Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“She does. Because your safety hangs in the balance.” Her breath caught, and he felt it as an airless pang within his own chest, but Kai pushed urgently on through her silence.
She needed to understand; he was going to push her away, again, and this time he needed her to know why.
“She threatens everyone I love, every single person—and Adhlas, I love you. I can’t pretend I don’t.
I couldn’t hide it even when you were halfway across the world.
She knew, even then, and she wielded it as cruelly as she does her pendant.
Now you’re here, and she’s going to see the way I look at you and the things I’ll endure to keep you safe, and it will only make her more vicious.
So I need you to stay away from me. I need you to go. ”
She laid her hands over his wrists, gripping hard as though she’d stop him from pulling away—which she might.
His limbs felt barely solid enough to keep him upright, and the tug in his chest was stronger than his own will.
Stronger still when she spoke, her voice thick, defiant even as she wobbled on the edge of overwhelm.
“I’m staying.”
His eyes fluttered shut, and he was almost grateful for the reprieve from her gaze, so wide and imploring he could hardly stand it.
“Please,” he rasped, each word more brittle than the last. “This is all I can do. You’re all I have left. I’ve already failed my court, they are undoubtedly wandering into a trap—”
“Kai, no.”
She broke free from his hold, and though her backward step felt like something physically torn from his own body, he was too weak and weary to stop her.
His head swam at the sudden shift, but when he opened his eyes, she was still standing before him.
So beautiful and so determined, eyes never leaving his as she rifled through the pockets of her woollen dress, until she drew out a handful of paper scraps in one hand and a shimmering blue conch shell in the other.
She held up both, closing the distance between them once more with her hands cupped to his chest until his weary arms responded and lifted to take her offerings.
Adeline plucked a scrap from his hand and unfurled it, holding it up for him to see.
Kai read it; read it again, and again, confusion giving way to utter disbelief.
That was Oswalt’s handwriting scrawled out before him.
His breath evaporated from his lungs, from his very blood, knees buckling so violently he nearly dropped the handful of treasures as he sank to the bed. Adeline followed, settling gently beside him to pluck another scrap from his hand.
“This one’s from Ceri,” she whispered. “And from Al, see?”
Kai’s heart thundered for his cousin, his sister, his friend. Safe enough to write, to joke.
“They’re safe,” he said weakly. Weak because he could not breathe, didn’t dare to; not until he heard it confirmed. “You’re in touch.”
“Through the conch,” she said, nodding. “It’s an old Dhaliaan instrument, from before the Frost, one half of a pair. You feed your message into the cavity, and it appears on the other side. My father used it to speak to Eleni when—”
At the storm that crossed his face, Adeline’s fell, and she shifted closer.
“Eleni didn’t deliver me to Avette, Kai; she would never.
She delivered me to you, so I could give you this.
Ceri and the others, they’re in the Sealgair’s tunnels, but they’re not going to risk those depths.
They’re going to let Avette race them to the Pearl.
She’ll have to freeze the cavern if she wants to get close enough. ”
Adhlas.
The pieces fell into place as she spoke, every word repairing the tear in his chest until breathing was easier, his head notably clearer. Avette would go after them, of course, she would—and in doing so, she was going to lead them right to the Pearl.
“Ceri,” was all Kai could say, but Adeline understood; a grin ghosted over her lips.
“Who else?”
She took the conch from his limp hand, and he glanced over his shoulder to watch as she crawled behind him.
“Keep it out of sight,” she said, moving his pillows aside so she could tuck the conch between his mattress and headboard. “Keep your messages anonymous, in case they’re ever found. And when Avette inevitably moves for the Laune, you’ll write to them and tell them to be ready.”
She set his pillows back down with a decisive pat, then shifted back to his side, closer than before, her thigh brushing his.
Her arm curved around his back, so hesitant it hurt.
His skin still hummed with anxiety at her nearness, the clock ticking down to Benan’s awakening—but he couldn’t abide the idea that she’d take his fear for rejection.
Not when his entire body sighed at her touch.
He turned into her, and she responded at once, climbing into his lap even quicker than he could gather her to him.
She pressed her face into his neck, her breath warm and even on his skin, the rhythm of it leading his own heartbeat, soothing his thrumming pulse.
“She has not won,” she intoned, the words so low and adamant he could take them for nothing less than a solemn vow. “You are not hers. You are your own man, Kai Cumhaill. You’re Ceri’s, and Al’s, and Oswalt’s. And you’re mine.”
The surety in her voice did something to him; cut through the exhaustion and the anxiety that teased at every nerve ending.
“I’m yours,” he swore. “If nothing else, I’m yours.”
She looked up at him then, face so close he caught the visible softening of her eyes, warm, golden rays fanning out from the spread of her pupils. Her gaze flicked over his, searching and once more so uncertain that his entire chest threatened to cave in. She should not be uncertain, not about him.
“You know that I’m yours too,” she said, “don’t you? You know how much I—”
“I know,” he said at once. And he did. He knew what they were to each other, what they would always be. Adeline bit her lip, and he brushed his thumb over its edge, tugging it free from her teeth like he could tear her doubts away, too. “I know you do. And so do I.”
A pained whisper against the pad of his thumb. “You deserve to hear it.”
And Adhlas, he wanted to hear it. He did.
He wanted to know that it was not in his head, that the bond between their souls was a tangible thing with a name they could both agree on.
But he knew what it would cost her to name it.
And he had already cost her so very much.
Did he deserve to hear it? He did not know.
But she deserved to say it when it wouldn’t hurt her to do so.
“Then tell me,” he said at last, but when her lips parted, he pressed his thumb to their centre. He couldn’t meet her eye, just traced the shape of her lips like he hadn’t already committed them to memory. “Tell me when it’s over. Tell me to my face this time.”
Her lips tugged beneath his touch, and he felt the short breath of her laughter in his own chest.
“Not whispered to someone else when I’m out of earshot,” he added ruefully, just to watch her lips curve again. “Not when it’s a goodbye, or a just in case. You’ll tell me when it means our beginning. Not our end.”
Adeline kissed his thumb, then reached up and drew his hand away, guiding his palm until it settled over her heart, its rhythm strong and constant.
He finally looked her in the eye, and his breath slipped at the look on her face.
She might never have to say it at all; he could see it in the way she looked at him.
“You’ll tell me, too.”
“Endlessly,” he swore. “You’ll beg me to stop.”
Even dimmed by grief and fear, Adeline’s smile all but blinded him.
“Does that sound like me?”
And if only to stop himself from ruining it, from telling her again how he carried her with him at every moment of every day, Kai dipped his head and kissed her.
She came alive beneath his lips, turning in his lap to slide her knees either side of his hips, rising up to put her whole weight behind her.
Telling him all that she could not say aloud, holding him as though she’d never let go.
But she had to.
“You need to go,” he breathed between kisses. He did not release her.
“I will,” she promised. She did not pull away.