Chapter Seven
Kai
Now that he knew, Kai could not get past the blinding resemblance.
Here in the Empress’s private dining room, Adeline and her aunt stood with an older man and a young girl, all crowded together at the head of a long table of sun-bleached wood.
Both women wore their curls swept up and braided at the crown with golden twine, both dressed in rich shades of purple.
Both stood tall and proud with that practised, regal poise.
But where Adeline’s warm skin had long been cooled by the Eisalaan frost, Eleni’s was bronzed and sun-kissed.
The Empress spoke in a hush, and Adeline nodded distantly, one hand clutching a wilted flower, and the other folded too tightly in the soft heather skirts of her evening gown.
Judging by the looser cut and the elaborate embroidery across her waist, it was a gift delivered upon their arrival just as Kai’s had been.
She suited the soft Dhaliaan fashion, just as she’d suited the more tailored Eisalaan tendencies. And her simple training room clothes. And the heavy bronze armour she’d worn at the Queen’s Tourney. He was, in fact, quite certain that Adeline could steal his breath wearing an empty potato sack.
“Come in, come in!”
He hadn’t realised Eleni had spotted them, and it was only at a nudge to the ribs from Al that Kai drew his eyes away from Adeline and took a stilted step forward.
But the princess turned away from her aunt, visible relief flitting over her face, and his chest squeezed in response, snatching painfully at his breath.
Al nudged him again, harder, and it occurred to Kai that she had quite literally stopped him in his tracks, twice in the space of a moment.
“King Cumhaill, welcome,” Eleni called, sweeping into a shallow curtsey. He returned a bow of his own, but when he stood, the Empress’s eyes were bright and trained behind him. “And darling Alun!”
Al stepped out past Kai, arms already held aloft as Eleni swiftly closed the distance and drew him into a hug. They rocked in their embrace, turning as they squeezed one another, and Al shot a wink over the Empress’s shoulder that had Kai suppressing a snort.
Of course, Alun had thoroughly charmed their host. He should have expected nothing less.
When they finally leaned back from each other, Al’s arms still cradled hers. Her hands remained wrapped around his shoulders as though he were a beloved youth and she the doting older relative ready to coo over his recent growth spurt.
“Apricot is certainly your colour,” she said, with a fond tilt of the head.
Al’s eyes darted to Kai’s with the briefest flare of satisfaction, but he trained his attention and charm on the Empress, flashing his brightest smile.
“We should talk, Your Imperial Highness, now that my king has arrived. Discuss our meeting with the merrow, and—”
“Oh, Alun,” Eleni tutted, with barely a hint of real reproach. “Already so desperate to depart from my company.”
“Well, what am I to do?” Al returned. “You’ve refused to adopt me.”
Eleni threw her head back, her bright laughter so jarringly similar to her niece’s that Kai had to glance around just to make certain it wasn’t Adeline’s own amusement.
It wasn’t. Adeline was staring down at that same single, wilted flower with empty, distant eyes.
She looked so unlike herself, so small and defeated, and—
Adhlas, there was no other word for it. Sad. She looked sad.
It wasn’t until Kai took a step toward her that he registered the weight of a hand on his arm.
“—met my father, Your Majesty?”
Kai tore his gaze from the princess, cleared his throat in a weak bid for time. Eleni’s smile was polite but expectant, and he struggled to grasp at her half-heard question.
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” he said finally.
This seemed to satisfy the Empress, who made a soft sound of delight and gestured broadly for him to join her at the table.
Even as he was introduced to the former Emperor, Davide, and to his granddaughter Lyra, it was hard not to notice that Adeline had slipped away; she was now seating herself at the other end of the table, as far as she could possibly get.
Kai did not want to watch her, but he couldn’t seem to escape that earth-shifting tug from the other side of the room; couldn’t pull himself out of her orbit as much as he might try.
She was a beacon in the corner of his consciousness, bright in his periphery as Eleni poured his wine, and even as the seats around the table filled out and somewhat obscured her from view.
Ceri’s entrance was a relief to his strained neck; he could finally look up when she took a seat at the other end of the table, joining Adeline with Al and Os on either side.
The rest of the faces around the table were unfamiliar; some of them interrupted the flow of his polite conversation with the Empress, leaning over to greet Eleni with a hand on her back or a swift kiss to her cheek.
She introduced them all in turn; some, her court, and some, her family.
Adeline’s family, too.
“This is quite the welcome, Your Highness,” Kai said, as Eleni waved off a middle-aged man who had paused to say hello—and to stare with open curiosity at Kai’s gills, going so far as to stoop for a better look beneath his jaw before the Empress snapped at him in their shared tongue.
With a tut still ringing on her lips, Eleni shifted her seat toward him, settling back in.
“Well, we have all been anticipating your arrival,” she said. He thought that her swift glance down the length of the table was quite as involuntary as his own, but they each looked at Adeline—and then each other. Eleni smiled, knowingly. “We’ve been awaiting hers even longer.”
Kai did not ask what that meant.
One of the few things he knew of Eleni Vanjir was her tendency towards the vague and the cryptic. But he had read the tension in Adeline’s few interactions with her aunt, her stiff demeanour; there was, clearly, some history he was not privy to.
Dinner was a disorienting affair. The Vanjir court was both larger and louder than the Beira’s, though they seemed closer, too, and quick to fold their guests into that closeness.
Everyone Kai spoke to was warm, convivial—and welcoming in a way that might have bordered on intrusive had the wine not been flowing so freely.
Eleni did shield him from several more attempts to examine his gills, but when a question struck her interest, she was much slower to intervene, and much quicker to top up his glass.
“Were you close with her?” asked Eleni’s young niece, Lyra. “The Snow Queen?”
Eleni clucked out a quick reprimand in Dhaliaan, presumably over the title that Selma had so famously loathed—but then took a long sip of wine and watched Kai from beneath her lashes, awaiting his response.
“Her late Majesty was kind to me and mine,” he said, when it was clear that this was something Eleni wanted to hear. “She welcomed me into her home.”
Lyra didn’t miss a beat, raising a brow over her salad.
“But still refused to return you to your own.”
Thick with wine, Kai was slow to train his features, and even slower to recover from the abrupt catch of his breath. The Empress had the grace to look utterly appalled on his behalf.
“Lyra,” she hissed. “That is quite enough.”
Lyra gave a sullen roll of her eyes but scooped up a forkful of olives and leaves and stuffed her mouth, rather pointedly.
Eleni mouthed apologies, and though Kai waved her off, he did feel compelled to take another deep pull from his glass.
He could see now why Al and Os had been quite so stewed.
The wine was light and floral, the cool trickle of it down his throat entirely too moreish in the balmy heat that still rose off the bleached stone walls, even on this side of the sunset.
That it loosened the tension in his shoulders was a decided boon, though he was distantly aware that it also loosened his tongue.
A fact the Empress was shamelessly aware of, too. She watched him sideways over the rim of her own wineglass as he drank, then set her cup down and reached for the nearest jug.
“Speaking of the Beira, however,” she began, still with that sideways glance. “It is interesting that my niece has joined you here. I thought you seemed rather close on my last visit to Eisalaan.”
She reached for his glass with the jug in hand, but at the mention of Adeline, Kai regained just enough wherewithal to swiftly set his fingers over the rim, blocking her pour.
“Did you?” he said mildly.
Eleni’s dark eyes glimmered with amusement, unabashed as she hummed and turned the jug to her own glass.
“Oh, yes. But on your arrival, I wondered if I may have read an air of … contention.”
Contention.
Kai loosed a chuckle beneath his breath. He wondered, vaguely, if he would have found the implication half as amusing without the sweet fog of wine clouding his good sense. As it was, he felt his lips twitch into a smirk, and he leaned in, lowered his voice to a conspiratorial hush.
“Interestingly, Your Highness, I’d thought to ask you the very same thing.”
Tension flickered over the Empress’s features, almost too swift for Kai’s slowed senses to catch. She laughed, the sound perhaps tighter than before.
“Well then,” she said slowly, tapping the table in thought before she met his eyes again; he could see the fresh spark in her gaze when she nodded. “You shall have your answer.”
Then she picked up her wineglass once more and, raising it above her head, let it lead her to her feet.
Lyra turned a look of slow horror her way, uttering a curse beneath her breath.
Kai caught the sentiment, even if the words were foreign to him.
The distinct mortification of youth knew no language; it was written deep in her scowl, deeper still when she shielded her eyes from the sight of the Empress standing with her glass raised.
To be perceived, apparently, was the height of shame.