Chapter Twenty-Six #3
“Oh yes,” said Eleni. Her voice had recovered some of its surety, and Adeline knew what was coming.
She couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at any of them.
So she stared at the dagger-sharp frost patterns beneath her own feet and counted her breaths, stomach aching with tension.
“Something rather valuable: the gift of information.”
Adeline betrayed herself then, to look at Kai.
She couldn’t, but she couldn’t not. It was unbearable either way, so she would do this for him, do him the courtesy of seeing him.
Of seeing his pain, and feeling it with him like she might bear some of its weight.
She wondered if he understood yet, or if the tense line of his shoulders had more to do with whatever ice spell restrained him.
“Well, do tell,” said Avette. Impatience lent a bite to her tone, but Eleni took her time all the same. Perhaps theatrics did run in the family; from her periphery, Adeline watched Eleni take several slow steps forward. She watched Kai’s wary gaze follow where the Empress moved.
“On our journey here, my fleet tracked the surviving Merrow over the Common Crossing. They’re searching for something, as I understand it.
A treasure of some kind.” The Empress paused for effect, drew one long, wavering breath before her tone dropped to a confidential murmur.
“Your Majesty, they have found a way through the Frost. A way back to the Laune.”
Aera whispered a soft lament into the cavernous room.
Though the flicker beneath Avette’s perfect, porcelain mask said she’d heard Eleni’s every word, there was no shock or confusion. There was nothing but understanding; it lit her dark eyes when she tilted her head toward Kai.
“Tunnels, my heart?” She smiled, without an ounce of contentment. “Tunnels to the Pearl.”
Adeline’s heart hit the ice and marble beneath her feet.
And then, Kai let loose a guttural, inhuman sound; a moan of terror and sheer fury, muffled behind his sealed lips.
He strained and screamed inwardly, the tendons in his neck taut beneath a ruddy flush and his gills tensing with effort, until finally, one arm ripped free in a light spray of blood.
Adeline clamped a hand over her mouth, swallowing back her own scream at the sight of Kai tearing his body from Avette’s spell, bits of cloth and skin still bound to his chair while rivulets of red sluiced down his forearm.
He didn’t seem to notice, just scratched and pried at his other arm, half-crazed with panic.
Ger held her tighter against him; he knew her well enough to anticipate the tug in her gut, the one that called her to go to Kai despite the very real threat of Avette at his side.
The queen sighed then, pinching the bridge of her nose as though her betrothed were an unruly child and she a worn-out mother.
“It would be nice,” Avette said blandly, “to have one conversation in this palace without a member of my Court making a show of themselves. Gards, my beloved is overcome. Remove him.”
Ger didn’t move, but he didn’t need to; two further gards peeled out from the cavern’s shadows and darted up the dais just as the spell released Kai’s body, and he slumped from his throne, still screaming beneath sealed lips as his knees crashed on the ground.
The gards made quick work of wrestling his arms behind his back, and Kai convulsed at the grasp around his bleeding arm.
Adeline wrenched herself free from Ger’s hold for just a moment before he caught her again, but he could not catch the protest that ripped from her lungs.
“Stop it,” she yelled, voice shrill and shivering.
The gards did pause, and so did Kai, the fire in his eyes guttering when they met hers. But Avette’s eyes were on her too, as cold as Kai’s were hot.
“Remove my cousin also,” she called. “I should like some peace and quiet.”
???
Being dismissed from the throne room should have been a relief.
She could feel her toes again, cold as they were, and in the chaos of Kai’s removal, Avette hadn’t had the presence of mind to demand Adeline be sent to the dungeons.
That was likely the sole reason none of the other gards in her lovely little escort stopped Ger as he led them down the slippery halls to her old rooms.
She should be grateful for this much at least, but Adeline couldn’t blink away the sight of Kai. Bleeding and bound, eyes brimming with a pain she was helpless to soothe.
“He’ll be alright,” Ger whispered, reading her silence. “Avette needs him.”
For now, she thought, then immediately shunted the idea away.
No. He would be alright, not because Avette needed him, but because she did.
She was going to make sure of it, starting right now.
Adeline steeled herself as they drew up to her room.
How would this work? She’d be under guard, of course, but would Ger be allowed to escort her inside? Could she get him alone?
She had her answer when Ger opened the door and let her in; the shuffle of feet behind her did not pause.
Adeline turned and came nose to nose with the snivelling little shit who’d been leading her around like a dog on a leash. He fell back a step, but otherwise didn’t flinch—didn’t even drop her gaze.
“Some privacy would be appreciated,” she sniffed.
“The queen’s guests are guarded most carefully,” he said, lip twitching with a stifled smirk. “For your own safety, of course. You may find your privacy on the other side of your bedroom door, Your Highness.”
Bollocks. That wouldn’t do at all. Adeline stilled, fighting her own eyes as they strained to glance at her mantelpiece with its array of trinkets, now shimmering with frost. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, think for fuck’s sake.
The gard quirked one sparse brow, and Adeline jolted herself to life with a derisive scoff.
Alright. She’d be a petulant royal prisoner.
“And I’m to believe you’re a Queen’s Gard?” she sneered.
The gard outright grinned. “Not yet, but Her Majesty rewards loyalty, Your Highness.”
The glow in his eye told her she did not want to know what loyalty meant to this boy or his queen, and when Adeline took a decisive step away, Ger was already at her back, apparently having decided the very same thing.
“Can you stand guard without sitting on her lap, or are you as incompetent as you are stupid?”
The gard flushed a blotchy red, and his fellows in the doorway snorted and sneered when he turned and slunk back to them.
Better, thought Adeline, but they could plainly hear every word Ger had spoken. How was she supposed to tell him what she needed without actually telling him anything? He was her best friend, but he couldn’t read her bloody mind. Except—
Except when he could.
The answer came to her with a bittersweet burst of nostalgia that made her stomach sink and swirl.
She turned to Ger, breath tight, and watched confusion flicker over his features at whatever he found on hers.
She reached up and cupped his face—then let her hand slide to his shoulder and come to rest on his upper arm, fingers stiff with anticipation.
“I was so scared, Ger,” she whispered. “So worried. I missed you every day.”
The confusion fell away, relief in its place, sloping at his brows. He wrapped an arm around her waist easily, drawing her into a hug without a second thought.
“We’re together now, Ade.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “We are.”
And then, hand still taut and tense on his arm, her fingertips tapped out an old and deliberate rhythm.
Ger stiffened in her embrace—but when he pulled back just a moment later, his expression was suddenly charged with a heat she hadn’t seen in years.
Its warmth felt a little indecent now, like she’d walked in on him changing and glimpsed something she shouldn’t.
Something private, no longer meant for her.
It made her stomach clench guiltily. But Ger’s voice, when he spoke, was as low and rough as she remembered.
“I missed you, too,” he rasped. “You have no idea how much.”
Adeline bit her lip. “Then show me.”
And with a short, relieved groan, Ger bent his head and kissed her.