Chapter Ten
Adeline
Tell me it’s not over.
Adeline woke constantly, Kai’s words weaving through her head before she’d even fully surfaced from sleep.
No matter what we are to each other.
She slept for all of two hours, sprinkled in twenty-minute intervals throughout the night, until the shadows melted away and birdsong played a harmony to her own thoughts.
Tell me it’s not over.
She could not stop thinking about it, about his face as he’d said it. About the reply she wished she’d given, and the courage she couldn’t quite muster. About the kiss.
Goddess above, the kiss.
Adeline lay in bed, eyes closed against the pink flood of morning sunlight and Kai’s expression imprinted beneath her lashes. The furrow of his brow as he’d stared down at her mouth, eyes bright with singular focus.
I’m going to kiss you.
A knot of heat had burst in her chest at that moment, and the memory of it flooded her now, an echo of its warmth pooling in her belly. She rolled to her side, curling in around the warmth like she could trap it; keep it. Savour it, because the Daughters only knew when she’d find it again.
You could find it now, said her own voice in her head. It was small; muffled by something she couldn’t quite name, but the thought came to her all the same. You could find him. What’s stopping you?
She sat up, and her heart swooped, forgotten on the mattress for a moment before it snapped, thrumming back to her chest. She could find him.
What was stopping her? She was not, after all, a Senior Royal to this court—nor anyone of consequence really.
She had no training to get to, no public court to lead, no Council meeting to attend, nobody expecting a single thing from her.
She had no purpose at all.
That thought came with a bitter aftertaste, but Adeline swallowed it back.
She kicked away the covers before she could doubt herself and swung out of bed.
Eventually, for better or for worse, she would be home in the Silver Kingdom with her comforts and routine, and all of her various obligations—she was going to seize this temporary freedom while she could. She was going to find him.
Adeline tried to dress quickly, but her trunk had been unpacked by the time she got back to her rooms last night, and it took her far too long to find her way around the broad, bright alcove that served as a dressing room.
All of her own clothes were tucked into the back rails, behind rows and rows of light, embroidered tunics and dresses like the one she’d found laid out on her bed the night before.
Despite the prickle of irritation burning up her neck, Adeline told herself it was not pettiness that had her reaching for a too-thick day dress from the farthest rail.
She needed a comfort, a small piece of home.
She was immediately sweltering.
Pettiness aside, changing was out of the question; as she’d discovered last night, the tunics, with their thin fabric and straight silhouettes, did not have pockets. She needed pockets.
She’d read the letter, finally, after talking to Kai on the balcony.
Read it, and numbly tucked it away again with no intention of addressing its contents.
No, that wasn’t true. She had every intention.
She was full of intentions; it was the actual conviction to carry them through that she lacked.
Day after day, for more than two weeks now, she’d slipped that letter into her skirt pocket and told herself she would finally read it.
But unfolding the paper had only spilt a new set of obligations into her lap.
Another reason to carry it close, its weight heavier than ever with every passing moment that she did not let herself think on its meaning.
But maybe she would.
Maybe today would be the day. Maybe seeing Kai, finally mending the rift between them, would lend her some stability; some conviction, in turn.
And so, retrieving the folded letter from beneath her pillow and tucking it into her skirts, Adeline ducked beneath the gauzy privacy curtain that hung over her room’s entrance.
And walked smack into a scowling Lyra.
Her cousin bounced dramatically backwards, hissing like a feral little cat.
“Ouch, my toes.”
“Goddess, I didn’t see you! Are you alright?”
She reached out a helping hand as Lyra balanced on one leg, examining the foot that Adeline had lightly nudged.
Her cousin ignored the outstretched hand as she glanced up, undisguised loathing written in the flat line of her mouth.
Instead of answering, she let her eyes flick over Adeline’s dress, and the tight line of her lips slid into a grimace.
“What are you wearing?”
“A dress.”
“Is that wool? You know it’s summer, right?” She paused, and then added slowly, as though Adeline were a particularly dim-witted toddler, “Summer is hot.”
“I’m aware, thank you.”
“Unless—” Lyra’s scowl melted, brow lifting hopefully.
Nothing if not expressive, Adeline thought.
At any given moment, Lyra’s every thought and feeling could be read, etched plainly into her small face like an open book.
It reminded her, with a wistful pang, of her littlest sister Iseult, and she could not help the smile that bloomed at Lyra’s eager expression.
And then her cousin said, in a buoyant tone, “Are you going home?”
Adeline snorted; wistfulness dissipated.
“No.” The scowl snapped back into place like elastic, so fast that Adeline couldn’t help the twitch of her own lips as she bit back another laugh. “I just … woke up a little chilly.”
“You’re visibly sweating.”
She was, but now that Lyra had said as much, she could hardly show it—admittedly made more difficult by the slow roll of a single bead of sweat tickling her neck.
Her rooms opened at the top of a gigantic sundial that served as an open courtyard, the shimmering stone beneath their feet already absorbing the few hours of daylight.
The heat of it licked at her ankles, seeping into the heavy material of her dress.
She held her flushed head high, sending that bead of sweat racing for her collar.
Ugh.
“What can I do for you, Lyra?”
At this, Lyra crossed her arms with a small huff and glared off into the distance, recalling some past indignity.
“Aunt Eleni sent me to fetch you. We’re to spend the morning with her in the gardens. For a walk,” she said, as though walking were a filthy habit of only the lowest degenerates.
Adeline hesitated. Her thoughts immediately snapped to Kai, wherever he was, and to the letter in her pocket.
I need to see him.
Lyra tapped her foot, shrugging as if to say; Well?
“We’re meeting her now?” said Adeline. “Right now?”
Apparently, this exhausted Lyra’s capacity for speech, because it was with no further response that she turned and stalked off, pausing in the shadow of the sundial to throw a tsk in Adeline’s general direction.
“Are you coming or not?”
Adeline glanced around the glowing dial, with its frame of identical archways; she wasn’t even sure where she’d find Kai.
Little though she wanted to spend a sweltering morning in current company, the gardens seemed as sure a start as any.
With little other choice, she beamed at Lyra, expecting and perhaps even relishing the answering death glare.
“A whole morning spent soaking up the sun with my favourite cousin? How could I refuse?”
Lyra’s groan was deafening.
???
Eleni’s court was larger than her mother’s had been, and all the more intimate for its size.
It was made up not of the wealthiest courtiers or the most prestigious bloodlines, but of dozens of Vanjir relatives spanning multiple generations.
Several of the women Adeline met were a few branches removed from the family tree, but the roots were there; the widow of an uncle twice removed, Eleni’s grand-aunt by marriage, a distant niece whose claim to the family court was so complicated that Adeline lost track about five minutes into the explanation and could not bring herself to ask for a repeat.
Some of them seemed to remember her from the childhood summer she’d spent here. Some of them she recalled, too. All of them, moody cousin excluded, were warm and open.
And very, very curious.
Curious about Adeline, about Eisalaan, even about Kai, apparently having caught on that she might have some intimate insight to share—but most especially, about her mother.
Eleni held the ladies of the court at a polite arm’s length as they took their turn about the gardens, but whether this was for her own benefit or Adeline’s was anyone’s guess. She was, after all, just as curious as the rest of them, even if she was more adept at expressing it subtly.
Still, Adeline could feel her Aunt’s eyes flitting around her, light as the butterflies that danced amid the nycta bushes, though not nearly as timid.
When Adeline caught her stare for the fourth or fifth time, the Empress simply smiled, unabashed, and said, “Your father loved these gardens in his youth.”
They had wandered beneath a row of wooden arbours, a canopy of sweet-smelling flowers above them, and its tendrils weaving a cool, green tunnel on all sides.
The shade was a welcome reprieve, especially when the tunnel caught a breeze that cooled Adeline’s sticky neck and cleared her stuffy head.
She tilted her head back at the small relief, eyes closed, even as she met the mention of her father with a soft smile.
“I know,” she said. “He talked about them. Made them sound like magic.”
“They are magic,” Eleni said, at once playful and indignant. “They must be; this is where my brother won the Silver Queen’s heart.”
Adeline’s foot caught in the hem of her skirt, and she staggered, catching at the nearest arbour for balance. She was too busy gaping to accept the hand Eleni offered to her, and clung instead to the wooden beam as she stared.
“My mother came to Dhalias?”
Eleni waved away a short huff of laughter. “Oh yes. Did you never wonder how we became acquainted?”