Chapter Nineteen
Adeline
No letter. Again.
Don’t fret. You’ll miss the scenery.
To be fair, the scenery hadn’t changed, and she had little else to do.
Eleni had hurried off to solve some crisis with another missing shipment at the docks.
The Merrow were staring down their last week on land, and Kai was due to spend the day in Nua Laune making final arrangements with Daithí and the Elder Council.
Add to that the lack of word from her father, and with all the ensuing gossip around the palace, the idea of wandering the gardens with the keen and candid courtiers …
It made Adeline’s skin feel too tight, for more than just the blinding Dhaliaan heat.
So it was that she found herself aboard the Arabidae, taking charge of nearly a dozen Merrow children while their parents toured their new home beneath the tranquil waves.
It felt good to help in whatever small way she could; to feel useful—and keeping the children from flinging themselves into the sea was as much distraction as she could have possibly asked for.
The youngest of their number was barely walking, and with the gentle sway of the anchored ship, the babe spent much of the afternoon perched on Adeline’s hip, babbling sweetly in her ear.
With a shy little girl clinging to her skirts, and a precocious young boy sticking so close to her side she’d accidentally elbowed him in the nose twice, she hadn’t the room to dwell on her father’s silence even if she’d wanted to.
Especially when the talkative little boy, Colm, piped up that they should play a game the princess had taught them, and the rest of the brood had erupted in excited squeals and gasps.
“What game did I teach you?” Adeline asked, wincing as she gently pried a twist of her curls from the Merrow baby’s iron grasp.
“The little princess,” Colm said. The boy grabbed Adeline’s free arm, face shining as he beamed up at her. “Will you play with us? The game your sister showed us! The Silver Winds one!”
Adeline hadn’t a clue what Iseult had taught them, but after some chaotic demonstration that had Captain Aegus grumbling from his perch on the forecastle, she recognised a snippet of an old nursery rhyme and her memory clicked into place: Iseult weaving through the treeline on the night of the mid-Winter faire, cheeks glowing pink as she chased the Merrow children’s heels.
They’d been playing Winds and Waters, a play yard game borne of a nursery rhyme nearly as old as Kai was.
The memory of Iseult’s laughter made her chest contract, and she squeezed the baby in lieu of her own sister’s embrace, then set her bittersweet sorrow aside.
Adeline played the role of the Waters with the baby still attached to her hip, flailing his little arms and giggling wildly as they dashed around trying to stop the Winds from blowing past them.
It took several rounds before the children began to take pity on her, and a handful of them allowed themselves to be caught.
They stood in their two opposing lines. At the fore of the Winds team, Colm leaned into one knobbly knee and readied himself to run.
Adeline narrowed her eyes, and he grinned back at her.
“Behold the Silver Winds that blow,” called the Winds team.
“Where Gilded Waters once did flow,” the Waters team roared back.
The children scattered in every direction, some of the youngest forgetting which teams they were on and simply tackling whoever they could get their hands on.
Colm darted past Adeline’s reaching arm, and the baby yanked gleefully on her hair, unwittingly sabotaging her just as her fingertips grazed the boy’s shirtsleeve.
He took a minute to whoop for his victory, then jogged off again as she worked to untangle her hair while the baby laughed and laughed.
“You’ve got your hands full,” came a deep, amused voice from behind them.
Her stomach gave a silly little flip.
Hair half-freed from the tiny Merrow’s fist, Adeline could turn just enough to see Kai standing at the ship’s edge, wet hair slicked back from his face and his shirt clinging to his chest and arms. She hoisted the baby higher on her hip and weaved through the children, half of them still screeching bloody murder as they darted back and forth.
“Not as full as these little hands.”
She tickled the baby’s belly, and he wiggled and burbled but clutched her hair even tighter. Kai gave a soft laugh.
“Here,” he said, moving in to help her. The moment he did, the baby seemed to notice him for the first time and gave a high-pitched coo of delight before throwing himself in Kai’s direction.
Adeline lurched out of instinct, and between them, they just about managed to settle him in Kai’s arms before he could tumble to the deck.
“Is that how it is?” Adeline asked the baby, reaching out to tickle him under his soft chin until he squealed and wriggled. The child snuggled in closer to Kai, not seeming to care a lick that he was soaked to the skin.
“I’m just a stepping stone,” Kai assured her. “He knows I’ll bring him back to his mammy.”
Adeline gave a sceptical hum. The baby, a wriggly, giddy little thing while under her care, had calmed in Kai’s arms, heavy-lidded with one chubby cheek squished against the damp collar of his shirt.
Kai patted a soothing rhythm on the little one’s shoulders, his palm broader than the baby’s entire back.
It was difficult not to notice just how good the Merrow King looked with a sleepy baby in his arms.
Stop noticing, she warned herself.
But the thought made Adeline’s pulse flutter all the same, warmth tumbling through her chest and flooding her cheeks.
Goddess, grant me some sense. She gave a half shake of her head, but that only served to draw Kai’s eye to her—and whatever he found in her expression softened his own, to dangerous effect.
She cleared her throat. “You’re good with him. Very … at ease.”
He nodded, gently so as not to disturb the little one’s head. “It comes with the role; spending time with the Merrow community. That includes the youths and babes.”
“Right,” she said. She reached out to stroke the baby’s downy hair, mostly giving herself a reason to drop Kai’s gaze; she could very easily say something stupid if she let herself sink too deep into that warmth.
Do not ask him if he wants his own someday.
Do not.
But she made the mistake of looking up again, and when she did, he tilted his head at her in that tender way that made her want to split her own chest open and hand him everything she was and would ever be. Daughters help her, his eyes.
Don’t do it.
“Do you think,” she heard herself say, “you’d ever want—”
Adeline was saved from herself when a huff of exerted breath snatched at their attention.
She was slow to look toward the ship’s edge, but when she was done scolding herself, she hurried over to glance down the ladder.
Eda scaled the side of the ship, her grey head bobbing closer in time with the small dinghy that bobbed on the water’s surface below.
Adeline called out, and at the sound of her name, Eda reached up gratefully to accept an outstretched hand.
Helping her over the railing, Adeline braced a hand under one frail elbow while Eda found her feet.
She gripped Adeline’s arm as she caught her bearings, glancing around the ship with a twinkling smile.
“You run a fine nursery, Your Highness.”
“They’ve been a pleasure,” said Adeline. They had been, hair loss notwithstanding. The Merrow children were everything she admired about Kai’s people: warm, and spirited, and remarkably amiable, gracing her with their trust from the moment they stepped aboard the Arabidae.
And, of course, they’d kept her tired mind occupied.
Eda’s smile spread at that, but when her gaze shifted to Kai, the deep brackets of her mouth fell flat.
He held the now sleeping infant, rocking slightly from side-to-side and absently patting the baby’s small back, eyes lit by his own withheld laughter as they darted back and forth in time with the patter of children’s feet running over the deck.
Their squeals reached a fever pitch, and he chuckled at whatever new mischief they’d uncovered.
Eda turned from him and fixed Adeline with a look that was all tenderness.
“He’ll miss this,” she said, a little sadly.
“He can hear you,” said Kai, but his smile remained. “And yes. Yes, he will.”
“Well,” said Eda, planting her hands on her hips, “he can help me round up the young’uns. Their mammies and daddies are waiting on the other ship.”
Kai nodded, but added, “We’ll let them have one more round.”
Eda followed his gaze, a curious frown flickering between her grey brows. “What is it they’re playing?”
“A chasing game of some sort,” said Kai.
“Winds and Waters,” Adeline supplied. “My sister taught them. They’re getting started again, look.”
Colm had taken Adeline’s place at the centre of the Waters team, bracketed by a handful of other children as they faced off their opposition. They stood arm-in-arm, legs wide and little bodies braced.
“Behold the Silver Winds that blow,” cried half the children.
“Where Gilded Waters once did flow,” screamed Colm and the others.
At that, a line of little Merrow burst forth in a stormwind and swept a fresh wave of chaos across the deck.
Two little ones got caught up in chasing circles around each other like excitable puppies, and a particularly spry toddler dove between Colm’s legs as he made a comical swipe at the empty air.
Adeline laughed, and the weight of Kai’s gaze landed on her as sure as a warm touch. He shot her a grin that had her heart briefly bouncing in her chest—briefly, because when she turned to find Eda, her buoyant heart plummeted.
“Eda?”
The old woman was pale as snow.
“Your sister taught them?”
“Yes …?” Adeline said uncertainly, though she wasn’t sure Eda even heard her.