Chapter Twenty-Six
Adeline
For days now, Adeline could stomach little more than root tea and sweet bread.
The tea calmed her seasickness, and the bread kept her from outright swooning, but neither could touch the writhing nest of anxiety that had taken residence in her gut.
If she’d had the will to be grateful for anything, it would be that the crossing had been relatively swift up to this point.
Now, with the shudder of ice grinding up the sides of the Pasiola as they sailed the narrow path to the port, Adeline could think of nothing but the slow drag of every second.
Each one of them held infinite horrors.
What if this was the second that Gerard disappeared, as so many others had?
What if this was the second that Avette turned her sights on Mareda?
What if this was the second that Kai was killed?
And the worst what if of all, the one that did not bear thinking, though she could feel it scraping around the inside of her skull like the ship through the ice path. What if it’s already too late for them all?
Her nails were a bloody, ragged ruin; she’d started chewing them again the morning she woke to find Kai gone. Rising late with a burnt taste in her mouth and a smoggy headache, she had half-crawled to her aunt’s dining hall—and there she had found the Merrow Court staring gravely back at her.
I have an idea, Eleni had said.
They’d talked for hours that morning, so many of those precious, dreadful seconds slipping past while they schemed and mapped and planned, and Adeline tore her hangnails to gory rags.
In the end, this was what Eleni’s grand plan had amounted to: commanding a ship to follow Kai over the Common Crossing.
And, it appeared, delivering Adeline across the oceans to Avette.
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“Come now agameni; one foot in front of the other.”
Adeline scowled.
“Do not call me that, you traitorous wench.”
Eleni merely threw a raised brow over her shoulder, but the gard with the length of rope in his hands gave a deliberate, nasty tug.
Adeline stumbled midstep, her bound wrists straining as her elbows parted to catch her fall.
It didn’t help. She toppled face-first into the snow with an oof and a mouthful of ice.
Fantastic.
Eleni drew up short, spinning to face her with both hands planted on her hips.
“Oh, now really,” she sighed. “A brief respite in the sun and you’ve forgotten how to walk on your own terrain?”
Adeline lifted her head from the perfect faceprint in the snow.
“Have I mentioned that you can go fuck yourself?”
“Not in a few hours at least. Up you get.”
She couldn’t bloody get up without the use of her hands, but the charming gard who’d tripped her in the first place was generous enough to haul her to her feet and nudge her forward.
It was rather surreal, being frogmarched into her childhood home like this.
Not quite the return she’d anticipated—nor the home she’d left behind, she quickly realised.
It hadn’t quite fallen to ruin. The opposite, she supposed. Everything was preserved exactly as she remembered it, just beneath several layers of ice. So thick in places it made the fine marble walls look like half-melted wax.
But Eleni clipped ahead of her as confidently as she walked the sundrenched halls of her own home, and under the forceful guidance of the gard holding her restraints like a leash, Adeline had little choice but to shuffle along after her.
That was until a great silver shape came barrelling around the corner and sent Eleni stumbling into the wall with a shriek.
But the shape staggered to a halt and stared wildly around, his eyes rounding as they came to land on her, halfway down the hall.
He stood there, stiff with disbelief, ignoring Eleni’s dramatics as she caught her breath with a hand clasped over her chest.
“Ade.”
The sound of her name. The sight of that face she knew as well as her own. It was too much—and more than enough to flood her throat with unshed tears.
“Ger,” she said thickly.
He bounded forward before she’d drawn her next breath, gathering her to his cold, armoured chest, face buried in her snowdusted hair. He held her so tight she could barely breathe beneath the crush of steel plating, but it didn’t matter. It was Ger, Ger, her Ger. Alive and whole and here.
“Jack said it was you,” he murmured into her hair, “but I thought—I hoped—”
She tried to lift her hands to halfway return the hug, but her leash pulled taut, and her winced curse had Ger pulling back, brow pinched with concern as he looked her over. And then concern dissolved into simmering rage.
“Why,” he snarled, leaning past Adeline to grab a handful of the other gard’s cloak, “have you bound a Princess of Eisalaan?”
Her binds slackened as the gard backed up slightly, stammering something about “traitor to the Sorceress” and “just following orders.”
“Well then, as I outrank you as a member of the Queen’s Gard, you can follow my orders. Let her go. Now.”
He snatched the rope from the stammering gard’s hands.
“And as I outrank you,” came a bemused voice from the end of the hall, “you would do well to escort myself and my dear niece to Her Majesty’s throne room. I believe she’s expecting us.”
Ger stiffened; despite having knocked Eleni into the wall, it seemed he was noticing her for the first time. He turned slowly on the spot, and Adeline didn’t miss the way his arm extended backward to shield her. His tone, when he spoke, was mistrustful. More than reasonable, really.
“She’s your family,” Ger gritted out. “And you’re just … handing her over?”
Eleni’s smile was warm in the chill of the blank hallways.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Come along now.”
Ger stood a moment longer, frozen even as Eleni wandered around the corner and the sullen gard shifted around behind them. Adeline nudged him gently forward.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “It’s going to be alright.”
He blinked around at her, dazed—then his eyes focused, hazy blue turning clear and sharp as a polished pane of ice. He drew himself up and turned on the gard.
“Follow the Empress,” he commanded. “Ensure she knows where she’s going.”
The gard shot a glance between Adeline and Ger, hesitant.
“Now.”
Tension flickered over the boy’s face, but he gave a reluctant bow of his head and scurried around the corner after Eleni. The moment his grey cloak whipped out of sight, Ger spun around and began to herd Adeline down the hallway.
“We have to move quickly,” he hissed. “The Queen’s Gards tend to avoid the kitchens if they can help it, so I’ll leave you there for a few minutes while I find—”
Panic hiccuped in Adeline’s lungs, and she drew up short, tugging her arms against the rope. Ger faltered at the strain, immediately dropping the rope like he hadn’t realised he was holding her bound wrists—but he was quick to double back and grab her by the arm.
“Ger, stop.”
“There’s no time—”
“No,” she snapped, shrugging him off.
Ger’s face went slack with disbelief, then tight with a sweeping sort of despair she’d never imagined she’d see on that bright, open face.
It made something within her crumble. Even more so when he reached for her again, and she was forced to step out of his grasp.
His breath caught so sharply she could hear it snag in his lungs.
“Adeline,” he said, an echo to her own sharp tone. “You won’t get this chance again. If Kai knew you were here, he’d tell you the exact same—”
“He’s here,” she breathed. She’d known he would be, of course, but perhaps some small part of her hoped he’d escaped. Changed his mind, turned around, was sailing, even now, back to the warmth of Dhalias.
But Ger gave a solemn nod, and her heart sank.
“About two weeks now,” he said.
“Then I’m exactly where I should be.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Ger wheezed, breath snagging once more. “This isn’t noble, or—or romantic, or whatever it is you’re imagining. She’s vicious. She’s possessive and powerful, and I’ve watched her splinter people to pieces on a whim. She means to marry him, Adeline.”
She froze. Every living, beating part of her was suspended in utter shock, and Ger took her silence for pause, nodding as though he’d finally gotten through to her.
“She’s killed for far less than someone stealing what she thinks is hers.”
Hers. That one word was a flint striker to the heavy weight in her belly, rage simmering neatly in the heat that engulfed her. But Ger took her by the shoulders and stared into her face, stooped to her eye level as he pleaded for understanding.
“She sees Kai as hers, Adeline, and she knows you mean something to him. To us all. Don’t make him watch you die.” Ger’s breath galloped beneath every word, urgency thinning his voice until it finally cracked. “Don’t make me watch.”
And just like that, the fire was doused in cold clarity.
There was something in the set of his face, something that hadn’t been there before.
Suffering had dulled the ever-present glimmer in his eye, that warmth he radiated, drawn in like a snuffed flame.
And it hit Adeline with a fresh surge of crackling rage that he was hers, too.
Hers to protect, just like Kai, and Mareda, and everyone else in the palace and beyond.
Because no matter how possessive Avette might be over her shiny new crown, this was Adeline’s home, her family, her kingdom. So no, it wasn’t romantic or noble or whatever other pretty notion Ger had projected on her.
But it was her duty.
“She won’t hurt me, Ger. I promise.” He drew in a breath to protest, and she stepped in close, raising her bound hands to cup his chin between her palms, forcing his gaze to lock on hers. “Do you trust me?”
Ger’s brow creased, eyes flicking between hers like she was a book page with cramped notes in the margins, some secret he couldn’t decipher no matter how plainly her face spelt it out. After a moment, he sighed—and nodded, his golden stubble scraping her palms.
“I trust you more than anything, Ade.”
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