Chapter Sixteen
Kai
He was reeling, even now. Almost drunk on that second-hand surge of power as they stumbled through the open hallways of the Imperial palace.
Kai had felt it coursing through her body as he held her; pure, ancient, boundless magic pouring out of Adeline in the same moment that he poured himself into her.
He hadn’t understood what was happening at first; only that he was coming harder and longer than he had in his entire life.
He’d thought she was coming too, unravelling again just moments after her last orgasm—had felt some misplaced pride at that, if he was honest with himself.
But then a featherlight touch exploded around his legs, his back, his neck, and as his own climax ebbed, he finally became aware of the shift in the dim light and the density in the air.
Life itself exploded from beneath Adeline’s palm, green spreading like a thorny, velvet flood in every direction, petals unfurling and vines snaking.
She had clung to him, blind with power, utterly senseless to everything but its all-consuming rush, and Mother help him, he had been incapable of anything but to sit back and marvel at her.
Her beautiful face was lined with ecstasy and lit by the fractured flare of green that his pendant cast between her fingers as she clutched at him.
And the thought had dawned on him, though somewhat shadowed by her sheer brilliance, that her grasp on the Adhlian pendant had loaned her a momentary power.
He hadn’t yet had a private moment to test the potency of Daithí’s gift to him, but seeing Adeline overtaken by magic, his veins throbbed with that familiar thirst, that ache for the power that had once lived in his blood.
It was not the same hollow feeling it had once been.
It was a keen edge of eagerness and excitement.
He could share this with her. She would know now what it was to feel that ineffable connection to Adhlas at the core of your own mortal being.
But when it was over, Adeline took some time longer to return to herself. In his own few moments of clarity, he hadn’t stopped to consider how she might react; her initial shock was understandable. What had thrown him was the quiet, simmering rage that swept in to swallow that shock.
She had climbed off of him, her voice so hoarse and hollow he could only just comprehend the few words she uttered beneath her breath; The fucking flowers.
She’d fought to unearth her dress from a tangle of weeds on the tiled floor, and Kai had done up its bodice while she stood with her fists so tightly compressed he worried she would break a finger.
Adeline said nothing else; didn’t seem capable of speaking, her jaw so tight it was nearly sealed shut.
Had she not stood and waited for him to dress himself, he wouldn’t have known she wanted him to follow as she strode from the powder room.
He struggled to keep up with her, long though his legs may be; in her fury, she moved like a river beneath a storm, so rapid and wild there was nothing to do but let the furious waters braid you into their tide. She was a force of her own.
Adeline did not slow as they stepped into the evening.
The night air had cooled, and Kai only realised how hot and slick his skin still was with the kiss of the breeze.
By the grace of the Mother, he could only hope nobody else would notice—nor wonder where they’d been.
But the gardens had stilled somewhat, the raucous noise of the courtiers and musicians reduced to a quiet, contented hum; the golden lantern light drawn in, now just one singular flame remaining lit.
They had been gone much longer than he realised.
The Empress sat with half a dozen courtiers in a circle of wooden chairs beneath the last remaining lantern, sipping wine and smothering their laughter.
A pretty raven-haired woman sat in Eleni’s lap, their heads bent close and their overlapping skirts creating one tufty cloud in the shadows where they seemed to float together, giggling and giddy.
“Aunt Eleni.”
Adeline’s voice was a current in the air, the crack of it sharp as a bolt of thunder. The women jolted at the sound, and shot nervous looks around themselves; a few of them whispered to one another as they noticed Adeline approaching, but she hardly seemed to notice them.
“The fucking flowers?” she seethed. “Really? You couldn’t tell me outright?”
At her heated language, the courtier in the Empress’s lap drew herself upright, spine straight and lips flattened with tension before they parted, apparently poised with a reprimand—but when Eleni lay a coaxing hand on her forearm, she bit her tongue.
For a moment, nobody moved, nor spoke, though Kai saw their gazes swivelling from Eleni, stiff and wide-eyed, to Adeline, fists curled and chest heaving.
The courtiers were barely breathing—as though by staying as still as possible, they could avoid being seen and dismissed, missing the royal conflict unfurling before their very eyes.
But Eleni composed herself and said, without taking her eyes from her niece, “Ladies. The hour grows late, and I’m sure you are all weary. I shall bid you goodnight.”
“We are quite energised, cousin,” said one beady-eyed woman over the rim of her glass, her every word so dry and drawling that her neighbour gave her a playful nudge that sent both of them spluttering into their wine.
“Leave,” said Eleni.
With no small amount of grumbling, the ladies got to their feet and snatched up their wine glasses, then weaved arm in arm toward the palace.
The woman curled into Eleni’s side was the last to leave; she shot a mistrustful glance toward Adeline, then Kai, but Eleni whispered something low and reassuring, and she eventually followed the others across the grass.
“Hello again, Your Majesty,” said Eleni—and Kai had been so engrossed in Adeline, in the rage pouring off her like the magic that had spilt from her hand, that it took him a moment to realise the Empress was addressing him.
“Oh—hello,” he said, a little weaker than he’d like.
“I take it you’ll be remaining where you are,” Eleni said pleasantly. “You know what this is about?”
Kai was about to tell her he hadn’t a singular notion what this was about, but Adeline spoke first.
“He most certainly will be remaining,” she snapped. “Because, like me, he deserves to understand what just happened.”
Eleni’s eyes were ringed with white as she leaned forward and clutched the wooden armrest of her seat.
The flare of excitement lighting her face told Kai what he should have guessed from the moment that Adeline dragged him out here—this was no one-off peculiarity.
He had been wildly sifting his own thoughts for a logical explanation, assumed that some combination of their connection, and the sex, and Adeline’s hand around his pendant had aligned the perfect circumstances for a magnificent burst of magic.
But no. As the women stared at one another, he realised how wrong he was.
Because the Empress knew what Adeline was talking about. She knew what Adeline had done.
Which meant she had done it before.
“It just happened?” Eleni said eagerly. “This very evening? Where?”
Adeline gave an angry huff of laughter, glancing around at an invisible audience in disbelief. “You might be surprised to hear that I have questions of my own.”
Eleni leaned back in her chair, and the gleam in her eye drew in, smothered with a rather practised effort. “Of course. Will you sit?”
Kai did, at once. His legs were shaking, he realised, and he did not think it was from exertion.
Adeline sent him a hard look of betrayal, and he sent her a softer one back.
Sit. Talk. She resisted a moment longer, then fisted her hands and took a swift step around the closest seat, sinking into it.
“There,” she said, in an acerbic voice so unlike her own. “I’m sitting. Aren’t we so civilised?”
Eleni sighed. “I’m sorry, Adeline.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t. I promised I never would.”
“Promised who—”
Adeline cut herself off, her words simmering on the air before they were replaced by a half-choked gasp of disbelief. Her narrowed eyes widened, brow pitched nearly into her curls.
“My father?”
The Empress bowed her head in confirmation—and perhaps to hide the slight, sour twist to her lips.
But it was Adeline’s lost expression that made the pieces slide together; that brought him back to the balcony, where she’d worn the same expression as she’d told him of the rift between Silas and his Dhaliaan relatives.
“That’s why you stopped writing,” said Adeline, in a voice so small it slipped between Kai’s ribs like a splinter.
It was an effort, in that moment, not to snarl at the Empress for ever having hurt her, no matter how old or healed that hurt might be.
But for her part, Eleni simply hung her head lower, defeat and shame dragging at her shoulders.
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “I thought it was for the best. You kept asking to come back here and I couldn’t bear to—”
At Adeline’s audible wince, Eleni stopped and raised round, sorrowful eyes to her niece.
“Did my mother know?”
“No,” Eleni breathed, not quite a scoff, but a small gasp that echoed some past disbelief. “That was the whole point, I’m afraid.”
“The point of what?” said Adeline. She seemed tired now, all that fire smothered, her voice quiet but thick with emotion.
Kai reached across his own wooden armrest for her hand.
She took his at once and squeezed, eyes falling shut as though she could draw some borrowed strength from his grasp.
When she opened them again, she said, “I don’t understand why you did this.
Why you hid this from me; Papou, my father, all of you. ”
Eleni gave a small, defeated nod and leaned forward in her chair.