Summary: After ending the curse, Jude has been burden with the emotional toll of what she feels for Cardan, yet she struggled telling him till now.
Warning: Smut, swearing, tqon spoilers, and pregnancy
If you read this, I am so rusty with smut, but after rereading the series I had to.
Staggering inside the moon-lit bedroom, the shadows casted from the silver lining metal, shaped as forest creatures, concealed in the glass panes were fracture by the drunken High King. The High King of Elfhame, stumbled gracefully, across the shadows, sending them in disoriented spirals, which he danced with while humming a horrific tune, easing his sleeping queen out of the rest she rightful deserved, and fought for.
After the past few escapades thoroughly displayed, the queen’s energy dissolved somewhere between receiving her newly found titles of Serpent Slayer and High Queen of Elfhame, and the addition serpent dawning her nightmares left her uneased. However, Tatterfell—her servant since childhood—halted her scolding, swapping her daggered words for a better weapon. Instead of merely mentioning the lavender herbal tea, she left a small cup on the miniature tree nightstand beside her; a beautiful addition she grown from the bark flooring while practicing the magic she carried from the land, tree stands with thick roots twisting up into tinier—vine like—branches, autumn brown leaves springing out from the edges and mended together like solid metal. Despite her earlier refusals, the High Queen decided differently that night.
Drearily, her leaded eyes peeled open. She flicked her eyes to the nightstand, catching the empty spot where the quaint teacup had resided. Tatterfell. Rolling her heavy-lidded eyes, they nearly collapsed into a disoriented dizziness threatening to send her back to sleep. “Cardan?” she rasped quietly. Her eyes unable to adjust quite right despite the moonlight.
“Jude, my violent queen, my sweet villain,” Cardan chuckled, his quicksilver smile dawning his vulnerable face. Drunken himself kind. “My curse, my cure,” he purred lowly, prowling the edge of his bed as the High Queen propped herself up. Cardan kicked his silver toed boots off, tripping up over himself till he spiraled over the massive in heart of their royal chambers.
“Cardan,” Jude sighed. “Is this how it is to be?”
Cardan muffled giggled filtered into their honey-gold sheets. He pushed up slowly, letting his face fall lazily into his hands. “How what is to be? If you wish grander words spilled from my lips, then I shall grant your desire. Perhaps, I ought to assemble the most gifted mortals to accompany me, and I shall shout ballads of my endless love, my never-ending love.”
“Never,” Jude remarked, “Cardan, never is quite a ways away. I may never reach it.”
“Jude, my darling Jude, I might be incapable of keeping us alive till never, yet my love, my heart’s content, it will reach never,” Cardan’s dizzying words spirals Jude’s mind.
She might had consumed whatever wine or ale he simmered down. It was a mighty excuse if she ended throttling the king.
Cardan, slowly, climbed his way up the massive mattress, his onyx eyes glazed as if the stone was freshly forged from the fire which birthed it. He displayed either arm on the outside o of her shapely thighs thickened during the years Madoc spent drilling and training her, honing her wildness into a sharp sword—one worthy of cutting through anything. Sadly, the exiled general had neither truly appreciated his daughter capabilities nor strength. She was grander than anything Grimsen crafted and forged. Deadlier than any of his curses. An enchantment no fair folk’s magic amounted.
And she, solely till Oak came of age, was his delight. His endless, ongoing joke to torture and tease till never caught them by the ends of their hair, yanking them down to the reality they gradually ignored.
Cardan kissed the smooth side of one Jude’s legs stuck out from the coverlet. He chased several gentle kisses to the bend of her knee with that wicked mouth of his till her legs vanished beneath the silk. He groaned softly, wrapping his hand playfully around her calf. He flexed his hand slowly, and he massaged the mortal flesh beneath his hand, warm with the blood running through her. Grinning wickedly, the High King nipped Jude’s skin. His sharp fang drew the smallest noise from his queen, his wife.
As if Jude knew the moment the thrilling idea provoked Cardan, she paled, and the dim moonlight highlight the reddish glow beneath her cheeks. “Cardan,” she rasped quickly, jerking her knee closer, yet the drunken king thought otherwise as he kept her firmly in place. If anyone was to mover her, it was to be him. “Do not think of it, my king. You are drunk.”
“As you should be, my queen,” he lyrically responded as if his magic teased his voice, dawning the beginning of an enchantment. “It is a celebration to last a month! A celebration of you and I. Why have you retired to our chambers? No guard is posted outside the door.”
Unsure if Cardan’s words were suggestive, Jude leaned closer. The space between the queen and king thinned, yet there was so much separating them. And she partially burdens the blame. If only she removed her armor as quickly as Cardan. “I retired as I am tired. Why have you left the celebration?” she inquired, glancing at the slant of the moon. There were a few hours left till light came dawning the land, and the fair folk found themselves a resting place till the endeavors resumed.
“What is a celebration without the queen?” Cardan mused. His raven hair fallen into the eyes the color of the same spilt black ink.
“A tiresome queen never made for good company,” Jude heard herself saying without much content.
Cardan, frowning, saddled between Jude’s legs, and a hefty sound came from the back of her throat. The queen’s eyebrows risen. The king merely curved the daggered smile Jude had come to admire in a way moths do with flames. Cardan crushed the silk spun blanket against the mattress, leaving Jude little room to pry the coverlet over herself. “You ought to find better reasoning, my queen. Has my sudden transformation left you sadden? Were you wishing to rule the throne as yours, and yours alone?”
Jude tipped her head back, and the shooter strands of her chestnut roasted hair falling loose and framing the sharp details of her face. Cardan trailed his hand slowly over her smooth skin, rubbing the taut muscles always strained to flee in a moments notice. “Cardan, I thought I craved power, and power alone, yet the hatred for you that poured so thickly through me anytime I crossed over a raven’s feather quill, or I wore a sliver golden ring, or I saw a tail swindling to and frow, or I went on your brother’s missions had consumed my being so thoroughly I knew nothing else than to think of you—”
“Tell me again, my sweet villain,” he whispered lightly, the sweetness of the wine far gone from his lips.
“What again? Please, do not interrupt. I must say the issues of my unresolved mind and armored heart,” Jude murmured. The opportunity was slipping. Her armor tightening. Her mind sharpening.
“Tell me you hate. At least, then, I am aware the depths of this marriage, and I may armor my heart once more—”
“Cardan,” muttered Jude abruptly, “if you do not wish to find what your tail tastes like, then hush.” Jude slid her own hand to meet Cardan’s, intertwining their fingers together. She brushed her thumb over his signet ring, tracing the symbol of his lineage. Her eyes flicked upwards, and she almost came undone. Those beautiful ink eyes glimmering with bit of golden star dust. The gold was haunting. Almost taunting. A reminder her king’s midnight eyes were completely glazed in gold when Cardan had been cursed. “My heart is armor as yours is stone, yet you held a depth of feeling, which you confounded in me, and if I were not to do the same…if I were to go another moment without telling, then I would be the serpent.”
“Then tell me, Jude. Whether you love or hate me, I plead you to tell me the heaviness shielded behind that armor of yours, so I may know how to act, how to be, around you,” Cardan exhaled as if he were the one saying those desired words all over again.
“I love you, Cardan,” Jude whispered shallowly, the words barely strung into the open. She spoke the words as a dead greedy man refusing eager ears where his treasury resided, and Cardan eagerly bent so close, catching every detail. The shutter in her breath, the heavy reside woven as if she had been gutted on a battlefield than sitting in their chambers.
“Cardan, I love you, and I will love you till never comes and beyond,” she vowed.
“Mortal promises are not worth much,” Cardan claimed, and it took Jude a brief second to realize the light teasing.
“You must wish to have your tail stuff into that formidable mouth,” she threatened tauntingly.
Leaning towards the High King, she reached past him. Quickly, she grasped his flickering tail and laughed the moment Cardan released a strangled noise, somehow a low growl and chocked moan. She ran her hands along his fury tail till she brushed the tuft ends. Gleaming, Cardan released an involuntary purr, and he quickly eased Jude onto her backside, tearing the silky blanket aside. He drew an eased breath, staring darkly down at the woman he loved, at his queen.
Jude brushed her fingers through his raven locks, pushing the strands behind his blade tipped ears. Her thumb brushed the golden hoops fastened in his ear, trailing to the bottom of his lobe. She twisted a golden chain piece of metal dangling in the lowest part of his ear, and her fingers continued, tracing the curve his jaw—the jawline that had cut out her own heart—and touching those wicked lips. Her eyes met his, and her heart slowed as if she followed into the beyond.
“Cardan, there’s another heaviness weighting my heart, and I must relieve it,” she murmured, catching her eyes on his thinned lips plastering a frown, and those dark eyebrows drawn closely together.
“Perhaps it ought to wait, my queen. I need you. I need all of you, and I will be damned if I am not inside you once more,” he growled against her lips, seizing the corner with a small kiss. He trailed his lips down, down, down, roaming the most tender parts of her jaw and neck that drew noises Jude had not known she could create.
She tried catching his jaw and steering his eyes back on her, yet she found them bounded by one of his hands, tucked between their rising chests. “Cardan, please…”
“Jude, let me show you the way you make me feel. You know I cannot lie, yet I can deceive unless you ask me directly. Please, let me love you,” he pleaded.
Cardan, her cruel prince, her wicked king, begging was an unholy sight. Jude inhaled and held it in. Her mind spun, snatching on any cohesive thought, yet as quickly as one formed, it dissipated into the nothingness of her mind. “Cardan, let me tell you this, and if you wish to continue, I give you a whole week’s worth of my time.”
Cardan growled lowly, nipping the corner of Jude’s soft lips. Inhaling a slow breath, he stiffened atop of her, and his eyes narrowed upon an intoxicating smell. A smell he had been too intoxicated and overwhelmed, with Jude lying in their bed, to notice. “How long?” he demanded, trying to articulate the seldom nights they had alone since Jude return and his own rebirth. “How long, Jude?”
“How can, how can you tell?” She stammered, her voice falling low. Refusing to meet those dark, golden ebbed eyes, she felt the heaviness of them crushing her.
Unable to stare at the woman beneath him, Cardan rolled, not caring his tail crushed beneath him. He thought their scheming and secrets were done. At least between them. How foolish though, to believe a mortal at their word. As deceitfulness and ruthlessness bounded his nature, strategy and lying bounded the queen beside him. How were they to rule as one if they could trust as one?
Cardan, while Jude breathed heavily beside him, rolled onto the edge, his bare feet cooled by the bark floor. A hand caught his shoulder, yet he shrugged off the contact. “My own wife cannot trust me,” he muttered.
“Cardan, I trust you…I was frightened, and I have been so frightened since…”
“Since when, Jude? Is it me that frightens you?” he asked calmly.
“Yes, you frightened me. The moment you transformed into that serpent I was frightened. I found out prior and had yet found a time to tell you. Vivi scented the change when I was dressing for the arrival of Madoc right before…” she kept her strength through the entire explanation, until the end. She crumbled thinking of the serpent. Serpent Slayer.
She bared the title Serpent Slayer. Slaying the serpent, ending one of the only pieces of Cardan she had left without knowing cleaving the beast’s head from its body would end the curse, releasing the High King. The serpent’s death meant Cardan’s death, and though, the power and influence of binding the serpent to her forever was desirable, she had to free the High King. Even if he was released to the beyond.
A part of him remained with her. She rubbed her flat belly.
“The curse took me,” Cardan finished. “You’re so reckless, Jude.”
“I am reckless when it comes to you, my king,” she said.
“Foolishly, reckless,” he declared, tugging her carefully into his lap. Jude crashed against him, curling her fingers around his outgrown locks of velvet black hair, winding the ends and pulling. “Not to mention the lack of guards, Sir Fend should be with you at all times, understood?”
Jude rolled her eyes, “I am capable of handling myself.’’
“I know, love, I think you are the only one who is, but it will be by your command or mine, she will be with you,” Cardan declared as if he was declaring war itself. He pressed his wicked lips against Jude’s, bounding her to him. There needn’t be anymore word exchanges, just Jude and him. Him and Jude.
Working his fingers underneath the rosy robes, mossy vines embroidered along the arms, Cardan pushed the tied robes up Jude’s thighs and pass the widened curves of her hips, a perk of her mortal body the High King loved gazing at. However, he was greedy, taking every part of her she would allow him to have, and he devoured each part until they molded themselves together; lips clashing in a battle, Cardan disarming her with quick swipes of his tongue and brief nips of his teeth.
Jude moaned lowly into her husband’s mouth. She pulled him closer, pressing her clothed chest to his, yet she ached to strip the dew green tunic off his body. Trailing her fingers down Cardan’s neck, she fumbled quickly on the frustratingly golden buttons, and slowly, she worked each button through the small sewn slit. Each button she unraveled, a feverish kissed replaced it till she reached his lower abdomen. Then, the impossible feat was his black breeches from which she ripped the tunic free from and ran her hands back up Cardan’s chest. He chuckled lightly, grasping Jude’s wandering hands and pressing kisses on the inside of her palm.
“I thought you wanted me?” she teased Cardan, rolling her hips against him while Cardan stripped—really shredded—the robe from Jude’s shoulders, letting the flimsy material bunch around her elbows, exposing her breast to her king.
“I do, and I will,” he growled lowly, bucking his hips harshly against hers, and he claimed her wide hips with his hands. He kept her firmly against him, watching her breast bounced as they moved against once another. “Fuck—” Cardan muttered, pushing his face against her chest, and he quickly closed his lips around her nipple.
Jude threw her head back, digging her dull nails into Cardan’s arms; she clutched tightly as if she might disappear if it weren’t for him, his body, his love, keeping her grounded. “Cardan,” she cried softly, biting her lip as he teased her nipple. He sucked gently, tongue swirling over her hardened nipple, and he kissed softly to the other, taking it gently between his teeth.
An encompassing heat arose within the pleasured queen. An intoxicating warmth dampened between her legs, and she heard Cardan inhale a frighteningly deep breath. “Jude, you smell so sweet,” he muttered against her breath, prying his mouth away.
His kissed her brashly, preventing himself from laying Jude out on the bed and sliding between her legs; he would be there till the sun rose and long after it fell. Pulling away, his eyes traced her warm skin illuminated in a silvery shine and her chestnut hair fleeing the braid she knotted it into. Trailing his eyes down her chest, he devoured the heavy rise in his chest, and he felt her clenching thighs around his waist. Every bit of her surrounded and drowned him, taking him completely by surprise as he knew he’d never tire of undoing her.
She may forever undo him with hers skilled tongue and schemed mind, yet as he held her captive, undoing her entirely, he knew this was how did so to her.
Cardan gripped her hips like an iron band, watching Jude closely. Jude released a soft mewl of laughter as her husband’s tail swayed joyously behind, and she briefly wonder if his tail was ever an indication. Dropping her hands to his breeches, she unlaced them lazily till she could work her hands beneath the waistline, and she trailed her fingers over her husband, touching his hard member. She listened to his labored breathing and felt his stiffened muscles, each ticking up with tension as he waited.
Slowly, she freed his member from the breeches, thanking whoever she must for the lack of the fair folks’ modesty. Their bodies never adorned undergarments, and sometimes, during grand festivities they bore no clothes, lost to the winds and the lands. Working her hand slowly up and down him, Cardan tightened his hold on her, almost bruising her tender flesh, yet Jude partially paid any mind. Having him leave marks on her, they were still figuring out things in bed as Jude did tend to bruise easier than her husband’s past lover, left her slightly drunken. It was a symbol other than their spoken promise that Cardan was hers and she his.
Yet, none of the marks hurt, nothing ever hurt. Cardan always made sure.
Cardan shared a darkened look, quick glimmers sparked around the blackened iris, as he pulled Jude entirely against him, entering her in a swift movement. Chocking on a breathless moan, Jude sealed her eyes shut and leant her forehead against her husband’s. He filled her so thoroughly that she was lost in a delirious state, mouth slightly parted. It was, perhaps, the only way Cardan managed to silence his wife, the High Queen—his member buried deep in her, and Jude clenching tightly around him as he adjusted.
“Are you with me, my darling?” Cardan rolled his hips slightly, grinding deep inside her.
Jude shuddered lightly, Cardan brushing each sensitive place. He always found every perfect place, drawing her higher and higher with each roll of his hips. Nodding her head meekly, the High Queen sluggishly rested her head against the king’s shoulder, too heavy to bare the weight herself. “Y-yes,” she stammered lowly, meeting her husband’s movements in a dazed pattern.
Cardan released a breathy chuckle into Jude’s chestnut hair, and he pressed a tender kiss there. He dragged her hips forward, hands tight around Jude. He moved her forward and guided her through the slow motion as he fucked inside her. Deeper and harder, he ensured their hips in perfect movements. Losing every part of herself, she sputtered a weakened breath. Fitting onto her husband’s thick length stolen everything—her mind, her heart, her body—at blade point as she had done to him all those months ago. She was breathless. She was thoughtless. The only thing grounding her was the way Cardan pressed everywhere she needed inside her, soothing and igniting a blazing fire all at once.
He snarled against her neck, lapping his tongue over the sweet skin salted by his wife’s light sheen of sweat. Jude found herself in their paced movements, drawing out the grand evening. She lifted herself up Cardan’s thick member, and she dropped down. Her loud moans chimed higher as she built the friction inside her stomach—a slow burn, forged brighter and hotter as they entangled themselves together.
Jude’s chest fastened the rate it heaved, crashing into Cardan’s heated skin. Her hardened nipples brushed the fair folk’s taut chest, sending jolts of delectable ecstasy, and she shivered violently despite the warmth spread over her skin and overtaking everything inside her. The heat crawled beneath her skin, each nerves sent ablaze as the warm unfurled and swept from the bundle inside of her stomach. It tightened in turn with the way she grinded and bounced on Cardan’s hard member. Her thighs trembled—from the work and the waves of pleasure that crashed over her, and they threatened to send her drowning in the abyss of it all. Her stomach tightened. Her skin raised with little bumps. Her nipples swelled with intense heat. Her walls clamped around Cardan.
As she drew closer, Cardan all but slowed the pace. He snapped his hips violently into, groaning greedily at the warmth of his wife. He sunk further into her, overtaken the way she felt around him. He cursed profoundly against her skin. Clashing his canines over Jude’s warm skin, he sank his sharp teeth into her flesh. The fresh blood swirled on his skin made him hum while Jude cried sharply, her voice loud and rough, as she sunk down on Cardan, clenching tightly on his thick cock as she unraveled.
Jude’s muscles trembled uncontrollably as she let go, the threatening waves crashing over and taking her to the peak of her high. She collapsed against Cardan. Completely unmoving, aside the little twitches of her body and her uncoherent moans, she was only held steady by the High King’s body that still thrust deep into her. Cardan fucked deeper and deeper, muttering Jude’s name like an oath as his entire body tightened then shuttered. He released deep inside the wetness of his wife, watching as she came undone once again before him.
As he drew his face back, he peered down at his wife. Everything about her wholly appearance left him confounded. The beautiful, blissful drawn expression on her heart shaped face. The messy sprawl of her braid. The way her body twitched as Cardan rocked shallow inside her. The little droplets of blood splattering shining, heated skin near the inflated puncture wound on the juncture of her neck.
Craning his neck down, Cardan lapped the drying blood. “That was a pleasured delight,” he hummed against Jude’s flesh, “hopefully, the remainder of your pregnancy will be so.”
Jude lazily rolled her eyes, keeping them closed tight. She hummed softly, “if you behave, my king.”
