Chapter Ten #3
The Goddess and her Daughters, her father had told her once, when she’d brought him another little flower on a Dhaliaan beach all those summers ago.
He’d taken the small blue thing in his palm and smiled, gently touching the tip of each petal with a fingertip.
Mother Goddess, he’d said, here at the crown watching over us all.
And around her, like the arms of a star, who do we have?
Aera, Lasra, Tala, and Isa, she’d chanted back to him, endlessly pleased with her own great wisdom.
Standing now in the Silver Meadow, Adeline touched the cold petals of the little white blossom just as Silas had, lingering on the topmost, the crown—and sent a rare prayer to the Goddess.
It was a childish prayer; a fantasy. A simple thing that could never really be, or at least not in the way she wanted.
Make it right, she prayed all the same. Make it all right again.
With the frozen flower cooling her palm, and an odd sense of release loosening her chest, Adeline was actually rather content for one still moment. Her tears had dried. The meadow was quiet, and her breath came easily. Then she turned, and the fragile peace shattered like the thinnest pane of ice.
Eleni was watching her again, just as she and Papou had only yesterday, with intensity and eerie, disconcerting expectation.
“Eleni,” Adeline said, a little more sharply than she’d intended—but it really was quite off-putting.
Last time, she’d put it down to some custom or cultural gap she’d forgotten about in the many years that had passed.
But her father was Dhaliaan; she knew enough of her second homeland to know that this wasn’t some misunderstanding.
Her aunt blinked, at once abashed.
“I—Sorry.” She swallowed, eyes darting to the shimmering blossom in Adeline’s palm, and then away, across the meadow. Then she called up a swift smile. “Just wondered if the frost enchantment would hold once picked.”
Why wouldn’t it, Adeline thought with a frown. She highly doubted the Wielder who’d preserved the garden had worked on the roots alone; Palace Wielders tended to be a lot more precise than that.
But before she could say as much, Eleni patted her own knees and sighed. “Well, now. That’s the Silver Meadow. The ladies will be wondering where we’ve gone.”
She gathered her skirts and began to rise, and as she did—she paused, head twitching in a short double-take. “Oh, you dropped—”
Fuck.
Time contracted around them. The meadow went airless with a sudden, ringing silence, and Adeline’s muscles were as sluggish as her frozen brain.
She could not stop Eleni from leaning down, from reaching for the well-worn scrap, from glancing down at the blue seal, the bold S.B.
still legible even with the silver lettering having faded beneath Adeline’s constant touch.
“You dropped this.”
Eleni relaxed her widened eyes just a split second too late, remembered herself at a delay before she handed the letter over. They stared at each other for another airless moment.
“Adeline—”
“I have to go,” Adeline blurted.
Too loud. She didn’t care. She needed to get the fuck out of here. She needed—
Kai. She needed to see Kai, like she’d planned to. Like she was supposed to, before this entire, strange, awkward, too-hot day had gotten away from her.
“I have to find … Ceriwyn,” she said, unwilling to spark Eleni’s unquenchable curiosity again.
The Empress just bowed her head in a nod. “Very well. I imagine she’ll be at the docks shortly to greet her brother.”
Adeline did not like that knowing thread that weaved her mention of Kai, but she couldn’t help but perk at it either.
“He went to meet the other Merrow? Already?”
“Yes,” said Eleni. “I’m due to meet him soon. I can bring you to … Ceriwyn.”
Adeline tried not to notice all the implication in that single pause, nor the smile that tugged at her Aunt’s lips. “Alright. Thank you.”
“Meet me at the entryway in an hour. You’ll have time to change, if you’d like.”
Adeline might have taken offence at that, had she not been unsticking her collar from her skin when her Aunt suggested it.
They exited the meadow in silence, and Eleni excused Adeline without the formality of bidding her court farewell.
She went to her room and immediately peeled the damp woollen dress from her skin, stopping only to tuck her mother’s letter into a drawer before half-running to the bathing chamber and sinking into a cool bath in the bronze tub.
By the time she returned to her room, her wool day dress had been swept off the floor, and another was laid out on the bed.
She didn’t recognise it from her morning riffle through the wardrobe; it was Eisalaan blue, with white embroidery and much fuller skirts than the sheathlike dresses she’d found earlier.
She picked the dress up, fanned the skirt out to its full width—and found a corner of bright, fresh paper spearing out from its side.
It had pockets.
Adeline fumbled with the thin material and finally yanked the small note free. The writing was flowy and familiar, broad swirls of ink she’d spent so much of her childhood hoping to see again.
Keep that letter close, agameni.