Chapter Thirty-Seven
Adeline
The men outside her doors were lightweights, and for that she was grateful.
Ger hadn’t come back after she’d sent him off to deliver the message to the others, but she knew he’d managed it if only for the very fact that there were two unconscious gards in the hallway, their empty goblets overturned on the floor where they sat, slumped and twisted up in their own stormy-grey cloaks.
She stepped gingerly over them and did not look back.
The library was black and silent as the grave, though not quite as frostbitten as the rest of the palace. She thanked all the Daughters for every sturdy step she took into the pitch darkness, feeling along walls that did not nip and sting at her fingertips.
Her footsteps echoed in the fathomless black.
So black. Why were the sconces not lit? They were always lit.
A warm hand around her arm sent her heart into her throat, dragging a shriek from her lungs.
“Shit, Ade, we’re supposed to be discreet.”
She batted blindly at Ger’s arms.
“Then perhaps don’t sneak up on me in the dark, you absolute numpty.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could feel him grinning at her as she caught her breath.
Could feel the warmth and playfulness rolling off him, just like old times.
Just like old Ger. Strange as the shift was, she wasn’t sorry for it, even thought she might understand it, in a way; there was an end in sight now.
They were doing something, and no matter how tomorrow went, it would all be over one way or another.
Her breath came a little easier with that warmth, and she found his arms again in the dark, let him tug her into a wordless hug.
“Why is it so dark in here?”
Ger stiffened in her embrace.
“The archivist,” he said, after a reluctant beat. “He refused to destroy some old journals that Avette wanted gone. Said he’d never even seen them. She didn’t believe it, so—”
Adeline’s heart dropped.
An old man who’d done nothing but fulfil his duties, tending to the library and the archives for longer than she’d been alive.
Snuffed out on a whim, like so many others.
She closed her eyes; she didn’t feel the shock or even the despair she might once have—but he deserved the moment of silence, of reflection. They all did. They deserved anger.
They deserved justice.
Adeline set her jaw and stepped back from the indulgence of her friend’s warmth.
“Where are the others?”
“This way.”
And with his elbow threaded through hers, Ger led the way through the dark.
The blackness shifted before long, thinned by moonlight and the faint glow of a single small lantern on one of the tables set between the endless aisles.
Three figures huddled over the light, their voices low.
At their approach, the tallest of those shadows peeled away and reached for her.
They moved together like magnets, her hand in his before her eyes had even adjusted enough to take in his face.
When they did, she smiled and reached up to cup his cheek.
“Hello,” she whispered.
He laid his hand over her own.
“Hello,” Kai returned softly.
A simple exchange, but it told her plenty. He was surviving. He was here, he was present. He was grim, but he was ready. And for now, that would have to be enough.
Time was not on their side.
She didn’t release his hand as she turned to face the others across the table—and startled at the sight of Imogen.
“Are you alright?”
Even in the dark, her rich brown skin was wan. Her eyes appeared almost sunken, her frame rounded over the table as though it was all she could do to stay upright. Perhaps she wouldn’t have managed if it weren’t for Mareda’s arms around her like a brace, circling and supporting her.
Imogen gave an unconvincing nod, shallow as her own breath.
“She will be,” said Mareda quietly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you called us here to find a way to stop Avette,” said Imogen, attempting a breathless smile. “And I happen to have a way.”
Her smile flickered, pain rippling over her brow as she sucked in a breath, Mareda gathering her closer. Adeline glanced around at the others, but Ger only shrugged, his brow just as knotted as she knew her own must be. Kai, on the other hand, met her gaze steadily.
“Imogen holds the Pearl,” he said.
Adeline whipped around. “You stole it back?”
She shook her head, Marry mirroring her.
“She never gave it to her.”
“It can’t be given,” said Kai. “We misunderstood, all of us. The Mother’s gift isn’t bestowed upon the person who owns the Pearl. It belongs to the person who holds it.”
“Literally,” Imogen rasped weakly.
Adeline blew out a breath.
“Shit,” was all she could manage, but Ger’s bright burst of laughter had them all flinching and glancing around, a round of hushes drowning him out.
“Sorry,” he said, grinning, “but—this is it, right? Imogen has all the power in the entire fucking world?”
Kai nodded.
“So we’ll take a stroll down to the queen’s quarters, Imogen can—I don’t know—turn her into a worm or something, and we’ll all be back in our warm, defrosted beds within the hour.”
Imogen raked in a long breath. “I can’t.”
Ger just laughed again.
“Fair,” he said jovially. “Thought it sounded a bit too good to be true.”
Adeline turned her head to fix him with a bemused stare.
“Why are you being so odd?”
He shrugged, lip quirking.
“Just in a good mood. Feeling positive.”
His lips popped around the P, and she stared back at him, laughter and confusion swelling in her chest.
“Well, that’s great, but what—” She cut herself off as understanding barrelled into her, her brows shooting up so fast she was in danger of losing them. “Wait. No. Did you?”
He grinned and mimed locking his own lips.
“Oh, now you’re discreet?”
“Ade,” Marry sighed. “Whatever this is, could you two pick it up later?”
“Right. Sorry.” She shot one last giddy glance at Ger, then gave herself a mental shake and turned to Imogen. “So, you have the powers, you just can’t use them?”
Imogen dragged down another breath, her face so pained with the effort that Adeline felt guilty for even asking.
“It’s too much. Takes too much of a toll, but—” She paused and licked her dry lips, hand tight around Marry’s. “But I can channel it.”
“That’s how she fooled Avette,” Marry supplied, and Imogen gave her a grateful smile. “Imogen sent a wave of that power to her when she reached for it. She can feel it every time Avette tries to Wield.”
“She called to the Mother, and you answered,” said Kai.
Imogen nodded.
“So,” he paused, eyes searching the middle distance for something none of them could see, before his brows twitched up. “So we could call to you.”
“Yes,” she said, this nod a little firmer, eyes brighter. “Exactly. Let me channel through you both, and we can blindsight her.”
Adeline’s every nerve ending pulsed in protest, stomach flipping, but she nodded at once.
“Then that’s it,” she said. “We’ve got a plan, the upper hand, and the element of surprise.”
“We haven’t really got a plan,” said Kai. “Not yet.”
“I like my plan,” said Ger.
Adeline patted his shoulder.
“I don’t think I’d know how to turn her into a worm.”
“We do have a plan,” Marry cut in firmly.
“Two-thirds of Avette’s forces are holding down the ports, and the dregs that remain will be conveniently assembled before us tomorrow.
Imogen’s been biding her time, winning Avette’s trust for months now, chipping away at her every defence.
She has single-handedly brought us as close as we could possibly be; it’s up to us to see it through. ”
The others nodded, chagrined, but Adeline caught the slight flush to Imogen’s wan cheeks and could not help but smile.
“You’re right,” she said. “So, what can we do?”
“We need to get all three of you close to Avette,” said Marry. “We wait for her to call for her power, and while she’s open and expectant, Adeline and Kai will strike.”
“And by strike, you mean—” Adeline swallowed the barbed end of her sentence, but her sister just nodded, face impassive.
“I don’t want to kill her,” said Kai quietly.
Every gaze darted his way, and he avoided each one of them, staring down at the tabletop.
Adeline’s head spun; they’d talked about this in Dhalias, with Os, and he’d said then that he wanted her dead—but so much had changed. So much had happened in just those few short weeks.
“The pendant,” he said. “The proximity to that amount of power—it causes a kind of madness, after some time. She wore it for hundreds of years. We don’t know who she might be without it.
While I might not personally be able to forgive all that she’s done, we don’t know what remnants of who she was might be saved. ”
Marry didn’t let even a moment of silence hang off his words.
“My father wore that pendant on and off for twenty years,” she said.
“And it did drive him a little mad; it did drive him to make some awful decisions. But everything he did was an extension of his true self. He bound my mother to the Frost because he was in love. He unbound her because he was petty, and she hurt him. The pendant didn’t make him that way; it just intensified his every instinct.
Avette has her free will, Your Majesty, just as my father did. She has shown us who she is.”
“She heard the story of the Pearl,” Adeline reminded him gently. “She believed it. She sent you to the cavern. She chose this, Kai, before she even had her hands on the pendant.”
He nodded, but his frown did not falter.
“It just doesn’t seem right,” he said. “Who are we to bring an end to a life, any life?”
Adeline glanced helplessly around; Marry was unmoved, Imogen barely conscious.
But Gerard’s lips were pressed in a firm line, and she read that line like a sentence printed in ink.
He didn’t want to wade in because he agreed with Kai and could not articulate his reasoning.
He didn’t need to, not to her at least. Of all of them, only Ger truly understood what it was to end a life.