Chapter Forty #3
“We meet at last,” said the strange woman.
Her voice was melodic and slow, soft as the tilt of her head as she considered Adeline with those too-curious eyes, the glow of her pendant building just as a slow pressure settled over Adeline’s lungs.
“Well, I quite understand all the fuss. You are a pretty thing. Not quite as lovely as the stories say, but then, who ever is?”
“That’s not her,” someone cut in urgently, and Adeline felt the pressure in her chest evaporate. She raked in a burning gasp, disbelief and confusion warring for space as her eyes darted around.
Ceri skidded to a halt at her side, shoulders heaving as though she’d run the length of the hall.
She must have, Adeline realised, as Ceri bent to grasp her arms and haul her upright, righting her when she staggered into her arms. Ceri’s brow was taut, the sorrow and seriousness on her face making her look so like Kai that it shot a bolt of panic through Adeline’s chest, sweeping her mind with vicious clarity.
Her heart gave one mighty pulse of protest. Kai.
She had taken too long; left Kai to battle Avette and Benan for far longer than she’d intended.
“The other Beira girl,” said the strange merrow woman. She glanced up at the canopy of trees above them, lips pursing. “Interesting.”
Adeline’s head swam; something was tugging sharply at her veins, no longer crying for release but demanding her attention.
Imogen’s influence, not just feeding, but calling, searching, panicked.
Her heart stuttered, trapping her breath.
They needed her. She tore her gaze from the Merrow woman’s, from Doran’s rapidly purpling face, and found Ceriwyn’s worried frown.
“I have to go,” she tried to say, but the words burned all the way up, and all that came out was a pained wheeze.
Ceri paused in her exam of Adeline’s injuries to hush her, fingers brushing lightly over her aching throat.
“He’s bruised your throat; it will hurt to speak.”
Adeline shook her head, vision swimming with the vigorous movement. “Have to get to Kai.”
She watched realisation crumple Ceri’s brow, but she turned to the Merrow woman at once. Looking to her for leadership, Adeline realised, for permission. She eyed the woman’s green pendant, a twin to the one Daithí had given Kai.
The same pendants the Sealgair had lived and died for.
“My brother needs her,” Ceri said urgently. “She’s a part of the plan he described last night.”
Adeline’s pulse skipped; she hadn’t known Kai sent word—sent for help, from those who had no reason to offer him anything. He really had taken every chance to make this work, and the knowledge swelled through her in a reviving burst of warmth.
The woman gave a sing-song sigh, tearing her attention from the trees. “Very well.”
The green glow above her heart reeled in, and Doran gave a great, gasping sob of breath. The Sealgair woman lifted him higher, his boots slipping in the mess of frost and moss.
“What would you have us do with this one, Your Majesty?”
Ceri nudged her, and she realised with a start that the stranger was addressing her. There was no time to dwell on the honorific, as much as it resounded inside her like the clash of a bell. Your Majesty. Her mother had been Your Majesty, Kai was Your Majesty, but Adeline was—
“Don’t know,” she said, weak and wheezing. “Don’t kill him.”
Despite her mercy—or perhaps because of it—Doran sent her a look of sheer, unfiltered hatred.
It was a look reserved for the lowest of traitors, the demons of old folk tales who toppled kingdoms and brought plague and devastation upon all the Goddess had created.
Strangely, that one look from the man of her nightmares was all she needed. She drew herself up, decisive.
“Restrain him. Leave him here.”
The Sealgair pouted, but she let him slump to the ground and began to drag him backward like nothing more than a flailing sack of potatoes through the sparse treeline.
“Wait,” Doran shrieked.
Nobody paid him any mind.
“We’ll be along shortly,” the Sealgair called merrily. Her lips curved in a speared grin that sent a shiver stealing down Adeline’s spine. “Do us proud, Your Majesty.”
Without another thought to spare, Adeline snatched up her fallen sword and hurried out of the small clearing, emerging into the hall with Ceri on her heels.
She snapped her head this way and that, finding her bearings in the mess of ice and bodies.
The trees and brambles she’d called in her panic had erupted at random intervals in the corners and alcoves of the room.
The pews were overturned by sprawling roots, and the ceiling had collapsed in parts, shattered icicles as long as swords strewn across the marble floor, some of them half-melting in rippling streams of water.
The air smelled of earth and brine, and the doors had been flung open, but the room was even more crowded than before.
Merrow and a fresh wave of gards had joined the fray, and many of the imprisoned civilians remained, armed with their fists, stolen swords, shards of ice.
It was disorienting chaos, and it shimmered with hope.
But there, at the head of the room, the glittering whirl of winds and waters had enveloped the whole of the dais.
Adeline’s heart leapt into her throat and sent her surging forward.
As she tore by struggle after struggle, she thought she caught a glimpse of a steely grey head before it was swallowed beneath the punishing weight of a mob.
Adeline forced herself onward. She had spared all the time she could, wasted precious seconds to give Doran the mercy he so often withheld from those he was sworn to protect.
And after so many years beneath his thumb and his sword, neither she nor Eisalaan had any mercy left to spare.