i would like to dedicate this chapter to Mystery IT Man, who isn't a reader, but he spent a whole night painstakingly recovering this chapter, line by line, from the depths of my computer memory after i accidentally deleted it. i truly thought i'd lost it. it means twice as much to me now to be here posting it today
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i think we earned this :)
art posted later in the chapter
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Thank you for standing by.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
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𝐉𝐮𝐝𝐞
It feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop, or the glass bubble dream to shatter. It's one of those lovely moments you're supposed to stop and savour, because time has taught her that lovely things are never built to last. A sleepy suburban childhood. A dream of knighthood. Such things have a bad habit of coming exclusively in meanwhiles. That's what this moment feels like, another beautiful meanwhile.
Take it. Take what is yours.
If this kiss is hers to take, she'll take her good sweet time with it.
After all, it isn't Locke wrenching a story from her lips, nor is it the Ghost making a game of intimacy. It's Cardan, who honours this distance between their bodies, slight as it might be. Cardan, now watching her beneath the sleepy awning of his lashes, waiting for her to make the first move.
It was perhaps too much power all at once. Jude noted the slight tremble in her hands as they left her folded arms to reach for him, seeking a safe place to start. She began her slow excursion of his body at his torso, plotting him from chest to shoulder, then all the way up through his gorgeous head of hair. She had to tarry at this checkpoint. His hair was twice as soft as she remembered, and it shouldn't have been. After that windy moth ride, it should have all been in tangles.
