Cardan lets himself fall back on the grass. He lies there for a long, dizzy moment, until he hears the tinkling of the leaves on Jude’s armor. He looks up to see her running toward him.

“What is wrong with you?” she shouts, falling to her knees by his side. Her hands go to his shirt, pushing it aside to look at the wound on his shoulder. Her fingers are cold against his flushed skin. It’s nice. He hopes she won’t take them away. “You told me not to come alone, and yet here you are—”

“I knew Aslog,” he says. “We were friends. Well, not precisely friends. But something. We were something. And I decided to play the hero. See how it felt. To try.”

“And?” she asks.

“I didn’t like it,” he admits. “Henceforth, I think we should consider our roles as monarchs to be largely decorative. It would be better for the low Courts and the solitary Folk to work things out on their own.”

“I think you have iron poisoning,” she tells him, which could possibly be true but is still a hurtful thing to say when he is making perfect sense.

“If you’re angry with me, it’s only that I executed your mad plan before you got a chance,” he points out.

“That’s absolutely untrue.” Jude helps him stand, propping herself under his good shoulder. “I am not so arrogant as to have begun my fight with a troll in the middle of the night. And I definitely wouldn’t have managed to talk her to death.”

“She’s not dead,” Cardan objects. “Merely imprisoned in stone. In fact, that reminds me. We need to alert our retainers to haul her back to Elfhame before sunset. She’s probably rather heavy.”

“Oh, rather,” Jude agrees.

“You didn’t hear the story I told,” he goes on. “A shame. It featured a handsome boy with a heart of stone and a natural aptitude for villainy. Everything you could like.”

She laughs. “You really are terrible, you know that? I don’t even understand why the things you say make me smile.”

He lets himself lean against her, lets himself hear the warmth in her voice. “There is one thing I did like about playing the hero. The only good bit. And that was not having to be terrified for you.”

“The next time you want to make a point,” Jude says, “I beg you not to make it so dramatically.”

His shoulder hurts, and she may be right about the iron poisoning. He certainly feels as though his head is swimming. But he smiles up at the trees, the looping electrical lines, the streaks of clouds.

“So long as you’re begging,” he says.