Chapter Text
“And today I will dispense justice. Jude Duarte, do you deny you murdered Prince Balekin, Ambassador to the Undersea and brother to the High King?”
As I speak, I try to seem the composed, haughty king I am meant to be, but my eyes are alight with excitement. I know Jude sees it, because her voice comes out careful and uncertain in a way I have never heard from her.
Still, she lifts her chin. “I do not deny that we had a duel and that I won it.”
Such careful words from a mortal girl who grew up surrounded by warped speech of the Folk.
I pull out the silence, stretching it until it thins and I can feel the Folk around me begin to shift in excitement and anticipation.
“Hear my judgement.” My words echo obscenely in the hollow air of the brugh. I can feel Jude’s fawn brown eyes searching my face, trying to anticipate what I am going to say, trying to get her footing. It takes everything in me to keep my voice to a lazy, regal drawl and hold back a smile as I damn her. “I exile Jude Duarte to the mortal world. Until and unless she is pardoned by the crown, let her not step one foot in Faerie or forfeit her life.”
What I expect her to do is to narrow her eyes at me and pardon herself right then and there. I expect her to snap at me, maybe, or to huff in irritation. Or maybe even to smirk with a glint in her eye as she sees my next move in our years-long game of cat and mouse. What I don’t expect her to do is suck in a breath as her eyes flicker with hurt—all of it directed at me.
“But you can’t do that!” she blurts.
I stare at her, waiting for her to get it. Surely, any second, she’ll realize my careful wording. But she only stares back at me, long enough that I start to feel uncertain. The Folk around us are eating our duel up with beetle eyes and sharp teeth.
“Of course I can,” I say, slowly, confused. Why isn’t she calling my bluff?
“But I’m the Queen of Faerie!” she shouts, and I let out a breath. Finally. I wait for her to go on to pardon herself, to laugh, to acknowledge my cleverness.
But that’s all she says.
After a beat, the brugh erupts into laughter. I’m still staring at her, puzzled, when her eyes turn red and rainy. When I finally begin to laugh along with them, it is more in disbelief than anything. Come on, Jude. Play with me.
She doesn’t. She keeps staring at me, full of fury and hurt, as a pair of knights drag her down from her horse and I start to panic. It wasn’t supposed to get this far.
“Deny, it then!” she screams at me. “Deny me!”
I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, so I say nothing. Some part of me is still waiting for her to pull out her trump card. Or at least try to fight back, to push me and pull my hair and hurt me for how I’m hurting her. I think my uncertain smile is still twisted on my face as she glares at me with all the hate she’s ever held for me, that I’ve ever deserved, and more of it.
I am still confused when Sir Rannoch takes her away. When the mocking laughter of the Folk fades from my ears as I stare out at the new island I’ve drawn from the sea. When I start to think that maybe this is Jude’s way of punishing me after all—leaving me when I so desperately wanted her to stay.
***
My first day without Jude is unbearable.
She plagues my thoughts, as always, but it’s worse now, because I thought for one beautiful minute that she was mine, that she would stay. For one minute, she was my queen, and I was enough, and I wouldn’t have to do this alone. But she left. Like everyone does.
Locke suggests a revel, to celebrate getting rid of the girl of dirt, as he calls her. He congratulates me on my cleverness and says things like finally, and thorn out of your foot, and now you can be a proper king without all of her diplomatic fussiness in the way. Why did you keep her around so long, anyway? Taryn keeps her eyes down, but I think they are red and puffy.
I wave my hand dismissively at his proposition and he throws one anyway. I have to go, for appearances, but the mischievous eyes of my subjects burn my skin like iron where they land.
I miss Jude.
I drink. A lot.
Somewhere between then and now, I stumble down the halls, hopefully heading towards my rooms, when a very displeased Lilliver finds me and leads me… somewhere. What part of the castle am I in, anyway?
Her eyes are hard and her arms are stiff when she opens my door for me and practically shoves me inside. I fall onto the packed earth floor by the foot of my bed with a grunt of pain. The Bomb doesn’t move to help me up. I deserve worse.
“Goodnight, Your Majesty.” She makes to leave.
“Lilliver,” I mumble into the floor. She pauses. “Why didn’t she come back?”
“Your Majesty?”
“Jude,” I say. “Why didn’t she come back?” The earth is wet beneath my face, for some reason.
The Bomb pads over to me so silently that when she tugs my arm to get me up, I flinch in surprise. “You exiled her, that’s why,” she says shortly, practically throwing me onto my bed.
“But she was supposed to come back. She was—” I retch, and Lilliver takes a hasty step back. “She could have come back. But she hates me. And now she never will.”
The Bomb throws a metal bucket at my feet with a clang. “Sleep well, Your Majesty.”