Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“This is what you were keeping from me,” he said. He sounded more thoughtful than annoyed, but Adeline’s stomach still pinched with guilt.
“Yes. I knew you’d be worried and—and you’ve been so worried already, Ger. You’ve had so much on your shoulders.”
He just nodded; didn’t try to deny it or laugh it off like he might have just a few months ago.
Avette, and all she’d put him through, had hollowed him, nearly gutted him of the light that had once been her beacon.
Nearly. Because as bleak as the winter around them had become, that flame within her friend was not yet doused; she’d seen it burning feverishly when he’d first stormed in here.
Something had kept it alight, tended to it all this time. Or more likely, she now knew, someone.
“Ger,” she said softly; he didn’t look up, but she went on all the same. “Ger, if you need to go, you should go. But maybe I’m not the one you should be inviting to run away with you.”
His fingers twitched around the nycta and set its petals pulsing like a pretty pink heart laid bare in his palm. Finally, Ger lifted his head, drawing his eyes to hers with difficulty.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But from now on, I go where you go.”
???
On the plus side, being the queen’s favourite made it rather easy for Imogen to get away with certain demands—the gard outside Adeline’s room didn’t dare question it when she was whisked away for further dress fittings several nights in a row.
On the other hand, being the favourite did seem to come with many more obligations than privileges.
When Imogen was not lost in the whirl of wedding preparations, she was fathoms beneath the Laune, carving tunnels from six hundred years of solid ice.
And, in the spare hour or so before she collapsed, she was here in Mareda’s empty rooms, teaching Adeline what most Wielders learned as children.
Imogen was plainly exhausted, her own magic near depleted as she tried to coach Adeline through her Wielding.
But despite the dark and sunken hollow to her eyes, their session that evening was longer than ever.
So long, in fact, that for the first time, Mareda returned to her rooms before they’d finished.
If she was surprised to find them here, it didn’t register on her face.
Not so much as a flicker over her golden brow, or a spark of interest as her gaze swept over the earthy debris strewn all over her floor; petals and vines of various lengths and thickness, the strongest of which was still bound around Imogen’s middle like a belt.
All this she ignored. Her eyes met Adeline’s for perhaps the third time since she’d returned to the palace, and just as she had every other time, she dropped them at once.
Mareda shut the door gently behind her and stepped gingerly into the room.
The bones of her quarters were similar to Adeline’s, with the front door opening into a round reception.
But where Adeline had fashioned hers into a warmly cluttered living room, Marry’s was more of a hall; no cushy armchair by the fireplace, and no settee.
The room was formal and sparse; Adeline had assumed that was why Imogen had chosen it, for the wide open space her own quarters lacked.
Apart from some cursory shelves and a small chandelier, the only furniture was two ornate silver dining chairs at a small round table, hugging the wall on one side of her bedroom door.
It seemed to take Marry an age to cross the empty space—and, Adeline was ashamed to admit, nearly as long for her to realise why her sister moved so slowly.
The fall of her skirts hid her gait somewhat, but her hem swished oddly around her ankles.
“Are you limping?” said Adeline. She locked her knees against the natural instinct firing in her limbs, ready to carry her across the room to her sister’s side. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, though, “What happened?”
Mareda froze where she stood, hand braced on the small table. Her eyes were wide as they darted from Adeline straight to Imogen, where they remained, round and wary. Imogen did not turn her head, yet she seemed to feel Mareda’s attention.
“She’s fine. Concentrate.”
“You—” Adeline shot a surreptitious glance at her sister. She had no idea what, if anything, Imogen had told her. The last time she’d seen either of them, they could barely stand to be in the same room. “You want to continue?”
Huffing through her nose, Imogen began to tug away the limp vine that belted her waist. She tore at it in jerky, irritable movements far removed from her usual smooth grace.
“No, I do not want to continue. I want to eat. I want to sleep. Tell me, though, what do you want? Do you want this wedding to go ahead? Is that it?”
She’s exhausted, Adeline told herself, hoping it would loosen the tension winding her jaw together. Don’t rise.
“Of course not,” she managed, but the words splintered between her teeth and prickled on her tongue.
“Then we’d best continue,” Imogen said dryly. “Because in four days’ time, Avette will have not only your king and your crown, but a shiny, all-powerful pearl to set in it. At this rate, you’re closer to being her flower girl than anything else. So call on Tala, and let’s go again.”
With a final pointed tug, Imogen shucked off the last of the vines still clinging to her dress. She clicked her tongue at the belt of green staining the lace of her cream bodice, and gave it a cursory scrub with her thumb.
“I don’t understand,” said Adeline.
Imogen’s eyes fluttered shut, an obvious effort not to roll them.
It stung, no matter how much she told herself it was just the exhaustion, the wear of the day, the hunger that gnawed at them all.
It hurt to find her friend so cold. To see her fawn over her new queen when it seemed she could barely tolerate Adeline’s presence.
“I’ve told you,” Imogen said slowly. “When you reach for your magic and feel that rustling or creaking or whatever it is you feel, that’s Daughter Tala bringing forth the Earth just as Aera brings forth the Winds—”
“No,” Adeline cut in, all the more sharp for the sting in her throat. “I don’t understand you, Imogen. Why spend your days fussing over Avette, planning her wedding, literally tunnelling into the centre of the earth for her, if you want me to take her down?”
“You don’t understand,” Imogen said, with that same slow, deliberate patience, “because you were not here.”
“I’m here now,” said Adeline. “I’m doing what you’re asking, and I’m grateful for your help, Imogen, but you haven’t given me anything to—”
“I have given all that I can,” Imogen snapped.
Silence fell for just one moment before Mareda’s voice cut hesitantly through the ringing tension.
“Gen,” was all she said.
And Adeline’s chest just about cleaved open at the sound of it; Marry had always been soft spoken in that demure, practised way of hers.
She could raise her voice when it mattered, and would not hesitate to do so.
This was different; not soft, but weak. Not demure, but weary.
It was all wrong, but it was, she now realised, the first she’d heard her sister speak since they’d set their mother to rest. And it wasn’t even meant for her.
Mareda was watching Imogen, a patient and expectant look on her face.
Imogen took a breath deep enough to curl her straight shoulders, lashes falling to rest in the hollows beneath her eyes.
“Gen,” Mareda said again. This time, Imogen turned, and though Adeline could see only half of the look that passed between them, Mareda’s soft expression had her turning away before she could really ask herself why. “Have you had your broth today?”
It was a bland enough question, but somehow the tone of it felt private. So did the stretch of silence that followed before Imogen shook her head; Marry’s tired smile, too.
“You need your strength. Go, eat. We’ll wait for you, won’t we, Adeline?”
Adeline startled at being addressed, the unexpectedness of it jerking a nod from her before she even thought to protest. Not that she’d want to.
Did she want to? She was still undecided as Imogen slipped from the room, the door wafting a gust of ice-wind behind her before it shut.
They watched it settle in its frame, the lock sliding easily into place where Adeline’s door now needed a physical shove to scrape past the constant creep of frost. There was no frost here; not spilling out beneath the door or clinging to the frame like silver vines left wild to spiral and creep.
“It’s warm in here,” said Adeline, just for something to say. “Warmer, I mean.”
Always the first to break a silence between them, even when the jarring echo of that silence still rang in her ears. For an awful moment, it rang still, and she half-imagined they’d sit here unspeaking until Imogen returned. But then Mareda raked in a weak breath.
“It is. Imogen warded my door somehow, to keep out the chill.”