M for mildly Mature, read at your own risk! Jude/Cardan Drabble from the Cruel Prince by Holly Black
—
She sees him only in glimpses. A black coat striding around the corner. A distant form on a cantering stallion, stiff and tall. Long, thin fingers curled around a blood-red glass. A flash of pointed teeth.
He lounges on the throne, his boots up, as she entertains a messenger from the Unseelie. He slaps an ambassador for no reason at all, and then sits back to let Jude clean up the mess. He comes drunk to his first feast and, laughing, yanks the tablecloth. The plates and glasses shatter like ice across the marble palace floor.
He has a nixie on his lap when Jude tries to discuss trade with him. Jude ignores the sucking sounds of the nixie kissing his neck as she rattles off the benefits and negatives of possible deals, coolly looking at him as she gives him the various options.
“Do what you want,” he says, slicing the nixie’s dress off with a casual flick of his dagger.
Jude laughs drily. “I wasn’t asking your opinion. I was informing you of mine.”
His hand slips between the nixie’s thighs, and Jude doesn’t react. He says, “Tell me, have you had any contact with Madoc?”
The nixie moans, and he watches Jude, searching for a reaction. She doesn’t give one.
She tells him about her father while he fucks the nixie with his fingers until the nixie squeals and falls back. Jude watches, refusing to give in. He wants her to order him to stop, but Jude hasn’t given him an order since the coronation.
He wants her to leave, but Jude won’t give him the satisfaction of driving her away. This is her palace. For a year and a day.
When she finally leaves, the nixie is gone, and he has heard everything she has done in his name. Every ruling she has made. She leaves when she is good and ready.
—
She fights his knights in the mornings, training. They beat her most mornings, leave her with bruises and stronger muscles. Slowly, she improves. She is faster. She is more instinctual. Her muscles begin to remember battles she hasn’t yet won.
She wakes up angry one morning.
The knight is red-haired and lithe, a scar across his cheek. She doesn’t know his name. He almost knocks her to the ground, but she flips. He isn’t ready. Their swords clash, and he slips past her defenses, nicking her arm.
She gets angrier.
Her sword is a blur, parrying and sliding in, slicing his collarbone. They keep fighting. The knight overcompensates, and she slides into his space. She smashes her forehead in his nose, smashing it. Her knee comes up into his groin. He crumples. She steps on his sword hand, forcing it flat.
He gasps up at her, sputtering, as her own sword comes to rest between the knight’s watery eyes.
She looks up, sees him standing in the door. His black eyes are wide, his lips slightly parted as he stares at her. He feels a sort of fear, she can see. But there is something else in his face, something wild.
He turns away, disappears back into the castle they share.
—
He tries to provoke her. He enjoys getting under her skin. He fucks in front of her. He offers her faerie food, and then bites into it so that she watches the red juices run down his lips.
He begins inviting Taryn and Locke to the castle, partying with them. Taryn gets too drunk on faerie fruit while Locke watches.
Jude is forced to send Taryn home. She is spinning and skipping and somehow still in it enough to hurl insults. Locke follows, laughing. Jude stands at the door, to angry to show her anxiety as her sister disappears into the night.
She turns back, her mouth open, and she can see the gleam in his eyes.
He wants her to give him an order. He sees she is about to, and the smirk is already forming.
She understands, for the first time, how power makes you powerless. This time, he has nothing to lose. This time, she has the power.
And to use it would be to let him win.
To use it would mean he had power over her.
—
She is tired. Everything went wrong that day. There were a thousand problems, a thousand complaints. Everybody wants her energy, her decisions, her guidance, and nobody likes what they hear.
She needs him to sign a contract, and cannot find him in the cellars where he likes to get plastered or the parlors where he lounges and breaks things. She knocks on his door.
“Come in,” he says.
He is standing in the window, naked. There is nothing intimate about his nakedness. He is too chiseled, to perfectly, smoothly pale. Like a statue that feels no touch. He looks cold.
He is smirking by the time her eyes reach his face, satisfied with the hesitation in her step, the way she loses her train of thought.
His smirk burns her. She is too tired for these games.
“Can you sign this?” she asks.
He walks towards her, takes the contract without touching her hand and places it against the wall. He bites his thumb and slices the skin, signing his name with a swirl of his bloody thumb.
He grabs her chin harshly. “You’re a mess today.” He lets go, leaving a smear of blood. His fingers weren’t cold at all. They burn her skin. “Look at you,” he says harshly. “Worn out already. Mortals don’t have the stamina. But you wanted to rule, and rule you do.” He laughs. “Oh, what they say about you when you can’t hear. And what they say to your face.” He chuckles slightly. “This is what you asked for, Jude.”
She stiffens, and her body brushes against him. She jerks back, but he is still there, in her space.
“Pathetic, they call you. Weak.”
They don’t call her weak. They call her Kingmaker. She knows this, but in his voice, it feels true. She feels weak. She is going to order him–
“Hopeless,” he adds.
– she is going to make him obey, make him shut up, she isn’t weak, “I’m not weak. I have power over you,” and oh he gleams. To verbalize the threat was a display of weakness, and she knows it.
She will order him to be quiet, she won’t let him speak for a week. She will, she will, she opens her mouth. She orders, “Kiss me.”
His eyes are feral as he moves in, joyful and violent. His lips touch hers. She has lost.
Sorry I’ve been so inactive lately here’s s Cardan And Jude! I can’t seem to make cardan look young enough, his face is constantly shifting in my mind ugh
Finally done with my chibis of Cardan and Jude! I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I put so much effort into their clothes and hair. I know this isn’t the hairstyle she wore with this dress, but it was so iconic for her I just had to draw it.
You can buy prints and stickers of this at my RedBubble!
cardan has such a way with words like my sweet villian, my darling god??? my dearest punishment??? if ure the sickness i suppose u can’t also be the cure??? come home and shout at me. come home and fight with me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home??? BY YOU I AM FOREVER UNDONE?!?!?!!??!
