Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Could you send for a Healer, please?” she said, pushing forth that too-tight smile again. “And perhaps someone could fetch the Merrow Court, too?”
Eleni rose with a gracious bob of her head.
“Of course,” she said, and with no further pleasantries, she turned and disappeared through the open archway.
Only when the echo of her footsteps had faded did Adeline turn back to the table—to find Kai already watching her, waiting.
He’d released his hold on the table, and some of that fire had guttered along with the glow of his pendant.
He didn’t look angry; he looked so very tired.
His hair was tousled, damp from his leap from the crumbling ship, face still black and grey, streaked with smoke and saltwater—but he sat with the most regal bearing, his spine straight and shoulders squared, large hands curved over each armrest, a king on his throne.
He was here, he was blinking and breathing, and yet his expression was blank.
No golden charge behind those hazel eyes at all.
It was devastating.
“It’s not your fault,” she said softly.
“Yes, it is,” he said before she’d even finished speaking, then raised his voice in anticipation of her denial. “Yes, it is. It is my fault. Eda’s death. Simon’s.”
Simon’s. Adeline swallowed and tried not to let that reflex shift across her face. She hadn’t known. Not about Simon, the boy who’d once saved their lives.
“It is my fault, because Avette killed them to make a statement meant entirely for me.”
She frowned. “The fire—”
“Was Avette’s doing,” he said, with unnerving certainty. “She sent the Eisalaan Gard to deliver this summons, and to deliver a blow to my people.”
“Kai,” said Adeline, then faltered.
She didn’t know what else to say; his grief was raw, and she knew how bewildering it was, how little sense the world made in the thick of a loss. He needed it to make sense. So did she.
“Then it’s Avette’s fault,” she said finally. “She’s to blame for this. For all of it.”
“Even more reason,” he returned, “to put an end to it, once and for all.”
That implication hooked beneath Adeline’s stomach and gave it a violent, sickening tug; though whether it was the promise of death in Kai’s eyes or the threat to his life, she could not say. Actually, yes. Yes, she absolutely could.
“I’m going with you.”
“No, you are not.”
“I beg your finest fucking pardon,” said Adeline. “But yes, I am. If you’re going to confront Avette, to put yourself in harm’s way to free my kingdom and my family as well as your own, then yes. I am coming with you.”
“No, Adeline,” he said, green flashing over his face once more. “You are not.”
Adeline narrowed her eyes at his pendant, at the ghostly pulse that betrayed the thundering pace of his heart even as he stared her down with all of his usual restraint.
“When did you last take that off?” she asked him. “You normally do, for a few hours, but we weren’t practising today. Daithí says it can distort your reasoning, make you act—”
Kai grabbed the chain and dragged it over his head, dropping the pendant so abruptly that it skittered and spun across the table.
He drew his shoulders wide, the injured one gleaming painfully, spine pressed to the straight back of the chair as he enunciated each word with slow, infuriating clarity.
“You are not coming with me, Adeline.”
Rage simmered beneath her skin; she could hear it in the thrum of her own voice even as she strained to keep it low, a glance spared for the open archway and the hall beyond.
“You cannot make that decision for me,” she hissed. “I’m not one of your subjects, Kai, and if I were, I know you would afford me the respect of—”
He stood, and Adeline felt her back stiffen as her spine snapped straight.
If he assumed he’d walk away with the final word, he did not know her nearly as well as she’d believed.
She scraped back her chair, ready to storm after him if that’s what it took—but Kai didn’t turn for the door, didn’t even turn away.
He held her eye as he rounded the table.
And dropped to his knees before her.
The huff that had risen in her lungs caught painfully, an odd mix of relief and dread pressing down on her breath. Kai took her hands in his, and though she wanted to knead away the ominous pain in her chest, she let him.
He still looked utterly defeated, but he was trying so hard to smooth the ragged edges of his anger and grief, kneeling before her so they were nearly eye to eye. Kneeling, like he had when they’d first met and he’d stared up at her from the courtyard floor.
And when he’d begged her not to compete in the Tourney.
And after he’d told her he loved her for the first time.
“I am not making this decision as a king,” he said, somehow even softer for the ragged edge to his voice, the salt and fire still baked into his every breath.
“I am deciding this as someone who cares for you, beyond anything else. As someone your father trusted with your safety. And as someone who will one day be your subject. Not because I’m a king.
Because you are the heir of Eisalaan; because you’re my queen. ”
He paused deliberately, letting the silence hang off his words. Giving them the space they deserved, the breath that brought them to life, made them feel, for one airy moment, like a reality within their reach. She would be queen, just as her mother wanted; he believed that.
He believed in her.
Kai lifted one of her hands to his lips and brushed a kiss over her knuckles. Then bent his head over her fingers laced in his own grasp and stayed there, as though deep in prayer.
“I am deciding, Adeline, because no matter what it means to you, I have a responsibility to keep you safe. Please, let me keep you safe.”
It meant everything to her. It did. Which was why she had to tell him, freeing her hand to cup his soot-smeared face and guide his gaze to hers:
“Someone has to keep you safe, too. Someone has to tell you that you can’t—don’t have to—save the world by yourself.
That not a single soul is expecting that of you.
You keep telling me how selfish you are, but I don’t see it.
What I do see is that you need someone to hold you still.
Someone has to make you take a moment to breathe.
And that someone is me. No matter what it means to you, Kai, that’s my responsibility. ”
She knew what it meant to him. Just as he must know what it meant to her.
It was a stupid game they were playing, one with rules she’d invented in the midst of disorienting, soul-crushing grief.
He was only allowed to tell her how he felt in those heated, breathless moments when he literally could not help himself. She was not allowed to tell him at all.
But the game had run its course.
He stared up at her, and it struck her just how much she’d missed this; his eyes—without the glow of the pendant and the way its otherworldly green muddied those leafy, earthy colours that were all his own. He was more himself without it. He was more hers.
Kai let his eyes fall shut, and as though he’d taken her words as permission, he took a long inhale that sent his ribs swelling against her knees.
He leaned into her touch with the next breath, resting a little more of his weight into her palm; she would take it all, gladly, if it meant that little bit less on his too-taut shoulders.
It hit her squarely in the chest then, and did not stop. Another pulse within her own, singing between each beat of her heart’s blood.
She loved him.
She loved him, and it was marrow-deep. It shifted her bones and rewrote her heartbeat, changing the shape of her from the inside just to make room for it all.
Every fibre of her being was made up of that same singular, aching adoration.
Her pores brimmed with it; she swore she could feel it humming along her very skin, so loud he had to hear it too.
She loved him so much she could barely breathe around it.
She loved him so much she didn’t know what to do with it all, except to hold him here, his face in her hand.
Safe, and hers.
For a few moments longer, at least. The echo of approaching footsteps drew Kai’s attention, and she felt him tense before she heard it herself. The stiffening of his spine lifted his face from her hand, and when he turned his head in the direction of the archway, Adeline followed his gaze.
Oswalt was the first to enter.
He took a few steps into the room and paused just beyond the glow of the candlelight, gaze sliding over Adeline in her seat to Kai on his knees.
Adeline could make out the dampness of his hair, the soot streaks that painted his face just the same as theirs.
His expression in the shadows was harder to read, for her at least. But whatever Kai saw there turned his own expression to stone; he moved like it too, heavy, stilted movements that saw him from his knees to his feet, spine straight as ever.
They stared at one another for a moment, something tangible passing between the king and his cousin that Adeline couldn’t put a name to.
She’d almost have believed they were communicating telepathically, but in the next moment, another pair of footsteps sounded from the hallway, and Os finally turned away.
Ceriwyn’s quiet sobs preceded her, and she rounded the archway half-carried in the circle of Alun’s arms. Kai was with her before Adeline had even noticed him step away, darting around Os to guide his sister to him, where she collapsed against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his back almost frantically, like they were lost at sea and she’d drown without her brother to cling to.
Adeline watched his back stiffen as Ceri lay her head on his burnt shoulder, but he didn’t push her away, didn’t make a sound other than the quiet, rolling hush of his breath as he patted her back.
The rest of them stood in silence, watching the pained embrace, hearing Ceri’s sobs and even the slight crack in Kai’s hushes.