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Paranoia had chafed at Jude’s confidence. It had reduced her into a shadow of herself when she was home alone. Old instincts had her drawing a blade from the sheathe strapped to her thigh but she still jumped when she heard a distant click of a lock broken and the sharp sound of a slur spoken. The door opened with a slight creak, revealing a familiar figure though Jude did not release her grip on her blade. She had had a geas put upon her but the Fae were sly folk, they could slither their way around oath and vows.
It wasn’t until the man stared at her with a curious stare did Jude loosen her grip on the hilt, sliding the blade onto the table beside her. Marshall, she remembered now. He was her supposed lover or boyfriend as the mortals popularly phrased it. His blue eyes had always been distant, his mind engulfed by his own thoughts. He hadn’t been much unlike Jude in that sense, partly why they had had this relationship going for so long. But today his eyes, like the colour of midnight skies, were narrowed in an accusatory glare.
“Why is your first response always drawing a weapon?” he demanded. This was peculiar, Marshall had never cared before and Jude could not discern why he was starting now of all unconventional times. He paused, waiting for an answer Jude knew she could not give. What could she even say? That she had spent her life constantly reminded of her inferiority? That she had begged her step-father, also the person who had stabbed a sword through her parents and also the previous Grand General of Elfhame to teach her all he knew so that she could fill herself with the false sense of security? Marshall would not believe her and the truths he thought were lies would only anger him further.
“You never answer anything I ask. And I’ve tried so very hard to be patient with you but you aren’t cooperating and our relationship has become little more than stagnant water!” Jude felt her hand slide towards the blade she had earlier cast aside. Marshall had never been violent towards her but he had never been so fired up either, never so angry, brimming with rage. “Did you run away from home or were you cast out because they had become so frustrated with your cagey personality too?”
It was much too close to the truth. Jude felt the carefully stitched wound open, unleashing memories about the exile and about Elfhame she had long buried. Although no she spent most of her nights entangled with Cardan, her disciplined mind had never strayed, constantly within the moment. Besides, most of the time she had been drunk on lust and some cheap wine they had shared from the bar before they returned here.
“Whenever I ask if you’re free you say you aren’t. And for the longest time I believed you but last night I had come here knocking on your door, worried sick only to find you asleep with some guy in the bed we shared and this,” he held up a game token, the one Jude had neglected to discard. She had intended to keep it, a small gesture meant to display to herself that the little ticket had sentimental value. Now, she wished she had burned it in the fireplace, it would’ve been ash by now, not an incriminating piece of evidence exposing her own lies.
But she would’ve never guessed he was keeping count. Jude had made the most common mistake in strategy; underestimate your opponent. And although for a long while they had been on the same side, Jude found that she could truthfully say the same for this precise moment. Jude had never thought the whirling thoughts in Marshall’s head would ever revolve around her. Aside from their frequent-enough intercourse she had never thought he spared a moment to think of her.
A stupid fool, that was what Jude had become since the lavender haze overtook her. People called it love but that was much too strong of a word. And it wasn’t necessarily a lust that clouded her mind, her mind wasn’t clouded at all. It was simply that aching feeling that settled in your bones with the rain soaking through your clothes, lips interlocked as a distant clock chimed two hours past midnight. Perhaps some would call it blind hoping, faith in the most blasphemous things but Jude couldn’t help but pray that these rendezvous would bring them somewhere, somewhere where they could spend the entirety of their life without consequences.
Cardan would agree, Jude knew. If she whispered her plans against his skin, he would cave to her will. But Jude did not desire a life without consequences, she did not want to live in a world that was indifferent towards her existence and that she was indifferent towards it. She wanted to make an impact, she wanted to stomp her boots and shatter the earth with her presence. And the easiest way to do that was to leave Portland and resume her life in Elfhame, go on as High Queen, bribe Cardan with kisses so that he would lift her exile.
“You’re a freeloading bitch,” Marshall yelled, storming past her and into the living room.
Jude was tempted to stab his back, to wrench his collar and slice his neck but she refrained from doing so. She did not say that she was a queen in her own right either because as of right now, she was the queen of nothing. And she was living in his spare apartment, a seeming gold digger to anyone who might’ve cared.
Jude did not tell Marshall that if she wanted to, she could find her own residence too. It was at his insistence did she move here. He had promised he would not stay unless invited, that for as long as Jude needed it, she could stay. But he broke one of those promises already, once today and last night when he proclaimed he had seen Cardan and Jude laid in bed together. She should go back to Vivi’s. Her elder sister would tease her for her shortcomings but she would not condemn Jude for them.
Marshall put on a record, a solemn tune. In her mind, Jude couldn’t help but string conclusions that he was already regretting any trust he had earlier put in her. And once again in her mind, Jude felt as if she had bent the truth too far, and now in accordance with the melody she was dancing around the elephant in the room. He had yet to ask who Cardan was but Jude sensed he did not care. Marshall lived in his own secluded bubble, a silver-spoon gated community. Perhaps he had never been attracted to her in the first place, only intrigued by the prospect of putting up the illusion of kindness; that he was willing to take this sad girl under his wing and provide for her needs.
High infidelity.
Marshall’s ideal lifestyle with a picket fence was as sharp as knives. That was not what Jude had envisioned for herself, not anymore. Jude had used to wish for any semblance of normalcy, expanding the barest inklings she had of the mortal world into her own little future. But her goals then did not align with those of now, it was the precise opposite. She did not disdain the swords and weapons, she held their hilts with glee, gladness for a battle, relieved by the sight of bloodshed, however twisted that may seem. Jude did not crave violence, only the blatantly stark evidence of change, one so undeniable none could object to it
“Do you really want to know where I was April 29th?” she asked, referring to the day before, to the date on the game token. “Do I really have to chart the constellations in his eyes?” Did Marshall intend to find out every little detail about yesterday? About the thoughts Jude suspected crossed Cardan’s mind, about how he was a wonderful conversationalist despite his snide remarks often laced under malice to conceal his concern.
“Well did the stars foretell the storm coming?” he gestured at their argument. “Would he be a good husband like I had intended to be?” Jude did not think Marshall would be a great husband, she would’ve known it right from the start, as she dragged her feet across the aisle. At their grand house, she’d be inevitably lonely even with the good money she couldn’t possibly pay him to just know her. Marshall would never learn of Jude’s affinity in swordsmanship and espionage, they would be a part of a larger secret Marshall could never know.
“It seemed like the right thing at the time,” Jude insisted. A half-truth. Her words insinuated she held remorse and regret for her actions. She had none, especially not after she discovered the reality of Marshall’s horrid personality.
There were many different ways to kill the one you loved. The slowest way was never loving them enough, Jude realised, thinking of Cardan and his half crazed, half desperate touches as if he was unsure how long he would have before it would all be wrenched away. It was satisfying to see him wilt but Jude did not feel quite as triumphant as she ought to be. A small part of herself loved Cardan back, or at least it felt an emotion closely resembling love. She knew she had to address the exile and how he had betrayed her. Perhaps he would apologise then and Jude would be content but it was much too late to acknowledge it, especially when another question was tethered to the first; would Jude ever return to Elfhame?
“Do you really want to know where I was April 29th?” Jude asked again, determined this time. “Do I really have to tell you how he brought me back to life?”
Perhaps Cardan had been the one who had torn her soul apart, shredding it to pieces with no hope of ever recovering. But he was also the only one who had elicited emotions within her, he was the one who had stunned her enough for her to return to this pitiful hollow state of herself but a version that was slowly mending, slowly healing. For the long stretch of time directly after the exile, Jude had felt herself hovering about the world like a wraith, passing by and passing through. Not even Marshall had noticed how empty she had been though Jude supposed he had never known her before. Perhaps that was why he had made her up to be a charity case in his mind.
High infidelity.
“I know this thing had been going on for a while. I had only hoped you would have confessed it earlier, unprompted and without all the dramatics,” he said though he did not sound defeated, only distressed. Jude didn’t know he was keeping count. But oh, he was keeping count. “Break it off with him, we can resume as if nothing had happened at all. We will go through with the wedding—”
“No. Goodbye, Marshall.”