Chapter Six #2
Nobody spoke. Not a single golden-brown stare even wavered.
Adeline laughed again, more forced this time. She waved the flower a little, and her family’s eyes tracked it like honeybees after its perfumed pollen. Her laughter died off into ringing silence, and Adeline stiffened.
What is happening here?
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, “is there some custom I’m forgetting? Something I’m supposed to do with this?”
The silence lingered for just a fraction longer than one might expect; just one stilted moment where someone should have answered her. But then Eleni’s frown flickered, her smile taking up once more.
“Oh,” she said, and the wave of her hand might have seemed airy, if not for the slight swallow between her words. “Nothing to worry about. Customs and such, they’ll all come back to you eventually.”
Adeline cast a doubtful glance back to the flower, then up at the Vanjirs—and at that moment she could almost believe she’d imagined the strangeness that had passed between them all.
Lyra was examining her long, sharp nails, testing the point of each one against a fingertip and frowning to herself, apparently dismayed by their bluntness.
Eleni had already turned away, waving forth the palace staff who had appeared at the door with trolleys of fine crockery.
Only Papou watched her still, less intent now and more thoughtful.
All the same, Adeline shifted under his gaze. She smiled, then cast about the room and watched the staff set the table for dinner, hoping for some topic of conversation to present itself so she wouldn’t have to stand idly beneath her grandfather’s confusing focus.
“The palace is so beautiful,” she said finally.
It was the truth. Their home, with the wilderness forever creeping in from outdoors, flowers and vines winding around every open archway, was a place lost in time.
Ancient and imposing, and despite it all, still endlessly warm and welcoming; she had been at home here, once. “I’m grateful for your hospitality.”
Papou gave a dismissive grunt. “Hospitality is nothing. You are family, agameni. Our home is your home.”
With nothing more to say, Adeline gave a gracious bow of her head—then jolted upright when the gesture drew an abrupt snort of laughter from her grandfather. His eye twinkled, softer than the intense stare he’d worn just a moment ago, and he shook his head fondly as he waved Eleni to his side.
“Ah, but she is so—” The old man broke off, frowning thoughtfully as his weathered hand rolled in the air, wafting around for the right word until he eventually said something in rapid Dhaliaan. Eleni’s answering smile was unfamiliar; soft and sombre.
“He says you are so like your mother. That you have her bearing.”
“Her bearing,” Papou agreed briskly.
Adeline barely heard him. The balmy air had chilled, something cold and forceful sweeping outward from the cavern of her chest. She could not say what the chill had done to her face, but with a single glance at her expression, Eleni’s smile dropped.
Papou went on, oblivious, reaching out to pat her hand where it curled tight around the wilting nycta stem.
“We were sorry to hear of Selma’s loss. Truly. Was it peaceful, agameni? Her passing?”
Adeline could not speak. Was her voice frozen, too? Was that where the lump in her throat had come from?
Eleni whipped at her father’s arm, hissing something in a string of Dhaliaan that Adeline could vaguely translate as “a few weeks” and “be tactful.” Papou glanced around, his dark eyes wide, lips sagging. She managed to shake her head, and wheezed out a barely audible, “It’s—Don’t worry.”
“Adeleni, I apologise,” he said, then cut off and resumed in Dhaliaan, muttering to himself as he smacked a palm over his papery brow. Eleni intercepted, pulling his hand away and holding it as she spoke.
“We’re sorry, Adeline,” she said gently. “It’s easy to forget, sometimes. Loss is something different when you’re young. We do understand, if you would rather not speak of it.”
Lyra flopped down in the seat beside her grandfather and leaned over his wooden armrest.
“I lost my mother,” she said matter-of-factly. “And we talk about her all the time.”
And despite knowing little of her late aunt—and even less of her young cousin—Adeline wanted to tell her that it was different.
It was different because this grief was hers, and it had been with her for as long as she could remember.
She had carried it her whole life, an open wound as old as she was.
Slight as a papercut, at first. Tended by her father with such love and care that it never caused much harm, but it had never really stopped bleeding either.
And then Selma had come back to herself, back to Adeline too, and it was at her hand that the wound had finally started to heal.
It was tight and uncomfortable to begin with, as healing always was.
Adeline had picked at the scab, slowed its progress—but it was healing.
By the end of last Mid-Winter, that healed part of her had become pink and tender.
Perhaps that was why it had torn so easily.
Perhaps that was why the queen’s passing had ripped this gaping cavern through her and left such a mess in its wake. Left her such a mess.
I bet you spoke to your mother every day of your young life, she wanted to tell her cousin, hating the vicious, broken voice in her own head.
I bet she played with you, listened to you.
I bet you never cowered at the sound of her footsteps.
I bet she didn’t have to learn who you are just weeks before she left you.
I bet, despite it all, she died knowing that you love her.
Adeline did not say any of that. She bowed her head, low enough for her curls to swing forth and conceal the painful set of her jaw, molars aching.
“I am sorry for your loss, cousin,” she said, too stiffly. “And if it’s all the same, I’d still rather not discuss my own.”
“Of course,” said Eleni. And then, before Lyra could so much as draw a breath, the Empress gave a long, blatantly relieved gasp and a swift clap of her hands, attention sliding past Adeline to the entryway. “Come in, come in! Just in time, Your Majesty.”
The missing warmth rushed her chest, and when Adeline turned, she could swear her frozen pulse began to beat anew.
Because there, a tether in the flood of grief and strangeness, stood her Merrow King.