#holly black

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.

Had to add Jude!

people who think faeriesare the same as fairies(derogatory)

Jude Duarte from The Folk of the Air series by Holly Black, I almost gave up this fanart cause I didn’t like the colors but HEY never give up right? I ended up really liking the result, what do you think?

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse” - Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

I know we poke fun a lot at men writing women (and often with GOOD reason) but I’d just like to take a moment to look at women writing men:

• Muscles for days. It doesn’t matter if he’s sixteen and is a band kid whose hobby is skipping PE, if he’s a love interest, that boy has a six pack for some reason. Every man is lean but muscular and always have that perfect V. Six packs are free and you can see them through every and any tshirt.
• Always tall. Like, we can never honor a 5"5 King. Every dude is like 6 feet plus. Even when the woman is tall, the guy is always taller.
• He’s always so much bigger and his hands always dwarf hers. Like, every man has hands the size of dinner plates.
• Penises are always like 8(+) inches. He’s always the biggest she’s ever had and he is a Sex God, where he was a virgin or a vampire with a love life that dates back into the 1500s. He will make her cum 26 times, often with words alone.
• He’s the most poetic fucker you’ve ever met, even if he’s never read a book or watched a romance in his life. He’s going to spout out how she is the last star in a galaxy of loneliness that lights the sole path to his salvation. He’s gonna freelance that shit like it’s nothing.
• He will automatically never find anyone else attractive ever again, even platonically and if he does, he will compare them to the love interest in a way that makes her better. “Joanne had nice eyes. Not like Kelly’s eyes though, which were emeralds polished to a shine that made him think of summer and the fondest of childhood memories in the forest under a sky of jade leaves. Joanne’s were, like, ordinary blue or brown or something.”
• He always smells like things that you don’t even know had a smell. “He smelled like sunlight and cloudless blue skies, of cool winter frost and magic sex musk”
• He’s a douchebag to everyone but the love interest. She makes him a better man. (Ah, the good old “I can fix him” mentality in motion)
• He can eat cupcakes, pizza and beer for breakfast every day of his life and he will never have an extra ounce of flesh anywhere.
• He will randomly quote Shakespeare or Charles Dickens or, I dunno, Julius Caesar
• He always thinks her vagina tastes like rose petals and peaches and strawberry milkshakes
• He is constantly witty and charming and every women who seems him thirsts for him and his six pack and 12 inch schlong but only Kelly will ever catch his eyes and he has never loved anyone as much as he loves her. All other women can catch fire including his mom and he probably wouldn’t notice if it meant one last kiss from Kelly.

I really, really despise all the posts where Jude casually beats on, threatens, or injures Cardan like it’s supposed to be funny or charming??

If it was the other way around, people would be proclaiming abuse from the roof tops. I hate the double standard.

Jude and Cardan have enough issues in canon, enough toxicity in their pasts, without people adding casual abuse thinking it’s funny.

Cardan: *panicking* Jude! You’re bleeding!

Jude: *completely calm* Don’t worry, it’s not my blood.

I’ve been working on my bookshelves, getting them reorganized. 2 of them are done-ish, just 3 more to go

I wrote a review of Holly Black’s spellbinding novel, ‘The Cruel Prince’. Read it here.

Throughout all my time as a reader, I have found just a few writers that seem to have almost a mystical prowess; that grab their readers attention immediately, and hold them in a trance from the beginning to the end of their novels. Among these spell-casters, Holly Black stands out as one of the best. I’ve raved over every Holly Black book I’ve ever picked up. I read ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’…

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I just read the excerpt of The Wicked King and I am hyperventilating omg

Gahh Holly don’t do this to me I can’t wait for this long

Also the cover looks finneee; I love it

Jude Duarte Reference Sheet for Artists

(Requested by anon. I hope I didn’t miss anything)

(Spoilers!)

General feautures:

• Chestnut brown hair

• Heart shaped face

• Missing the tip of her left ring finger

• Tall, wide hips, heavy breasts (in relation to Vivi)

Additional Details:

• Wears a hidden necklace of dried rowan berries (for a while)

• Oftentimes has one or more knives strapped under her clothes or in her pockets

• Wears a glove to hide her hand when it was wounded

Her outfits:

1. Hair braided in a style that resembles horns, dressed in sapphire velvet

2. General everyday wear: Grey leather boots and a tunic with Madoc’s crest (a dagger & a crescent moon like a cup with a single drop of blood falling from one corner) embroidered in silk thread, braided hair with hairpins (golden, with a tiny cluster of filigree hawthorn berries at the top)

3. Human clothes: Jeans, an old gray sweater with a black star on it, a pair of glittery silver Converse high-tops, a slouchy knitted hat

4. A slightly padded tunic stitched with metallic thread in the pattern of Madoc’s crest

5. A long black dress with gold cuffs and a lacing of green braid, mint and black polka dotted underwear

6. Disguise: A servant’s dress, old leather slippers with a badly patched up hole at the toe, a thick velvet cloak, hair im a rough braid

7. A blue silk dress

8. Only in design, never worn: A dark blue velvet dress, a corset with two golden beetles stitched like a breastplate, Madoc’s crest and elaborate swirls of shining thread down the front, tiny sheer drop sleeves of more gold

9. A dress stitched with the silhouette of dancing fauns as tall as the skirt, hair braided like a crown

10. A velvet doublet (+pants and boots)

11. An ombré ball gown (white to pale blue to indigo from top to bottom), stitched with the stark outline of trees and beads to represent stars, dark blue silk gloves, a choker

12. A bottle-green gown, earrings the shape of berries