It was not the first time Cardan found himself abandoned in such a state, soaked to the bone, curled like a stray thing in the mouth of a mortal alleyway, the rain falling in cold sheets, slicking his hair to his brow and leaching the warmth from his limbs. The mortal world always seemed to shudder with its own kind of filth, rusted gutters, rotting wood, and the faint, acrid stench of iron humming beneath everything like a curse.

A curse. Yes, that’s what they’d said he was. From the moment he drew breath, the prophets whispered ruin. A child born with a curse, how obscene. One who would bring the fall of Elfhame, if not its outright destruction. His mother, Lady Asha, delicate and cruel as a glass dagger, looked at him as though he were an inconvenience she might misplace. His father, King Eldred, distant and severe, treated him with all the warmth of a blade pressed to skin.

They had not raised him so much as endured him. And he, Cardan, had responded in kind.

If they wished to see a monster, then a monster he would be. He misbehaved at court, gleefully. Broke rules with the flair of a boy who knew no one would mourn him if he disappeared. He spoke in barbed riddles, let his mouth get him into trouble, and found perverse delight in driving others to fury. If they wanted him to be the shame of Greenbriar, he would stain the name like wine on silk.

So it was hardly surprising that they sent him away when he became too bothersome to bear. To the mortal realm, always. Sometimes for hours. Other times for days. Once, as a babe, his mother left him to suckle at a cat’s belly like some changeling castoff. A prince of Faerie, suckling on milk not meant for him. He still bore the resentment in his marrow.

And now, he sat pressed against a pillar slick with rain, tail coiled miserably beneath him, arms wrapped around his slender frame as though that alone might hold him together. His velvet doublet clung to his skin like a second, soggy pelt. His hair, dark as crows’ wings, hung over his golden eyes, hiding the flicker of something like shame, or worse, hope.

He hated the mortal world. Hated the way it smelled, the way it felt, the way the rain fell with no magic behind it, just cold, senseless sky weeping for no reason at all.

A tap on his shoulder shattered his reverie like a thrown stone through glass. He jerked, spine stiffening, his body tensed to bolt or bite.

“What—?” he snapped, twisting toward the touch, voice sharp as he met your gaze.

You stood before him, oddly calm for a mortal, though there was something in your expression that made him pause. You were about his age, maybe younger, with storm in your eyes and rebellion tucked beneath your tongue like a secret. You didn’t flinch. Not even when you saw the tail.

How curious.