Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Cardan woke at the bottom of the sea.
Wisps of his hair floated about his face like tentacles caught in a current. He tried a few unnatural breaths of saltwater, spluttering at the strange sensation of it. It took a shamefully long time to compose himself. To accept this state of crushing saturation.
Maybe he was just hungover?
The previous day's events crashed upon him in giddying waves. The coronation, the carnage. Madoc assuming the throne. Balekin escaping with the blood crown. Cardan did not care which available monster ruled Elfhame, but he had no intention of sticking around long enough to be made responsible for either creature. In life, or in death.
He was fortunate that Nicasia had found him first, then. The princess discovered him drunk and stupid under a dining table, waiting for the screaming to stop so he could plot a swift exit from the palace. Nicasia claimed she could not leave him to die, and Cardan had been in no fit state to refuse her.
He took her hand and ran for the safety she promised. The safety of the Undersea.
He only looked back once on his way to the ocean and, in so doing, found himself locking eyes with Jude. What torturous serendipity it had been. A lingering look of mutual terror. She was running, too. It would be the last time he ever saw the mortal girl, disappearing with her sister Vivienne into the glittering flock of fey fleeing in all directions. In that moment, he wondered why Jude and Vivienne had not stayed at Madoc's side. Like Taryn, they might have lived as princesses.
Years later, in bits and pieces of Nicasia's gossip, he would come to learn that Jude and Vivienne had fled that night for the mortal world, turning their backs on Elfhame entirely. If Madoc's own daughters could not feel safe here, then the surviving sons of the murdered king were walking corpses. As for Balekin, wherever he was, his precious blood crown would be useless to him as long as he lacked a surviving sibling to bestow it upon his head.
Cardan came to accept that he would not be surfacing any time soon.
☕ 🐍 🗡️ 🍄 🖤
Ten years passed in aqueous slow motion.
Though it might have been two years, or twenty. Time passes strangely for the young and immortal.
There were days the ocean's depths overcame Cardan. Days he craved the touch of late sunlight upon his skin. The grounding of grass beneath his feet. The ancient scent of moss. The chirp of crickets. The swoosh of fabric along the dancefloor. Dry things. Bright things.
