Chapter Twenty-Two #4
He nodded, his nose brushing over hers. She would have liked verbal confirmation, would have pressed for it, but Oswalt’s stare was boring into her back. The Healer had stopped her rustling, and Adeline could feel her behind them, waiting patiently to attend to Kai’s shoulder.
So she released him.
???
The darkness of the hallway was a blanket to Adeline’s senses; black and silent.
The dining room, with its sparse candlelight and smoke-tinged breeze, had existed in some liminal space.
Outside its bounds, she realised with a jolt how deep they’d sunken into the night.
There must be hardly a soul awake in the palace, court and staff alike, dreaming peacefully, unaware of the smog and devastation still hanging over the bay.
Her eyes took several minutes to adjust, and even when they did, she couldn’t quite find her bearings. She felt her way along the walls, in the general direction of her room, but more importantly, away from the distant hiss and snap of Kai’s conversation with his cousin.
And toward a second pair of voices, just as quiet and perhaps twice as taut.
“—can’t go. You can’t.”
“Why not?” said Ceri, defiance raising her voice above Al’s whisper.
Alun’s laughter was not the same sunny, carefree sound she’d come to expect from him. It was dry, abrupt, little more than a huff of breath in the dark.
“Am I allowed to tell you why not? Are you going to listen this time?”
Shit, thought Adeline. She froze where she stood, just a few strides before the shadowed outline of Ceri and Al, and deliberated wildly.
The catch of Ceri’s breath was too intimate; she did not want to be here.
Should not be here, witnessing this private moment.
She glanced over her shoulder, the archway distant but still lit by the dim yellow candlelight of the dining room.
She didn’t want to be there, either, but she would take Oswalt’s obvious disdain over—
“Stay with me,” said Alun. His voice was low and intimate, meant for no one but Ceri. “Stay in Nua Laune. We might not grow old, but we can grow scaly together. I’ve loved you for years, Ceriwyn. I’ll love you with webbed feet, too.”
Adeline shifted slowly backward, masking her footfall under the watery swell of Ceri’s laughter.
“I love you.”
Daughters, they make it look easy, she thought.
But then the shadow that was Ceri surged for the outline that was Al, and Adeline abandoned any attempt at creeping away in favour of retreating as quickly as she could. Too quickly. The scuffle of her slippers on the stone was met with a sharp inhale, and she winced, freezing once more.
Bollocks.
“... Kai?” said Ceri tentatively, Alun swearing beneath his breath.
She swivelled on the spot, gut tightening guiltily when she found Ceri hurrying forth from the shadows, eyes round and tense, Alun at her heels.
“Nope,” she said, as they drew up short before her. The word came out with an awkwardly bright pop and an even more awkward wave. “Just me. Sorry.”
They stared at her.
“I was just …” She faltered. Gave up. “My room is that way, so—erm.”
She edged around them, but Ceri turned with her, reaching out to touch her arm in a gentle request. Wait, said that brief touch. So Adeline waited, little though she wanted to.
“Did you … hear any of that?”
She bit back a wince, and judging by Ceri’s face, that was answer enough.
“More than I should have,” she admitted all the same.
Ceri wrung her hands. “Are you going to tell Kai?”
“We should tell Kai,” Alun grumbled.
Adeline felt the awkward tightness in her chest drop like snow off a sagging branch, unwanted weight swept away on a gust of relief.
Relief that this was not some secret she’d stumbled upon, that they did plan to tell their king.
His friend, whom he loved and trusted, and the sister he’d always fought so hard to protect.
Two-thirds of his small court; she understood why they’d hesitate, but—
“You should,” she said, and then at the sharp pitch of Ceri’s brow, she hurried to add, “I’m sorry, I know it’s not my place, but you should tell him. I hate to keep anything from him, and the way you both feel is far from subtle—”
Ceri stopped twisting at her hands and froze with both of them folded before her. Even in the dark, her face was a mask of disbelief that piled that cold weight upon Adeline’s chest once more. When she spoke, her voice was thrumming; dark.
“And you’ve told him how you feel?”
“Ceri,” Al murmured, but she shrugged him off.
“No. I don’t pretend to know what happened between you and my brother; I understand that it’s complicated,” she seethed.
“So is this. You know he wraps me in cotton, and you know why. You think we owe it to him to tell him something we have just figured out for ourselves? What about what you owe him? I see the way he looks at you, Adeline. He’s happier than he’s ever been, and yet it breaks his heart. Why is that?”
The snow was piling, and Adeline could not breathe.
“Ceri, stop,” Alun said again, a hand tentatively curling at her shoulder. He shot Adeline a look that was part panic and part apology, brows sloping in time with his helpless shrug. “Look, it’s been a difficult night, and we’re all upset. She doesn’t mean—”
Ceri rounded on him.
“Do not speak for me,” she snapped, but her voice had gone thick and watery.
She was upset, and she had been so happy just moments ago.
A brief bubble of bliss after yet another terrible ordeal, until Adeline had stumbled in and popped it.
She didn’t want to be the reason they fought after what they’d just admitted to one another; didn’t want to break another tender Cumhaill heart.
“You’re right,” Adeline blurted.
It had the desired effect of turning Ceri’s attention.
“I haven’t told him how I feel, because—” Her chest stuttered, a painful warning in the burning catch of her breath. Not that part, then. “It doesn’t matter why. I’m in love with him.”
The hallway fell silent; quiet enough for Adeline to hear the gallop of her own heart beneath all that weight, set to beat right out of her chest and race off down the hallway.
It hurt, every pulse a strike against her heavy ribs.
Ceriwyn was staring at her, and she did not know what to do other than hug her arms around herself and try to contain the ache.
It was the first time she’d said it aloud. Every rhythmic slam of her blood was a protest in her own veins. Whether because she’d said it at all or because she hadn’t said it to Kai, she didn’t know. She said it again anyway, just to prove to herself that she could.
“I love him.”
“Well, good,” said Ceri stiffly. “I was beginning to worry you hadn’t figured that out yet.”
Adeline just nodded, dazed by the visceral reaction of her own body. It must have shown in her face; she watched Ceri’s soften.
“I won’t ask you to lie,” she said finally. “We’ll tell him. But you have something to tell him, too. All my brother has ever wanted is to protect the people he loves, and he tries. So hard. The least that we owe him are these small truths.”
It didn’t feel like a small truth.
She nodded anyway.
But she was still holding the mess of her chest together when she finally walked away.