts out laughing. Neve before has the Grand General seen his second wife, laughing so hard that tears began to well in her eyes.

“And you find it funny?” – He growls, completely baffled.

“The fact is, yes, I admit it,” -the fairy lady says, wiping the tears of joy away with the back of her hand. “You see, I wouldn’t say Liriope was an unfit mother, but some evenings she preferred going to balls and revels to staying with her son. Locke was a difficult kid, a very nervous one. I used to babysit him when my friend was going to the Palace. The first time Liriope  left her boy in my care Locke woke up in the middle of the night, all in tears. He wet his bed. I gave the kid a bath, changed his clothes and hugged him tight. He was still crying so hard that the front of my nightgown quickly became drenched. Finally the little one fell asleep. Later, Locke learnt to take being away from his mother much better, but he still wanted me to sing him lullabies… I didn’t mind it, he was such a cute little clingy. He desperately needed to be loved. The fact that his father left him certainly affected the boy. The truth is I still feel sorry for Locke,” – she sights, “That is why I asked you to take him under your roof when Liriope died.” Madoc’s features soften.

“Could you forgive me, Oriana, for doubting in your fidelity?” – He pleads, humbly looking in her gentle eyes. The woman just smiles impishly.

“On one condition,” – She whispers.

“Your wish is my command, my lady,”- the Grand General breathes clasping his wife to his heart.

“From what we know, Locke did a lot of foolish, unwise things, but for me, he’s just a confused child, raised without the proper moral fiber. We cannot blame the boy for this – after all he never got to know his father and later, his mother died. Maybe there's still hope for Liriope’s son? Let’s adopt him! I think you are just the man to play the role of his father,” – Oriana whispered.

“Well… I am not really sure. After all he is almost adult, but there’s no harm in trying. Fortunately he looks nothing like Oak, so no one will ever figure out they’re actually brothers. We did an excellent job with the upbringing of four children… I guess together, we can handle raising six of them,” – He smiles proudly.

EPILOGUE

On that very day High King Eldred gave General Madoc and his wife custody of Locke, son of Lady Liriope. The lad was devastated, although the old warrior swore he would never hit the boy again and sincerely apologized for hurting him. Taryn was truly heartbroken – the fact that Locke was her brother now meant they would never be allowed to get married. Vivienne, however, just shrugged and stated that her parents must have gone nuts. Jude in turn wanted to know whether Locke still wets his bed. Only Oak was happy he’d finally have a big brother as well as a little one!

[cruelduarte]

Pregnant Jurdan, part 1

Part 2

Being High Queen means always being busy. Always being busy means a lot of the time I have no idea what day it is or how much time is really passing.

It isn’t until I’m sitting in the brugh during a revel that I notice a full moon in a sky. Something about this seems significant to me, and I force myself to think as hard as possible.

And then I realize.

I’m late.

I can already feel my heart pounding loudly in my chest.

Turning to Cardan, trying to seem as calm as possible, I say, “I’m going to turn in early. Enjoy yourself.”

I don’t give him much time to respond before I’m taking my personal guard back to our chambers. If anyone notices something off about my mood, they don’t mention it.

I’m slamming my door and pacing the parlor before my mind can come to any decision. I’m positive I’m late because the last time I remember bleeding was two full moons ago.

Suddenly I feel dizzy.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” I try telling myself. “Stress can make things irregular.” Even though the last time I was irregular was when I was 14. I know that this isn’t merely a missed cycle.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I crack the door open and call Fand over. I keep my voice steady but quiet while I say, “Please send a healer. And be as discreet as possible.” Without waiting for questions I’m back in the parlor.

I’m already coming up with plans in my head. If I am... pregnant then it’s not the end of the world. I’ve been queen for almost eight years now. Cardan has briefly mentioned wanting children with me.

I’m most scared for myself. Which already gives me evidence that I’d be a terrible mother. I was raised with too much hate and destruction to ever be a good mom. But now it seems I won’t have a choice. I don’t know what to do to ensure I don’t screw a baby up like I’ve been screwed up.

A light knock comes at the door, and when I give the okay an imp hobbles in. She reminds me of Tatterfell, but with a face that seems less kind. Perhaps I’m just used to Tatterfell’s fondness.

“Your majesty,” the imp says to me, bowing her head. I’m too panicked to get annoyed that she doesn’t kneel. It will take far longer than eight years for a kingdom of immortal beings to accept a mortal as their ruler.

That seems like a small worry now.

“You’re a healer?”

All she does is nod.

“If anything we discuss in here tonight leaves your mouth outside this room I’ll have your tongue cut out, and I’ll throw you up into the Tower of Forgetting.” When she looks slightly alarmed I continue. “I have a suspicious I might be with child. What can you do for me?”

“May I touch you, my lady?”

I don’t particularly want her to, but I give a stiff nod. She motions to my body, and then I understand she means to touch my skin. My stomach. I don’t care much for modesty at the moment, so I strip out of my dress so all I’m in is my mortal undergarments. At least they’re not polka-dotted.

She approaches slowly, and then places one of her gnarled hands on my stomach. It’s cold and not soft, but I say nothing. She can probably hear how fast my heart is beating. I definitely can.

Minutes pass, and she moves her palm several places around my stomach. I’m getting anxious. I know getting mad will do me no good, but it feels like a can of soda that’s been shaken. Too much is going on inside of my head.

The imp clears her throat and steps back respectfully. “You are with child, my lady. In fact, I believe you are with two children.”

And then the world goes dark.

———————————————————————

When I wake, I am in my bed. A damp cloth has been placed across my forehead, and I can feel someone holding my hand. I already have a sneaking suspicion who this someone is.

I turn my head to the side to see Cardan sitting in a chair at the edge of the bed, forehead resting on his forearm. He’s still in the clothes he was wearing at the revel. He must’ve been called when I passed out.

The anxiety is still there, but I’ve built a wall around it. I can’t let it all flow out yet. I need to be smart about how I handle this situation. I need to treat it like every other obstacle I’ve ever approached.

Minus the murder. But that’s what Cardan is here for.

“Cardan,” I whisper, squeezing the hand he’s holding mine with.

He immediately stirs, a sleepy smile on his face when he sees me. And then is immediately replaced with a look of concern. “Jude. What happened? All I was told is you asked for a healer, and then you fainted. She wouldn’t tell me anything else.”

His worry over me makes me feel guilty even though there was nothing I could do about passing out. I was a slave to my body’s whims. But I need to tell him. I’ve learned from my mistakes in the past of keeping things from him. He doesn’t appreciate it, and it only leads to problems between us. We don’t need anymore of those than we already have.

I squeeze his hand again and motion for him to come onto the bed with me. “I’m okay.” Not a complete lie. I’m not dying. “But I have some news.”

His large black eyes feel like an unescapable tornado. I’m being sucked in. Before I can think of a good way to explain, I’m saying, “I’m pregnant. With twins.” Maybe that is the only way to explain it actually.

He sucks in a breath which does nothing to ease my anxiety. “Are you lying?”

That’s offensive. “What? No, of course not why would I lie about this?”

“I’m sorry, I know, I’m just...” Seeing Cardan at a loss for words is half exciting and half terrifying. A smile breaks across his face. His perfect face. “Jude!” He’s laughing now. I wonder if fae are able to become psychotic. Or more psychotic than normal. “That’s amazing! Wait, twins? I’ve never heard of Faerie twins. Are you sure?”

I’ve never heard of it either, but I doubt there have been many twin mortal consorts to begin with. “Unless imps have learned to lie, we are having twins.” Saying it out loud just makes my head spin more. Two of them?

He grabs my face and slams his mouth against mine. It’s quick, but it translates all the excitement he’s feeling. “This is wonderful,” he says breathlessly.

His happiness is infectious. I wouldn’t say he’s unhappy most of the time, but I’ve never seen him like this. Right now I’m looking at the person he would’ve been without the horrors of his past. A person full of light and love for everything. I hope he can pass it on to our kids.

“You think we can do this?” I ask. I’m skeptical, but I remind myself we have more than enough help should we need it. And Taryn has been doing it for almost eight years. She was always the more adaptable type, but I have to figure that child rearing can be no more difficult than kingdom building. I hope.

Cardan gives me a soft look. He’s smiling, but I can tell he sees my worries. “Yes, Jude,” he says sincerely. “Our pasts don’t make us unfit to love. They show us why it’s so important to be good. And we will be good parents. Better than either of us ever had.” He kisses my forehead. “We have each other.”

He can’t lie so he must believe these things are true. It does make me feel better. He’s already proving that he’s more cut out for this than I am. Too bad I’m the one who will provide housing for the next nine months.

I pull him closer so that both our heads are on one pillow, and his head is in the crook of my neck. He lazily runs his fingers up and down my arm while he verbally daydreams about what parenthood will look like. He talks of reading faerietales to our children at night before bed. He talks of showing our kids all the different kingdoms of Faerie. He talks of loving them unconditionally, no matter what happens.

He talks until I fall asleep, dreaming of tiny feet and pointed ears.

———————————————————————

@gloriouspalacebakerylawyer @bookwyrminspiration @fallingstarsandeagles

I tagged those that requested this prompt! If this does well I’ll post part 2! It’ll include cute moments of Cardan helping out a difficult pregnant Jude and announcing it to the kingdom probably! Hope you guys liked this!

[courtofjurdan]

One Chance part 15

Jurdan College AU - previous chapter

masterlist

A/N: I wrote this three times and I think I still hate it. I hope you guys enjoy it and I promise the next one will be better. 

Cardan saw her black out and fall over. He tried his hardest to get to her before she fell, but he was too far away. She fell on her side. Cardan was worried for her and the baby because Jude did have a hard impact with the ground and the side of her stomach took a lot of the blow. 

He turned her over to lie on her back. He took her face in his hands. 

“Jude, baby, wake up, please.” Cardan paused to think. He needs to call an ambulance. He pulls out his phone and dials 911. 

“This is 911, what’s your emergency?” 

Panting, Cardan replied, “My-” small pause then decided he could think of this later. “My girlfriend just fainted. She’s kinda sweaty and hot to the touch. And she’s 16 weeks pregnant.”

“Where are you at?”

“Elfhame University.”

“And did you say pregnant?” 

“Yes ma’am.”

“Okay. By any chance can you see any blood between her legs?” 

Cardan looked at her leggings and saw no stains. “No there’s none.” 

“Okay that’s a good sign. Put your hand on her stomach. Can you feel any small movements? You might not since she’s not too far along.”

Cardan did as told and he couldn’t even feel the slightest movement, which started to worry him despite what he’s been told. “No, I don’t feel anything.” 

“Okay. That’s okay. The ambulance is on their way. If someone nearby can get a cold rag to put on her forehead that might help her wake up faster.” 

“Okay.” Cardan looked over his shoulder to find some kids and the professor from their last class standing there. He asked the professor to get what he needed and he did. Cardan placed the rag on her forehead. Cardan thanked the operator and waited for the ambulance.

Jude was sliding in and out of consciousness. Never enough to speak but her eyes would move and then she would go back under. 

Cardan kept one hand on her face and the other hand rubbing gentle circles on her bump. Reassuring her she was going to be okay. 

In ten minutes the paramedics were there and loading her into the ambulance. Cardan followed them in his black mustang. Getting there at the same time she did. He parked and went back into the room with her. Because of their relationship and the fact that she was caring his baby, they let him stay with her. 

She was still out when they got her to the hospital. They started to hook her to a whole bunch of monitors. They put these sticky pads in her chest to monitor her heart rate. They started putting this monitor around her stomach to monitor the baby’s heart rate. They started an IV and gave her fluids. 

Cardan held her hand through all of it. Even though she had no idea. He sat in the chair beside her bed the whole time. They told him everything looked fine. Her’s and the baby’s heart rate were great. Her body just needs rest, she’ll wake up on her own time. Cardan let the sound of his baby momma and baby’s heartbeat lull him to sleep. 

——-

Cardan awoke to his hand being moved. That means Jude is starting to wake. He opened his eyes and quickly stood onto his feet. Jude was just waking up. He cupped her face into his hand. 

“Hey Jude, how are you feeling?” 

She looked at him confused. Then started to look around. 

“Wh-what happened?” Jude muttered. 

Cardan took his hand off her face. “You passed out in the hallway after you were leaving your class. I saw you fall and I couldn’t get you to wake up so I called 911.”

“The baby?”

Trying to keep down his panic and keep his voice calm for her, “Um, they said the baby is okay but I’m not sure what caused your episode. They were waiting for you to wake up.”

Jude nodded her head. And realized she was holding Cardan’s hand so she took it back abruptly. She had Cardan go get the doctor while all the memories of why she was mad at him flooded back. 

Dr. Tatterfell came into the room. Without Cardan. 

She spoke, “Hey Jude, I’m glad to see you awake. I told Cardan to stay out there unless you want him in here?”

Jude shook her head no. Dr. Tatterfell continued, “We did some blood tests and your blood sugar was really low. Some women can get something called gestational diabetes. We check during the 24-28 week checkup. But you're only 16 weeks so we obviously haven’t checked for it. Some people have it more on the severe side and I would say you are one of them.” she paused. “Have you been feeling much more tired recently?” Jude nodded. “Nausea?” Jude nodded. “Bigger appetite and drinking more?” Jude nodded. “Okay well we can’t take all the symptoms away but we can sure try to manage them.”

“Are there any risks for the baby?” Jude asked hesitantly. 

“They can have low blood sugar when they’re born. They can have jaundice. Pre-term birth. Can have some breathing problems. And you can get high blood pressure which can hurt the baby, try to be as stress free as possible. So If you ever feel off call us immediately.”

Jude shook her head yes. The doctor talked to her about the route of treatment they would go, and some diet changes she can make. After that, Cardan came in while the doctor left.  

Cardan asked, “Are you okay? Is the baby?”

Jude told him the rundown of things. 

“Jude, you should have told me you felt bad. I would have tried to help.”

“Well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Cardan, or if you’ve had your tongue down to many people's throats, but I’ve been distant.”

Cardan sat down in the chair beside the bed and watched Jude as she rubbed her hand in circles on her bump. 

“I’m sorry, Jude. I forgot who I was. I’m not the kid who mocked and tortured you anymore. I don’t want to be. I messed up, and I messed up bad.”

“Yeah no joke.” She paused. “Cardan I need you. I can’t do all this alone. I can’t raise a kid alone.”

Cardan looked up, voice thick with emotion, “You will never be alone.”

“Let's take a break. I will go back to my dorm.”

“Jude, you can’t stay alone. If I overheard right, the doctor said it was wise for someone to stay with you. I’ll sleep on the couch. You get the bed. I’ll keep to myself.” 

“Okay. But if I get annoyed, I’m leaving.” 

Soon Jude got to go leave. Her body was weak and she just didn’t feel good. Cardan got her back to the dorm and to bed. After that he left to go get Jude some food for her newly formed diet plan. 

————

Cardan helped Jude and was as friendly as he could be. Jude had good days and bad days with him. If she felt bad, she was a butthole. If she felt okay, her attitude was more playful with him. Things were beginning to heal between them. The bitterness was slowly leaving them. It was back to cuddling and playful banter. 

One night watching a movie on the couch, Cardan spoke up, “Jude, are we good? Will we ever be what we used to be? Well we started to be?” 

Jude didn’t know if this was the hormones talking or not, “Yeah Cardan were good. I love you too much to give you up over a mistake. A drunken mistake at that. Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Then I may not forgive you.”

Cardan chuckled. “Okay. I love you, Jude.” He dropped a kiss to Jude’s head which was laying on his shoulder. 

————

It’s been two weeks, which makes today November 13th. Not only is it Jude’s birthday, but they get to find out the gender of their baby today. Well they won’t find out but the bakery that will make a cake blue or pink cake will find out today. 

They decided to have a small get-together with their friends to reveal the gender. It was Cardan’s idea. Jude just wanted to know at the appointment, but Cardan wanted to have a small party. Jude relented. It can’t be that bad. She just hates surprises. Waiting another day won’t hurt. 

On top of the gender reveal party, Cardan wanted to celebrate Jude’s birthday on the same day, to which she also relented because Cardan’s puppy dog eyes are charming. But she said yes on the behalf Taryn gets celebrated also. 

Jude doesn’t like to celebrate her birthday. The memories of birthday parties as a young kid with her mom and dad are what come to her mind. But Cardan wants to make her birthday different. A happy day. 

They are waiting in the waiting room of the doctor office. Jude has missed the last appointment in being busy which she knows is bad but since she was at the hospital and everything was fine, she saw no need in coming in sooner. 

She is 18 weeks. Almost half way through her pregnancy. Her stomach doesn’t just look like she’s gained weight, it's obvious that she is pregnant. 

She cradles her bump with one hand and holds Cardan’s hand in the other. She is rather anxious for this appointment. She doesn’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, but she is just nervous anyway. 

“Jude Duarte.” 

Cardan gives her a hand and helps her up even though she can get up easy-ish. She goes back and lays down on the table and pulls the hem of her t-shirt up. Dr. Tatterfell comes in.

“Hello, Jude how are you?” 

Jude gives a sweet smile, “I’m doing good. Feeling huge.” 

Dr, Tatterfell laughs at that. “Well, darling, it only gets worse from here. Have you been eating, drinking, and resting well?” 

“Umm yeah I have.”

Dr, Tatterfell gives her a look of disbelief and looks to Cardan, standing beside Jude. 

Cardan clears his throat. “Well she has definitely been eating well. More like raiding my kitchen. Drinking lots of water. The rest is…. complicated. Some days she rests, and other days I can’t get her to stay still. She is stubborn.”

“Yes, I do pick up on that. Jude, rest is very important. You are almost halfway through your pregnancy. You are going to be really tired. Your body is working for two people. With gestational diabetes on top of that, it’s important to rest.” 

Jude nods her head in understanding. Dr. Tatterfell continues with a genuine smile, “Well now, would you like to know the sex of your baby?” 

Cardan and Jude look at each other, Cardan speaks, “We would not. We want to have a gender reveal party to reveal it. So could you put the results in an envelope?”

“Yes I can. I can also give you pictures of the baby today without the gender so it will still be a surprise but you can still have pictures of your baby.” 

They both nod their heads. The doctor squeezes the cold gel into Jude’s bump. Cardan grabs a hold of Jude's hand and they look at the screen together. Jude looks over at Cardan with admiration in her eyes. He shows so much love for someone he hasn’t even met or felt. She loves him for that. 

They look at their baby’s head, nose, arms, fingers and then Dr, Tatterfell asks them to close their eyes for the next part so she can find out the sex. After she’s done, she looks at them both and says, “Congratulations.” 

She prints the photos and the results and puts them in an envelope and gives them the “safe” picture, meaning it doesn’t show the gender. 

She gives Jude a tissue to clean herself off with and says she will see her in a few weeks. Before she leaves the room, Dr. Tatterfell mutters, “Happy Birthday by the way.” 

————

They drop the results off at the bakery and Cardan takes Jude to lunch for her birthday. 

They were walking back to the car when Jude stopped suddenly and put a hand to the side of her stomach. 

Cardan whirls around, “Jude, what’s wrong?” 

Jude grabs his hand and places it  over the spot where their little baby kicked. Realization dawns in Cardan and he muttered quietly, “Did the baby just kick?” 

Jude nodded her head. Cardan’s grin widened. He bent over and kissed the little bump saying, “I love you, little one.” He captured Jude’s lips and walked to the car.

He and Jude watched a movie marathon and went to sleep. They were now sleeping together again. Now that forgiveness was bound. 

They were both excited about tomorrow. Not only was it Jude’s birthday party, but it was the day they would finally learn the gender of their little one.

masterlist

next chapter

-----------------

Tag list: 

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Let me know if you want to be added or taken off of the tag list. Bolded tags don’t work.

[mmvalentine]

The Washing Machine | Jurdan

Canon complaint. Post QoN. Smut warning.

The next time we return to the mortal realm is for Oak's tenth birthday.

I do not much like leaving Elfhame these days; the mortal realm has never held especially fond memories for me. My family visits often enough, and Oak is now attending school in Faerie and returning to his parents in the holidays. Hadn't wanted to, of course, having been able to play such marvelous tricks on his mortal friends, but since he's part of the royal family Oriana insists he have an education amongst the Folk. Personally, I think it can't hurt for him to have to contend with other faerie children, either.

This year, Oak wants to have his birthday at Time Zone.

To my great surprise, Cardan declares it high time we took a break anyway, and thinks we should spend a week in the mortal realm. I can't help but be skeptical.

"The mortal realm?" I ask in disbelief. "You, Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Expense and Excess, wish to spend a week in the mortal realm?" "Sure," Cardan shrugs. "Don't worry so, wife of mine, I'm sure it'll be fun." I shake my head. "Alright you weirdo. This I've got to see."

And so next thing I know we're in the spare bedroom of Vivi and Heather's apartment. Cardan finds the whole experience fascinating for all of three days and then promptly gets very bored.

"Let's go home," he says, flopped over our bed on his stomach. "No," I reply curtly, not looking up from my book. I've got my feet up on Cardan's back, and having seen this coming a mile off, I'm not letting him bail out now.

"I've had enough now," he says. "You're the one who wanted to spend all week here," I point out. "I was wrong. I take it back. Let us depart." "We can't go yet, Oak's birthday is tonight."

"Fine," Cardan says through gritted teeth. "Let's go tomorrow." "Tomorrow is Heather and Vivi's engagement party." "Since when?" I turn the page. "Since Monday, they announced it when we got here, remember?" "No, I do not." "Would I lie to you?" I meet his eyes over the top of the book.

Cardan growls low in his chest, and his tail flicks back and forth through the air.

"Okay so what, we just sit around waiting?" he demands. I don't know why he's so antsy, I swear he spends most of his days lounging around on his behind. I snap the book shut and put it down on the night stand.

"I'm so glad you asked," I tell him brightly. "In actual fact, we have several chores to do today!" "What are you talking about?" Cardan says crossly. "Here there are no servants," I remind him, bopping his nose. Cardan is now irritable, and swats my hand. I ignore him. "We need to get groceries for the next few days, and go to the laundromat.

"What's a laundromat?" Cardan asks. "It's where we wash our clothes." "We have to wash our own clothes?" "For the thousandth time, yes we have to wash our own clothes."

Cardan opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it again.

"Fine," he grumbles. "But if we're going to the shops I want ice cream." Of all the human foods he had tried so far, Cardan loves ice cream the most. Is an absolute sucker for ice cream.

"It's a deal," I say, sliding off the bed. "Now glamour up."

Cardan groans loudly, and rolls over onto his back.

"Now what you big baby?" I asked, exasperatedly. There really is no end to his complaining. "I'm sick of looking mortal," Cardan grumbles. "And just what exactly are you implying?"

Cardan looks at me upside down, his head hanging off the end of the bed. He reaches out and snags my waist, pulling me down next to him.

"On you it's beautiful," he says, nipping at my lower lip. "You have fewer sharp edges than faerie women." His eyes trail down to my chest. "You have more... more." He grazes his thumb under the curve of my left breast, and kisses the hollow at the base of my throat.

"Let's not go out at all," he says. "I can think of far better ways to beguile the time." His hands slide down my back, and for a moment I think we totally could just stay in here all day. But I also refuse to give in to him.

"Are you trying to use sex as an excuse to not have to be glamoured?" I accuse. Cardan makes a face.

"On me it just looks..." he gestures vaguely. "Bland."

"Too bad," I tell him. "We're going." Cardan harrumphs, and then a shimmer ripples through the air. His ears round down, his tail disappears, and the clawed tips of his fingers reduce to short, tidy nails. He keeps all the rings in his ears and on his fingers.

"I just don't want to go out like this," he says, pouting. I whack him with a pillow. "If I paint your nails, will you leave the house?" "Yes!" Cardan said, sitting up quickly. "Shiny black to match my eyes." He holds out his hands imperiously, and I bite his fingers savagely before rummaging through my bag for the nail polish.

Fifteen minutes later, we are walking down the street. I'm carrying a bag of laundry, and Cardan is blowing on his nails. He may not think much of mortal fashion, but I rather like him in his soft, black cotton t-shirt, and black jeans that hug his backside. He has kept his own boots, and he looks good. Not that I'm was going to tell him that, of course.

Our first stop is the laundromat to put our load on, then we continue on to the grocery store. I load Cardan up with a loaf of bread, bag of oranges, peanut butter to replace the one we've finished at Heather and Vivi's, a carton of eggs, a pint of milk and two packs of tampons to take back to Faerie. While I'm doing this, Cardan also grabs a bag of marshmallows, a box of froot loops, and a stack of flavoured condoms that I choose not to acknowledge at all.

When it comes to picking ice cream, Cardan spends a good ten minutes just going over all the flavours. He's transfixed by the multicoloured boxes and various promises of chocolate fudge and strawberry cheesecake utopia.

"One," I tell him firmly. "But there are so many I haven't tried yet!" he protests. "One." "You know we're not exactly short on funds, right?" "We're short on freezer space, and we're only here a couple more days. Pick."

Cardan takes on a pained look like I'm making him choose between children, and eventually selects a tub of rocky road.

We make our way home, and the laundry still has twenty minutes left on the timer. Cardan is eating ice cream out of the tub with a wooden stirrer he snagged from a coffee cart.

"Now that you've seen me do this one, you can do the next load, before we go home," I say to him. He feeds me ice cream.

"Why wash before we go home?" Cardan asks. "We've got people to do it for us there." He sucks on his makeshift spoon.

"Yes," I agree, plucking the whole tub from his hands. "But it's still a good thing for you to know how to do." Cardan reaches to take it back, but I yank it out of the way and continue eating. "You're a grown ass adult," I say. "You can't always have everyone do everything for you."

Cardan snarls.

"And stop growling and snarling at me, you're in the human realm now, act like it." I point the stirrer at him for emphasis.

Cardan raises his eyebrows.

"Do I detect a hint of vexation, my dear?" he asks. "You're awfully harsh with me today." It's true. Cardan in the human realm is like a little kid, needing constant supervision and cajoling. Not for the first time, I pity his servants at home.

"Because you're awfully annoying today," I say, putting the ice cream away. "You've been whingeing all day, consider me vexed." Cardan just grins, and it's infuriating. I hate the way he lights up when I'm annoyed at him, and it makes me all the more mad.

"Stop smiling at me like that," I snap. Cardan only grins wider, and then suddenly he's scooping me off the bench.

"What are you doing?" I yelp, as I'm lifted into the air. He sets me down on the washing machine, slides his hands behind my hair, and kisses me softly on the mouth.

"Still annoyed at me?" he asks against my lips. "Yes," I say. He kisses me again, and although I don't approve of this as a method of getting back on my good side, nor can I quite bring myself to push him away.

"How about now?" he whispers. "Kissing me doesn't make you less annoying." I try to sound stern.

Cardan smooths his hands down the outside of my legs, pulls them around his waist, and moves his lips under her ear. "Are you sure?" he purrs. Damn him.

He kisses along my jaw, lifts my hands to his shoulders, wraps his arms around my waist, and then licks at my tongue as he kisses me again. My mouth opens automatically for him, and despite myself, I shiver under his touch. It's always, always like this with Cardan and it'll be the death of me. When his mouth curves against mine, I know that he knows it.

"Seems to be working, to me," he murmurs.

"And that makes me hate it all the more," I say, a last stab at irritation before I give up, grab a hold of the front of his t-shirt, and pull him back to me. Cardan laughs as he kisses me, and the movement of it is echoed in the movement of the increasingly active washing machine he has sat me upon. I am suddenly very aware of the vicious vibration of it beneath my thighs.

"For fuck's sake," Cardan says, "this thing feels like it's about to take off. It's like video of the rocket thingy Oak showed me." "Shhh," I tell him, and drag his lips back to mine. I tighten my legs around his waist, as the whine of the machine gets higher. Cardan raises an eyebrow.

"I thought you were annoyed at me," he says. "I am," I reply, and then continue kissing him. His skin is delicious, and I want to taste more of him. I move my mouth down his neck. "It doesn't feel like... Oh. Oh." He pulls back.

"Jude. My love." A wicked gleam comes into his eye. "Are you rather enjoying this here washing machine?" "I don't know what you're talking about," I said steadily. But then the machine speeds up again, is shaking steadily under me and a shudder goes through my legs.

"How very delightful," Cardan says, and I want to slap him. He puts his lips to my ear. "Are you turned on right now, sweet nemesis?" he asks. "Do you want me, you angry little thing?"

"Shut up," I say, but then Cardan's hand is sliding up my thigh, slipping under my skirt and even though it's broad daylight and a public place, it's exactly what my body wants right now.

He licks his tongue up the column of my throat, and as he does the lights go down in the laundromat. Magic hums in the air, as the glass front frosts over and Cardan's glamour fades. His tail winds its way around my calf, and I hear the click of the lock in the door.

"Oh come now," he says. "Is that any way to talk to your husband?"

I opened my mouth with a retort on my tongue, but then Cardan is kissing me again and I forget it. He yanks me onto to the edge of the machine and before I know what I'm doing I'm reaching for the button on his jeans.

Cardan pushes my underwear to the side and sinks into me with the most delicious moan. Even thought he doesn't move for a minute, the rocking of the washing machine moves us enough that we are clutching at each other desperately and trying to get closer. Cardan hooks his elbows under my knees and my hands fall back to catch myself as he tilts me up toward him, and then he's fucking me right there in the laundromat.

The double sensation of Cardan moving inside me and the vibrations flooding through us both is almost too much. My moans turn to screams, but they are hidden by the clanging of the machine, and then Cardan's thumb is hovering over my clit and the pressure building in my abdomen is now threatening to surge up my throat and pour out my mouth.

With no warning, Cardan lands a stinging slap across my backside, where it is lifted off the machine. This last push, the flash of pain amidst my pleasure is what has me falling over the edge and I hit my climax hard, barely aware of Cardan falling right behind me.

We just stay there while the washing machine slows and beeps to tell us the laundry is done. Finally, Cardan speaks.

"You know," he says, "I think I like doing washing after all." I roll my eyes at him. "So what comes next?" he asks, and that's when I get my own wicked grin.

"The dryer," I say, and suddenly I, too, am excited by the prospect of more laundry.

****

I'm deep in my Jurdan feels, can you tell? If anyone is interested, I'll start a Jurdan taglist separate from my Feysand one. Let me know if you'd like to be on it.

For now, I'll just tag @asteria-of-mars because you got me into this mess and now you have to be subjected to my feelings...

JURDAN MASTERLIST (there's not much on it but may as well get into the habit)

[these-are-the-first-steps]

For @lilithsaur -- Thanks for all the art that converted me, and I hope you like it!

To everyone else, sorry it’s not star wars this time!

------------------------

Taryn’s child is two weeks old when it happens.

Like all newborns, my sister’s newborn was seen by the High King (and Queen) hours after birth, despite Vivi’s protests that human mothers shouldn’t be moved right after birth, but of course it didn’t stop her.

But it took two weeks before we could break away to see them in their own house. Before Cardan could hold her in his arms himself and give me a look that will be etched into my memory forever.

Taryn was timid, at first, handing over her child to our old schoolyard bully. But he was the High King now. And my husband. And the child’s uncle. Even if she didn’t want to, it’s not like she had a choice. We brought as few people as possible, the smallest audience we could for when the baby was finally placed into his arms, awkwardly at first, until settling right in- the little one suddenly fixated by his eyes.

It was then when he began to rock her in the same way Vivi had coached him on months earlier that he looked at me like that, cradling her head with his hand, and I could feel a nervous heat, but a heat none the less, dive through me. All I could do was swallow as discretely as I could without seeming affected in the slightest.

We were back in the carriage before he spoke again. “You know….I have not held many babies. Probably none, in fact.”

I gave him an incredulous look. “Probably? You mean you don’t remember?”

He scoffed with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. I guess you didn’t really have to remember when you were an unruly prince. Or maybe people just didn’t hand their babies to notoriously cruel people with too much power.

“She is…” he began, as if picking out the right words. “…more than I expected.”

I blinked, tilting my head at him as I looked over, but he continued to stare out the window. His hand crept across the silk cushioned seat, however, until his fingers brushed over mine to grasp my hand.

I couldn’t help it. I took in a sharp breath. And with a sly smile, he glanced at me. I couldn’t help what came next either. I smiled.

Taryn’s little one was five, a now boisterous little girl with golden eyes and fur-tipped ears, as she climbed over her uncle with her best approximation of a bear roar (she’d been fixated on nature shows during stays with Aunt Vivi). They tumbled and laughed, roared and pawed, the High King of Faerie and his little niece, hidden away in our private chambers where we could all be ourselves.

Cardan grabbed her, laughing as he playfully bit her hand that had come too close to his mouth. She grinned a toothy grin of sharp teeth in return. I was flipping through a collection of documents as they romped, but when I let myself totally focus on my work at hand, I quickly found myself ambushed by the pair, dragged to the floor until I was rollicking with the both of them, festooned with giggles.

When her mother came to pick her up, he smiled jovially but wouldn’t look at me, almost sad.

That night, when he had me in his arms, his body tight against mine as he filled every inch of me with him, he seemed almost desperate.

“…Beautiful…Enchanting…Mine…You Enchant me….Please…..PLEASE—“

And it was just before her tenth birthday, in the middle of planning an egregiously overdone palace-wide party for the now girl-child that the High King had himself insisted on, that he comes now storming into my study. He’s out of breath, his doublet missing as his chemise hangs loosely open. He’d slammed the door open as he now leans against it heaving. I move to stand up from my seat, fighting down a terror that something horrible must have happened for him to come here like this.

“Cardan? What—“

But I am cut off as he heaves himself towards me, swinging my seat around so that I must sit in it again as he gets down on his very knees in front of me and snatches up my hands in his. Grasping each one, he kisses the tops of them, runs his lips against my knuckles, before turning them over and leaves a heated kiss at the heart of each of my palms. He does not let me go.

“…Jude,” he croaks roughly.

Even after ten years….no amount of time could ever pass that could alter the affect this faerie has on me. My heart speeds in my chest as I look down at his beautifully bowed head. I have the overwhelming urge to run my fingers through his black hair, whisper to him sweetly to find out what’s wrong, but he’s got me caught with his fingers and I cannot. It claws at me.

“Jude,” he says again more steadily now, and as he looks up at me, his eyes are absolutely on fire. He is the only one I would ever let entrance me like this, and now, in this moment, I am entranced.

“What is it, Cardan?” I ask breathily.

He searches my face, and I can see him think behind his gold-rimmed eyes. As if he’s searching for the words, the right words, for whatever he’s about to say.

“Let me give you one,” he says suddenly, passionately. My eyes widen.

“What?”

“Please,” he begs.

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me give you a child. Let me give you one, Jude. I swear we could keep it safe. Since Eva was born I have thought over everything and tried more besides. And everything has worked. We could protect it, you and I. Please. Let me—“

I am stunned, listening to him ramble through what his brain has clearly been turning over repeatedly for who knows how long. Maybe since he held her when she was two weeks old. I break away one hand from his grip, his lips still moving to struggle to speak, and I place my hand along the side of his face. He stops and looks up at me with such deep longing that I am shocked when I feel something wet tumble down my cheek. Since the land was settled and we two began our reign, we have tried, together, to look at our metaphorical Armor and pick and choose what was good to keep. And what was good to throw away. Emotions have been mine. I wanted them back. And sometimes they ambush me, unused to them as I am. Like now. Right now, I am completely ambushed.

My silent tears drop to our joined hands.

“Cardan,” I whisper. A child. His name is like a prayer to me. And I am praying it now.

“Jude, I swear to you. Let us have a child of our own. One we can keep and hold forever. One we don’t have to send home after a day. One that has your beautiful face.”

“And your tail?” I choke out with a tearstained laugh. And he laughs, too- a soft thing filled with feeling as he looks up at me with ineffable hope.

“And my tail. If you like.”

There is a pause as he looks at me, eyes searching. And I look back. And with a squeeze of his hand, I bite my lip.

“I would like. I would like very much,” I say.

Suddenly it occurred to me how much I really did enjoy Eva’s visits. And also how I would often preoccupy myself with work on days she would be over. Consciously I ignored all the signs. I ignored how fully Cardan gave himself over to that child. Because I was scared. I still am scared. Terrified, even. A child! Of ours? God help this kingdom in the face of a child made from both of our flesh.

I laugh suddenly at the dangerous thought. And then Cardan is laughing with me, too. He slides his free hand beneath my thigh and begins to lift me bodily from my seat until I am sitting across his lap, our chests pressed together as he runs his hands across my back before resting his fingers behind my neck. His thumbs brushing away the tears on my cheeks.

We seem to inhale and exhale as one, our bodies stilling, when he leans over, eyes closed, and kisses my forehead. My eyes close, too, and I feel his lips there, lingering, and I dive into his arms. I bury my face against his neck, and his arms are there, circling around me, holding me, grounding me to the spot, against him, and he breathes out as if every burden he’s ever had on this earth is forever gone from him.

“Jude, Jude, Jude…” he whispers, and when I rise up again to look at him, his eyes, those beautiful gold-rimmed eyes, are there to meet and ensnare mine. And then his lips are, too. His lips are everywhere suddenly as we tumble to the floor in a fit of giggles.

“You are already ready to become a father. But I worry about my mothering. I lost mine when I was young, and Oriana wasn’t much.”

“I’ll help you,” he says, face hovering between my thighs as he shoots me a look that sends a liquid heat running through my veins. And suddenly the absurdity of Cardan, the Cruel Prince, of all people, being a better parent than me hits me like a ton of bricks and I succumb to an absolute fit of laughter. He smirks evilly at me, his brow flickering up in an enticing arch as he licks and then sinks his teeth lightly into my stomach. A mark. A presage. A promise.

“Are you sure?” I ask him, and finally, finally, I have my hand in his sinfully exquisite hair.

He nods against my hand, catlike, nuzzling my palm. “Mhmm,” he hums.

Thinking as I look into his face, I bite my lip again. “Well come here then,” I invite. Freely. Perhaps foolishly. Because now he’s on me, and we’re laughing, delighted in one another, and there is absolutely no turning back. Besides….why would we even want to? Why would we want to…when our future holds so much more than our pasts ever could.

So come to me, Cardan. “I love you,” I whisper into his ear, and I feel him shudder against me at my words. My fingers at the back of his neck.

I love you.

[toartemis]

Come on Love, Draw Your Swords - Part 7 (End)

I’m the worst and forgot to post here. Anyway, here’s the end, thank you so much for reading! <3 Read on Ao3. Here’s the complete Moon’s Serenade series.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & 4, Part 5, Part 6. 

Summary: 

Sing to me, Moonlight For you, dear, are honey-tongued I dream just for you.

Or: The one where Jude finds out she's pregnant and Cardan begins collecting a thousand plants.

Warnings: Under the cut

Word Count: 3123

Preview: 

And Jude can’t think under his stare, beneath his words. His tongue is honey, words sweet and smooth. He is the moon incarnate, and he sings just for her, serenades of sugar and spice and magic. 

Warnings: I do give a description of labor pains and being in later stages of labor in this (I felt it was necessary considering it's basically the climax before Jude has to face what she's been so anxious about since the beginning) so if you'd like to skip to the end, just stop reading at, "She forces herself not to freak out..." and begin again at, "And all at once, it’s over." 

------

When it happens, all Jude feels at first is relief. She’s never felt pain like this, no, but her thoughts aren’t of how much it hurts, they’re of just how eager she is to not be pregnant anymore, and to finally meet her baby.

It starts when she’s reading a book in their library, feet tucked up underneath her. The plush chair feels comfortable and soft until it suddenly doesn’t. There’s a slow ache in her lower back, and Jude loses her place on the page for a long moment before the pain ebbs. She makes it through a few more chapters when it comes back, harsher, scorching around to her abdomen. It rises and falls like waves, pushing and pulling, and Jude sits through it, trying her damn hardest to breathe.

She feels like the biggest fool when she realizes that it’s not just normal, everyday pain that she’s experiencing. The book clatters to the floor. Jude stands, but can’t quite straighten all the way as another contraction peaks. Panic rises in her briefly. How long has it been since they began? How far apart have they been?

Then she flips a switch and thinks through what she needs to do.

Get Cardan. Get the midwives.

Or is it the other way around?

Whichever, she doesn’t care. Jude hobbles forward and bites back a groan, waiting for the pain to leave. When it does, she stands fully, walking as calmly into the main rooms as she can manage.

Cardan should be meeting with… A general of some sort, she can’t be bothered with it at the moment. The point is, she needs him here right now or she’s really going to lose it.

Jude takes a deep breath before she wrenches the chamber doors open, startling the guards stationed outside. From the way they stare at her, she must look as horrible as she feels, because they’re momentarily stunned silent.

“Get the High King,” she says through her teeth, sweat dripping down her temple from nerves. Two guards tear off down the hallway, uncharacteristically frantic for their status. The remaining one is Mivian, to which Jude is immensely grateful. She doesn’t even have to give the order.

“I’ll sound the bell, the midwives will be on there way immediately.” Her deep voice soothes  Jude and she nods in response. She refuses to be frightened yet.

Treat it like a task, like you’re doing your part of a job.

The problem, now, though, Jude thinks when Mivian runs down the opposite end of the hall, is that she’s alone. They’ve had less and less coming to and from their chambers these last months, and really, only Jude’s personal attendants are in this specific area of the palace daily. But now the guards are gone, and the attendants are off somewhere because It’s not yet time for Jude’s first appearance of the night, the sun having just set a few hours ago.

Jude has been in the beginning stages of labor for quite a long time, and now she's without help or much of a clue of what to do.

She forces herself not to freak out and waddles back into the room.

Pain begins flaring again at some point, starting at her lower back and reaching around, pressure stealing the breath from her lungs. One hand shoots out to grip the desk next to her. It doesn’t provide much stability when she bends over it from the cramps.

Her inner thighs have begun to ache by the time she makes it into their bed in the other room. Her pelvis is heavy, as if thick stones have been placed there, weighing her down, so she sits down in a chair near the fireplace. Time passes, she doesn't know how long, but eventually she hears boots crashing against the stone floors.

Jude makes a mental note that this is one of the first times she can hear her husband approach her this clearly. He’s usually silent as a shadow.

As soon as she catches sight of him standing in the doorway, eyes wide, clothes ruffled from running, she stands abruptly.

And her water breaks. It’s not like any of the movies she’s seen when in the mortal world, with fluid splattering onto the floor. It’s more subtle, like a steady stream of water when she shifts. It’s absolutely ridiculous timing, and she will surely laugh about it later, but right now Cardan is suddenly in front of her gripping at her elbows, and the amount of discomfort she feels surely has to be written on her face.

“How are you? What can I do?”

“Fine,” she says. It’s really not that bad, yet. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

He doesn’t look convinced. In fact, he looks more out of it than she is.

The midwives arrive then, three women, two of them human, one a fey with glittering wings. They shoo Cardan out of the way, which Jude finds hilarious, because she’s the only one who gets to do that to him, usually.

It’s a waiting game after that. The labor is not as long as they told her it might be as her first time. At some point they make her get up from whatever position she is on the bed and have her walk. She really, really does not want to walk, and she tells them so.

The cluck at her, and drag a pacing Cardan to her side. He definitely winces at the grip she has on his arm, slowly leading her around their bedroom and main chambers. He tries speaking to her, but her hot anger has taken control of her at that point, and she just wants to sit down.

After, it goes quickly. She does what the midwives tell her to, and they prod and press and pull her hair out of her face. They send Cardan out of the bedroom a few times, completely uncaring in the moment about ordering the High King around. Jude adds this to the list of things she’ll find amusing later.

Dawn has come and gone by the time they prepare for her to push. And there is a quick pang of fear, one that she stamps down hard as soon as Cardan’s face is before her, taking her hand in his as they told him to.

It’s simultaneously as bad and not as bad as she thought it would be. She feels like her body is trying to rip out of its skin. Time loses meaning in those hours. Some parts are the worst thing she’s ever been through, while others she got through no problem. Jude will refuse to be held accountable for the names she called her husband during that time, and yes, she does blame him with colorful language once or twice for her current predicament. He takes it all in stride.

And all at once, it’s over.

In the middle of Spring, as the sun passes high in the clouds, Jude gives birth to her son.

He is a tiny thing with a shock of midnight black hair and what will be pale, golden skin. Jude can’t describe what she feels when they put him into her arms. She bursts into tears. She can’t help it. When she looks at him, drinking in the sight of his little, scrunched face, she feels the world click into place. It’s like she’s been living her entire life without seeing color, and suddenly a rainbow is before her. Each breath she takes feels new, as if her ribs have shifted to make room for the way her heart is singing.

His small cries fill the air, but Jude can’t even hear them. She never imagined what harboring instant, endless love would be like. She knows without a doubt that she will give everything she has in a heartbeat just to keep him safe and happy.

She struggles to tear her eyes from him, but when she does, she sees Cardan hovering near her, his gaze locked on them, and there are glittering tears on his skin. He is awestruck, barely breathing.

The midwives carefully lift her son out of her arms to clean him off, and when they bring him back, they give him to Cardan. Jude watches his hands cradle their baby like he’s afraid he’ll break. Cardan pulls him to his chest, and Jude feels another round of tears coming at the sight.

Mine. His. Ours, our baby—

The emotions flickering across his face has Jude unable to look anywhere else. The swirling ink of his eyes as he looks at their son has a star taking root in Jude’s chest, searing into her bones and marking her forever.

She feels like flying.

------

Jude sleeps until well after sunset after time spent eating and staring at her child. Really, she could stare at him forever. Just hours ago, he was in her belly, and now he’s here with her and breathing and wiggling around and Jude can’t quite wrap her head around it.

When she wakes, her hands go to her abdomen, where it’s soft and still round, just… empty. She turns her head to find Cardan there, sitting beside the bed. He wears no shirt and holds their son protectively in his arms. He’s doing nothing but staring at him, absolutely entranced.

“How will we ever decide on a name,” he whispers to Jude without looking up.

That’s right. A name. They’ve never really discussed it, always claiming they’ll know when they see the baby.

“I have no idea,” she says back, voice hoarse, limbs aching as she wipes matted hair from her face.

It takes them two days. Jude likes to think of it as the most calm argument they've ever had.

“Elios,” she suggests during her first bath after becoming a mother. Cardan pauses, their baby tucked against his shoulder.

“No, that’s not right.”

She nods in agreement.

Later, over a meal that Jude devours without manners, Cardan says, “Aarus?”

She looks up to find him staring quizzically at the tiny boy swaddled in the crib they had made for him. “Doesn’t fit,” she responds.

Before bed, he says, “I feel I’ve fully considered every possibility and none sound good enough.”

Jude smiles. “We could always name him something shockingly mortal, like Scott.”

Cardan scowls at her. Her grin widens.

“Rhyde,” she says when night falls and they wake. Both are cooing over the baby sleeping soundly beneath moonbeams.

“I detest that one,” he says, but his voice is light and singsongy. She agrees with him.

“Aegar,” he says at midnight, fingers caressing their child’s soft tan skin, poking at his adorable toes.

“That’s the ninth name with an A you’ve suggested, we’re not doing a name with an A.”

“Why, Jude?” he whines.

“Because this is my son and I said so.”

“Our son,” he murmurs, eyes on him. Butterflies erupt in her stomach.

In the end, it’s her picks. The sun has just risen, pastels mixing in the sky. The air outside is sweet and warm, and suddenly, it’s dancing on Jude’s tongue like it’s been waiting for ages.

“Faron,” she tests, staring out of the nursery window. It falls from her lips like honey.

“Faron,” Cardan repeats. She didn’t know he was listening, thinking him as lost in his thoughts as she is while he rocks the sleeping boy. “I do like that.”

She turns to him, back leaning against the wall. “Really?”

He looks to her, eyes shining. “Yes.”

------

The first weeks pass quickly, sliding through Jude’s grasp like water. She’s been too busy to really think, just basking in the knowledge that she and Cardan have a baby and they’re a family and Jude has never been so happy in her life.

Vivi and Aleena come with Oak to visit a week after Faron is born. Aleena falls in love at first sight. Vivi looks ecstatic the entire time and spends the day teasing Cardan on how much his son resembles him. Cardan is nothing but proud. Oak doesn’t care much for the fussy child, but he's pleasant company. He brightens visibly when they all talk about school and life in the mortal world.

Oriana stops by with Taryn. Cardan can’t get out of certain duties when they arrive, so it’s just Jude who greets them in one of the public gardens, reveling in the way they bow before her and her son. Oriana fawns over Faron they way she used to with Oak, and that settles something within Jude.

Taryn doesn’t say much except for complimenting Jude on the health and beauty of Faron.

Cardan strides into the clearing not long before they leave, all lithe figure and pitch black hair curling around his neck. His boots clack on the smooth stone path. He wears a billowy, dark green shirt embroidered with gold along the sleeves and chest. It complements the Blood Crown sitting haughtily on his brow. He doesn’t look at the guests.

She takes his ringed hand when he approaches, and he kisses her cheek, smiling softly. The look is gone when he turns to the others. They bow to him and exchange pleasantries.  

Cardan then takes a sleeping Faron out of Jude’s arms and walks him over to a pond home to a family of tiny singing frogs. Jude bids them all goodbye soon after, taking Taryn’s hands withing hers briefly and squeezing them. The look her sister gives her says a thousand words. Oriana gives Jude an approving nod, and it seems almost like a compliment.

She joins Cardan at the water. They stay there for some time.

------

Days later, Jude puts Faron down to sleep when it hits her.

Terror, like she hasn't felt it in weeks.

It spreads like a forest set ablaze. She doesn’t understand why it’s come on so suddenly, she’s been doing fine, Cardan has been wonderful, they’ve both spent so much time with Faron, already Jude recognizes his father in him. Things have been perfect, and her anxiety has to go and ruin it.

She steps back from the crib, arms folding across her chest. Familiar thoughts run through her mind, the biggest one standing out as if its caught fire.

You’re going to fail.

She’s there until Cardan comes back from his greenhouse, smelling of sweet candy and earth. He notices her distress right away. The coat he’s wearing drops to the floor on his way over to her. He presses against her back, arms folding around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder. Jude’s eyes stay on Faron, swaddled among many small blankets. His face is peaceful, his hair so much like what’s brushing against her neck at the moment.

There is a second where Jude feels completely at ease, her husband surrounding her, both their eyes on the baby they made. Something spreads in her chest, buttery soft and aching. She wants to keep it there forever.

“What’s the matter?” Cardan speaks against her cheek, quiet. Jude takes a moment, wrestling with herself.

“The same,” she relents. Cardan hums.

“You think of yourself as lacking, when your entire life you have only proved that you’re able to do anything. It’s perplexing to witness.” He presses a kiss to her jaw.

“I don’t even know how I got here. I don’t know how I’ve accomplished what I have.”

“I suppose ambition can be blinding,” he says, tone nonchalant.

Jude smiles. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes. You don’t recognize that when you are determined, you will not stop until you’ve reached your goal, no matter what it is. You’ve never let yourself fail before, so why do you think you will now?”

She mulls it over, then whispers, “I don’t know.”

Cardan uncurls himself from her, stepping around to face her directly. Faron still sleeps soundly. For a moment, her husband simply looks at her, eye flicking across her skin. His brow furrows, a small frown on his mouth.

“Jude,” he says, her name on his lips sounds like a promise. “You have no idea of the power you hold.”

It washes over her like a caress.

“It is all around you, in the air when you enter a room. No one can mistake it. It is everything you are: Your ferocity, the way you accomplish things purely out of spite, the sheer will you have that could end all other wills. I admire you more than I can hope to describe.”

Her heartbeat flutters. Jude doesn’t know what to say, so she keeps quiet, her gaze held within his.

“It is what captivated me, back then. You were like a force, and I ran from you as I did everything else. I used to tell myself I was weak while I was under your command because I couldn’t help myself. Each time I took one step closer to you, I would stumble farther than I intended. So long I spent dancing within your shadow, fearing that you would notice. And then fear became longing.” His fingers graze over her cheek, his eyes deep and far away.

“I committed everything to memory, frightened I would lose you. The way you move, the way you breathe.”  His thumb sweeps over her bottom lip. ”The look in your eyes the first time we were together.” He looks caught in a dream. Jude shudders, tingles running down her spine.

“I was tired of playing our games long before I realized. I wanted you so badly, for everything you were. Everything you are now.”

Jude swallows thickly. Cardan smiles to himself, eyes closing. When he opens them, Jude’s breath hitches.

“Sometimes, you look at me and I feel raw, like I’m missing my skin.” He drops his hand to his side. “Like my ribs have cracked open, and I hold my heart in my hands, baring every cruel and horrible thought I’ve ever had for your gaze.”

And Jude can’t think under his stare, beneath his words. His tongue is honey, words sweet and smooth. He is the moon incarnate, and he sings just for her, serenades of sugar and spice and magic.

Jude has nothing to say to him that could compare, but she knows that he won’t mind. He isn’t looking for that. So she reaches for him, hands brushing against his jaw, thumbs stroking against marble skin. And she tries, she tries so hard to pour everything she feels out through her eyes, and she says, “You are everything.”

She kisses him softly on the mouth, feels the thrum of life and power that radiates from his skin.

“I dream just for you.”

And it’s enough. It’s more than enough, because he understands, and he always will.

[wanderingpages]

All Human, Rockstar AU (Part 6). Cardan is in a band on the cusp of fame, and Jude has been there from the start. They fall fast and hard, but sometimes love just isn’t enough.

Trigger Warnings: Language, Sex, Drugs, Death (and the word ‘cunt’ sometimes I guess.)

Prologue, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 ∞ Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13

∞

Cardan’s POV

Waiting Game - Banks

“I think you’ve killed me.” Jude laughs at me and I try to find it in me to get off of her. I stand up, fixing my pants then offering her my hand. She looks confused before she hesitantly places her palm in mine. I pull her up and lead her to the bathroom.

“My legs feel like jelly,” she confesses quietly. If her legs feel like jelly my entire body is liquid.

“Are you okay?” I place her on the closed lid of the toilet and she watches me with bright eyes. Her cheeks are tempered a light pink, flushed. I lick at my lips as I find a washcloth and run it under the faucet.  “Do you… regret that?”

Her wide eyes meet mine in astonishment, “No. Not at all. I just didn’t think I had that in me.” She gives me a small smile, “I think I’m in shock or something. I really just want you to hold me,” she tells me, eyes darting away from mine. I wring the cloth before I kneel in front of her. I take her chin between my fingers, guiding her gaze back to me.

“I will,” I promise her. I pull her face towards me and kiss her gently. I’ve read enough of Liliver’s favorite books to know what my girl needs right now. And I get it, because I need that too. I need to hold her and let her know that was intense as hell, and maybe a bit rough, but we can come back from that.

“I don’t want to seem needy,” she confesses against my lips.

I pull her bottom lip between my teeth and she giggles when I pull back. I take the cloth against her chest, wiping the mess from her. A real small part of me is embarrassed I practically marked her, but a much bigger part of me is quite shameless. She wanted this; asked for this, and her wanton face, eyes bright with lust, chest heaving from a come down, skin glistening with a sheen of sweat – I wanted nothing more than to please her. “You’re not needy, Jude.” I kiss her again, “Now be quiet and let me take care of you.” She snorts and bats at my shoulder, but then leans back and lets me clean her.

It’s not much later that her clothes are back on and she’s lying beside me, head to my chest and my hand on her back. Her arm is thrown over my stomach, our legs tangle above the covers and she’s fast asleep as I play with her hair, catching strands of light and dark brown between my fingers. It’s too perfect so I although I’m not surprised it has to come to an end, I’m still peeved not an hour later when there’s a knocking at the door. It’s my sister and our time is up.

Jude’s so sleepy and groggy and when she smiles at me, I feel something fissure in my chest. I nearly keep her in the bed, just under me. It’s stupid but I want her to stay with me. Be my permanent plus one, but I can’t hinder the rest of her summer, especially when schools starting back up in a few weeks and all her attention has to be on her senior year and getting into film school. I’m selfish, but not so much so.

“Call me,” I tell her when she grabs her camera. She does something to the screen and then I’m so startled by the flash, it takes me a moment to realize she’s taken a picture. I laugh, “Is it weird that I forgot it could take pictures?”

She grins, “Seeing as videotaping what just happened is mostly frowned upon, I figured I wanna remember today like this. Sleepy-faced and soft.”

I walk her to the door, pulling her chin up for me to kiss her. “We can come back to the whole…home movie thing later, baby.”

She opens the door, Caelia waiting with a huge knowing grin. I narrow my eyes at her, but she shrugs me off. “Night, Rockstar,” Jude calls, before leaving.

Larkin opens his door from across mine and Liliver and Van open theirs adjacent. “Night Jude,” they call out like they’re Charlie’s Angels. I can’t muster up the annoyance I should feel because Jude is blushing bright red and my sister is laughing so hard tears run down her cheeks.

“Oh my god,” Jude mutters, hiding her face as she walks to the elevators.

I’m somewhere fluctuating between a high and a low days later; texts and phone calls seem ill-compared when I’ve held her in my arms.  I’m pocketing my phone, after reading through a message from Jude, when I finally manage to corner Larkin – the bastard’s been avoiding me since Caelia left. I narrow my eyes and block his exit in the small booth in our tour bus when he goes to leave. He gives me a grin and sits back down. My eyes narrow as I take the seat in front of him. “What’s up with you and my sister?”

“Elowyn? I don’t know, she’s kind of scary in a CEO type of way but -”

“Not El.” I cross my arms over my chest, scowling at him.

“Pretty sure Rhyia doesn’t swing that way…”

“Larkin…”

He sighs, giving up his charade. His entire face drops and it makes me feel off. Larkin is my best friend, but Caelia is my favorite sister. He brushes hair out of his eyes. He’s always been a natural blonde, but as of late, he’s taken to bleaching it lighter. His eyes were always more brown to me, it’s so strange to see how much green is prominent now. Liliver has said something about the gold undertones in his hair bringing out the flecks of green or some nonsense before trying to convince me to dye my hair some neon color that most definitely clashes with my very non-neon personality. Larkin looks at me like the same thought is crossing his mind because he tweaks a curl, pulling it taught by my forehead and says, “I think a little cinnamon roll streak of red would look nice.”

“Larkin.”

He looks upwards in defeat. “I don’t know. I like her, a lot, but it doesn’t feel right. It feels like she thinks we’re getting big now, you know, and I'm gonna do whatever I want, or whoever I want, and she keeps pushing me that way, like she’d be alright if I do that shit. I don’t like the attitude.” My eyes widen. Cae said that shit? “I would never cheat on her, or anyone. But she’s so insistent that it’s going to happen that she’s trying to forgive me before I can even make that mistake. It’s unnerving Cardan. It feels like there’s no trust and I don’t know if I can go on trying to convince her I'm not like that.”

I take a seat in front of him at the little nook in the tour bus. “But before we left, you…?”

“Yeah I said something about groupies. I don’t know, I was angry and trying to get into that mindset she was pushing on to me. She said, ‘what if the way we started made it something cursed from the start?’ What the fuck does that mean? I had no idea where we stood then and I’m even more confused now. Cardan, that first girl to show any interest in us as rockstars – it just didn’t feel right. I see the way DeathSweet treats their…girls? Groupies? I don’t know, but I don’t want to go down that path.”

I definitely don’t dispute that, but still, I press, “When she left with Jude, you guys seemed to be in a happier mood,” I note.

He shrugs, “She didn’t mention any of that bullshit, but I figure it was because she didn’t have the time to. It was nice, Cardan. It felt normal. She ran into my arms and she was all I fucking saw.”

“Then why are you avoiding me?”

“Because I love you, you dork. And your sister confuses me. And you confuse me. I don’t know, I’m a fucking mess. Not to mention hanging out with DeathSweet has seriously given me a complex.”

“What do you mean?” He opens his mouth to answer me but he never gets to respond.

Liliver takes that moment to squeeze in beside me, Van, sleepily following, sitting next to Larkin. “Hey,” she says after a yawn, “Morning.”

“Morning,” I sigh, giving Larkin a look, hoping it conveys that we’ll be finishing this conversation later.

“Did you get Randalin’s e-mail?”

That brings me straight out of my stupor over the lack of Jude and whatever weird shit is going on with Caelia and Larkin. I actually wince. Randalin, our manager, yes, but I’ve been filing all his emails in the spam folder lately. Sure, his advice is much needed, but sometimes it seems like he owns us more than manages us. Van and I are still not his biggest fans. “What did he want?”

“He wants us to record our first single at the next stop. He rented out studio time and somehow managed somehow, to get Roiben Rye to coproduce it. Even though Roiben hates him.”

“What!?” Larkin is nearly out of his seat, “Holy shit, what?”

“I guess Randalin’s is kind of okay after all,” I muse.

Van makes a dismissive sound. “let’s not go that far.”

“I wonder how much money he dropped on Roiben,” Liliver snorts.

“How much groveling that small man did. I don’t know if I respect the grind or am immensely embarrassed,” I admit. Of course, no tabloid will ever know the real falling out between Stepping Razors, Roiben Rye and Randalin, but I’m always inclined to believe dear Randy did something slimy and Roiben stepped in due to his connection with Stepping Razor’s lead singer’s daughter. But even then, Roiben and his now girlfriend, Kaye, are seriously reclusive – the most anyone has ever seen of them is when they grace fashion week photos in Blusher Magazine. He’s such a silent enigma, that no one would realize he’s produced every single song on the top 10 for this month alone, unless they were to check credits.

“Holy fuck,” Larkin says. “This is unreal.”

It’s only a day later that we polish up a song we’ve already performed countless times, then even managed to record a couple more songs with our remaining few hours at the studio. Roiben is every bit as amazing as he is scary, but his work ethic is impeccable. He comments on our EP and takes one of the songs that had supposedly been doing great on the charts and remasters it for us. whatever problems he has with Randalin is never mentioned. “My girlfriend loves this one,” he told us right before playing his version of it, keeping our vocals, but changing the rhythm just a bit. It’s more polished by the time it’s done and it’s one of our favorites, we push into the list of three that we debate on releasing as singles.

To say we’re running on a high is an understatement. To commiserate, Larkin takes us to a tattoo and piercing place just a few days after, Randalin signing off as Liliver and I’s temporary guardian, saying something about it being good promo or the likes. We end up getting a small silhouette of a snake on the sides of our thumbs. It’s kind of cute. Liliver takes a photo and posts it to our band page.

Hours later, I see Jude’s name on my phone and I grin.

Jude: Love a man with ink

Cardan: what if I got a piercing

Jude: be still my beating heart

Cardan: where do you want it?

Jude: I dunno…

Jude: anywhere I can play with it?

An hour later I send her a picture of my tongue.

Jude: Holy shit

Jude: Cardan

Jude: I am…blushing for some reason.

Cardan: You're blushing cus you’re a perv

Jude: Am not!

Cardan: so are.

Cardan: but you’re my perv.

Jude: I…don’t like you.

I laugh watching Van squirm from the needle going into Larkin’s lip. “I feel sick.”

“Look away,” Liliver suggests when she comes into the shop holding a rainbow snow cone for me.

“I can’t,” Van frowns, sweat beading at his forehead. I stick my sore tongue into the cold treat, unabashedly thinking of Jude and how she tasted of ice cream as I tried her mouth, and strawberries when I licked at her skin.

“Hmm, I think I want a piercing, too.”

Van shudders, glancing at his girlfriend, “Good luck, you sicko.” She laughs and finds a lady at the front to do her piercing.

While Liliver is in the back, Larkin gives us a smoldering look, “How do I look, big boys?”

I give Van a look, shrugging just a bit, “I don’t know Van…I think he kind of looks like a rock star.”

Van nods, mouth pursed like he’s thinking about it, “Yeah, I think he does. He looks like a rock star.” Moments later, Van adhered to peer pressure, but instead of getting a piercing like the rest of us, he gets a line in script across his clavicle. Do I think it’s stupid he’s got a tattoo in lieu of Liliver? Kind of. But I can’t see them without each other in the near or distant future, so I don’t comment.

The first person who calls me when the single releases right at the end of the tour around mid-September, is Jude. I just can’t answer her because we’re on stage. I manage a call right before Locke and his team decide they want to celebrate with us. “Hey baby,” I say.

“Hey, I heard your song on the radio today, on my way to school.” I grin, feeling my chest constrict. “I’m so proud of you all. I think…crazy enough, Taryn has my reaction recorded.”

“Send it to me,” I plead. “I don’t have much time, but I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“Okay, later, Rockstar.”

Locke orders a couple of the most expensive bottles of liquor he can and serves it to us even though we’re all very much underage. We get tipsy anyway, laughing and joking and over all just so giddy. Liliver says something ridiculous, I can’t recall but I know it garners my tongue sticking out at her.

“Oh my,” the girl beside me says, “I like the ring,” she grins. I smile back at her and she calls for a toast, “To piercings,” she winks at me. The night is mostly a blur of interacting with people Randalin sends our way, from scary looking dudes to pretty girls, all with the intent to make connections. I’m too wasted to roll my eyes at his little LinkedIn convention he thinks he’s throwing. Still, the people aren’t as snobby as I expect. DeathSweet even introduces us to labels, Nicasia tags us in all her photos of the night – apparently, she’s a really big deal – did Locke ever say she needed them for clout? Because she has just as much followers as him, bordering on just a bit more.

Hell, even Roiben takes time out of his secretive life to comment a congratulations for us. We’re on another orbit but god, what I’d do to have Jude with me.

It’s close to dawn and we’re stumbling back to the hotel, all of us stupidly wasted. Larkin has to help me with the keycard and then Liliver and Van stumble in after us. I don’t know where the three of them end up but I plop down face first on the bed, wiggling in my jeans for my phone. I squint to see Jude’s name and hit the call button. She doesn’t answer, and I realize why when I check the time on my phone. I see a missed message from and unknown number I quickly realize is Taryn, Jude’s twin sister. It’s the video of Jude taken from the viewpoint of the back seat.

I grin like an idiot, watching her like we’re not two thousand and change miles apart. A girl with pink hair is driving – I vaguely recall her from Val’s bar – and Jude is in the passenger side. They’re talking nonsensically about school and people I don’t know. Jude’s got her hair in a messy knot at the side of her neck, and she’s got her visor down, carefully applying mascara to her lashes.

She pauses, a tilt to her head, eyebrows wrinkled in the middle. “Wait,” she says, “Turn that up?” the pink haired girl obliges, pressing a button on her steering wheel a few times. “Is that…” Her eyes go comically wide before a huge grin breaks out on her face.

“Whoa,” Taryn says off camera, “Damn Jude, you tryna blind me with those pearly whites?”

“Guys! This is Larkin! He’s singing!”

“Larkin?” the pink hair girl asks, head bobbing to the music as she makes a turn at a light.

“Her rockstar’s front man, Heather” Taryn explains.

“Oh,” Heather exclaims, “Serpent Gold! Ooh girl,” She looks to Jude, “He’s about to be everyone’s rockstar, not just yours.” The video cuts there, and I frown.

I go back to Jude’s name and type out a text.

Cardan: Only your rockstar.

Jude responds hours later when we’re all suffering from massive headaches. I nearly vomit when I read over the text.

Jude: You sure?

Jude: [link]

“What’s wrong?” Larkin plops down beside me, groaning as he hits the pillows. He had fallen asleep on the floor. Van and Liliver, in the bathroom, taking turns on either sleeping or puking.

I hand him my phone wordlessly. It takes him a minute to read the text after I try to explain my train of thought last night. He frowns and presses the link for me. “Shit,” he mumbles.

“What did I do?”

“Nothing – because I was there, and I saw everything…but the way it looks…” he sighs and hands me the phone. “Maybe this is what Cae meant,” he mumbles, stuffing his face into the pillow. “You should call her.”

I check the link, it’s a photo that’s mostly dark, but shows all of us at the party from last night. I spot myself all too clearly just at the side of the photo, my hand at a woman’s hip, my head bent down to hear her. It looks intimate. The headline is generic, something about both bands celebrating the end of tour and our debut single, but I can’t stop staring at myself feeling sick beyond the hangover. I know telling Jude it’s not what it looks like is probably the dumbest thing I can do. But I send it anyway. She reads my message but doesn’t respond back.

I’m pulling at my hair and barely taking in my surroundings as we’re headed to the airport later that day. I’ve gone through the motions of thinking maybe she’s over reacting, spending all that time with my sister and her sudden toxic mindset about what my job entails. Then I’m beating myself up again because I’d be pissed seeing a picture like that of Jude – regardless of what I know and what I think; it just looks really fucking bad.

Cardan: Please answer me.

Cardan: Jude, you know I’m not like that.

Cardan: About to head on the plane, please answer when I call.

A hand at my shoulder causes me to jump. It’s Nicasia. Her and Valerian are headed in the opposite terminal, but we ended up all driving together. “Girl problems, Rockstar?” I cringe, not liking how that name rolls off her tongue, not liking it that night at the concert and not liking it now. It’s like she only does it to gauge my reaction, not because it means anything to her. “Hey, if she can’t handle the life, its best you kick her out of it.” She gives me a wink before waving and catching up with Valerian. 

∞

@cute898, @monawa, @afexiss, @somebodysqueen, @nish247, @andromeddea, @avenrebekah, @gamer670, @daddycardan, @outofstyles13, @vi0let-femmes, @babyillyrian @queenofdorkville, @courtofmadness, @queengreenbriar, @stormymeow,@goldbooksblack, @littlemergirl4779, @lalunaswhisperer, @archerons-arrow, @illyrianundercover, @atla-lok143, @fangirlinghard-spoilerson, @soup-that-is-too-hawt, @3am-reading, @tangledraysofsunshine, @readmeaway, @gently-say-aha, @breezyfreezey, @soup-that-is-too-hawt, @fi-fi-firefly, @alongwiththewindd, @an-teo520, @dracolovelaceisinlove, @sleeping-and-books, @city-of-fae, @inejghxfaa, @franticlittlegeek, @darlingod, @ame233, @feysand-dot-acotar, @l0sts0uls1128, @tswaney17, @shadesoflondonxoxo, @rapunzel1523, @hoegreenbrair, @lost0nline, @vera0124, @afexiss, @pala-done, @blackbirdswords , @sjmsstuff, @tintinnabulary, @flashytrashy, @the-unicornspoop, @books-and-sleep, @cailleach-na-speirtha, @acourtofstudyingandsuffering, @nitrot150, @foundtheavacados, @justccstuff, @goawayi-mreading, @kickassunicorn, @hoegreenbrair, @sjmsstuff, @feelthismom3nt-blog, @feeoly, @faefromthenorth, @queenofxhearts, @lovemollywho, @velarian-trash, @tessas-herondales, @alissa-kirk, @sophiespievak, @galllatea, @georgialeighc13, @clockworkgraystairs, @pilesofriles, @queentearss, @mustangsally913, @pilesofriles, @fangirlforever0704, @dayanna-hatter, @empress-ofbloodshed, @izou1204, @tintinnabulary, @13luecloud, @furiousflowerponypizza, @bamchickawowow, @ireallyshouldsleeprn, @hizqueen4life, @thebookish-fangirl, @judehatescardan, @cardanslittletail, @burninjurdan, @rowaelin-percabeth, @amapformyjourney, @ghostlyrose2, @nephilimlove, @judexcardanxgreenbriar, @charincharge, @flowersinvegas, @selcouthdream, @lizzzziebear, @sleepybabything, @ysitsohardtofindaname, @lahistoriaquenoteconte, @blackjacks-donuts, @sincerelymetoyou, @brit-alltoowell, @poeticbrownmermaid, @aelin-queen-of-terrasen, @flamingliterature, @whatafuckingbabe, @thesirenwashere, @drewstarkeyobx, @dorkzrul, @an-ironic-pisces, @sluttyskeletonss, @ironic-noodles, @ireallyshouldsleeprn, @kittkatandbooboo, @superrfk, @infinite-cats, @highlady17, @gloriouspaintercreatorbandit, @suchaspeciallittlesnowflake, @mar2203, @ireallyshouldsleeprn, @mis-lil-red, @clockworkgraystairs, @pig-on-acid, @owl0y0s, @sanctalina, @cardan-s-tail, @st00pid231, @courtofjurdan, @booksofthemoon, @sarcasticsagittarius1998, @elriel4life

[daddycardan]

I have a mighty need for Jurdan hc when Jude is pregnant and Cardan gets super P R O T E C T I V E!!!

I loVE this idea SO much, and I’ve actually finished this hc a little while ago, but I didn’t feel entirely sure about it, so I just waited, but now I feel like it’s ready so here you go!!

when Jude thought Cardan was obsessive

she didn’t realize that she was just scratching the surface of Cardan’s deep emotional ocean

she was only two months pregnant

her belly only slightly swollen

when she wore a looser gown it didn’t even show

but Cardan acted as though she could go into labour at any given moment

every time Jude sat down, sighed, rubbed her forehead or basically just... existed

Cardan gave her a wary look and quietly asked

“How do you feel?”

or

“Did he kick?”

or

“Is he coming already?”

Jude rolled her eyes and answered him, trying to keep her voice calm

“Cardan, I know it’s hard, but please try to comprehend the fact that the baby is not coming for at least another seven months.”

“He might just be early,” Cardan replied, slightly offended

Jude actually found it really funny that he doesn’t seem to understand the nature of a pregnancy

she tried to explain things to him

but he stubbornly stuck to his own little beliefs and assumptions

for example, he firmly believed that the baby is already fully developed inside Jude’s womb but is just really tiny

and that he hears and understands everything they are saying

“We need to stop talking dirty lest he should pick it up,” he whispered to Jude one time when they were lying in bed

“Cardan, he can’t hear and most certainly cannot understand us at this stage. He probably doesn’t even have his ears fully grown yet.”

Cardan just frowned, as if what Jude wasn’t making any sense

their sex life changed too

eventhough the pregnant Jude turned him on like nothing else, it also turned him so very cautious, that he hardly even dared to touch her

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Cardan, just put it in!”

“But wait, what if it hurts the baby? He cannot—”

“It’s not gonna hurt the baby, but it HURTS ME THAT YOU DON’T DO IT!”

but Cardan wasn’t just protecting Jude from himself

he protected her from literally everything and everyone

she wasn’t allowed to practice weaponry and spycraft anymore

because it’s too “dangerous”

“Put that sword down, riGhT nOw, Jude!”

people were not allowed to touch or approach her

because it would disturb her and the baby

“Hey, you! Why are you looking at my wife? Are you trying to harm my family?”

Cardan made sure that Jude never stays alone, not for one second

“Cardan, I’m just trying to pee, could you get out?”

“I’m just standing here, don’t mind me.”

it’s hard to be pregnant and be the Queen of Elfhame at the same time

sometimes, in the middle of an audience or a conference she feels like fainting or throwing up

she gets morning sicknesses regularly, and her swollen breasts are hurting

it would be a really hard thing to go through alone

and Jude is grateful for Cardan for all his efforts, despite his occasional stupidity

she understands why Cardan is so excited

he’s never had a real family

a family that he could truly call his own

a family that would love him

and now is his chance to get one

and recently, Jude noticed one thing

when they are lying in bed in the middle of the night

and Cardan thinks she is asleep

sometimes she hears him whispering

at first, she thought that he is talking in his sleep

but then

she realized he is talking to—

the baby

so she lies there, without revealing herself, and just listens to it

when he thinks that only his son can hear it, Cardan talks about his feelings

he tells him how excited he is and how much he loves him already

he tells stories

and memories

and when Cardan falls silent, he listens to his son’s answer in his imagination