Chapter Twenty-Three #2
The title was bitter on his tongue, a vulgar word. Beneath a mask of calm, his chest was heaving, the only sign that anger had finally caught up to him. Kai felt the echo of that anger in his own breath, fiery waves of it battering his lungs like seafoam beating down on the rocks.
“As for what I imagine, Kai?” Os barrelled on, tone pitching with the barest hint of feeling.
“I imagine you’re angry that Avette has something to hold over you, even after you set down your crown.
I imagine you were relieved that Nua Laune took that choice from you.
I imagine you’d hoped to finally live out the fairytale you’re so famed for. ”
Kai took a thunderous step forward before he caught himself.
Fuck you, he wanted to say.
Instead, he managed between gritted teeth, “It must be so easy to pass judgment when you’re above such trivial things.”
Os staggered forward too, the sheer disbelief strong enough to trip him up where he’d stood stone still.
“Above such things?” Os breathed, dangerously low.
Guilt immediately tightened Kai’s lungs.
“I’ve never had a moment to consider such things.
” Another half-tripped step forward, a hand flying to his chest like he’d catch his own fall.
“I have spent my entire adult life following you around so I could be there to pick you up when you fell too hard. Which you did, Kai. Time and time again.”
Kai shook his head, a short jolt, as though he could shake that truth away like a bothersome fly.
“I never asked you to—”
“Somebody fucking had to!” Oswalt exploded, both arms flying wide, the volume of his rage rocking Kai’s entire frame even as he tensed beneath it, refused to stagger back, to give an inch.
His jaw clenched with the effort, creaked beneath the rising drumbeat of his own rage.
“You’re a king, you don’t have the luxury of falling to pieces every time a pretty girl breaks your heart. ”
“Avette betrayed me,” Kai hissed, unable to withstand the blinding wave that propelled him forward, now nearly toe to toe with Oswalt’s squared-off frame. “I was not broken over her, not for a single damned second.”
If they hadn’t been in each other’s faces, he might have missed it. The fleeting look, something between a sneer and a snarl, that pulled Oswalt’s lip back from his teeth.
“I am not talking about Avette, and you know it.”
A flicker of acid green lit the space between them; he relished the hiss that moved up his lungs, even as it brushed past the very crack in his heart that his cousin spoke of.
The crack that was as much his own doing as it was Adeline’s.
The crack that had nothing to do with his Court, or his people, or Oswalt, or his Mother-damned duty.
“What I know, Os, is that you can go fuck yourself.”
Os flinched.
Kai flinched.
The pressure in his chest released and immediately rebounded, an elastic snap spreading an unbearable ache through his entire ribcage.
The venom of those words tasted all wrong on his tongue, but they were far too bitter to swallow back, and the slow collapse of Oswalt’s face was lit in the same sickly glow that numbed Kai’s skin.
“What is happening?”
Though neither of them stood down or even glanced away, they tensed in unison at Ceri’s unexpected cry, the rapid scuff of her footsteps. It was only when she wedged herself between them that Kai dropped his cousin’s cold and incredulous stare.
“Why,” Ceri grunted, shoving Kai back a step, “are you two screaming at each other?”
“What are you doing here, Ceriwyn?” Kai said, just to buy himself a moment to calm his own pulse, the steady green beat against his chest that gave away his every raging thought. “Didn’t we agree to meet at the manor?”
“We were—We just—” Ceri stuttered, and Kai finally looked at her; she was flushed and breathless, as though she’d run here.
Though she can’t have been that far away if she’d overheard them.
Al hovered behind her, equally winded, his eyes darting wearily from Os, to Kai, to Ceri, who was still half-stammering.
Then she shook her head, shaking off that hesitation and said, “Thank the Mother we waited, you look ready to rip each other apart.”
“It’s fine,” said Os, and he took a step back. “We’re done.”
The finality of that sentence dropped through Kai like a rock cutting through the wildest current.
We’re done. Kai could see he meant it too; whatever multitude of meanings those two words held, Os spoke them like an oath.
The glow of Kai’s pendant guttered, and the shift of shadows across his cousin’s face turned it from furious to hollow.
Then Oswalt turned, for a final time, and walked out.
“Os, wait,” Ceri called, but he didn’t.
Ceri still had her hand on Kai’s shoulder, as though to let go was to risk him tearing after their cousin. She wasn’t looking at him, though; her gaze had flicked to Al, who nodded at something wordless passed between them.
“I’ll get him,” he said quietly, and left the room. As soon as he had, Ceri was on him.
“What’s gotten into you, Koo? What is this about?”
Kai ducked his shoulder, shrugging out of her grasp.
“I’m tired of stirring up the same stagnant water. We’re wasting time.”
She reached for him again, stopping him with a hand on his arm as he tried to edge past, bending her head to search for his gaze. He paused only to avoid tripping over her, eyes arching to the ceiling as he threw his head back with exasperation.
“No,” Ceri said, “we have time. Haven’t we all agreed that we need time?”
His gaze snapped down with a flash of green.
“You have agreed. All of you have agreed that we should sit around talking. I am through talking, Ceriwyn. Eda is dead, and talking won’t undo that. But acting might undo the Frost.”
“Even so,” Ceri said, stepping into his path once more. He didn’t miss the way her eyes flicked to the pendant, the worried tug between her brows. “We can spare five minutes. You have nowhere to rush off to an hour before dawn.”
Kai said nothing, and Ceri’s eyes narrowed.
“Koo,” she said sharply. “No.”
“You can tell Os,” he said coldly, “that I’m fulfilling my duty to the Laune.”
He moved around her, a wider step this time that left her stumbling after him, half-running to catch up as he ducked beneath the archway.
“Kai, don’t you dare martyr yourself and say it’s for us,” she huffed as she hurried alongside him in the dark, still grabbing at his arm. “It wouldn’t even be for you, the only person who wins if you rush in there without a plan is Avette. Kai, look at me.”
She gave one final, desperate tug on his arm, and Kai stopped short, whirling to face her.
His jaw ached, teeth splintering, fists curling as his blood beat in his veins like a storm, the waters whispering to him from afar.
A low, mournful call, the Mother enticing him to loose some of that thunder from his veins.
It had been building in him all night, and he knew it was too much to hold beneath his skin.
Knew it was grating at his insides like the soot and saltwater in his throat; knew he’d need to release it soon.
But he also knew exactly what he would do with that otherworldly call.
Where those waters would bear him, if he could only get to the docks fast enough.
Ceri stared up at him with wide, horrified eyes. The only light in the hallway came from the faraway glow of the dining hall’s candles, and the steady shine of green between them.
“What about Adeline?” she whispered.
And as though her whisper were a gust of wind, the pendant’s light spluttered, waned; dimmer when it renewed.
“Adeline will be perfectly content here.” It was the first place she’d ever felt loved, and safe in that love. She had said that. It was not a lie; he couldn’t say why it tasted like one. “She’ll be safe here, with the Vanjir. She’ll be happy.”
“And if you get yourself killed?” Ceri challenged. “You think she’ll stand a chance at happiness then?”
“I do,” he said, and those words, too, were sour. “Adeline and I have always understood what this is. That our people come first, and anything between us would always come with certain … caveats.”
Caveats and all, said a contrary voice in his head. He shook it away, and Ceri’s eyes narrowed at the tic of his head.
“You’re either lying or you’re an idiot.”
He snatched his arm from her grasp, feeling only the slightest flare of guilt at her brief stumble until the cold pulse of his pendant swallowed it up.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and turned away.
“I know that she’s in love with you.”
The words slipped from Ceri in a flood, pooling beneath his feet and stealing his grip on the very ground beneath him.
He faltered, nearly slid to his knees. The hallway went momentarily dark as a mighty pulse of warmth in Kai’s chest breached the pendant’s numbing glow.
But the Adhlian cold was single-minded, and it beat back that warmth with renewed force, encasing his entire ribcage with sudden, unyielding ice.
Get to the docks.
“I don’t understand this obsession,” he said flatly, “with pairing me off in some fairytale romance. That is not, and has never been, my reality. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ceriwyn.”
“She told me.”
Kai turned to her in silence, warmth prickling at him once more, weak but insistent. The call of the waters wailed beneath his skin and in his ears, but he tuned it out; strained against it for just a moment longer.
“She said it quite clearly; I’m in love with him.”
“How do you know she meant—”
Ceri cut him off with an almighty scoff.
“Oh, you’re right,” Ceri said with a forced laugh and an airy wave of her hand. “Weeks of stolen glances and sneaking off for mountainside picnics, but it couldn’t possibly be you she was talking about. She must have meant Os. Have you seen the way they look at each other?”