Chapter Thirteen #3
Avette went as still as her own marble effigy, her brow pitched in uncharacteristic shock. It was that shock, Ger thought, that really saved Imogen. If Avette had expected this from her, she’d have joined the breeze seconds after Edward. As it was, she’d bought herself a moment to speak.
And fuck, he hoped she had something good to say.
Her voice was a conspirator’s whisper: “They don’t want this.”
“They want justice,” Avette replied at once, sure and sharp.
But then her brow fell into a flat line, the slightest crease flickering. Imogen seized her hesitation, nodding quickly at the balcony’s edge; at the crowd below, whose whispers now danced on the mournful sigh of Aera’s winds.
“And you gave them justice. You avenged them. He murdered their queen, and you did what you had to; anyone can see that. But Mareda—” Imogen’s face was so calm, her tone so matter-of-fact, that Gerard was not sure if he’d imagined the slight crack in her voice when she spoke of the princess.
“Mareda means something to them. They watched her grow, they mourned her mother at her side, they feel like they know her. She’s the golden daughter of the Silver Queen, one of the last living descendants of the Sorceress. She’s part of your fairytale.”
“She’s right,” squeaked a small voice. Bertha, huddled in the farthest corner with Norris, cringed under the swivel of Avette’s gaze—but she licked her dry lips and pressed boldly on. “The people love her. She’s a Beira.”
Avette still did not move, but her black eyes shot to Captain Doran.
He stared back at his queen for a long moment, one cold gaze locked on another.
Only the slightest bob of his throat betrayed his hesitation.
Doran was a famously brutal man. He had been vibrating with anticipation throughout Avette’s address, and the slash of his lips had split wide in a hungry grin as he watched her splinter Edward’s body down to nothing.
A man who had been a friend once, his cousin of a sort, if Ger remembered correctly.
And yet, even the Captain—who had built his career on slaying Caldbonians, whose idea of fun was beating the shit out of drunk tourists, who had publicly torn Adeline to shreds—even he paused at the sight of Mareda cowering at their feet, her hair dusted with her father’s icy remains.
“It is not the moment,” he said finally, hoarse and unfeeling.
Avette did not acknowledge him, but instead turned to Mareda, who had calmed enough that some of the danger seemed to have dawned on her.
She had a hand clamped over her mouth, but her shoulders still shook, her frame wracked with silent, hiccuping sobs.
The queen knelt, skirts tufting around her in a shimmery cloud, and Mareda skittered backward on the floor as Avette extended a hand to cup her face.
“Sweet cousin, there’s no need to be frightened,” Avette said softly.
She tilted her head, and though her back was turned to Ger, he could picture, vividly, the soft arch of her brow, her perfect mimicry of compassion.
“The man who murdered your dear mother is gone. I shall take care of you now. We’re family. You are a Beira, are you not?”
Mareda slowly drew away the hand that covered her mouth, but when she tried to speak, all that came out was another watery sob. A dim pulse of blue lit the path of the tears on her cheeks, and Ger knew that Avette had taken hold of her pendant once more. Her voice, when she spoke, was brittle ice.
“Are you a Beira, Mareda, or have you the traitor’s blood?”
“I-I-I’m a—I’m,” Mareda stammered and faltered as a fresh wave of tears overcame her, but she gasped through them, forcing the words urgently through the chatter of her teeth. “Beira. I’m a B-Beira.”
Avette stood.
“Then get up and show them.”
Slowly, shakily, Mareda got to her feet.
She moved toward the balcony’s edge like a baby deer, slow and uncertain without the crutch and cast that had been confiscated, stumbling under her leg, the bones that had been so poorly fused together by Avette’s cruel ice.
Another building pulse of blue sent Ger’s heart into his throat, and he was at her side before his better judgment could catch up.
When his hand landed beneath her elbow, she stared up at him with eyes as wide as blue saucers.
Apparently, the shock of Gerard coming to her aid was enough to steady her, and the princess dropped his gaze the moment she reached the stone railing.
“Show them who you are,” Avette said again, and raising her own hand, she began to wave to the confused crowd below.
Mareda’s lips pulled into a taut, painful smile.
With her one hand tight around the railing, knuckles bleached, she raised the other and mirrored her new queen.
Below them, some of the uncertainty, the tension, bled from the crowd and was gusted away by the still-howling winds.
Someone began to applaud, hesitantly. Others joined them.
And with her tears freezing in shimmering tracks on her cheeks and Edward’s snowdust hardening into her hair, Mareda stood by Avette’s side, and waved.