Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
Avette drifted back and forth in the mirror’s reflection throughout the fitting, her dark eyes agleam whenever they managed to catch Adeline’s.
She found excuses to stay close, commenting on the fabric.
Engaging Imogen in plans they’d already gone over at length.
Running her fingers down the spiral of Adeline’s curls as she mused over potential hairstyles.
At the proprietary touch, Adeline bit down on a shiver so hard her jaw clicked audibly.
She was a plaything to this woman; they all were.
Pieces to be moved across the chessboard at her will and whim.
As if in proof of that, Avette breathed a lofty little laugh when Imogen paused her work to go and fetch another swath of fabric to let out Adeline’s too-tight bodice. Avette grabbed her arm as she passed, and Imogen stiffened—then immediately fluttered her lashes in another simpering smile.
“Your Majesty?”
“We shall not deprive you or Lady Mareda of your dresses simply because my cousin has allowed her appetite to spiral.” She laughed again, pendant flickering gleefully. “Perhaps we have solved the mystery of my Drowned Prince, and his rather sudden arrival to his senses.”
Oh fuck you, Adeline thought at once, but when her eyebrows twitched with the need to shoot up, she gritted her teeth and reminded herself it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t fucking matter.
Imogen’s smile did not falter. “There’s plenty of fabric to spare—”
“No,” said Avette sharply, and Imogen fell silent at once. “We have six long days ahead of us. Lina shall watch her plate, or she shall learn to hold her breath.”
“There’s nothing to watch,” said Adeline. “The whole country is starving.”
A flicker of gold caught her eye in the mirror—Mareda’s head raising where she sat with her back to them, her face turning just enough for Adeline to catch the taut line of her lips and the fearful bob of her throat. Avette, however, just blinked impassively.
“Then it should be rather easy for you,” she said.
She made a swift gesture, and Imogen hurried back to Adeline’s side, pinning and tucking as best she could with the sparse fabric.
Over her head, Adeline and Avette remained locked on one another.
Even in the reflection of the frost-edged glass, it was difficult to say whose stare held the most ice.
“Why are you doing this?” said Adeline finally.
Avette pressed one delicate hand to her chest, doe-eyed and earnest.
“Because a woman’s wedding is the most important day of her entire life, Lina.
Perhaps one day you will understand. Or is your charming gard a mere distraction?
Another way for you to degrade and defile yourself?
If we were closer, perhaps you would allow me to speak freely.
” She laughed. “Then again, as the queen, I reserve the right to do so either way. Such promiscuity is unbecoming, cousin. Dangerous, one might say.”
Bent at her side, Imogen froze momentarily—then continued with such haste that her pin nipped at Adeline’s waist. She barely felt it beneath the prickle of unease nipping at her skin.
Ger. She could not help but remember how distraught he’d been at the thought that Avette might hear about their ruse, and she could see now that he was right.
That was jealousy slipping like oil beneath her every honeyed word.
Bollocks.
“I’m not talking about the dress,” Adeline said, too quickly. “I’m talking about all of it. Everything. All the things you’ve done in the name of a sparkly crown.”
“That,” said Avette, “is a rather simple conclusion to draw, for a daughter of the famous Snow Queen.”
She spoke mildly, but her pendant was caught in a constant glow that only shone brighter with every taut breath. She raised her hand to it, stroked the beaming blue glass as though it were an angry pet in need of soothing.
“In this modern world, with its modern privileges, I do not expect you to understand that history has not always been so kind to women like us. You do not know what it is to fight for what you and your useless sister were handed so freely. I fought, cousin. I fought for every scrap of power that was ladled into the hands of lesser men simply because they were men.”
“That is such an empowering story, Your Majesty. Until I remember that you tore away the one source of power your fellow women might have.”
“Adeline,” said Imogen sharply.
But Avette held up her free hand, still stroking her pendant with the other. It beamed in shifting patterns beneath her fingers, the light sliding over her eerily still features like water. A woman drowning in her own power.
“I am more than happy to set dear Lina straight,” she said softly. “Yes. When I froze the Laune, I stopped the flow of magic throughout the waters of Adhlas. Just as I intended.”
“Why?”
Avette held her eye in the frosted glass, unspeaking for a long moment, though the slow curve of her smile conveyed some of her thoughts.
How pleased she was at what she’d accomplished.
How she relished this chance to finally share, with a captive audience, how very clever she’d been.
The slow slide of her lips set Adeline’s stomach turning.
“Do you know why we call ourselves Wielders, cousin?” Avette asked finally.
“The term was coined when even my ancestors were still swaddled and squalling. Strange, how almost every aspect of our lives has changed since their time, and yet we still use the same language to talk about the single most coveted force in our world. Isn’t that peculiar? ”
Adeline did not answer. Imogen did not move, her handful of pins still held aloft.
Avette held them both in silence, and Adeline hated that she wanted to hear what this woman had to say.
She had a way of speaking that made her bones itch; sweet and intimate words that crawled over her skin like spiders ready to nest. As if they hadn’t met for the first time just last night.
As if she had not murdered Adeline’s father or turned her sister into a quivering shell of the girl she once was.
As if she did not delight in tormenting everyone Adeline loved.
Avette took a slow step forward, forcing their attention with her voice lowered to a bare hush. She stood close, cold fingers once more raking through Adeline’s hair as she spoke. Soft; almost affectionate.
“We call ourselves Wielders because it sounds heroic,” she said, gentle as a mother explaining the horrors of the world. “Because the term Expenders would make for poor poetry. But we don’t wield our power, do we?”
She swept Adeline’s curls aside, and as she leaned in, her breath was colder than the breeze rolling over the Laune, her pendant a jolt of ice where it rested on Adeline’s shoulder.
“We use it,” she whispered. Her voice rose a spikey crop of goosebumps down Adeline’s spine, sharper and colder where the pendant’s chill leeched into her shoulder. “We take it. We spool the very breath of this world into ourselves and spit it back out however we see fit.”
The chill sank beneath her skin, so rapidly that for a moment Adeline believed she could hear it.
It was the crackling spread of frost—no.
The rustle and groan of the trees. An ancient and angry forest coming alive in her veins.
She was all at once overcome, her breath absorbed into her lungs even as the urge rose in her to scream.
To expel the chill violently from every follicle.
It raced down her limbs, stung and itched and pressed at her palms—
“Magic is a resource, Lina. And every resource is finite.”
Something thick and painful jolted free of Adeline’s fingertips, and her breath bolted back into her with a full-bodied gasp. Avette rocked back, mild alarm flickering over her face—but the rustle and creak of the forest was gone.
And so was the chill of the pendant on her shoulder.
Adeline slumped against the mirror, half-panting as shivers wracked her body. There was a strong floral flavour in her mouth, as though she’d bitten into a rosebud; the taste made her tender stomach lurch, an impulsive retch working its way up her throat.
“What is she doing?” Avette demanded.
“She’s ill,” Imogen said quickly. “Happened all the time when she was little, bit of a poor constitution.”
This close to the glass, it was hard to miss Avette’s nose wrinkling in disgust.
“Well, for goodness sake, get her out of that dress before she—”
A sharp rap on the door cut her off, and Avette huffed irritably.
“What is it?”
“I do beg your pardon, Your Majesty,” came a hoarse voice from the hallway. “Might I have a quick word before my next platoon leaves for the coast?”
“I believe I was quite clear, Captain,” Avette called sharply. “Strength in numbers is our best defence against a Caldbonian invasion. You will send your soldiers as planned.”
“I understand, Your Majesty,” came Doran’s wheedling response. “But with the descent into the Laune, I only wondered—”
With an aggrieved sigh, Avette spun on her heel and stalked for the door.
Adeline leaned her head against the mirror and breathed through the reprieve.
She was glad now, for the chill of the glass; her skin was thrumming and feverish, so hot she couldn’t believe the frost didn’t melt beneath her forehead.
“Adeline.”
She jolted at the sound of her name; she was so overstimulated she’d forgotten Imogen still stood at her side.
It was with no small amount of effort that Adeline peeled her weight away from the mirror to turn and meet her eye—but Imogen wasn’t looking at her.
Her gaze was tilted to the floor, staring blankly at something between them. Adeline followed her line of vision.
And found several vibrant pink nycta, fluttering like a flock of butterflies at her feet.