Chapter Thirty-Three
Kai
When he woke to a large bowl of broth, thick with carrots and boar, Kai did not question it for a single moment.
He should have, as it turned out.
Hunger had robbed him of something vital, some essential cog in his brain rusted and unusable.
He’d been surviving, just about, on a small parcel of nuts that someone had snuck in with his bed linens, but that had been days ago, and even picking at them like a bird, he’d been unable to make them last. Rations had been whittled down to one daily cup of broth for each inhabitant of the palace, but as Benan was on duty more often than not, there’d been many evenings that Kai’s ration didn’t make it past his doorway.
He ate only on the nights that Benan was called to Avette’s bed—something he’d gleaned by the raucous exchanges outside his door.
She may be the Ice Queen, Benan had crowed to a chorus of grimy chuckles, but her cunt’s warm enough, that’s all I’ll say.
Kai wished that had been all he’d said. If only that rusted cog in his head had affected his hearing rather than his reason.
At least then, he might be blissfully ignorant of Avette’s appetites.
Strong enough to resist his own. He was not that fortunate.
The bowl the porter delivered that morning was brimming and fragrant, and Kai all but fell upon it, oblivious to all else until he was nearly scraping the bottom.
“Your Majesty,” a voice at his side sang, lifting as though they’d been calling him for some time now.
The porter had left without his notice, and it was Lady Imogen who stood over him now, where he sat on his unmade bed, expressionless yet somehow expectant.
Clean and groomed and fresh-faced, wafting a delicate perfume.
Kai stiffened. His sense of self overcame him now that he was somewhat satiated, and he was suddenly and acutely aware of who the Lady would find staring back at her.
He was a stale man in a dark bedroom, not a half-starved beast caught in a bramble—though he suspected he more closely resembled the latter.
Eyeing Imogen warily, he swallowed the last of the broth and wiped at his mouth with the back of one wilted sleeve, overgrown stubble catching on the fabric.
He wanted to lick the bowl clean, but he had just enough pride to hold out.
That is what he would have liked to believe at least, though if he was honest with himself, his tongue was just too sore—he must have burned it in his haste to inhale the scalding contents of the bowl.
“Lady Imogen,” he managed, unsurprised to find his voice hoarse.
“You’ll be joining me for a little while today,” she said pleasantly, as though she had not just watched him grunt and scoff his way through his first meal in days.
“We just had a fitting,” he said.
He had hoped for a brief respite from the fittings; each one of them had been carried out in Avette’s rooms, and how she revelled in the excuse to touch him.
She trailed her deadened fingers up his arms, plucking at the fabric of his half-made suit, black eyes shining with every shudder she evoked.
On the other hand, these fittings were the one and only time he left his bedroom lately.
More importantly, they were his only opportunity to gauge the Wielders’ work beneath the Laune, information that was crucial to the movements of his own Court.
Information that was rather freely shared in front of him, too—he had wondered, on occasion, if that was by design.
If Imogen was leading these conversations with her queen for his benefit.
If the distribution of the Eisalaan Gard to the ports and borders was intentional, or simply poor planning.
He could not say; she was incredibly convincing as Avette’s Lady Snow, all fluttering lashes and simpering smiles.
But here, in the rotting ice cavern of his bedroom, she remained unreadable.
“This is more of an excursion,” she said mildly. “You can visit the bathing room first if you’d like, and I’ve brought you some fresh clothing.”
Kai did not answer, moved nothing but his eyes.
There was no sneering gard filling the doorway; the friendly porter had been allowed to deliver his meal directly for once, and now Adeline’s one-time friend was offering him something of a reprieve. He was hesitant to react, even internally. It seemed almost too good to be true.
“We’ll have to hurry, I’m afraid,” said Lady Imogen. “Her Majesty is expecting us.”
Kai’s stomach sank, full enough now to give his dread some weight. Not a reprieve, then. And, he realised, when Imogen offered a tight and expectant smile, not optional either.
???
Kai had not seen the outside of the palace since his return from Dhalias, and he had not been in any frame of mind to take much notice at the time.
He knew it had been stark, but he was almost certain it was worse now.
Their steps sank with every step, and snow pelted sideways at them as they walked.
The cover of the forest offered only a brief reprieve, and when they emerged on the banks of the Laune, he could barely make out the Queen’s Village in the distance, so thick was the curtain of snowfall.
Kai’s cloaktail was sodden and dragging as they crossed the ice, his skin so raw with cold that he could not suppress the memory that shivered free.
The day he had dragged himself from the very same ice beneath his feet and half-crawled to the palace doors with only his rage to propel him forward.
But the sun had risen for him on that dark day; he’d seen Adeline for the first time, the light of her eyes parting the clouds that hung over his every numbed sense.
His lashes were thick with slush, just as they had been that day.
And just as he had that day, he blinked the cold away to better see her.
Because there she was.
Adeline, a beacon in the relentless snowfall—
Dimmed only by Benan’s shadow as he loomed over her.
It was only that shadow that drew his attention to the cluster of figures surrounding them, as though his eyes had only bothered to fight the distortion of the snowfall to cast his sights on her.
Now, he saw them all: Adeline, Benan, Mareda, and standing at the fore with her hands clasped like a Priestess in prayer, Avette.
Kai stumbled mid-step, drawing abruptly short. “What is this?”
The winds snatched his voice away, but a pulse of blue and a slow-dawning smile told him that Avette had heard him.
At his side, Imogen gave his cloak a short tug, gently but insistently drawing him on.
He went, gladly, thundering forward in several swift strides that had Benan stepping out from behind the princesses.
“What is this, Avette?”
Avette raised a hand, stopping Benan in his tracks without so much as a glance around her.
Her eyes were on Kai, dark and vivid in the expanse of white; her skin, her dress, the blizzard whipping around her.
She was storm made flesh, loosed upon the world by some force beyond his comprehension, all in the name of nothing but senseless destruction.
“This, my heart,” she said, with that practised, detached calm, “is nothing more than incentive. My dear Lady Snow has come so far in securing us our wedding gift. For this final effort, she will require your assistance.”
“No.”
It was an ingrained reaction, jerked from his nerves in the same way he might recoil his hand from a flame.
No, he would not help her. No, he would never make the mistake of helping Avette again.
Not when he still bore the scars of the last time, scored right through the centre of his palm.
Not when the whole of Adhlas bore its own scars, too.
At his side, Lady Imogen cleared her throat, perhaps a touch pointedly.
Avette just smiled, as though he had said nothing at all.
“You will be allowed your little trinket, and you will use it to hold the waters at bay for my Wielders as they enter the cavern.”
Kai’s very breath sank through him, gusting away far beneath his feet into the biting cold of the Laune.
“Why not just freeze it?” he said.
Quickly, too quickly, but panic had overcome him, working him like a puppet on its taut strings. Avette waved his words aside, impatient.
“The currents are too strong, too fast-moving. We will need the waters held aside before the freezing begins.”
Mother help them all.
The Merrow were expecting a frozen cavern.
They were awaiting his word; they would not know to follow him into the tunnels today, and for all he knew, they would have no way to hold back the waters for themselves.
They’d had to keep their exchanges so bare of detail he didn’t know if the Sealgair had escorted them the whole way.
Even if they had, he had no way to signal them without the conch.
They had lost, he realised, brain blanching with shock at that overwhelming knowledge.
They were too late.
“My cousins will keep us company as I await your success,” said Avette, but it was the sharp, yellow crescent of Benan’s answering grin that hooked Kai from his inner spiral.
Us.
At the implication, Kai all but gagged against the thick, sour slide of his heart in his chest. She meant to keep Adeline hostage. To hold her as collateral against his disobedience.
“And when you have returned,” Avette went on, “you may see to Adeline’s safety. If it still matters to you, all things considered.”
Kai could not help but bite at the obvious bait. “What is there to consider?”
Avette’s smile was bright and immediate.
“Well, I suppose her safety is less of a concern for you, is it not? Now that she has a strapping gard warming her bed. Sir Leman, I believe, a lovely young man indeed. Perhaps you know him?”
Kai stiffened. He didn’t want to look at Adeline—or rather, he did, so badly his spine screamed with the effort of holding still. He could not give Avette the satisfaction, but he was so exhaustingly aware of Adeline’s orbit that he simply couldn’t help but see her in his periphery.
She was just as rigid as he was.
There’s an explanation, he told himself. There has to be.
But the turning in his stomach was untouched by logic; it wouldn’t settle, he knew, until this was over. Until he saw Adeline away from Benan’s looming shadow and Avette’s bitter glow.
“It’s no less of a concern,” he said, voice so tight that Avette’s beaming smile spread light to her eyes.
“Very well,” she said, with a delicate shrug. “Assist Lady Snow in her efforts, and I shall see to it that you are granted a moment alone with your dear friend.”
Alone.
His stomach roiled more viciously still.
Not only at Avette’s knowing suggestion, but at the sickening realisation that it was enough to sway him.
He could not reach the Merrow, but Adeline was here, her safety and a moment alone together dangled before him like a carrot on a stick.
Despite his better judgment, he let himself look at her; Adeline’s lips and her brow told two different stories, face threatening to crumble even as she forced a trembling smile.
Kai dragged his gaze away, knowing that his mind had been made up before he’d even turned to her. Hating himself for it.
“Alright,” he said.
From the corner of his eye, Adeline stiffened—but Avette only smiled.
“Wonderful. Come now, cousins.”
And with a flippant gesture over her shoulder, she picked up her skirts and glided away.
The cold nipped and stung at Kai’s skin as she passed him by with her stormwinds and her cavalry in tow.
Benan leered at him, Mareda barely looked his way, but Adeline—Adeline slowed to brush her fingers over his.
Just one brief moment of reassurance.
The warmth of that touch did more to bolster him than any amount of broth or berries ever could.