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Jude remembers a time when she had asked Heather about hyperventilating, when Heather had wondered at the presence of mortal ailment in a land full of magic, of the fantastic, of Faerie. At the time, she had thought herself a bit above Heather; she was bound to lapse, certainly, in her weak mortal body with its weak mortal whims, but she made up for it in every way she could. Whatever her limbs lacked in grace, in fortitude, her mind compensated for in walls of thick steel and a will so iron it could pierce the very heart of the land she’d come to love. She had long since torn out the part of her that could falter, long since burned it into ashes and buried them in her most secret heart. Heather couldn’t have understood that. Heather couldn’t have known that mortality was a snake skin she had shed on the floor of her cage long before she had writhed herself free of it.
Now, though, Jude thinks that perhaps Heather had understood more than she had herself. Now, Jude lies awake in the middle of the day, shaking through a cold sweat and clutching at spider silk sheets, alone in the bed she was supposed to be sharing with her wayward and wicked and dear husband, the High King of Elfhame. She struggles to still the tremors in her hands, up her spine, but the taste of saltwater burns the back of her throat. The phantom press of her ribs through her skin like her skeleton was wont to break free of her leaves her chest heaving and her breath coming in gasps, though she had long since contained the skeleton, long since filled out her bones with meat and substance and strength.
Maybe Heather had a point, she thinks hysterically, wondering where the High King of Elfhame could possibly be if not lying next to her. Maybe mortal ailments had an unfortunate place in Faerie if a mortal herself had a place. Maybe memory, the most mortal curse of them all, was inescapable, even if one had tied their heart up so tightly with string that it could burst. The more Jude thinks about it, the less she wants to.
The sound of a door unlatching pulls Jude ever so slightly from the talons of her distress. Were it a different day, and she of different mind, a knife would be in her hand and then at the throat of whoever deigned to enter the Royal chambers. Today she just watches as Cardan slips inside their room, focusing through a tunnel of bleary haze to the tight set of his shoulders, the distracted way he shrugs off his robe and rubs at his jaw.
“Where did you go?” She croaks, her voice not sounding like her at all, dried out and mutilated from the sea water, all that sea water she had gulped down — He crosses the room in three long strides and collapses down next to her on the sheets, still clad in his court finery. His heavy exhale distracts her from the horror of her memory, from the bitter taste she never seemed to be able to scrape off of her tongue.
“Randalin was stirring up trouble with Grima Mog. We’re lucky for our Court of Shadows today, my Queen, or else we might have had to go through the trouble of appointing new Council members tomorrow.” As he speaks, he winds his fingers through hers, trails his other hand up the fine hair on her forearm.
Jude’s eyes narrow, and with this task in front of her, it is easy to push aside her ailment, easier to be angry with her husband and her Court than it is to hurt. “Why didn’t you wake me? I could have helped.” She would have. Cardan may be the High King, but it is the High Queen that people are much more afraid of, because she has designed it so, because she has fought and fought and fought for her place and her name and her safety and it matters because it didn’t before, because she hasn’t ever really been safe, because —
She doesn’t notice that Cardan’s attention is more wholly on her until he runs the back of his hand along the sheen of sweat that has gathered on her forehead. “You didn’t sleep enough and I didn’t want to wake you. Are you alright?”
“Fine,” she snaps, yanking her hand out of his, pulling (flinching) pullingaway from him to hike the lush blankets back up around herself despite the horrible heat pressing through her skin, behind her eyes. “But involve me next time.”
Cardan frowns, and Jude is about to flop down and turn her back to him, tremble herself back into a fitful sleep until he shifts further onto the bed, turning to face her and hooking one of his knees between her legs. He puts his hands on her shoulders, effectively preventing her from shirking him off. His dark eyes flit between hers, so deep she thinks she could drown in them, wishes she could.
“I will,” he answers to the demand she almost had forgotten she’d made, too trapped in his gaze, too lost in his beauty and his care and his love to remember that she was made vulnerable, that she needs to fight because she has always needed to fight, because if she doesn’t she will die. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She hisses in his hold, walls slamming up around her, desperate, so desperate to avoid another wound, to avoid another hurt because she doesn’t think she’ll survive another, and he’s close enough to her that he could do it, he could slip a dagger between her breasts and she wouldn’t be able to stop it, wouldn’t be able to do anything because she gave him the dagger herself, invited him to stab her herself.
“Let go of me.” He doesn’t. His hands tighten over her shoulders. His lips press into a thin line and he could be an irritated husband with a petulant and childish wife, or he could be an enemy, could be looking to lock her up in a cage and let her drown and let her starve and let her die and she would never know, would never see it coming —
Panic clouds her gaze and she jolts against him. “Let me go.” She wretches free of him to throw herself off the edge of the bed, and for a moment she forgets where she is. She forgets that she loves him, forgets that he has vowed to love her as long as he lives and he cannot lie, forgets that she is in their marriage bed in their castle in their home. Her leg gets caught on a sheet as she flees the bed, and the delicate fabric tears loudly as she trips her way to the floor, hands thrown out to catch herself. Before she knows what she’s doing, she’s dragging herself towards the wall, away from the bed, away from the safety (danger) safety danger. She slumps against the wall when she reaches it, trembling, breathing hard as though she’s scrambled through the woods and not across the room. She clutches a ripped piece of sheet to her chest, still damp with her perspiration, not quite realizing she’s taken part of the bed with her.
It isn’t until after several heaving, gasping gulps of air that she looks up to see Cardan, perched delicately on the edge of the bed, hands wide open and visible in his lap, eyes following her heaving chest like a hawk.
A rush of shame washes over her, hot and feverish. She lowers her gaze to the ground, cheeks flushing, still feeling so insatiably starved for oxygen.
She looks up at the sound of rustling by the bed to see Cardan slowly and deliberately lowering himself also to the ground, his back to the bed, several feet away from her. His eyes stay on her the whole time, his face schooled into what she hopes is an unbearably unreadable expression and fears is actually achingly sad.
His breathing is even, a steady keel that rises and falls as sure as the lifeblood pumping through his veins, and Jude does her best to match it, still not quite understanding what has just happened. All she knows is Cardan, his methodical inhales, his glorious exhales, his unwavering gaze on her. Her limbs start to unfurl the slightest bit, the veil of horror dissipates from her mind’s eye. She is startled when she realizes he is guiding her, guiding her to slow her breath like the Ghost had taught them both so long ago.
After a moment of shared breath, no sound in the room but her rasping, heaving lungs, Cardan again begins to move slowly. He makes sure every move is in her line of sight, never lets her eyes leave his. He crawls - crawls - on his hands and knees to the section of wall two feet down from her and turns so his back is also leaned up against it. He is next to her but not, plenty space between them, plenty of air for her to keep breathing.
He opens his mouth as if he is finally about to speak again, but she beats him to it. “Sorry,” she whispers, and feels the hot press of tears behind her eyes once more, but she is the High Queen of Elfhame and she will not let them fall, will not wear her shame like she wears her crown.
As the fog in her brain clears, she is able to piece together the short but surreal past few minutes. Logically, she knows what has happened. She knows mortal words like “panic attack,” like “trauma,” like “Jude was kidnapped and tortured and used and saw her worst fear come to fruition as a powerless prisoner of the Undersea,” but they have never crossed her mind like they do now while her husband stares at the sheet she has ripped in her frenzy to get away from him, perhaps the person who loves her most. It is hard to reconcile this logic with the burn still in her throat, with the caution in his face.
“What happened, Jude?” He keeps his voice low like she did, matching her wish to keep the air settled, not to stir up any more dust or bad memories or lingering nightmares.
She can’t look at him while she says it. Her head tilts back against the wall and she closes her eyes, her tremulous fingers playing idly with the bit of spider silk. “I dreamt of the Undersea,” she confesses to the silence. “I dreamt of the cage and of drowning and when I woke up,” she chokes, “when I woke up you weren’t there.”
There’s a furious lump in her throat, a horrible vulnerability in the softness of her words.
“I thought for a moment that I had imagined getting out, and everything that has happened since. I thought maybe it was a comfort my mind had conjured to keep me from seeing the truth.” A sob escapes past her lips with the words, and she hopes if she keeps talking, maybe she can hide the sound. “Even when I realized I was here, I didn’t feel like it. I still felt like I was there. I still felt hungry and cold and afraid and my eyes knew reality but the rest of me didn’t.”
While she’s spoken, Cardan has moved closer. An inch, and then another. She can feel him next to her, moving so slowly, though she won’t open her eyes, can’t bring herself to see the aftermath of battle, the carnage wrought by her words and by her mind. Eventually, he moves close enough that his shoulder brushes hers, and then he stops. He moves no closer, makes no sound while she says these terrible things and remembers her terrible mortality.
She is shaking again, she knows, but it’s not so difficult to breathe anymore. When she opens her eyes, they are sticky and wet, and she is surprised to realize her tears have leaked without her permission, her admission as plain on her face as her frailty is plain in her heart.
“I can’t stop remembering it,” she rasps. “I want to so badly. I want to forget and to stamp out the pieces of me that do things like remember my weaknesses, but I never can. I wish I were stronger, Cardan. I wish it didn’t hurt like this.” Another sob tears from her in earnest, and because Jude is already as powerless as she’ll ever be, she is resigned to her inability to stop it.
Her tears begin to flow freely, then, horrible ragged sounds drawing from her raw throat. Cardan gathers her up in his arms, his grip not completely enclosing so that she could easily withdraw, but tight enough that she remembers that he’s real, he’s here, and so is she. She shakes and shakes, shakes so hard that she falls apart and then pulls together again, like the Earth being remade.
After several minutes, or maybe hours or days or years, her sobs soften to hiccups and her tear ducts have been wrung of their water. She hides her face in Cardan’s chest, still so ashamed, still burning through and through. He hadn’t left, though. He had stayed by her side through every word, through every broken cry. That thought gives her the courage to hold on tighter to him, to shift into his hold rather than away.
One of his hands smooths down her hair, his breath a warm puff on the top of her head. “Oh, Jude,” he whispers, his voice a broken sonata. He begins to gently sway, to rock her as if she is a child, as if he is the wind and she is the earth it moves. “I wish you didn’t hurt, either.”
She shudders in his arms. He keeps rocking. “I would give - I don’t know what I would give,” he admits. “So much. Probably too much. Too much to keep you from pain, but nothing I give you compares to you.”
She scoffs. “I’m serious,” he insists. “You survived, Jude. You’re here, and you won, and no one else did it for you.”
“You got me out,” she protests weakly. “I couldn’t have - I wouldn’t have…”
“You would have,” he swears fiercely enough that it startles her eyes all the way dry. His grip tightens around her even as she pulls back to finally face him. “You would have found a way. You’re a warrior.”
He leans forward and presses a soft kiss to her forehead. When he pulls back, he replaces his lips with his own forehead, his eyes shut, his head bowed like it’s her he’s praying to. “But I’d always come for you anyways. You’re not alone. I won’t ever let you be.”
Her breath is stolen from her once more, but this time the pressure is cloyingly sweet. “I’m afraid of being afraid,” she says, emboldened by his promise, still haunted by her dreams.
Cardan scoffs, opening his eyes once more. “Who isn’t? I’m always afraid. And most often of you. You’re so scary, Jude.”
Her laugh is rough and grating, but she feels light, lighter than she has in ages. His eyes gleam as he smooths her hair back once more, watching the sound fall from her lips. His gaze searches hers, his heart reaches for her, steadying and full of love.
“We will be afraid together,” he vows, “and then we will be alright together. But whatever it is you go through, I’m by your side. Always.”
Always, she realizes. In the clarity his words have afforded her, she remembers that even then, even in an empty cage in the Undersea, starving and drowning, he had been there, as constant in her thoughts as her own pulse was in her veins. It was him that had given her strength, her love for him that had made her strong. Her humanity that had let her prevail.
She wants to tell him all this, to tell him that she always thought he was her biggest weakness but maybe it wasn’t weak at all to love him, maybe it wasn’t weak at all to love and be loved. She wants to tell him that she does love him, so dearly and deeply and eternally, and that she will try not to be afraid of it, will try to let him see it as much as she can. She wants to tell him, but the weight of her realization has stolen her words.
Instead, she closes her eyes and rests into his hold, breathes his beautiful air, feels his arms hold her up, because she thinks that even if she doesn’t say it all right now, he knows. That’s what it is to love someone, after all. To see them and know the truth of them and hold them close in spite of it all.
And so the King and Queen stay, curled up in the corner of their bedroom floor, tangled together as they will always be, until long after the sun goes down.