Cardan Greenbriar

Dim twilight settles over the forest, slowly draping the branches in a hazy veil, as if the night itself is stealing between the trees. The cold air smells of moss and damp leaves, and there is something infinitely ancient, almost regal, in that scent. That is what draws Cardan here again and again, though he hates to admit his own weakness. A thin silver shimmer flows through the gray dusk—an invisible boundary between worlds, unseen by human eyes. On one side the forest smells of rain and eternal autumn; on the other, of earth and smoke from village hearths. Cardan sits on a high branch of an old oak, one arm around the trunk, lazily swinging a narrow crystal flask in the other. The wine slides down his throat with a tart warmth, hiding the night’s bitter aftertaste.

He slipped out of the palace before sunset. A quarrel with his brothers, the usual mockery, his father’s coldness—all of it blurred into a single roar from which he wanted to flee as far as possible. Elfhame drowns in gold and cruelty, and every time Cardan remembers that he is a stranger there, even as a prince. The border forest is the only place where he can allow himself to be no one. Here he doesn’t have to play a role, keep his back straight, and smile as though sharp teeth are an ornament rather than a weapon.

A rustle. Thin, barely audible, but Cardan’s head snaps up instantly. His pointed, sensitive ears catch every movement. He already knows who it is. A human girl. The one who comes here almost every evening.

At first he noticed her by chance—a small figure in a gray dress, too plain to draw attention, yet somehow she caught his eye. Now he looks for her deliberately. She moves across the clearing with quiet confidence, as if the forest were her own garden. In her hands is a woven basket; her fingers flicker in the twilight, gathering berries, sorting stems of herbs. Sometimes she hums a simple tune, but her voice is as clear as a brook after the spring snow.

Cardan frowns. He is supposed to despise mortals. That is what they teach from childhood: humans are playthings, their lives short, their hearts weak. But in that fragility there is a strange pull he hates to acknowledge. He drinks to drown the feeling, but it only grows sharper.

Her hair slips out from under a plain kerchief. Every movement is soft, like an animal that trusts the forest. She does not know that just beyond a wall no mortal eye can see sits a faerie prince with golden eyes. He could reach out and the branch beneath him would break, showering her with leaves. He could speak and she would hear a voice that ties hearts into knots.

But he stays silent. Because this silence is the only thing that belongs entirely to him.

In the distance a night bird cries. The girl flinches and lifts her head. Cardan feels a strange, almost childlike desire awaken in his chest: that she might look straight at him, through the veil. That her gaze might meet his and she would see not a monster, not a prince, but simply someone else searching for quiet.

Instead she only adjusts her kerchief and continues her song.

Cardan’s mouth twists into a crooked smile. His fingers slide along the flask; the wine is nearly gone. He leaps to a neighboring branch—soundless as a shadow. Is he leaving? No. He never leaves while she is here.

His world is an endless game of lies and power. But this clearing, her melody, her innocence—like a crack in the wall he has built around himself. He knows that if he speaks, the crack will widen. Maybe one day he will let himself take that step. But not today. Today he is only an observer, an invisible king of twilight, a prince who will not admit to himself that he has found in a human girl something he cannot name.

When she finally leaves, the forest sinks back into silence. Cardan lingers for a long time, staring at the spot where her figure disappeared. In the air remains a faint trace of her song—transparent, almost impossible to catch.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Days passed, and the routine of his secret visits became an obsessive ritual: fleeing the palace, a flask of wine, the branch of the old oak—and her, a silent film in the dusk. He came every evening like a sinner to confession, carrying on his shoulders the full weight of his title and birth.

But tonight something was different. The air on the faerie side vibrated, filled with the hidden magic of the approaching full moon. The silver line of the boundary pulsed a little brighter, no longer just an invisible wall but something like trembling water. Cardan noticed it at once, as soon as he took his usual place in the oak. He felt the energy racing through his veins, sharpening his sense of smell, doubling the strength of every sound. His tail, tipped with black, usually coiled lazily around his ankle, twitched and beat against the bark.

He watched, as always. But tonight his patience—thin at the best of times—had been worn away by another clash with Balekin, his eldest brother, who delighted in reminding Cardan of his place: the younger, the weaker, the useless one. The bitterness of that conversation mixed with the wine’s tartness on his tongue, and he looked at the girl not with his usual cynical curiosity, but with something closer to hunger. Her calm, her immersion in the simple world of berries and herbs—he needed it like a sip of water in a desert. And he decided that tonight he would not remain only a shadow.

The thought was mad, dangerous—and therefore unbearably tempting.

When she finished gathering and crouched by the stream to rinse her hands, Cardan slipped soundlessly from the branch. His claws, black and sharp, sank for an instant into the soft earth. He moved deeper into the faerie woods, into thickening shadows where not even she could see him if by some miracle she looked through the barrier.

He knew he should stay hidden. To appear before a mortal in his true form was to sign her death sentence and draw down a wrath beside which his brothers’ taunts would seem child’s play. With a curse he stripped off his dark velvet doublet, left in a thin shirt of black silk. Long fingers worked with surprising skill: he arranged his hair to cover the pointed tips of his ears, tossed the golden circlet from his head beside the discarded doublet, removed the wide silver bracelet and several rings to hide any excess gleam. The tail was harder. With another stifled curse he wrapped it tightly around his thigh beneath his clothes, muscles protesting the awkward, constricting position. The tuft at the end teasingly brushed his skin.

He caught his reflection in a stagnant woodland pool: a tall, pale youth with dark hair and unnaturally golden eyes filled with anger and unease. He looked like a fugitive, not a prince. Which, in truth, was not far from reality.

His heart pounded wildly as he returned to the border. He chose a spot away from where she knelt, where the barrier, thinned by the full moon, was barely perceptible. Taking a deep breath, as if preparing to dive into icy water, he stepped forward.

The world swam for a moment before his eyes, a ringing in his ears. The scent of moss and eternal autumn gave way to the heavy, dusty aroma of pine and smoke. The air was thicker, poorer in magic. He stood on the human side.

Leaning against the trunk of an old pine, he tried to steady his breathing. His golden eyes fixed on her. She was only twenty paces away, her back to him. He saw every detail of her dress, the patch on her shoulder, the gleam of her hair. His throat went dry. What would he say? What sound would his voice make, so unused to speaking to anyone without venom or mockery?

He gave himself no time to reconsider. His fingers, now free of claws and almost ordinary save for their pale elegance, gripped a low hazel branch. A sharp, dry crack split the quiet.

The girl froze. Her shoulders tensed. Slowly, very slowly, she turned.

Their eyes met.

A shiver ran down Cardan’s spine. He saw his reflection in her gaze: a strange, dark youth with a stare too piercing for any mortal. He tried to soften his features, to look harmless, but managed only an uncertain, almost painful smirk.

“I… I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said at last. His voice sounded unfamiliar—quiet, stripped of its usual poison, low and a little hoarse from long silence and the wine he had drunk. He spoke her language, the language of humans, and the words felt rough and clumsy.

Blurred, drunken images rushed through his mind: he wanted to say something about her song, about how it somehow drowned the roar inside his own head… But his tongue, heavy with wine and long used to barbs, twisted the wrong way. Instead, lips curling in a semblance of a smile, he drawled with a faint, affected mockery:

“Just couldn’t help noticing… your singing. You go a little off on the high notes.”

He felt the words hang in the air, sharp and out of place, like a shard of glass on soft moss. Her eyes, a moment ago filled with simple curiosity, widened, then flared with a spark of hurt.

Damn. The thought struck him with a clarity even the wine could not blur. He had ruined it. Burned that fragile bridge the moment it began to form. Stupid, drunken fool. The inner fury that always simmered beneath his skin turned on himself. He wanted to hurl the cursed flask at the nearest tree.