Apr 18, 2024
What’s up whores I know it’s been two years but I’m Here I’m Sick and I’m Down To Stick. Anybody up for some ficky?
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What’s up whores I know it’s been two years but I’m Here I’m Sick and I’m Down To Stick. Anybody up for some ficky?
stickyfickystickyfickystickyfickystickyfickysti
What is this? Lex writing something after a literal fucking year? It’s more likely than you think.
Sticky ficky 10 (yea boiiiiiis)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Weeks had passed, time moving a little less slowly now that Jude and Heather were spending time with one another. She discussed her difficulties adjusting to the mortal world, Heather aired her confusion about Faerie, and they both staunchly ignored discussing their respective ex-partners. It was a happy, almost easygoing friendship; something Jude never thought she’d get to experience.
It was because of this that Jude had started to come out of her little hobbit hole of a depression cave and it was because of this that she started to frequent the local kite shop that Heather loved so much.
It was because of this that Vivi knew where to call when an emergency came up.
“Is he alright?” Jude asked, all but yelling into the kite store phone and her mind going frantic as Vivi told her that Oak needed to be picked up from school.
“From what the principal said, he doesn’t feel well, but I haven’t gotten much in the way of information,” her older sister sighed. “I’m out of town today so I can’t go get him. You’re on the pickup list. Everything should be ok.”
Jude nodded. She had a vague recollection of how to get to Oak’s school, having been there already for one play that his grade put on. She knew how to get there and—as long as the bus wasn’t late—it shouldn’t take her very long.
“Yeah I can get him. I’ll head that way now.”
She didn’t waste time waiting for her sisters response; she simply hung up the phone as wished Josh—the store’s middle-aged father figure of a cashier—a good afternoon on her way out.
The trip to the school was quiet and uneventful, exactly how she liked things and also exactly how she didn’t. It’s nice not to have to deal with attackers jumping out of dark corners to ambush you at every turn, but a lifetime of being raised to search for them leaves her antsy when they don’t appear. By the time she made it to the school, her hackles were up and her teeth were gnashing.
“I’m here for Oak Duarte,” she told the unassuming secretary, shoving her hands into her coat pocket and searching the office for her brother. “I’m his sister, Jude.”
“Can I have some form of ID?” The woman’s fake-chipper voice put Jude even more on edge, especially considering she had no form of ID. Missing important documents like your birth certificate and social security card tended to get in the way of shit like that.
But, thankfully, before she had the time to say anything, a door swung open and Oak came bounding out.
“Jude!”
“Hey, Oakling,” she accepted his hug with a gentle pat of his shoulders before nodding to the secretary. “This fine woman wants to see my ID.”
Understanding the assignment immediately, Oak turned and glamoured one of the secretary’s business cards into a fake license and Jude was in.
They were out the door and halfway to the bus stop, Oak excitedly pulling her the whole time, before Jude remembered exactly why she was there.
“I thought you were supposed to be feeling poorly,” she observed, one eyebrow cocked as her brother skidded to a halt, looking like a cat caught mid-air as he aimed for the family parrot. “What happened to that?”
He looked around him for a way out, only to half-heartedly cough into his arm.
Jude couldn’t help but snort. “Look, I know faeries can’t lie, but you’ll need to get better at faking it before you go back to Elfhame. That was pitiful.”
“What can I say? I feel much better now that I’m not in school.”
“Nice try, acorn,” Jude caught him as he turned to make for the bus stop once more, pulling him back to face her. “What’s in school that’s making you feel worse than out here?”
“Well math is rather boring,” Oak tried.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t play games, Oak. I want the truth and I want it now.”
He sighed, clearly giving in, before motioning that he’d like to sit on the bench at the bus stop.
Jude watched her little brother as they walked, saw how he hunched into himself and frowned as he worried over whatever was bothering him, and it hurt her heart. Clearly, he was struggling with something, and it angered her that he’d likely been dealing with it while she was off in her own head, too preoccupied with herself to help her baby brother when he needed it.
They sat down and she turned her full attention to him as he played with his hands.
“The kids at school are mean to me,” he finally admitted.
“What happened?” Jude instantly zeroed in. “Did they try to drown you in the pond by the playground?”
“No.”
“Did they poison you?”
“What? No!”
She searched her memory for another possible option. “Did they make you strip naked while your teacher did nothing?”
“You know your experiences aren’t universal, Jude,” he crossed his arms. “Mortal school has, like, conflicts of identity, not literal murder attempts.”
“Fair,” she nodded, remembering why they sent him to the mortal world in the first place. “Please, continue.”
His righteous indignation was almost immediately replaced by that quiet concern of moments before as he looked to the ground. “They say I’m weird.”
“Weird? How?” Jude gently probed, doing everything in her power to avoid mentioning that, technically, her fae brother was strange by human standards.
“When we’re playing at recess,” he continued, “they always separate into boys and girls. I don’t know how to play the sports the boys enjoy and when I went with the girls I got teased.”
She frowned, reaching back into her memory for her time in mortal school, back when the biggest threat to her life was a missing cooties shot.
“I remember having boy and girl friends when I was in school. Surely they aren’t all strict about this self-imposed gender segregation.”
He huffed angrily, throwing down his arms like she just wasn’t understanding. “That’s the problem! After a few days, when I finally got the girls to trust me, it all got worse! I can’t play like them.”
For just a moment, her heart soared at the idea that this was the struggle her brother was facing. Schoolyard teasing was nothing compared to violent bloodshed and upheaval.
But then she saw his face, saw how his eyes glistened with unshed tears, and she cursed herself for even feeling a moment of relief. He’d been right, her experiences weren’t universal, and she was wrong to judge his pains by her tolerance.
“Oh, acorn,” she pulled him into her side. “What do you mean?”
“They spend all of recess galavanting about, spinning tales about how I’m a princess in a castle of ice or I’m a sorcerer who can speak to animals,” his voice was muffled by her light jacket, but she could still hear the thickness in the back of his throat. “And I’m not allowed to tell them of Elfhame, so I can’t join in! I can’t dance the day away on falsehoods like they can, so they don’t want me around.”
Something deep and personal in her chest broke as she held her brother. Looking down at him, at his golden curls and his little horns and those sharpened ears that she’d currently despise seeing on almost anyone else; she was hit by the realization that he was much a stranger in a strange land, just as she’d once been.
He looked up at her, likely drawn by her silence, and scrunched up his face as he wiped his eyes. “I’m not sure what there is to smile about at this moment, my life is in shambles!”
“I’m merely proud, Oakling,” she said, attempting to pacify him. “Proud that you did not simply glamour the problem away the second it popped up.”
“I don’t see how glamouring myself a friend would help here. What good is a friend that you essentially have to create by yourself?”
That caused her to pause as the bus arrived.
“Acorn,” she asked as they got on, glad they were the only passengers. “Did you not have an imaginary friend when you were younger?”
He spun on her, looking something between puzzled and offended. “Whatever do you mean?”
“An imaginary friend,” she continued. “Someone that you talked to and played with when you were alone. Did you not ever make up an imaginary friend?”
“Who would do that?” He scrunched his nose up, looking, for just a moment, every bit the spoiled royal that his blood unfortunately made him.
“I did, Taryn did.” Jude tilted her head and studied him closely. “We’d tell lavish tales of their backgrounds when we played, making up everything along the way.”
“I can’t do that!” He sounded more frustrated than I’d ever heard him. “That’s the problem! I can’t tell the story of something that isn’t real.”
He spun, arms crossed once more as he glared out the window.
“They were real to me.”
She said it softly, more soft than possibly anything she’d ever said to him before, and she thought that he hadn’t heard her.
Until his head turned just a sliver, and she knew he was listening.
“I once asked Vivi why faeries could tell stories, even when they weren’t reading them off a page, and she told me that there were lessons in stories, and those lessons were enough of a truth for a faerie to be able to speak it,” Jude kept talking, looking ahead to give her brother the room to study her if he wished. “I suppose I liked the idea of that, because it made the fae and humans seem just a little more similar.”
She let the silence hang, waiting for him to take the bait.
“How?”
Hiding a smile, she went on. “Humans find truths in stories too, that’s why your classmates are so passionate about pretend. The sorcerer who can speak to animals? That likely comes from a love for her pet that’s so strong would give anything to be able to understand what it said. The princesses? Little girls who are learning to harness a power that within that they aren’t sure they understand yet. She wants to speak out and to lead and to be heard, so she is a princess because a princess does all of those things.”
She turned back to him, watching him from the corner of her eye as he pondered her words.
Then, as the bud stopped, she stood.
“Where are we going?” Oak rushed to grab his school bag and follow her.
“To the toy store, we’re making imaginary friends.”
She gave no other information as she led her brother into the tiny toy shop by the grocery store, even though he did his best to quiz her into submission. No, it wasn’t until they stood in front of a wall of stuffed animals that she spoke again.
“Choose something, a base, and I shall teach you how to play pretend.”
He frowned at her, then at the wall, and then back at her. “This is absurd.”
“I said the same thing about learning the language of birds when I came to Elfhame,” she laughed. “If you wish to survive in a strange place, you must be willing to unlearn your concept of absurdity.”
And she moved deeper into the toy store, studying dolls that she remembered from her childhood and electronic knickknacks that she’d never be able to work properly.
Oak followed behind aimlessly.
She was starting to think that she’d have to choose for him, to give him that extra little push he needed, when her eyes landed on something that made her gasp.
“Oh my god, I remember these stupid things!” Jude couldn’t help but laugh as she moved forward with the kind of speed that only a former spy could manage.
When she spun the package around, Oak made a face.
“Worm on a string?” He sounded more confused than before. “What is that supposed to do?”
“It’s this dumb little toy that you were supposed to be able to make look like it moved on its own,” she looked back to it. “I could never make them work. Vivi could, but I think it was glamour.”
Oak stepped forward, grabbing a package containing an orange worm. “So it’s just a fake worm and,” he squinted his eyes, “fishing line?”
“And googly eyes!” Jude nodded enthusiastically, gesturing to her blue worm like Vana White. “The height of early-twenty-first-century entertainment.”
“This is so stupid.” He shook his head.
But didn’t put the worm back.
“It’s so stupid,” Jude probed, “and you want it anyway.”
He scowled at her. “If you insist on this foolish imaginary friend agenda, I suppose a worm is a non-offensive start.”
Jude grabbed the orange worm and headed to the counter, letting Oak cross his arms and continue to act like this was all beneath him.
Once they made it home, she tore open the two packages and sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, already fussing with the tiny cardboard card that you were supposed to hide in your waistband and failing to make the worm move in what she considered to be a natural method.
Her brother watched from the edge of the living room, still clinging to the idea that this was dumb.
“Come on, acorn,” she shook the little orange worm at him. “Your friend is waiting for a name.”
“A worm doesn’t need a name.” But still he relented, walking over and sitting by her.
“Nonsense!” Jude exclaimed, brandishing her blue worm at him. “See? I’ll prove it. This is Fweej, they’re an alien from a different planet, set on conquering the world and bathing in the blood of their enemies.”
“But it’s literally not.”
“Oh, Oakling,” she sighed at him. “I’m going to need you to work with me here. The worm is your imaginary friend, you get to decide everything about it.”
He rolled his eyes, but looked to the orange worm all the same. “Fine. Can I just name it Orange?”
“Oak, that would be like if Oriana had named you Blond,” Jude fixed him with a tired glare. “Don’t you think your friend deserves a fancier name?”
“But oranges are called oranges and nobody’s ever had a problem with it!”
“I thought oranges were actually green and they changed it to make them look more appealing?” She looked back to Fweej, pulling him across the tabletop.
“Wait, what?”
“Not important,” she waved him off. “Name the worm, acorn.”
He frowned at her again before glaring at the worm once more.
“Clementine.” He finally announced.
Jude smiled at the little win, pulling Fweej over to her brother.
“Why hello, Clementine,” she said grandly, moving Fweej for emphasis. “I am Fweej, and I am so pleased to make your acquaintance. Would you like to be friends?”
Silence descended, and she fought the urge to look over and nudge her brother.
Then, finally…
“Hello, Fweej,” Oak started, his voice quiet and unsure. “I would love a friend.”
~~~~~~~
The rise of FweejTM
Lmao sorry I literally went MIA for like 10 months college has me seconds away from grippy socks jail 🤪
Also before anyone is like “but the nerf war was oak playing pretend!” No my friends that was Real and our favorite ten year old was literally ready to commit both murder AND treason
Tag list: @cardan-greenbriar-tcp @hizqueen4life @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thewickedkings @aelin-queen-of-terrasen @cheekycheekycheeks @queen-of-glass @b00kworm @doingmyrainbow @andromeddea @jurdanhell @thesirenwashere @illyrianwitchling @courtofjurdan @clockworkgraystairs @st00pid231 @booksandlewks @fateandluminary @addies-invisible-life @nahthanks @dirigibleddinosaur
If anyone else wants to be tagged in the dumb, let me know. Also @jurdanhell the platonic love of my life is helping me with a list of links to each of my fics so y’all don’t have to keep scrolling.
hi I just wanted to let you know that I saw this post and immediately before even reading it, just from the pictures, thought of your sticky ficky fic
I’m fucking honored
Sticky Ficky 8
Hello everyone! Since Jurdannet Christmas in July is coming up, I thought I’d celebrate a lil family tradition. In my family, the 23rd of December is Elf Night. Basically, if you’re good, the elves will leave you one gift to occupy your time until Christmas. As it is now July 23rd, that makes this Elf Night in July, and I believe that’s as good an excuse as any for some Sticky Ficky!
So awhile back @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 helped me out with something and I wrote a pillow for hc for her in return and I thought at the time “this has Sticky Ficky potential” so we will now take a break from our scheduled worm chapter to have pillow fort Sticky Ficky! Hope you enjoy!
~~~~~~
Wssssh
THUNK
Jude Duarte Greenbriar, Hugh Queen of Elfhame and wife to Cardan Greenbriar, dove to the side at the very last moment, just barely avoiding the glow-in-the-dark suction cup dart as it flew past her head, sticking comically to the groin of a satyr statue in the office she shared with her husband.
She swerved onto one knee, taking aim directly at Cardan’s pretty black eyes and letting fly a dart of her own, this one pink and with a soft tip. Like most things in her life, she was right on target, her timing impeccable and her aim unfailing.
Why Cardan insisted on doing this when he was so obviously set up to fail always confused her, but she was never one to back away from a surefire victory.
Using the disorientation caused by her near-perfect hit, Jude scrambled to her feet and careened out the office door; headed for their destroyed sitting room. She was out of bullets and needed to restock. Luckily, she knew the sofa fort like the back of her hand, and she had hidden an extra gun in the hollow of the underside of a sofa cushion for just this moment.
But she always underestimated just how fast her husband could move. Cardan was a man well practiced in getting others to forget he could be lethal. Hidden behind the near-constant dullness of intoxication and the ever-present serving of indifference, Cardan always payed attention. He was a dangerously advanced student of the Court of Shadows, and he’d been raised in an insanely cutthroat royal family.
She needed to stop forgetting that.
“Jude, villain and darling,” he purred in her ear as he captured her by the waist, hauling her up over his shoulder and back away from her stash. “Leaving so soon? I was having so much fun.”
“Let go of me!” Jude squealed, going for threatening as she wiggled like a petulant puppy in his arms but unable to hide the mirth in her voice. “I said unhand me!”
Beneath her stomach she felt him chuckle as he ignored her, spinning towards their bedroom and keeping one hand firmly on her ass to make sure she didn’t successfully squirm away.
If their sitting room was a disaster, their bedroom was a war zone. The mattress was completely off the bed frame, angled like a lean-to and hiding a pile of pillows for ample cuddling. The vanity that Cardan used to use as a place to hold his wine was in the middle of the room, hooked to other pieces of furniture by fine silken sheets as they spread across the chamber.
Forts had become a topic of conversation after Jude drunkenly admitted to loving them in childhood. One night, as she and Cardan were deep in their drink and basking in one another’s naked company, she’d gotten to talking about how little Jude had always loved Friday nights.
Friday nights meant no school the next day, no sports and no homework for the following week. Friday nights meant staying up and gorging on microwaved fish sticks with a dessert of cosmic brownies. Friday nights meant reruns of Scooby Doo and pajama parties with her whole family.
Most importantly, Friday nights meant pillow fights and forts in the living room.
Forts in the living room meant family sleepovers in the living room.
Family sleepovers meant she had her parents with her, meant she was safe, that she was nothing more than a child.
A child with no knowledge of real war, of Faerie, of bloodshed and suffering and sacrifice.
Cardan had confessed to her, after she’d described her coveted purple unicorn pajama pants and her favorite mortal soda, that he’d quite like to know what it was like to have a pillow fight and a fort in one’s living room. He hadn’t expected her to follow through. Hell, he hadn’t even expected her to remember. But then, after nearly a week had gone by and he was aching after an infuriating meeting and a ridiculous revel, he’d returned to their chambers to find the sitting room turned over and a pile of sheets by the door.
That night was the first of what would become their weekly ritual. What began as a little fort in the sitting room turned into nerf gun fights and feasting on only the most mediocre of mortal cuisine, sheets hanging from every viable surface in the royal apartments and Homeric descriptions of cartoons from Jude’s childhood, relaxing in one another’s embrace and having a little fun—between, below, and above the sheets.
It seemed like every day they’d find some memento of their Friday nights, a sticky hand that Cardan had used to smack Jude’s ass, a pillow from their bed in their bathtub, or—Cardan’s favorite—Jude’s stash of good wine hidden in the skirts of the dress she was due to wear the following day. Each little thing made them grin and made their hearts go weak with love for their partner.
And that’s what it was, love.
After all this time, after all the teasing in school and the suffering so early in Cardan’s reign, after Madoc and the Undersea and exile, they loved each other. It surprised Jude every day to realize it, but she couldn’t deny it was there. No one who saw the way the king looked at the queen could deny it was there.
Cardan shocked Jude back to reality by none-too-gently throwing her atop a pile of pillow. When she gave him an offended gasp, he turned his nose high and said: “I have no sympathy for prisoners.”
“Am I a prisoner now?” Jude asked, a sly smile overtaking her face as she watched her husband stalk around the room like the cat he just barely wasn’t. Sure, she didn’t have a functional weapon and she was pretty winded from the fall, but she knew she could take him without too much trouble.
He stopped cold, his back turning rigid as he stared at something she couldn’t see. Jude felt her stomach clench and she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d said something wrong. She and Cardan had gotten a lot better at communication over the years, but they still had their moments.
Unable to convince herself to open her mouth to ask what was wrong, she watched in horrified silence as her husband flexed his hands once, twice, three times.
Then, when he turned to face her, something had changed in his eyes.
“Of course you are,” he spit at her with a vitriol he hadn’t used in years. “Isn’t that what you’ve always been? All you’re good at being?”
Her brow furrowed and she felt a furious blush rising to her cheeks, but as her husband fully turned towards her, his boots angled directly at her outstretched legs and his face dark in a way she didn’t like to remember, she couldn’t bring herself to ask him what he was talking about.
Jude was unable to verbally defend herself as he took a step towards her. In fact, she was unable to do anything but scramble awkwardly onto her hands and feet.
“Poor little Duarte, a human child stolen away to Faerie,” he hissed at her, advancing. Jude felt a lump in her throat that she was unable to swallow around and she began to crab-walk backwards as fast as she could. Still, he gained on her.
She successfully dislodged herself from the pile of pillows, the cold stone floor biting into her hands as she continued to move away from her husband. He seemed so angry, so hateful where he’d once been so loving.
“Cardan—“
“Shut your filthy human mouth!” Cardan shouted, so suddenly and so loudly that she couldn’t help but flinch. And then she was against a wall with no way out and he was only fifteen feet from her.
Jude was looking for something, anything to defend herself. She tried to reassure herself that she was the better fighter, that she was protected against geases and that she had the land on her side just as much as he did, but, in the face of that evil look in his eyes, it did nothing to calm her.
“Jude fucking Duarte, the scum of the gentry,” he spit as he tilted his head, inspecting her the same way a troubled child would inspect a beautiful butterfly right before they ripped the poor thing’s wings off. “Did you honestly think you’d ever be anything more than a prisoner?”
She blanched and he was ten feet away.
“Did you think you’d ever stand a chance against a people so undeniably better than you?”
A cold tear dripped down her cheek and he was five feet away.
“Did you think anyone, much less someone like me, could ever love the likes of you?”
He gripped her by the throat and yanked her off her feet, slamming her against the unforgiving stone wall and glaring into her eyes, his nose a hair’s breadth away.
“Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame. Jude Duarte, Hugh Queen of Elfhame,” he sneered in a voice so high-pitched that it was obviously making fun of her. “Did you think it ever mattered? Did you honestly believe that those titles made you safe?”
She opened her mouth to try to speak, but she couldn’t force any air out, not with how his long, delicate fingers were so easily crushing her windpipe.
“You were a prisoner to mortality in your childhood,” he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “and they you were a prisoner of Faerie in your adolescence.”
Her vision blackened around the edges as her mind reached weakly for a memory of when Cardan held her sweetly. She couldn’t quite grasp one.
“You willingly enslaved yourself to my brother and then you went and made yourself into my prisoner when you engineered my rule,” he laughed, pulling away just enough for her to see his cold eyes once more. “Surely you knew that’s all you were? Bound to my word in public and stuck cleaning up all my messes. God, you make a good little servant.”
She tried to kick at him, but her whole body felt week and she wasn’t able to bring her leg up. Panicked, she looked down to where her hands clawed at his and she found that her nails were broken and bloodied, the beds caked with sea salt.
“You were a prisoner beneath the waves.”
Seaweed rose from the floor and wrapped around her ankles, pulling down like it was trying to pull her under the water once more.
“You were a prisoner, bound to the bidding of Balekin.”
She felt the ghost of his lips against hers and she gagged, gasping for air and unable to get any.
“A prisoner to your own desires,” he smirked. “That’s why you stupidly chose my hand over my control.”
She couldn’t get a word in edgewise, couldn’t correct him, couldn’t even really remember why she’d done it. Was he right?
“And now you’re once again locked in the world of the mortals, a prisoner in your little bedroom cell,” he sneered at her. “It’s where you belong, don’t you agree? I’m sure all of Faerie does.”
Memories of exile came flooding back to her. She could see, almost as if she were a fly on the wall, a disturbingly sick Jude. Clothes were falling off her and her normally tanned skin was deathly pale, the only real structure in her life coming from the rat’s nest that has cemented itself in her hair.
“Let me tell you a secret, Jude,” he leans back in, lips ghosting against her ear. “That’s where you’ll stay. In that tiny room in that hellish world, wasting away to nothing and waiting for your inevitable death. You’ll go quietly, without a fight and with no one to remember you. Do you know why, Jude?”
Her mouth formed around his name.
Cardan
But she couldn’t say it.
“I’ll tell you why,” he continued, smirk evident in his icy voice. “It’s because, above all else, you are a prisoner to your own fear. You will always be your own jail cell.”
Tears gushed down her face and she wanted to beg him to stop saying such hurtful things. But she couldn’t, because when Cardan next pulled away, it wasn’t Cardan at all.
One cold, rotted hand gripped her by the throat as she stared in horror at the decaying body of Balekin Greenbriar, fresh blood still oozing from the fatal wound she’d inflicted.
She woke screaming.
Jude Duarte, exiled High Queen of Elfhame, woke screaming.
She didn’t know the day or the time, where she was or why she was there, all she knew is that she could still feel the cold hand of death wrapped around her throat.
Cardan wasn’t there, he’d never been there. They’d never built forts or had pillow fights and they likely never would.
She was blind to the world as she heaved herself out of bed, flying towards the shower to try and wash the stench of death off her skin. She didn’t notice that Vivienne was awake, Oak sitting next to her at the kitchen bar.
The siblings shared a horrified look and Vivi didn’t give herself the time to hesitate. She picked up her phone, dialed, and prayed.
It rang three times.
“Listen, Vivi, I really don’t have the time for th—“
“It’s not about us, Heather,” Vivi rushed to say, taking the sudden silence on the other end as a sign to continue. “It’s Jude. Please, I need your help with Jude.”
More silence, and then:
“I’ll be right over.”
~~~~~~
What? I didn’t say it would be fluffy pillow fort Sticky Ficky,,,,,all aboard the angst train lol
Hope y’all don’t hate me too much I promise I will have more funny/stupid Sticky Ficky but I gotta get this exile angst in!
Tag list: @cardan-greenbriar-tcp @hizqueen4life @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thewickedkings @aelin-queen-of-terrasen @cheekycheekycheeks @queen-of-glass @b00kworm @doingmyrainbow @andromeddea @jurdanhell @thesirenwashere @sweetlyvillainous @courtofjurdan @clockworkgraystairs
bestie i’ve been thinking about nothing but sticky ficky for months pls tell me we get more soon
Lmaoooooooo I know what I’m doing for the next chapter I promise I have it all in my head and it’s even kinda cute but writing has been so fucking hard recently yknow
Like we’re def getting more (and it’s even finally worm on a string) but oof buddy motivation is some ass
Sticky ficky 7!
Have some Oak angst, some Vivi angst, and some Cardan angst feat. Bomb help! I actually made myself sad with this one so I hope y’all enjoy it!
~~~~~~~
Dear High King Uncle Cardan Sir,
It is with a heavy heart that I write to inform you I can no longer engage in correspondence with you, nor can I continue to be your sticky hand supplier. While my alliances were with you throughout this long and trying war, I cannot side with you anymore, given the recent turn of events.
I don’t know what happened with Jude, or why she’s staying in our guest room, but I do know that she suffers. When she saw my green sticky hand in the living room her first night here, she broke down sobbing.
Uncle Cardan, I confess I have never seen my sister cry.
So I send this letter to inform you that I have washed my hands of The Great Sticky Hand War, as I now wash my hands of you. I wanted to be friends, but I must stand by my sister now, as I know she would stand by me.
Why did you have to hurt her?
With disdain,
Oak
Little Oak closed his thesaurus and put down his mechanical pencil, handing the letter to Vivi to proofread. Vivienne Duarte, for her part, had no idea why Oak had decided to stake his honor upon something as trivial as a sticky hand, but she dutifully read over his letter, correcting any spelling mistakes before sealing it in an envelope and promising to send it to Faerie.
If Oak was to become High King one day, he would need to learn diplomacy, this was as good a place as any to start.
So Vivi watched with raised brows as Oak gathered up all his sticky hand memorabilia, his collection and the propaganda posters he’d made for the war, and threw it in the trash without a second glance. His bottom lip wavered and tears seemed ready to spill from his eyes.
Vivi took him out for pizza that night, leaving Jude alone in her room, crying like usual.
~~~~~~
Two weeks had passed since the night Vivi took Oak for pizza, and while she had been confused then, she was now severely worried.
Jude Duarte was a shell of a person. She’d get up to go to the bathroom, but she had yet to take a shower or even brush her hair. She barely ate, and what she ate was anything but nutritious. She denied herself water to the point that her head pounded, and only then would she sneak into her sister’s supply of alcohol, leaving her to wake the next day with a headache already formed.
Vivi didn’t know what the hell to do. She couldn’t handled a normal breakup, one where her sister cried if a certain song came on or because her boyfriend had cheated on her. But how was she supposed to handle a newlywed, exiled from her home and throne? Especially when even the thought of a sticky hand or nerf gun sent her over the edge?
Honestly, Vivi didn’t know what kind of set up those two had had when Jude was still in Elfhame, and she didn’t ever intend to learn. The likelihood of some weird sex thing being involved was way too high for her to even consider asking, not when she already shuddered every time she passed a sticky hand in the toy aisle of the local Dollar Tree.
“Jude?” Vivi called out, knocking on the doorframe of her guest room and staring into the darkness, towards the pile of covers that shielded her sister from the rest of society. “I ordered Chinese food, it should be here in forty-five minutes. I made sure to get sweet and sour chicken, I know it’s your favorite!”
Her fake upbeat tone echoed back to her, but Jude refused to move. With a heavy sigh, Vivi walked forward and sat on the edge of her sister’s bed.
The girl looked like a ghost, her eyes staring blankly ahead and her cheeks stained with tears.
“Jude, honey, you know I love you,” she sighed, patting Jude’s hip. “But you smell like a dumpster. Please come shower in my bathroom.”
Jude, her mouth covered by her duvet, mumbled something Vivi couldn’t understand. Then, after prompting, she spoke again.
“Need help,” she whispered, the most pitiful noise Vivienne had ever heard in her—admittedly short—life. Jude Duarte, asking for help? Fuck.
She decided not to say anything, opting to just pull down the blankets and allow Jude to use her shoulders as support to sit up.
Jude’s time in the Undersea had been tough on her body, and her wallowing in the mortal world had worked overtime to rob her of whatever muscle and fat she had left. Starving oneself and laying in bed at all hours of the day was a terrible recovery strategy, but Vivienne couldn’t really bring herself to berate her sister.
Jude leaned heavily against her sister’s side and together they stumbled through the hall and into Vivi’s bathroom.
Vivi turned on the water, ready to leave to give Jude some privacy, and stopped when she saw the way her sister’s fingers shook. She knew then and there that Jude wouldn’t be able to undress herself, so she did it for her.
Just like when they were children, after Madoc had murdered their parents and spirited them away to Faerie, Vivienne Duarte helped her sister out of her clothes. When they were little, Vivi had been in charge of bathing the twins and helping with their hair. It’s been years since she’s had to do this, but she put Jude in the shower and washed her hair as the young woman sat, face first in the blasting water.
Vivi grit her teeth in anger as she took in the poking bones and concave stomach of her little sister, the girl who had always been full-figured and strong. Her body, her tenacity, her will to live, all taken from her so quickly. Jude Duarte looked broken as Vivi washed her hair, pulling fingers through tangles that had long formed into clumps the size of her palm.
Jude should’ve been safe, she should’ve been ruling in Elfhame, where food and wine abounded and excess was the name of the game. She shouldn’t be wasting away to nothing in a world she never claimed as her own. Cardan, who, by Vivi’s own observation, cared for Jude, should’ve known what banishment would do to her.
No matter what happened, no matter why she’d angered him, he should’ve never banished her. Not then, not so soon after she’d been tortured.
Vivi helped Jude out of the shower and helped her dress before steering her towards the living room, where Oak was waiting with the Chinese food, Teen Titans playing on the old tv.
Vivi took her food into her room and sat down with a pencil and paper.
Cardan Greenbriar, you worm-eaten husk of a man,
I don’t care who you are or what you are, I don’t care about curses or crowns or kingdoms or fate, I care about family. And, right now, mine is hurting. Fix things with my sister, or, so help me gods, you’ll be fucking mincemeat.
Sincerely,
Vivienne Duarte
The paper ripped in some places she was pushing so hard, but she figured that would help get the message across.
She sent it directly to the High King of Elfhame.
~~~~
The scent of smoke hung thick in the air of the unnaturally quiet room. The birds outside the open window knew to stay silent as the man on the floor threw a second crumpled up paper into the crackling fire.
The High King of Elfhame’s rooms were in shambles; furniture broken in rage, tapestries form down by hands with nails bitten down to the quick, books toppled from precarious places on overfilled shelves.
One man, the king himself, sat in the center of the carnage, his back pressed to the foot of his grand bed and his legs stretched out towards the fire roaring in the corner of his bedchamber.
His eyes were wide but unseeing, tears cutting ragged trails through the dirt smudged across his cheeks and his hands shaking in his lap. His tail, freed from his breeches, was the only part of him smart enough to try and hide from the flames. It stuck out behind him like a sore thumb, cowering under the bed in a way that he wished he was small enough to do.
What had he done to his Jude?
He’d thought for sure she would’ve put two and two together, would’ve figured out his riddle. She’d already announced herself to be the High Queen if Elfhame, all she had to do was say she pardoned herself!
He’d considered that maybe she had been to tired from her ordeal the day of her banishment to decode his words, but he was positive she would’ve been recovered enough to come back and claim her throne by now.
His Jude, his darling god, should’ve been by his side already.
When he’d received Oak’s letter a fortnight ago, his very heart, as scabrous and small as it may be, had felt like it was ripped from his chest. His nephew, his only family left—save his mother—so recently introduced and so quickly ripped away from him. He had to admit that one day Oak would make a fantastic diplomat, he was already capable of getting his point across with scathingly few words.
But when he’d gotten Vivienne’s letter, that’s when he began to realize he’d truly fucked up.
His head pounded and his stomach was in knots as he wondered what had happened to his wife in the past two weeks, what had warranted such strong words from his sister-in-law and former friend. Was Jude sick? Had she hurt herself? Was she refusing to eat?
Would she recover? He couldn’t even begin to picture a world where Jude didn’t recover, where she wasn’t fighting tooth and nail to better herself, where she wasn’t the powerhouse he always saw her as.
Deep down in his heart he knew that he’d done the one thing that all the torture in the Undersea wasn’t able to do: he’d broken his wife’s spirit.
He’d never forgive himself.
“Your Majesty!”
Cardan didn’t so much as blink as the Bomb screamed, entering the disaster of her king’s rooms and likely expecting to find his dead body on the floor.
When she saw the fire, she gasped in horror and grabbed Cardan by the shoulders, throwing him as far away from the fire as she was capable of.
The fire had reached halfway up the wall and was dangerously close to engulfing the bookshelf closest to the window. Anyone with a brain knew that, if she left to get buckets of water, the whole room would be up in flames by the time she returned. So, she made the executive decision to sacrifice his duvet—the duvet that he’d pulled up over his sleeping wife only two weeks and a day prior.
She threw the duvet over the fire and began to stomp on it, her thick rubber-soled boots making a hollow THUNK every time she brought her foot down.
When the fire finally stopped trying to fight back and the room was full of cloying black smoke, she pulled the remains of the duvet up.
And it stuck to the floor.
The Bomb furrowed her brow in confusion and pulled harder, bracing her feet against the stone floor and yanking with all her might until the duvet finally gave up and she went flying backwards, landing harshly on her butt with the ruined duvet in her hands.
The underside of the duvet was covered in black scorch marks and some strange, multicolored substance that she can’t quite place.
But Cardan knows what it is, and he reached for the duvet; his fingers running through the molten hot rubbery liquid, tears springing to his eyes once more.
“Your Majesty?” Bomb’s voice was quiet, confused as she watched the boy king spread boiling hot goop between his nimble fingers.
“I couldn’t look at them anymore,” he whispered back and Bomb put two and two together.
He’d started the fire to melt all his sticky hands. The gifts from his nephew, the game he’d played for weeks with Jude. All up in flames in the blink of an eye.
“Why hasn’t she come back?”
Bomb winced, reaching to try and pull his hand back. She could see boils starting to form on his fingers and she knew that if she didn’t get the melted sticky hand off him soon, his skin would burn so badly that it fell off.
“If you were her, would you?” Bomb asked, succeeding in grabbing his hand and worrying at her bottom lip as she saw the blood red burn marks on his hand.
He ripped his hand back from her, forcing her to look him in the eye, to see the wild devotion in his face and the desperation dripping from each tear.
“I’d always come back for Jude. Do you understand that?” He sounded ragged, broken and robbed of comfort. “Always. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of going after her, Liliver. Please, you must know that. You have to know that.”
The Bomb had never seen anything like this, not from Cardan, not from another faerie, not from anyone. This kind of pure, unrestrained pain reached out from every facet of the king’s being and grabbed her heart with a grip of cold iron, throttling her as she watched him suffer.
“Liliver I did it for her! Everything I did was for her, she has to know that. She can’t not know that!” He’d reached the point of sobbing, his burned hand hanging limply at his chest and starting to well blood from where the burns broke his skin.
“They would’ve killed her, Liliver, we both know it!” Cardan’s voice cracked and he folded over himself. “You saw what she looked like, she was wasting away! No mortal should ever be that thin, Liliver, certainly not Jude!”
“Your Majesty, please.” Bomb didn’t know what to do beyond grab his injured hand once more. She pulled him to his feet and hauled him over to the bathing chamber, but he stopped in the doorway. He refused to go in, refused to hard that brambles grew over the entrance and stopped the Bomb from trying again.
So she moved him to his desk and she sat him down. It took about a half an hour of work, but she was able to pull the ruined sticky hand mash off his hand, burned skin and blood falling away with every movement. The whole time he sobbed, he lamented, he worried. Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Elfhame, told her every word from the two letters he’d received because he’d memorized them both in his pain. He told her of his fears for his wife and he asked for her advice and she didn’t know what to tell him.
She didn’t know what she would’ve done if she’d been Jude and Van had been Cardan. She didn’t know how to come back from a betrayal like that.
“Write back,” she finally offered as she bound his hand. Around them ash was still falling and his room was still a disaster, but at least Cardan seemed to have recovered some of his composure; sewn together just like his ruined hand. “Write Jude, tell her what you meant. You can’t leave Faerie to go get her, not with Madoc on the prowl, but that doesn’t mean you can’t speak to her in your own way.”
He froze, his hand throbbing against the confines of his bandages as he looked at the Bomb. She was right. She was seldom wrong.
Liliver figured that she wouldn’t get his dismissal, not with the way his gaze had gone so distant so suddenly, so she excused herself. She arranged for the rest of the Court of Shadows to clean his rooms, ensuring that she was the one cleaning his bedchamber.
She watched as he wrote and wrote and wrote and she said nothing, not that he would’ve heard her anyway. He was way too far in his own head.
She found herself grabbing his jacket off the floor—no doubt thrown in a fit of anger earlier during the night—and she found herself walking towards his closet.
Cardan Greenbriar hadn’t gone into his closet since that night, his wedding night. Not since he’d been with his wife, his darling.
So it was Liliver who found the discarded blue sticky hand with the broken ring finger, the only sticky hand saved from the great sticky hand fire.
She didn’t even think as she grabbed it and hid it in her trouser pocket, slyfooting away and out into the hall. She didn’t think as she snuck into a back tunnel and worked her way up to the room that Jude had kept as Seneschal. She didn’t think as she opened Jude’s bedside drawer.
And when she was met with a pink glittery sticky hand, she smiled. When she set the blue hand next to the pink one, she thought that maybe, just maybe, these two would have a chance.
She hoped they’d have a chance.
~~~~~~~
Hope y’all don’t hate me yikes lol
Tag list: @cardan-greenbriar-tcp @hizqueen4life @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thewickedkings @aelin-queen-of-terrasen @cheekycheekycheeks @queen-of-glass @b00kworm @doingmyrainbow @andromeddea @jurdanhell
Sticky ficky 9
~~~~
That’s right hoes, I’m back and bringing you more sticky ficky content. I really set this chapter up expecting to introduce work on a string but it didn’t happen I PROMISE I SET IT UP FOR NEXT CHAPTER THO
~~~~~~
Silence greeted Jude as she stepped, shaking and weak, out of the shower. She could still see bits and pieces of her dream in her mind’s eye, could still feel the sharpness of Cardan’s nails digging into her neck and smell Balekin’s rotting flesh.
She tried to take deep breaths, to swallow around the painful lump in her throat, but she couldn’t find the strength to.
Just as she was about to start hyperventilating again, she heard a knock at the door. It started soft, just three delicate raps. But when nobody answered, the knocking became louder.
Funny, Vivienne and Oak should still be home. Why weren’t they opening the door?
Jude kept her plush blue towel wrapped tightly around her and walked through the apartment, her wet feet threatening to slip on the linoleum floors.
“Fucking calm down, I’m here,” she griped as the person on the other side continued to beat at the door. Still, nothing couldn’t prepared her for what she saw on the other side.
There, out in the hallway, was Heather.
She opened the door, crossing her arms over her chest. “Vivienne isn’t here.”
Heather brightened upon seeing her, only dulling slightly at the mention of her ex before smiling once more and pushing into the apartment.
“I’m not here for Vivi,” she stated. “I’m here for you.”
Jude, who couldn’t stop the puzzlement from showing on her face, merely watched as Heather continued through the apartment she’d once shared. She was carrying a long sleeve of fabric, longer even than her leg, tucked up under her arm.
Heather stopped in front of Jude’s door and motioned for her to enter. Jude raised a brow in response.
“Get dressed,” she ordered. “We’re going out.”
She said it with enough confidence that Jude didn’t even question it. She moved robotically, going to her room and dressing in comfortable leggings and an old concert hoodie. As she laced up her boots, she studied her sister’s ex lover.
“Why are you here?” Jude finally asked.
“I told you, I’m here for you,” she answered, then her face faltered a bit. “I need someone to talk to about,” she sighed, “everything. It’s messing with my head and I can’t figure it all out”
Reasonable enough, Faerie can unhinge even the most sane of people.
Jude, dressed and ready, nodded for Heather to lead the way. It didn’t even occur to her as she walked out the door that it was the first time in weeks she’d left her self-determined prison. After the dream, she was tired, too bone tired to think about her own sorrow.
She was tired enough to try something new.
Neither woman spoke as they hopped on the bus. Being late morning, most people in the city were already at work. It was just them and the bus driver, sitting in a comfortable silence that was broken only by the humming of passing cars.
As they got off the bus and the smell of salt hit Jude, she finally asked what they were doing.
“I always used to go kite flying when I needed to think,” Heather explained. “ I’d go with my dad when I was younger and Vivi when we were together. It helped me talk things out.”
Jude blinked against the sunlight, her body still used to the Faerie timeline.
“I can’t exactly talk this out with dear old dad,” she reasoned. Jude snorted.
It was the first sound that resembled a laugh she’d made in weeks.
When she was a little girl and her parents still lived, they always used to go to the beach during the summer. She can remember days spent building castles out of sand and doing cartwheels down the coastline, searching the water with her twin for any sign of mermaids.
The mermaids she’d imagined were far sweeter than the ones who really lived.
“C’mon, kick your shoes off!”
So Jude did. She tucked her socks into her boots and tied the laces so she could hang them round her shoulders while they walked. Together, Jude and Heather stepped off the boardwalk and into the sand, the warmth of the sun-baked earth seeping into the bottoms of their feet.
They walked in silence and Jude thanked whatever gods existed for the fact that the surf was calm that day. They could barely hear the ocean and hardly anyone was in the water.
“Here looks like a good spot,” Heather decided aloud, dropping her shoes and the sleeve she carried.
“What’s that?”
“My dual-line,” she answered, pulling fabric and strings and handles and sticks out of the sleeve. “I figured I’d bring the easy one, in case you wanted to try.”
“I’ve never seen a kite that looked like that,” Jude observed the mess of black and purple and green nylon as Heather began to unravel the strings from around the handle.
Heather grinned at her, laying out some forty feet of line. “It was handmade by a guy down in Georgia. My dad bought it from the artist. It was my first stunt kite, I never liked mono-lines.”
Jude watched quietly as the other girl set up the vaguely triangular kite, testing the tension on the carbon fiber rods that held the fabric open before using a lark’s head knot to tie either of the handle’s strings to separate sides of the kite.
“Watch this,” Heather grinned, setting the kite down so it was being pushed back by the wind.
So Jude crosses her arms and watched Heather walk her way back to the handles, keeping the kite’s lines taught so it didn’t go over into the sand. Then, when she’d gotten the handles firmly grasped, she took a step back.
And the kite launched into the sky.
For all the beauty Jude had witnessed in Faerie, nothing was quite like this. It flew, nothing like a bird and everything like a leaf gliding through the wind. Though the colors were glaringly unnatural, it still gave off a calming sense of beauty.
Jude had become so used to the terrifying version of pretty that she’d forgotten what mundane beauty could look like. She’d forgotten how much she’d loved it.
Heather whooped as she caught the wind, pulling the line in her right hand towards her so the kite did a spin in the air and laughing at how it oversteered. They squinted together, watching the kite fall and then rise as it lost and caught gusts of air.
Jude smiled. It was small, and it was gone quickly, but she’d smiled all the same.
“Would you like to try?” Heather asked and she nodded, letting her friend hand her the handles and then stand behind her to help her get the hang of things.
“If you want it to turn left, pull the left handle towards you. For right, pull the right. Don’t move the handles side to side. Lift them up for the kite to go higher and pull them down for it to go lower,” she explained, laughing loudly as Jude promptly did exactly the wrong thing and sent the kite smashing into the ground.
“Oh shit—“
“Don’t worry!” Heather exclaimed, running over to the downed kite. “They’re tough!”
She picked up the kite and set the tip back towards the sky, holding it aloft and telling Jude to step back. When she did, Heather launched the kite once more.
What must’ve been an hour passed as she taught Jude the ins and outs of stunt flying. She got talking about her foils and her quad-lines and how her mother knew how to spin a mono-line and keep it in the air. She told Jude stories of competitions she’d watched and festivals she’d been to. She even mentioned how she’d started a kite flying club in her highschool.
“It’s just something about the way the wind whispers through the trees on a good day,” she grinned. “Sets my soul at ease. Nothing quite clears the mind like a kite in the sky.”
“We don’t have kites in Faerie,” Jude whispered, almost reverent in her tone. “I suppose it loses its appeal when so many people can fly themselves.”
She passed the handles back to Heather, who began doing tricks like a seasoned professional.
“Faerie loses its appeal when the people have no appreciation for simple things,” Heather whispered back, sounding perturbed. “Like trust, for that matter.”
Jude snorted as Heather made the kite fly in a square. “Trust? In Faerieland? Vivi didn’t prepare you at all.”
Heather shot her a look and the two stared at each other for a long time until the kite crashed down again.
She walked to grab the kite and launch it for Heather.
“How’d you survive? Back when you were a child, I mean.”
Jude crosses her arms, moving back to her previous spot, keeping her eyes on the kite the whole time.
“Madoc viewed us as his responsibility after he killed Mom and Dad,” she shrugged. “And we were children. The fae are usually very careful with children, even human ones. Babies are so unbelievably rare that to harm a child would be unthinkable for most.”
She allowed herself to look back over and catch Heather watching her.
“I suppose we just got lucky that we had enough time to learn the ways of Elfhame.”
Heather turned back to the kite.
“And we used a lot of Rowan berries and salt.”
The other girl pursed her lips and sent the kite careening towards the sand, saving it at the last possible moment. “I just don’t understand how an entire people can be so unbearably cruel. So evil and manipulative, especially when they can’t lie.”
“They’re self-satisfying,” she offered like it wasn’t a bad thing. “A way of life that you either get used to or get crushed by.”
“Don’t they ever get tired of being selfish?”
“Why would they?” Jude half laughed. “It gets them what they want.”
She let the kite fall and neither woman went to retrieve it.
“Do you ever get tired of playing their game?” Heather asked.
Jude blinked, her fingers tapping a soundless rhythm on the elbow of her crossed arm as she stared out into the calm, glassy sea.
“I get tired of losing it,” she finally answered. “And I tire of the fact that I only lose when my selfishness isn’t driven by destruction.”
Together they sat down and Heather, sensing Jude wasn’t done, waited for the younger woman to continue.
“I’ve killed more people than I care to count, bathed in blood and dug secret graves in the dead of night. I’ve engineered the fall of the eldest Greenbriar child and, unknowingly, helped set the stage for the fall of the others.”
“I’ve dominated meetings and outsmarted countless people I shouldn’t have been able to outsmart.” She finally turned to look at Heather. “I’ve done all this and more. So why is it that it only works when I’m hurting someone? Why is it that, on the briefest occasion I do something out of love—be it crowning Cardan to protect my brother or taking a lover for myself for once or giving myself to a man in marriage because I genuinely thought he cared—why is it that love breeds failure for me?”
Heather blinked calmly, weighing the question in her mind, rolling her thoughts around on her tongue and playing with the handles of her kite as it fluttered oh-so-slightly on the sand.
“I don’t think love breeds failure for you,” she finally started, “merely success that you aren’t comfortable with.”
Jude raised a brow at her before leaning back in the sand, throwing her arms across her face to block her eyes from the sun.
“Jude, I’m serious!” Heather insisted. “I get that ruling through Cardan didn’t go as smoothly as you liked, but Oak got to be safe here. He gets to be a normal kid for awhile, learn some basic kindness.”
She went to respond, but Heather cut her off.
“And yeah that Locke guy was a complete and total tool, but plenty of men are. It wasn’t your insistence on loving him that made him a two-timing whore and your sister a back-stabbing bitch.”
Jude couldn’t help but smirk at that.
“And, while I’ll admit I don’t really know what’s going on with you and Cardan right now, the fact remains that you’re still married. He could’ve tried to divorce you instead of sending you away. That has to count for something, right?”
“He banished me for murdering his brother,” she felt her face sour at the very idea of Balekin. “Never mind that he challenged me to a duel and, per the rules of courtesy and the fae’s slavish insistence on obeying it, I couldn’t turn him down.”
Heather opened her mouth.
“And never mind that he forced me to kiss him in the Undersea—“
“WOAH!” Heather exclaimed and Jude went quiet. “He did what?”
She uncovered her face and opened an eye, squinting up at her friend and raising her brows at the shocked expression that she wore.
“When I was trapped in the Undersea he made me come to him,” she explained, covering her face once more. “I guess he had an idea that I might feel something for his brother so he forced me to kiss him the same way I’d kiss Cardan. He thought me glamoured, I had no choice.”
“Jude that’s assault.”
“Add it to the thousand other things that’ve been done to me. You get used to it after awhile.”
She felt Heather’s hand on her shoulder and started, uncovering her face in shock and finding the older girl staring at her in horror.
“Jude that’s not right. Just because it happens a lot doesn’t mean it’s okay.”
She chewed the inside of her lip as Heather’s face scrunched up in determination. “You should use some of your murdery badassery next time someone tries that shit on you. I’ll help, I’ve got a taser that looks like lipstick.”
Jude wanted to laugh, but the completely serious look that Heather wore stopped her.
How long it had been since someone was willing to go to war for her and her alone. Well, if you ignore what Cardan did to get her freed from the Undersea. But was that really the same? He’d not lifted a finger, and he’d had the power of half an army and magic that could boil the sea.
Heather has nothing, likely not even basic fight training, and she was still ready to back Jude up.
“How are you handling things since,” Jude changed the subject, “y’know, with Vivi?”
Heather’s face soured and she huffed, staring out at the sea.
“I’m so angry,” she admitted. “I could get over her not preparing me, I could get over the whole cat thing. But taking my memories? Deciding that I’m not adult enough or strong enough to remember what’s been done to me? I don’t know if that’s forgivable.”
The way her voice broke at the end told Jude everything she needed to know and she wrapped her arm around Heather.
“But you want to forgive her.”
“You know I do,” she sounded so forlorn. “I love her so much Jude, but I don’t know how we cone back from something this devastating.”
“If you figure it out, I wanna be the first to know,” Jude snorted and Heather cracked a smile once again. “What a pair we make.”
“I’ve never been friends with a murderer before. Or a queen, for that matter,” Heather observed. “Do you get used to it?”
“The murder part? Absolutely.”
Heather shot her a rueful grin. “I have much less of a problem with you getting used to that then the assault thing.”
“What a coincidence,” Jude laughed. “Me too.”
~~~~
The Jude and Heather friendship I always needed in my life. Next chapter will be Jude and Heather go to/have gone to a kite shop and seen the worms on a string. Some WILL be purchased I promise.
I know it’s no Cardan and no sticky hands but I needed some Jude healing. I think we can all agree she needed to talk through her feelings with someone who was close enough to care but far enough away to point out when she wasn’t being treated right.
~~~
Tag list: @cardan-greenbriar-tcp @hizqueen4life @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thewickedkings @aelin-queen-of-terrasen @cheekycheekycheeks @queen-of-glass @b00kworm @doingmyrainbow @andromeddea @jurdanhell @thesirenwashere @sweetlyvillainous @courtofjurdan @clockworkgraystairs @st00pid231
Sticky hand 2: electric boogaloo because ya bitch can’t stop y’all I’m having way too much fun.
~~~
Vivienne Duarte had been very wise to hide Oak when Jude returned to the mortal world, violently kicking the apartment door open with murder in her eyes and a pilfered sticky hand in her grasp.
“Where the fuck does he keep getting these?” She screamed out in frustration, her every waking moment consumed by sticky hand-induced dread.
Three weeks had passed since the day in the study, the day where Jude had wrapped her fingers around the king’s throat and ordered him to stop using his sticky hand to disturb the peace. Naturally, he’d just gotten a bunch of different sticky hands. He’d found a way around every one of her orders, changing out hands or targets every time she thought up a way to try and stop it.
The High King was a monster; a monster with unfailing aim.
Oak, hiding under Vivi’s bed and giggling as he wrote out a letter to his uncle—a letter that would absolutely include a brand new hand—listened close as his older sister raged. He wasn’t particularly sure how or why Jude had decided to get involved in politics with her sworn enemy, but it was the greatest entertainment he’d ever witnessed in his short little life. On top of all that, he now had a running correspondence with the High King of Elfhame!
Oak was moving up in the world, one sticky hand at a time.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to run a country when your hands are tied by a boy’s obsession with some stupid toy?”
Vivi, back in the kitchen and leaning over a mug of coffee, openly laughed at her little sister’s rampage.
THWAP
Jude screamed as she launched the stolen hand across the room, raging even harder when it stuck to the wall with that stupid fucking sound. She pulled at her hair, yelling without any real words and stomping her feet like the child she just barely isn’t.
“Find something to fight back with,” Vivi offered with a shrug, eyeing the sticky hand and hoping it didn’t stain the paint on the walls. “If he’s truly as legendary with sticky hands as Oak assures me he is, you’ll need a weapon you can counter with.”
Jude gritted her teeth and spun on her heel, halfway out the door before she realized she had no mortal money and she’d need Vivi with her to glamour some leaves.
But if Vivi came with her, Oak had to come, and Oak was so clearly on his Uncle’s side in this war. Family or not, she couldn’t risk letting her little brother in on her planning.
Not when the stakes were this high.
It took a few days of planning and a careful excuse for why she was returning to the mortal world so soon, but Jude eventually got her weapons of choice.
Later that night, as the sun was nearly at its peak in the sky and Jude was waist deep in more of Cardan’s unfinished paperwork, she sensed him.
She sensed that fucking hand.
She heard it begin to whistle through the air, tiny rubber fingers reaching longingly for her extremely important paper.
She spun in her chair.
THWAP
THUNK
The paper slid onto the floor, accompanied by the sticky hand that Cardan had let go of in shock as he went over backwards, crashing into the doorframe at his back.
The High King sank down, eyes wide as he stared down his seneschal, a dart suction cupped to his forehead.
The most wicked grin Jude Duarte had ever pulled plastered itself across her face as she kept the nerf gun raised threateningly. She’d been gripping it in her left hand for hours, double checking it was loaded every five minutes as she awaited Cardan’s attack.
“You’ve come prepared today, my dastardly little villain,” the king openly grinned as he reached up, pulling the dart off his forehead with a little pop!
“My job is far too important for you to ruin it with toys, Cardan.”
“I promised I wouldn’t make this easy on you,” he rose from the ground, the dart spinning in his fingers as he stalked forward, his tail sweeping along the floor. “But I will admit, I didn’t think you’d be willing to play with me.”
Jude’s grin fell as he laughed, now towering over her.
Cardan Greenbriar leaned forward, his lips brushing against the shell of Jude’s ear.
“Game on.”
~~~~~
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