Chapter Twenty-Nine
Adeline
The dawn was bleak and grey, so it seemed fitting that it should bring with it a summons.
Adeline had guessed it was coming; probably would have been prepared for it had she slept more than a few winks the night before.
After they’d snuck past her wine-sodden gard, Ger had stayed.
Deciding, it seemed, to lean into their earlier charade so they could be alone after so long apart.
He had been angry at her, and she at him, but neither of them wanted to waste time on a petty squabble when they couldn’t say how much time they had left.
So, they’d sat in her bed and talked all night long.
She told him, in spare detail, about Dhalias.
About Eleni, and Papou, and Lyra. About Daithí and the Sealgair, and the grudge they held against Kai.
About the Arabidae, and Eda, and Simon—at which point he’d yanked her close and squeezed the breath from her lungs.
She didn’t tell him about the nycta or the clementine buns, the floral wine or the long afternoons spent in the mountains.
And she did not tell him about the tender green thing unfurling in her veins, the fragile magic still settling its roots within her.
She couldn’t. Not knowing, as she did now, how little sunlight there had been in the dark days they’d spent apart.
Ger told her about it at all, every detail of every soul tortured, maimed, or murdered before his very eyes.
She wasn’t surprised to hear that his episodes, as he called them, had started up again.
She’d only seen it happen once, at his first biennial tourney years ago.
She’d stood with him outside the arena and helped him claw his armour off, then watched helplessly as he was racked by an all-consuming breathlessness, his broad frame entirely taut and still, his blue eyes shot with red as he gulped and gasped for air that would not come.
It had been so terrifying to watch; she could only imagine how scared he must have felt.
After the tourney, when they were so deep in their cups he could barely stand, Ger had slurred through the story of his mother and her violent scumstring of a husband.
The breathlessness, the panic, they were symptoms of a deep wound his hateful stepfather had inflicted.
And now, the violence he’d been forced to witness had become a blade, slicing open that same old wound to let the panic come spilling out faster than he could bind it back.
With all he’d told her, Adeline should have met that summons with a healthy dose of fear.
Apprehension, even. All she felt, however, was glorious, reviving rage.
It burned low in her belly on the slow march from her room to Avette’s quarters and kept her warm even now.
Even here—because like the throne room, her mother’s parlour had become a frost-slick cavern.
The white walls with their elegant silver moulding were encased behind thick panes of ice, great shards of it dripping off the tables and drawers, the ceiling, the mantelpiece.
Even the upholstery was thick with hoarfrost; it had crunched beneath Adeline’s skirts as she’d taken her seat at the suite of settees where the Queen’s Ladies convened.
“Adelina,” said Avette’s cool voice now, her tongue slipping strangely over every syllable.
Adeline wouldn’t have bothered to raise her head; it wasn’t her name, after all.
She would have been quite content to ignore it completely, were it not for the slight catch of breath at her side.
It was the most noise Mareda had made since she entered the room.
She hadn’t acknowledged her; hadn’t spoken to her, even when their eyes locked, and Adeline had choked out her name.
She’d just turned her glassy blue stare back to the swath of fabric on her lap and continued with her sewing.
She was still at it now, stitching a pattern of ice beads and pearls into the skirt that Imogen had spread between their laps.
Adeline had set her own sewing needle down on the armrest without a word.
She would not contribute to the wedding dress Avette intended to wear as she forced Kai down the aisle.
If Avette noticed her refusal, she didn’t comment.
She had wandered away from Selma’s writing desk, where Imogen and Captain Doran still stood bent over overlapping sheets of parchment, each of them watching the queen’s back with entirely different expressions.
Imogen, cautiously curious. Captain Doran, practically shuddering with excitement.
Perhaps he had noticed the discarded needle and hoped it would bring him some entertainment.
But Avette’s gaze didn’t stray as far as the armrest—she was eyeing Adeline’s sullen brow instead with quiet relish.
“I shall call you Lina,” she said, her smile demure as she clapped her slender hands before her. “Pretty. You’ll forgive me the familiarity, cousin, but I cannot afford any wasted time, as you can see.”
Avette swept a hand behind her to where Doran and Imogen stood waiting.
And Adeline did see. She’d been poring over those plans with them for the better part of an hour while Mareda sewed and Adeline seethed.
And listened too, as much as she could under the ever-present whistle of Aera’s winds.
She’d caught enough to understand the depth of power Avette coveted and how she planned to amass it.
Kai, and Caldbon, and the Pearl. She made wedding plans with Imogen, discussed decor and dresses and the number of invitations to be sent to the palace dungeons and the heavily guarded suites where Eleni had been placed with the survivors of the Silver Court.
She reviewed border strategies with Doran, tutting when he grumbled over the loss of half his men and most of the Palace Wielders to ports and waters between Eisalaan and Caldbon.
She held tense discussions with both over the lack of resources left for their planned descent into the Laune.
Tomorrow morning.
Their race to the Pearl.
“I do not doubt we would have gotten there eventually,” Avette said now. “I am close with all of my Court, am I not, Lady Imogen?”
Imogen straightened, and the parchment she’d been pinning to the table rolled up beneath a gust of sparkling wind.
Even with Avette’s back turned, her smile was simpering and sweet.
It didn’t fit the usually smart set to her full lips, and when she spoke, she was a stranger.
Not the dry, clever woman Adeline had so admired her entire life.
“Very close indeed, Your Majesty.”
Avette smiled contentedly, but her black gaze turned as hard and cool as obsidian. “Lady Mareda?”
At her side, Adeline felt her sister jolt; heard her weak hum, just a moment too late.
“Yes,” she half-whispered, then cleared her throat again. “Yes, we’re close.”
“Oh, wonderful,” said Adeline. The grin on her face was rigid, her teeth clenched against the chill, and her facial muscles frozen in place. “Although I’d venture our dynamic is a touch more complicated. Wouldn’t you agree, cousin?”
Avette tilted her head, black hair bounding over her shoulder in sleek waves. Her perfect, porcelain face crumpled with confusion, slim brows pulling together, rosebud lips pursed. All that gave her away was the dim light that shivered over her pendant and winked out nearly as quickly.
“Why ever should it be?”
Adeline said nothing, but the scoff that worked itself free only served to light a gleeful fire in Avette’s unwavering gaze. A ravenous and barely contained flame, ready to raze her where she sat.
Careful, said a voice in her head. It was her own, but it was Ger’s and Kai’s, too.
Selma’s and Silas’s. It belonged to everyone she loved, and everyone who loved her back.
Everyone she’d sworn to fight for. So she didn’t shift under the cold gaze that sought to pin her in place; didn’t rise to it either.
“Captain Doran,” Avette said finally, without turning or even raising her voice.
She didn’t need to; Doran hurried eagerly forward, hand on his hilt as though she might ask him to withdraw his sword and behead Adeline where she sat.
Lovely. On the bright side, at least there remained one person unchanged by Avette’s influence.
“Be a dear and step outside, would you? My ladies and I will require some privacy.”
The smile that followed was for Adeline alone; thin and feline, eyes and pendant coming alight as one.
“There is but a week until my wedding,” she said, soft as a breath. “And it is high time my bridesmaids were fitted.”
Later on, Adeline would marvel over the miracle of it all; that she’d gotten through the next hour without even once lunging for Avette’s slender throat.
It helped to hear a little reassurance; the sort of soothing phrases Marry might once have whispered to her as children, hand in tiny hand as they faced her mother’s quiet wrath.
But Mareda was not in a position to reassure anyone right now.
So, with her sister nearly catatonic on the settee behind her, Adeline was left to reassure herself as Imogen worked around her, rephrasing and reframing the words in her head each time they began to lose meaning.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. This wedding will never happen. I will not stand beside her in this stupid dress while she binds herself to the love of my life. It won’t happen. It does. Not. Matter.