Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kai
In the earliest days of his captivity, when the meals had begun to thin and dwindle, Kai found ways to cope with the gnawing in his stomach.
With little else to do but sleep and wait and spiral, he would count the hours to his single meal of the day; often the only time he would see another face, even if that face was Benan’s.
Tonight, he did not notice the absence of his meal, nor mourn the lack of a sneer in his doorway.
The torn flesh of his arm was clean and bound but throbbing insistently beneath a salve of stinging herbs, and even that was not distraction enough.
No physical sensation could have occupied his mind right now.
He paced around the room all the same, but his mind whirred faster than his weary body could move.
Adeline had followed him.
They had all followed him.
And Eleni. Eleni, whom he had always thought so enigmatic—she had finally laid her patterns out before him.
Betrayed them. He should have known she would.
The very first time they had met, he asked about her intentions.
How it benefitted her, to transport every one of his kin across the oceans, to feed and clothe and shelter them.
What did she want from him? She had never answered, not in any satisfying way, and he had been a fool to accept her offer on blind faith, to trust her even when he saw firsthand how duplicitous she could be.
She had kept the murderous Sealgair a secret until she had him on her shores, kept Adeline’s dormant power from her for years.
He thought of how she’d sat with them after the Arabidae burned, and let him forget she was there, let him rant and rage until Adeline cut him off from revealing Eda’s prophecy.
But she had found out anyway.
Then she had dragged Adeline across the oceans to kneel at Avette’s feet, borne on the open waters that his court negotiated for her.
His court.
At the thought of them, Kai’s entire body seized, his pacing halted mid-step as though he’d hit a physical wall.
His family.
Were they truly here, wending their way through secret tunnels of ice?
Planning to go after the Pearl, to take their chances on the very same waters that had left the Sealgair dead or worse?
Kai sank to the bed on trembling legs and dropped his head, with all the weight of his worries, into his hands.
But behind his closed lids, he saw that Sealgair woman stalking him from the depths of Koemi with her fanged smile and predatory gaze.
She blinked, and her features melted into his own hazel eyes and dark brow; Ceri, staring back at him from her perch on the rock, warped and vengeful.
Kai’s mind buckled, every instinct within him straining to reject the thought, to tear it away and hide it, deny it.
But he remembered how adamant his sister had been.
Eleni had not lied. He knew that with a keen and stinging certainty. Ceri was here, Os and Alun too, and the Mother only knew who else.
And Adeline.
Kai’s heart crawled up his lungs, reaching for the mournful echo of her name in his mind.
Safe, Avette had promised him, safe as long as he played his part at her side.
But he was failing at that, too. Could not keep himself in check, could not pretend, for any audience, that she did not repulse him.
Beneath its wrappings and salve, his arm throbbed in agreement; even bound by her magic, Kai had torn his own skin off rather than play her pet, her docile Drowned Prince, for a moment longer.
And now he could not say who might pay for that failure.
He would do better. He would have to.
So when the room turned black as the night, and a murmur of voices sounded outside his bedroom door, Kai fought to tame the racing of his heart and the surge of bile it sent up his throat.
By the time the door finally creaked open over the splintering of fresh frost, Kai had wrested control of himself, still and impassive where he sat on the bed and awaited Avette’s cool wrath.
But it was not Avette who entered.
“Hello, Your Majesty,” smiled the young man. “Hungry?”
Recognition jolted him to his feet; a friendly face backlit by the hallway lanterns, a steaming mug in his hand that Kai could smell from across the room.
“It’s just broth,” the man said apologetically. “You might get a sliver of boar in there, but even that’s running low now. Couple of peas, at least.”
He crossed the room and handed Kai the mug, his fingers thawing at once as they curled around the hot ceramic.
“It’s more than I expected,” said Kai. “Thank you.”
The sound of his own voice was a shock; brittle with hunger and hoarse with disuse. He quenched it beneath a sip of broth that quickly turned to a gulp, scalding his throat all the way down.
“Easy,” said the man, and Kai struggled to slow his sips, grunting with effort as he pulled the mug from his lips. It was half empty already, but its warmth had spread through him, some of the numbness ebbing away and clearing his thoughts.
“I know you,” he said finally, and the man nodded.
“Jack,” he offered. “We’ve got … mutual friends. Who should be joining us any moment.”
Kai shot a panicked glance past him into the dim hallway, but Jack just grinned.
“One thing we’re not running short of is wine. Her Majesty very generously bade the kitchens to offer your gard a sup for a job well done. Seems he’s overindulged a bit, though. Might be out for a while.”
Drugged.
But for how long?
At a murmur in the hallway, Kai’s heart dropped, but Jack only stepped back and peered calmly out. He shot Kai a smile, slightly tighter this time but no less friendly.
“Enjoy your supper, Your Majesty.”
Then he stepped halfway out the door and paused, just the outline of his back visible in the dim lanternlight.
“Jack,” whispered a man’s voice, soft and slightly hesitant. Gerard, Kai thought, and his sunken heart suddenly pitched at the realisation. Was he here with a message from Adeline?
“All set,” said Jack, more briskly than he’d spoken to Kai. “Benan’s had his wine, you’ve got maybe forty minutes, but I wouldn’t push it. He’s a big lad, might absorb it a little faster—”
“Thank you,” Gerard blurted, then softer again, “Look, Jack, I just wanted to say—”
“Don’t mention it,” said Jack, a touch too brightly. “See you, Pup.”
Then Jack edged out of the doorway, and there was only the sound of Gerard’s low, pained exhale.
“Pup?” said another voice.
Adeline.
Kai’s every muscle locked in place. No. She was not here, Gerard would not have brought her here, he would not have been so stupid as to risk—
“Don’t start, Ade,” Gerard warned.
“Jack seems … annoyed,” she noted all the same.
Kai could have shattered at the sound of her voice. Perhaps something inside him did, something vital. Perhaps that was why he still could not move, could not race to the door and send her away to safety. His broth was cooling in his hands, limbs as weak as his will.
“Oh, and I suppose you think that’s my fault?” Gerard was saying hotly. “You think I put my foot in my mouth? Said something well intentioned but ultimately very hurtful, and those few words are the most he’s spoken to me in days?”
“That’s rather specific, love,” said Adeline, gently bemused. “Is that what happened?”
There was a decidedly exasperated rustle and clap, as though someone had thrown their hands up at their sides.
“Of course it is,” Gerard huffed, before the sound of his footfall echoed down the hall.
For a moment longer, Kai heard nothing more.
He dared to hope, for the slow passing of seconds, that Adeline had followed her friend.
Gerard might then realise the danger he’d put her in and drag her back to her own rooms. But the sinking in his gut said otherwise; she’d choose him, choose the risk, if even for just a single moment together. He knew she would.
And he was right.
She had her arms hugged around her middle as she rounded the door, some combination of nerves and the impenetrable chill dimming her usual sunlit glow. She paused on the threshold, a smile flickering. Too timid.
“Hello.”
Kai was halfway to her before he heard the crash of his mug on the floor, and it simply did not matter. Not when she surged to meet him in a buoyant wave of warmth and curls and indiscriminate kisses, her lips on his chin, his jaw, his cheek, his brow.
“You stubborn, bloody fool,” she whispered against his skin.
“You stubborn, bloody fool,” he breathed into her hair. He clung to her, every muscle in his body defying him as he murmured, “You can’t be here, Adeline, you’re only safe as long as you stay away from me.”
And, he did not add, as long as he played his part for Avette. He didn’t need to say it aloud; he saw that Adeline heard the unspoken truth when she drew back, and he saw the ferocity in her knotted brow.
“I told you,” said Adeline, cupping his face with a gentleness entirely at odds with the set of her jaw. Her words ground out between clenched teeth. “She won’t win.”
Kai weaved his hands over hers, breaking her hold on him so he could knot his fingers in her hair.
He locked his gaze with hers, dredging as much tenderness as he could from the withered scraps of his soul.
Whatever was left belonged to her anyway; it was the very least he could do to offer them up.
“She has won, Adeline,” he said gently. “I had a chance to end this, and I couldn’t. She owns me.”
“No—”