Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Stepping into the throne room was like opening your bedroom door only to stumble headfirst into a vast and ancient cavern.
The once soaring ceiling hung low, jagged splinters of ice fragmenting the light from the sconces in a disorienting blend of shimmers and shadows.
Bodies crowded the walls, fully dressed in outdoor cloaks and thick, furlined hoods, their faces hidden, but their shivering breath pulsing in intermittent clouds of frozen, white air.
The Court, as Adeline assumed they must be, were fenced in by a wall of large sculptures that adorned either side of the narrow path to the throne; shimmering, lifelike things with twisted expressions and wide eyes that seemed to follow her with every step she took.
Some of them seemed to be mid-flight, sprinting from whatever lay ahead.
Adeline was so thrown by their eerie, lifelike appearance that she didn’t fully absorb the sight in front of her—not until Eleni finally paused and sank into a low curtsey, the long, purple train of her dress almost violently bright against the stark marble.
“Your Majesty,” said the Empress. “You are even more beautiful than the legends suggest.”
And it was true.
The woman who sat on her mother’s throne was terribly beautiful.
She wore an elegant dress of pure-white lace that streamed down the dais stairs like seafoam.
Her hair was dark and thick, her complexion a perfect porcelain, unblemished save for the deliberate trail of glittering tears drawn on each cheek.
She was stunning, striking—but even her otherworldly beauty was not enough to hold Adeline’s attention.
Not when Kai sat at her side.
The sight of him made Adeline trip mid-step, Ger catching her elbow. Her stomach plummeted even as he righted her. Even as her foolish heart soared in the opposite direction.
Alive, whole, here.
Kai’s beard was shorn, his hair neatly trimmed, his white suit crisp and well-fitted.
And yet, just like Gerard, there was something off about his face.
Handsome as ever but … hollow. Until his eyes found hers over Eleni’s bent head, and came alight with a vicious, vivid strike of light, a bolt of electricity that seemed to shock through his entire body.
He sat rigidly in his seat, his hands straining oddly against the armrests and his jaw working furiously.
He was bound, she realised, unable to move or speak.
“You flatter me, Empress Vanjir,” said Avette.
And though her voice was quite as lovely as her face, the sound of it dragged over the hairs at the nape of Adeline’s neck.
That horror twisted at her spine, and she found her gaze turning without her say so.
She was met with a glittering, black stare, fringed with lovely, long lashes.
Avette cocked her head like a curious bird, and a dim blue light flickered over her features; Adeline noticed, for the first time, Edward’s aged blue pendant sitting neatly against her lace collar.
“And you have brought us a wedding gift,” she said.
A wedding gift.
Eleni’s bright chirp echoed her own numb disbelief; “A wedding gift?”
Avette merely smiled.
“But I am afraid I must ask, Empress. This new world of yours is not the world I left behind, and I have learned to be shrewd. What do you stand to gain with such a generous gift? I have searched for my cousin far and wide, it is true—but she is your kin too, is she not? Why bring her home?” Avette leaned forward in her throne, spine still impossibly straight as she tilted her head curiously. “Why now?”
A new kind of tension ringed the room; a tension Adeline did not understand.
She could see it in the way the cloaked courtiers shrank back against the walls, the barely audible whimpers.
The way that Ger stiffened at her side. They were braced, all of them, expecting something awful.
If it caught Eleni’s notice, she didn’t let on, just smiled that easy, enigmatic smile.
“I’ve been an ally of the Silver Kingdom for many years, Your Majesty and I, too, have learned to be shrewd.
” She shrugged one shoulder and threw a careless wave in Adeline’s direction.
“When word reaches my shores that the most powerful woman in the world wants something in my possession, I pay attention.”
Adeline couldn’t help but notice that the courtiers did not unpeel from the cold walls—that Ger didn’t exhale.
Avette didn’t move either. It was as though the entire room had frozen perfectly in place, leaving only Adeline and her aunt untouched by the spell that held them all.
Avette’s pendant gave a slow, blue shimmer, and she finally pursed her lips and sat back.
Unprompted, her dark eyes swivelled to Adeline, and she was struck with a breathless wave of … Goddess.
Unfathomable hatred.
And it was not her own.
She hadn’t expected to strike up a friendship with the woman who’d usurped her mother’s throne, tortured her kinfolk and kidnapped the man she loved, but even so, it threw her.
The bitter chill in Avette’s eyes ran deeper than the Laune itself, and Daughters knew nobody had ever looked at her like that before in her entire life.
She hoped, as she fought back a shiver, that they never would again.
Avette’s long lashes finally broke her dead stare, and she returned her attention to Eleni, markedly colder now.
“And if I hold something of yours in my possession?” said Avette.
Eleni’s smile turned quizzical, but she seemed to sense it was best not to speak.
In her silence, Avette’s lips tilted in a feline smile.
Then, lit in a flare of blue light, she made a swift gesture over her shoulder, and Adeline watched as a snowstorm rose behind the throne, a roar of wind and a blanket of billowing white.
It was only as the storm died away that Adeline saw it really was a blanket—not a sheet of snow, but of linen.
Those same heavy drapings the palace staff had dragged over the furniture in her mother’s rooms to stop her things from gathering dust after she’d died.
Adeline saw the fall of the fabric and the glimmer of the ice sculptures behind the throne, but she couldn’t make sense of what she was looking at—not at first. Peering out over Avette’s shoulders were two of the same eerie statues that had lined her path to the throne.
One was small and wizened, the other tall with a crest of curls blown back from his face in an invisible wind.
Curls much like her own.
Her body made sense of it before her mind could catch on; she felt it in the crumple of her brow, the thick slide of her heart.
And then, like a roll of thunder before the strike, Adeline heard Eleni’s sharp inhale.
A gasp—and its answering strike was the bolt of pain in her chest. That anguish forked through her, split her ribcage down the middle.
Pain poured out of the crack, and she crumpled in on herself, the room tilting around her, then jerking upright when Ger caught at her waist, dragging her to him before she could hit the floor.
Her father, her father—
“I know,” whispered Ger. “I know, Ade, shh—”
She hadn’t known she was wailing until he shushed her, still holding her upright as her entire body sagged under the unbearable weight of it.
She could not stop looking at his glassy face, couldn’t stop poring over that expression.
He was scared. Her father, her protector and greatest champion, the person she looked to when she didn’t know what else to do, who she would never stop needing, who made her feel safe in this cold world—he had died scared.
Sorrow moved through her like a river in a storm, dragging her along in its treacherous current.
“A theatrical streak to rival your sister’s,” drawled Avette, though Adeline was barely capable of hearing her, let alone answering.
She tsked then, put out by the lack of response from the pile of broken pieces that was Adeline, scattered at her feet.
“Gard, if you cannot silence my dear cousin, I will be only too happy to assist.”
Even through the shuddering sobs that wracked her, she could feel Ger’s grip tighten around her waist.
“Ade, please,” he breathed in her ear, voice splintering with panic. “Please, I’m so sorry, but please, she’s going to—and—and you promised me. You promised she wouldn’t hurt you. Please.”
His fear was palpable, just enough to cut through the storm of her sorrow.
Because she had made him a promise, and she’d made herself one too—that she’d protect them all.
So she gasped down a breath; another, fighting past the burn in her raw and heaving lungs.
When she’d slowed her sobs to an uneven hiccup, Ger sighed and drew her closer, dropping a kiss to her crown.
“That’s it, Ade, it’s alright.”
She managed to drag her gaze from her father’s face, and that helped too—though she landed next on Avette, and caught a hot flicker of rage tugging her slim brows, those hollow eyes narrowed on Ger’s hands around her waist. She glanced quickly away, but Goddess, that was worse—because there was Kai, staring at her, still frozen save for the collapse of his brow and the wet gleam in his eye.
The sorrow rose in her again; she had to look away, or she would shatter.
“Well, Empress?” said Avette. She schooled her features as she turned her gaze, frown smoothing and eyes wide with feigned interest. “Have you nothing to say for your brother’s demise?”
Eleni’s swallow was audibly brittle, and when she spoke, her throat still sounded dry.
“Only,” she said slowly, “that despite my shock, I cannot say I am sorry to see an obstacle to my throne removed. I should thank you, really. And, perhaps, offer you something in return.”
“Another gift? Something even more delightful than my cousin, no doubt.”