[Jurdan] To see you again

Chapitre 1

When Cardan came back into these huge—too huge—apartments that he ought to call his own, he slouched on a couch and drank. The wine, he realized, had been his only true friend through all these years. He recalled Nicasia, their conversations, their whereabouts and their kisses, which tasted like salt and comfort. So different from the desperate fever he had shared with Jude.

He wondered if everything could have gone differently. He drank more, wishing to forget himself for the next century - no. For the next thousand years.

He felt Jude's absence like a presence around him. A ghostly reminder that nothing good ever happened to the villain. The single candle flickered in the dark, and the moving shadows it produced looked like all the people he had known, silently walking by and staring down at him. He drank, but the more he drank, the more they stared. A discreet flow of air behind him made him feel like Balekin was here, with one of his punishments. Cardan couldn't say out loud that it would be unfair.

Jude wouldn't have let herself been mistreated like this. She wouldn't have let ground to her father; she wouldn't have waged war against her best - and only - friend. She wouldn't have been weak. But Cardan was nothing like her, to his misfortune.

The more he drank, the more he felt this hole inside him gaping. Like an infected wound, it ached, it tore apart the rotten thing he called his heart. It felt like Jude herself was clawing it apart, avenging every humiliation Cardan had put her through; her impossible absence his whole fault.

He emptied a bottle, then two, then he grabbed a feather and papers, threw up his desperation on them.

He couldn't cry, he didn't think he had ever been able to, be he wished he could. He wished he was this pathetic.

The words were blurry, and the feather clammy, and his fingers tainted with ink, but he couldn't stop, couldn't stop as if writing it all down would ease the wrenching of his heart.

Oh! tormentor of my heart, why have you never returned. He drank half another bottle, then stumbled to his bed. The flowers that stuffed the mattress didn't smell like anyone he wanted to smell.

When he woke up, a headache awaited him by the couch. His mother smiled at him when he grabbed a shirt in the closet and the half full cup he had forgot on the shelf.

"If you have no good news to bring up to me, then you should leave," Cardan said, struggling with his garments and his hangover.

"You should have servants to help you. You are the King," she said, her tail twisting in what Cardan interpreted as threatening. Maybe Balekin had instilled more fear in him than Cardan had thought. Cardan graced her with a royal grunt.

He sat on the chair next to the couch, the half empty bottle of wine already in his hands. His own tail twisted with nervousness, which his mother noticed.

"Queen Nicasia had demanded an audience."

Cardan put his cup on the low table. There was ink stains on it. Strange since he didn't remember they were here yesterday.

"The Grand General wanted to accept but I had to turn her away. She was so disrespectful," his mother went on.

Cardan searched din his foggy mind when he could have stain his furniture. It lightened up in his mind.

"Where is it?" Cardan said.

"What are you talking about?" She asked.

"I write a letter, last night. I let it here before going to sleep. Where is it?"

His mother blinked.

"There is no letter here," she said eventually.

"I have noticed that," Cardan smirked. He was showing his mean smile; he knew it, but he hoped his intuition was wrong.