A/N:I’m so sorry this is a week late y'all. It’s a big chapter and I didn’t want to rush it!
***
There was a saying in the mortal realms that Cardan had heard from an indentured servant once—when the cat’s away, the mice will play. The first time he had heard it, he’d wanted to know what happened to the cat. While the mice were playing and basking in their newfound freedom—where had the cat gone? It was something that he’d puzzled over, idly, wondering what had drawn the cat out.
As he leapt from Jude’s balcony to the neighbouring tree, Cardan thought he might know.
When Jude’s away, the cat gets bored and decides to explore, he remarked wryly, inching his way down the trunk. He may or may not have fallen the last metre, but a quick glance around told him there had been no witnesses to his disgrace.
Jude kept her bedroom door closed at all times, and locked for good measure. It was a good policy to ensure privacy, certainly, but it did nothing to quell Cardan’s boredom. And while her balcony door was left open for him during the days, there was only so much lazing in the sun he could do before he started pulling his hair out.
He had resisted snooping thus far, but he had limits, and as boredom grew and curiosity burned, Cardan found that the line of what was proper and polite as a guest in this house was growing increasingly blurred.
So, in order to occupy the dragging days, he took to exploring.
That was how the prince of Faerieland came to find himself slipping through an open entrance into the hazy kitchen of Jude’s family’s home—the only reliable way, he’d discovered, to access the rest of the house, since he unfortunately didn’t currently own a pair of thumbs to open Jude’s bedroom door. (Also, he was hungry and the smell of meat pies had been wafting through the mansion all evening.)
He picked his way across the tiled floor, avoiding the few servants milling about. The heavenly scents of roasting meat and boiling stew were carried to him on the smoke from sizzling frying pans. One of the servants set a meat pie on a counter before turning to prep another on the opposite side.
Cardan jumped lightly up onto the wooden surface and helped himself to it, batting through the thin crust with one fuzzy paw and licking the gravy from his fur before tucking in, half his attention on the occupied servant.
He’d eaten half of it by the time she turned, screaming at the sight of him and raising her rolling pin. He jumped back as it smashed down where he had been standing a moment before, then leapt from the countertop and streaked from the kitchen into the house beyond, pursued by the storm of her howled curses.
Cardan thought perhaps the spell Pellia had put on him was messing with his head, because as he escaped the certain doom of Death By Rolling Pin, he found his whiskers twitching in amusement. Fleeing from an angry chef was the most fun he’d had, perhaps ever. He felt as though he were a child sneaking cookies, delighting in the chase.
It was more than the simple thrill of doing something he knew was wrong, far from the spiteful buzz he felt when he purposefully did things to earn the disdain of his family.
No, this was different. It was a childish delight, to commit relatively harmless crimes and evade the consequences. It was a first for him.
It was this eagerness, this thrill he got from chasing little dangers, that goaded him into doing the unthinkable: sneaking into the office of Elfhame’s military commander.
The entire affair was disappointingly simple. Cardan waited in the shadows for a servant to come by to clean the office. He lost track of how long he stayed there, but when one finally came by, a letter held in one hand and a key ring in the other, Cardan put his plan into action.
As soon as the boy opened the door and disappeared inside, Cardan darted to the other end of the hall, where an ugly, tri-coloured vase sat on a table. He climbed up and put his cat instincts to work, knocking the glazed pottery to the floor in an explosion of painted shards.
He fled the scene of the crime just in time to avoid the servant boy, who came out of Madoc’s office wide-eyed and horrified, empty hands flying to his mouth at the sight of the shattered vase. As he moved to clean it up, Cardan slipped through the open door and into Madoc’s office.
He had been inside once before, with Jude, the day they’d learned of Dain’s death. (Since then, they’d steered clear of the general whenever possible, especially Cardan. Madoc had been informed of Jude’s visit to the castle and had not been pleased with her taking the investigation into her own hands. He’d arrived with the morning, burning with all the raging heat of the sun itself. There had been a lot of yelling that day, and the only plus side was that, in his anger over being disobeyed, Madoc seemed to have forgotten the feline presence dwelling beneath his nose.) But now, in the office all alone, without the general’s bulk or the messenger’s fidgeting or Jude’s steady presence, the room felt vast and empty, like it might swallow him up.
He took a tentative step, his curiosity winning over fear. The bookshelf was messy, stacked with tactical books and titles in print so faded Cardan didn’t bother trying to read it. Aside from that and the desk and chairs by the walls, the office was bare.
Cardan felt a thrum of disappointment. He supposed he should have expected that Madoc would not leave any information lying around where it could be seen, but still. He had hoped this would be more fun.
He leapt nimbly onto Madoc’s high backed chair, then onto the desk. In the centre, set carefully atop the rough wood, was a sealed envelope.
Cardan remembered the letter the servant had entered with and left without. It was a heavy parchment paper, sealed with a blob of unmarked wax, which was suspicious, to say the least. Nothing wholesome ever came in an unmarked envelope. Cardan’s stomach curled in apprehension; Madoc could not be allowed to read this letter.
The servant’s shuffling feet in the hall spurred the cat-prince into action. He shoved the envelope so it lay half off the edge of the desk, grabbed it in his teeth, and jumped down. He barely made it out, darting between the servant boy’s legs just as he pulled the office door closed.
“What the—” the servant exclaimed, teetering on his feet as he tried to avoid being tripped up by the cat.
Cardan bolted down the hall and around the corner before the envelope could be spotted, heading outside for the tree leading to Jude’s balcony.
~ ~ ~
Jude walked home from her classes with Taryn, lost in thought. In the past two nights, she had gotten no closer to deciphering the pixie’s clues and it was driving her crazy.
Cardan is closer than you think, she’d said. But where? Was he in the palace? In the very dungeons Jude had searched? Had she walked right past him without even noticing?
No. No, that couldn’t be it. It didn’t make sense for him to be kept there, unless the High King had ordered it, but that would mean—no. It was with a certainty borne of dread that she decided—she would have known, somewhere in her gut, if she’d passed him in that prison. He was still out there, somewhere, and he was still alive. At least, for now.
“Jude?” Taryn asked, breaking through Jude’s thoughts.
“Hm?”
“I asked if you’re feeling all right,” her twin repeated. “You’ve been so quiet all day—you didn’t even snap at Nicasia when she insulted you.”
“I’m—yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking, is all.”
“You know what she said isn’t true, right? You—”
“Of course I know. I’m not here to serve anyone and I will never bow to them. You, of all people, should know that, Tare,” Jude snapped. “Besides, I can handle Nicasia. She’s not even half as horrible as Cardan.”
At the mention of his name, Jude’s chest burned, like a spear had pierced her heart. Cardan was horrible, yes, but she didn’t wish him dead.
At least, not unless it was her to kill him, she thought with morbid humour.
“Hey, Tare?”
“Mm?”
“If you were looking for something,” Jude started slowly, “and you supposedly already have it, except that you don’t… where would it be? How would you find it?”
“What?” Taryn laughed, giving her sister a strange look. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Jude sighed, rubbing her face. “Yeah, that makes two of us.”
“What are you looking for, exactly?”
She was silent for a long moment. At last, Jude said, “Something that’s been lost.”
“Um, okay then, Miss Riddler,” Taryn teased, and the look on her face made Jude want to scowl. She wasn’t finished though. “How do I know I have the thing?”
“What?”
“Well, you said that the thing is supposedly already in my possession, but it’s also not. How would I know I supposedly have it?”
“Someone told you,” Jude said. “But that’s all they said. And they won’t say anything else.”
“Is there anyone else you could ask?”
Jude sighed. “No, just—”
She broke off, a memory of her partner in crime rising to the forefront of her mind: the cat.
Somehow, some way, the cat had known both the way into the castle, and the way to the dungeon. Somehow, some way, the cat was tied to the pixie. Jude remembered the way the pixie had spoken to her at first.
It looks like you came back to find me, the pixie had said. You miss me that much?
Jude had thought it was an odd thing to say, since they’d never met before. Except, what if she hadn’t been talking to Jude?
Not everything is about you, she’d said.
No, it was about the cat.
The cat, who somehow knew the ways in and out and around the palace. The cat, who always seemed to understand Jude when she spoke. Somehow, the cat was tied to all of this. And if that cat knew how to find the pixie, maybe he knew how to find Cardan as well. Maybe.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. The word ran on repeat in Jude’s mind, possibilities tumbling over each other. It was a desperate option, a shot in the dark, improbable and implausible. But then again, this was Faerieland, where magic reigned and impossibilities existed and people lived forever.
“We have to get home,” Jude gasped, and took off at a run. Her feet pounded the ground beneath her, a steady cadence, timed to the thoughts reeling in her mind.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe the cat was the key to solving all of this. Maybe the cat was the key to finding Cardan.
~ ~ ~
Cardan clawed his way up the tree, the letter gripped tightly in his teeth. He would hide it somewhere the servants wouldn’t find it if they came to clean. He would hide it, and when Jude returned from her classes, he’d give the envelope to her, and they’d find out what it was about together.
~ ~ ~
The night was thinning by the time Jude neared Madoc’s home. As she exited the thinning tree cover around the manor, she ran head on into a servant carrying a letterbag.
“Watch where you’re going, mortal,” the messenger snarled.
Jude seethed, but didn’t respond. Desperately, she wanted to snap back with something smart. Desperately, she wanted to defend herself against the fey’s disdain.
But she held her tongue as the messenger straightened his tunic and smoothed the crest embroidered over his breast—three blackbirds, laughing in merriment at their debauchery.
“Nice jacket,” Jude said, already turning away. Before the servant could begin his disdainful response, she sneered: “It suits you,” and jogged the rest of the way home.
~ ~ ~
Two days, it’d been two days. The guards were restless. Something was brewing.
Pellia knew these things with a certainty.
Yesterday, she’d been beaten.
The prince is dead, they’d said. The prince is dead, and we know you’re connected.
Pellia shook her head, eyes blurred by tears she refused to let fall.
Tell us.Tell us what you did. Tell us what you know.
Each phrase, punctuated by a blow to her side, her ribs, her face. She tried to tell them she didn’t, she didn’t know, she hadn’t killed him. The words caught in her blood-sticky throat.
First Cardan, now Prince Dain, and we know you’re involved.
She shook her head. She couldn’t see through the blood that dripped, dripped, dripped—into her eyes, down her face. It tasted of iron and earth. It tasted of sweat and pain.
It wanted to taste of defeat, but she wouldn’t let it. She couldn’t let it.
For Amber for Amber for Amber. Pellia wouldn’t lose.
I’ve never killed anyone, she wanted to say. I’ve never killed anyone.
Everything ached and burned and bruised.
Two days. Two days. The cat had come two days ago. The mortal he’d brought, she was smart. Pellia had sensed it.
Two days two days two days. She’d had so much time, so much time to figure out the clues…
Two days. Pellia didn’t have enough time left.
Darkness pressed, ushered in on currants of pain. Surrender tasted bitter on her tongue.
This was not the end. The girl would figure it out. She would figure it out, and then it would be okay and Pellia’s family would be safe.
Unconsciousness beckoned. Pellia’s mind hurtled toward sleep. As a wave of nausea washed over her, her last thought was that she wasn’t done fighting.
Amber Amber Amber Amber. For Amber, Pellia would survive.
~ ~ ~
The cat was pacing when Jude entered her room, his tail lashing.
“We need to talk, kitty,” she declared. He agreed loudly, and she dropped her bag on the floor, kicking off her boots before sitting down on her bed. She didn’t bother to light the lamps.
“Okay. Um…” Jude trailed off, steepling her fingers at her chin as she tried to collect her thoughts.
How did she even start this? Hey, I suspect you’re more magical than you’ve let on and you might know how to find the missing prince and bane of my existence? Or maybe, You knew how to find that pixie girl and so I’m wondering if maybe you could help me find the person I hate most in the entire world because actually contrary to popular belief I am a teeny bit worried?
“You’re a cat,” she said instead. She could have sworn, then, that he gave her a look, but she pushed on. “You’re a cat, but this is Faerieland, and nothing is ever exactly as it seems here. Don’t walk away from me!”
This last part was added as the feline, apparently growing impatient watching Jude trip over herself trying to find an explanation, turned tail and disappeared under her bed.
“Kitty, I’m trying to have a talk here,” she accused him, about to peer over the edge of the bed, but before she could, the cat reappeared carrying an envelope of heavy paper. He dropped it on her folded legs.
“What is this?” she frowned, holding it up to the dim light of the coming dawn. There was no writing on the outside, no crest pressed into the waxen seal.
Jude reached under her pillow without looking, withdrew the dagger she kept there, and unsheathed it with one hand, still flipping the unmarked envelope in her other.
She slid the point of the blade under the seal, prying it gently upwards, careful to keep the hardened wax intact.
A single page of crisply folded parchment paper was inside. Jude pulled it out and unfolded it, holding it up to catch what little light filtered into her room.
Scrawled on the page in bold ink, she read:
General—
It has come to my attention that one of my assets is still being held in the palace. If she has become a liability, I expect you will deal with the situation appropriately. Remain in touch.
There was no signature. Jude flipped the page over, holding it up to the light to see if there was anything more hidden away.
Nothing.
At her side, the cat was still, his claws gently pricking her thigh. She took a deep breath.
Things were starting to click in her mind, puzzle pieces from the past days and weeks pulling together and assembling in her mind’s eye:
This letter could be about no one else but the pixie, who has still being held in Elfhame’s dungeons, far underground. The girl had mentioned that she was only a pawn in the larger game, played ever-so-carefully by a master who had hidden behind an oath forbidding his name be revealed.
Despite this fact, and despite the lack of signature, Jude was starting to see who was behind Faerie’s recent strife, and the realization was like the shock of plunging into icy water. Her mind flashed back to the messenger from earlier, wearing a jacket with the crest of three laughing blackbirds: Cardan had been betrayed by the sender of this letter, his own brother, Balekin Greenbriar, prince of Faerie and owner of that crest.
What truly made her throat sour and her gut twist, was the knowledge that Madoc was involved. In what capacity, Jude had yet to decide, but he was, at least, a willing participant, if not a partner, in recent events. She wanted to be shocked, but Madoc had always thirsted for more power, and if falling in league with one so hell-bent on destroying his country was what would get that for him, then truthfully she could not see her foster father being too bothered.
And perhaps of greatest importance, Madoc could not be allowed to get his hands on this letter. If he did, the pixie would be killed, and since Jude had yet to decipher her riddles, if the pixie died, Cardan would be as good as dead.
Jude tucked the letter back into its envelope and shoved it under her mattress before laying back. She pulled the cat onto her chest, cuddling his small, warm body to her as her mind raced. She would have to do something to stop Madoc and save the pixie if she wanted a shot at finding Cardan. She would pay another visit to the castle tomorrow.
The cat on her chest purred as she stroked his head, down his back. It was a homey, comfortable sound, like the rumble of thunder in a warm summer rain, or the rattle of hooves on hard-packed earth.
With his purr filling her ears and the light weight of his warmth on her chest, Jude found drowsiness creeping up on her, slowly, slowly, until she surrendered to the dark blanket of sleep, her cat still curled over her heart.
~ ~ ~
In her dream, she was standing again before the cell in the palace dungeons. The pixie was wearing a black silken doublet branded with Balekin’s laughing blackbird crest. She was smiling again.
“Desires sometimes take unexpected forms,” she said, red eyes flashing. “You have to stop chasing him, Jude.”
“What do you mean?” Jude asked, her fingers digging into the cat’s fluff in her arms. “You mean stop looking? I can’t.” She shook her head. “They might kill him if I don’t find him. I don’t want him dead.”
“Why do you care?” The pixie tilted her head, inquisitive, studying every detail of Jude’s face like she could see right into the other girl’s soul.
Jude shifted. “I don’t. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. I do know that I hate him so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”
“But you’re still searching.”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence before either of them moved. Finally, the pixie said, “What you want is already within your grasp. Cardan is closer than you think.”
The pixie’s face started to blur around the edges and her words came out solid, wreathing through the air.
“Cardan is closer, closer, closer than you think. What you want is already within your grasp. He is within your grasp. Closer. Closer…”
The words echoed around her and the room was spinning. Jude clutched at the squirming cat. The pixie’s words wrapped around her, restraining her arms, shoving themselves down her throat until she couldn’t breathe—
Jude let out a strangled yell, her heart thundering in her chest as she came awake. The cat, who had rolled onto her neck in his sleep, leapt away from her with a startled yelp as she flailed, thrashing against the blankets which had tangled themselves around her limbs.
She shoved them over the side of the bed and sat, panting, as she tried to calm the painful, frantic beating of her heart.
“Mmrw?” the cat asked, stepping hesitantly toward her. She pulled him onto her lap.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” Jude reassured him, trying to convince herself of the same. “I just had the strangest nightmare. We were back at the palace with that pixie and I was holding you again and she just kept saying Cardan is closer than you thinkand he’s already in your graspand—and—”
Jude broke off, her eyes trailing to the cat’s. For the second time that day, she felt the many puzzle pieces in her brain slide together.
“…And you’re literally within my grasp.”
She turned her eyes on the small companion she had grown so fond of.
“Cardan?”
The cat—Cardan—meowed.
“Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I’m an idiot,” she realised, pushing her hair back from her face. “I’m a whole idiot. You’ve got to be kidding me, this can't—this isn’t even real, I’m still asleep and this is just the second part of this horrible dream.”
The look the cat gave her was so full of disdain that Jude had to fight the urge to shrink back under its force. She felt his claws prick at her legs through her pants.
“Ow, okay, okay! I’m not dreaming, okay? Plus, you’re definitely him, with a glare like that. You’re—definitely… him…”
She trailed off, Cardan still watching her, stock still, his cat eyes bright even in the dim light.
It made complete sense. She’d found the cat shortly after Cardan had gone missing. The pixie girl had said she hadn’t killed him, she had done something to him. Something like a spell. Something like turning him from a cruel and insignificant prince of Faerie to one of the abundant, largely insignificant creatures that crept around in the shadows of most estates.
And it was all in the interest of someone who desired more power than they had, who would stop at nothing to get it. Someone who would kill for it. Someone who might consider the lives of those who posed a risk expendable. Someone sending correspondence to Madoc from Hollow Hall. Someone like Balekin.
But more importantly…
“Oh my gosh,” Jude exclaimed, for the third time in as many minutes. “Oh my gosh, you’ve been here watching me change and sleep and bathe. You’ve literally been in the same room as menaked.Oh my gosh.”
She flopped backward on her bed, dragging her pillow over her face. She figured that maybe if she couldn’t see Cardan the cat, maybe she could pretend he wasn’t there. Maybe she could imagine a pretty little scenario where she hadn’t found a cat and instead Cardan had gotten caught and beheaded, or something. Jude wanted to sink right through her bed and into the floor. Her cheeks were flushed red and hot enough to burn something. Maybe her room. Maybe her whole house. She thought that might be preferable right now.
From the muffled walls of her down pillow, Jude heard the cat—Cardan, Cardan who was the cat—make a sound that was a kind of cross between a cough and a purr. It was almost like—
“Are you laughing at me?!” she dropped the pillow. “This is—I can’t believe—I hate you so much.” She threw the pillow at him.
And maybe it was the absurdity of it all, or maybe it was the sleep deprivation—hell, maybe she was still dreaming—but when Cardan climbed over the pillow with an indignant mew, Jude started laughing too. She laughed until her stomach hurt and she couldn’t breathe, and then, skin still burning, she pulled the blanket over her head and laughed some more.
It was an awkward, uneasy sort of laugh, the kind you do when you’ve run out of options and bluffs and can do nothing else. As it forced its way up her throat, harsh and breaking and shameful, Jude found herself wanting to cry of embarrassment. She didn’t; she had a guest.
As the laughter finally sputtered to a stop, Jude couldn’t bring herself to pull the covers back down. She wanted to hide forever underneath the perceived safety of them.
After several long minutes, she felt Cardan move, creeping to the edge of the blanket and poking his head beneath. He crawled his way under, pausing to poke her nose with his own cold, damp cat nose, and when she buried her face in the sheets again, he moved to curl up on the other side of the bed from her, close but not touching.
He didn’t move for a long time—he was letting her choose, she realised. He had known what was happening all along. What would she do, now that she also knew?
Slowly, she reached out a hand, until her fingertips brushed his shoulder. She felt the muscles in his shoulders relax under her touch, and he gave her a slow blink.
“Okay,” she said, the word escaping soundlessly on a breath. She cleared her throat and tried again: “Okay. We’re going to find a way to turn you back. I promise.”
***
A/N:Thank you thank you thank you for bearing with me and sticking out the wait! It means a lot. I hope this chapter was worth it!! I don’t know when I’m getting the next chapter out. I’m going to try super super hard to post it on Sunday like I’ve been doing, but this week is super busy for me and my city is back in lockdown so I’m doing zoom meetings all week long (fourteen, to be specific) and I don’t think I’m going to want to be on my laptop during my free time tbh. I’ll try my best for you guys though. I love you all and I am soso grateful for each and every one of you, and all the support you give me <3
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