Chapter Forty-Three
Adeline
It took several days to assemble the Cold Council, or what was left of it.
Bertha and Edward had been mourned over empty ice caskets.
Aunt Johanna, though thawed and breathing, had never fully woken from Avette’s spell, and even as she lay tucked away in a Healer’s suite, her recovery appeared less likely by the day.
Even Silas had struggled to be here; his days were shorter now, rising amid the full bustle of the castle and retiring not a moment later than the sun had set.
Adeline told herself it was to be expected; the thawed victims who fared the best had turned out to have dormant gifts, and her father had been trapped for months without a drop of his own magic to fortify him.
Of course, it should make sense that he’d need to rest.
Deep down, she knew it was more than a physical exhaustion.
In his waking hours, he was quieter. His words came to him slower, as though his body had forgotten how to convey his thoughts from his mind to his mouth.
It frustrated him to turn from a moment of silence and distance, to find expectant eyes awaiting replies to questions he hadn’t heard.
And yet, when Eleni suggested he sit out the meeting, he had come alive.
“I’m still here,” he had said, in his stern and quiet way. “And my daughter needs me.”
So here he sat, at Adeline’s side on a spare settee they’d had to drag into her rooms just to accommodate everyone.
“Cosy,” Ger quipped, to a round of silence and sideways stares.
He wasn’t wrong, though.
Nobody had much felt like stepping foot inside the old council rooms, where they had all suffered such indignity.
Where they had watched Bertha drown. Where Avette’s influence still lay thick and unthawed.
There hadn’t been enough seats to spare either, with Ger standing in for Doran and the additions of the Empress, the Merrow Council, and their Nua Laune counterpart.
Little old Norris now sat, stricken, between Imogen, with her pearly-white eyes, and Fionnula, the leader of the Sealgair, who stared fixedly at Kai with her long fingers drumming a seaglass dagger against the armrest. She stopped only when Ceriwyn leaned over the settee to flick at her arm, earning a hiss and a baring of fangs before the dagger was tucked reluctantly away.
They sat in silence for too long, unsure who should lead the proceedings, though Adeline could feel more than one pair of eyes turned her way.
They’d all been there, after all, when the gards had knelt, one by one, and laid their sword at Mareda’s feet.
They’d all seen Marry rise over Avette’s body, bloodstained and spent, and heard her resonant declaration.
The usurper is dead, she had called, voice ringing across the ravaged hall. Long live Queen Adeline.
“If there’s any hope for progress today,” Eleni said finally. “I believe we all know where we must begin.”
She turned her gaze once more to Adeline, and the others followed. The weight of their eyes and expectations was undeniable. Kai reached out and squeezed her shoulder, holding on through her long, steadying breath.
“I was my mother’s chosen heir,” she said.
“Her late Majesty told me so herself,” said Mareda at once. “I can confirm it.”
“And I,” said Eleni, with no small amount of flourish, “can prove it.”
With that, she withdrew the crumpled scrap of parchment that Adeline had left in her possession on their long return to Eisalaan.
Norris scooted forward in his seat, unease forgotten in his eagerness.
He took the letter from Eleni’s outstretched hand and turned it immediately to inspect the broken blue seal, then flicked it open to pore over the faded ink.
Adeline watched, one knee bouncing beneath her skirts, as the Councillor’s grey brows disappeared into his sparse hairline.
When his face softened into a smile, she thought she knew which words he was reading.
She heard them in her own head, their author’s voice as clear as it had ever been.
I hope you know, my darling Adeline, how very much I love you.
And as if to ensure she felt that love on all sides, Silas reached out to take her hand. His touch was cold now, always, but the intended warmth flooded her all the same. Her jittering knee slowed, and as Norris raised his head, she lifted her chin high.
“Well then, long live Queen Adeline indeed,” he said.
???
There was so very much she wanted to do with her position, to the point where she hadn’t yet had the space to articulate it all.
Caldbon, of course, still loomed over their heads with only the thin buffer of little Iseult’s love and affection to hold off an immediate advance.
Adeline suspected their King was deterred, too, by the potential of another ally lost in Dhalias—Eleni had decided to stay a while as her advisor, while Papou stepped into his old shoes back home.
She could not stay forever, though, and Caldbon would not be held to the whims of an eight-year-old for long.
They were coming, sooner or later.
She could only hope it was later; sooner was thoroughly booked. Eisalaan would thaw, and they would all have so very much to learn—some of them, more than others.
“An academy?” Norris had said sceptically when she’d brought the idea to the Council.
“A refuge,” she’d told them.
They would need one, Eisalaan, and all of Adhlas.
Because every day more and more people would wake to find a strange call in their veins, and when they did, they would need someone to guide them, just as she’d needed Kai and Imogen.
She was more than willing to share her home for the cause.
It was, after all, no longer the home she’d left behind.
What better way to cope with that than to create something new?
And so, in the days that followed the Council’s first meeting, Imogen had been resting and unspooling more and more magic for anyone who could Wield it; there had been more to answer the call than they’d realised.
Tucked away in the kitchens, Marie and Jack had discovered an odd surge in their blood.
A handful of the gards and several of the courtiers, too.
Those with Isa and Lasra’s gifts did what they could to thaw the frost within the walls, and together the inhabitants of the Silver Palace all did their part in putting their home to rights.
“There will be more,” Imogen had said. “When the rivers run free, and magic finds its way back to the crevices of the world, many more will hear the call.”
She spoke like this from time to time, intoned and distant until Mareda inevitably took her hand and guided her back to reality.
“And there’ll be help for them when the time comes,” said Marry. “But that’s not for you to worry about, Gen.”
Imogen had blinked, struggling to focus a moment before she nodded, wan and silent. It was wearing on her; on them both. The time had come, the Council agreed; they would ask no more of Imogen after today.
They were dressed, for the most part, in the traditional bruised blue, though its meaning had become somewhat muddied.
Adeline could only guess at what each of them mourned as they followed the procession of gards and the sparkling ice casket to the centre of the Laune.
Their innocence perhaps; their sense of selves, months or even years of their lives.
There was not, however, a single tear shed for the Last Sorceress.
Avette’s mourning party was small, once the gards set down the casket and departed.
Imogen and Mareda stood side-by-side at the foot of the coffin, Adeline and Kai at the head.
Ger stood a little farther back, one hand on his hilt and the other tucked tightly in Jack’s.
The Sealgair leader had chosen to remain on the banks, though they felt her unblinking eyes as keenly as though she had climbed atop the casket to peer at the corpse within.
Unsettled by the image, Adeline set her stack of books down over Avette’s unmoving face.
Norris had delivered them to her following the confirmation of her mother’s wishes, the trunk of prized journals every monarch of Eisalaan had inherited for the past six hundred years.
It had been the one symbolic rebellion he could stomach, it seemed—to keep Avette’s own journals out of her hands.
But Adeline could not keep them; didn’t much want to.
These false fairytales had built the Silver Kingdom, and brought it thundering so swiftly to its knees. She could not, in good conscience, allow them to make up the bricks of the new Eisalaan they built from the ruins.
So she lined the stack up neatly and took a step back.
“Should we say something?”
Imogen just stared at the coffin; Mareda’s face tightened, and Ger gave a flat purse of his lips. But it was Kai she’d been asking really, and nobody objected when he stepped up and placed a hand on the coffin’s edge.
It took him a long time to collect his thoughts; to put into words six hundred years of suffering, and all that had befallen them since. Eventually, he sighed a curling gust of white breath and peered through the clear pane of ice.
“You will not be missed, Avette, but you will be remembered. From the First Frost to the Last.”
He stepped away, and Adeline took his chilled hand in both of hers, warming it briefly before they took their positions at Imogen’s side.
She didn’t ask if they were ready; they heard the call, the careful spill of magic filling them each to the brim.
Adeline’s veins full of blooming life, Kai’s of crashing tides, and Jack’s of roaring fire.
And with the noise of the other elements cast aside, Imogen peeled off her lace glove and laid her bare palm over the coffin and the journals.
There was no slow crushing down to snow dust, no gust of Aera’s winds to carry the remains; the might of the mother’s gift saw her away like a shooting star, just the barest blink of silver in a grey sky.
There was nothing left in her wake but the indentation of the casket.
And with no further ceremony, the six of them turned and walked back to the shore in their pairs.
Fionnula disappeared between the trees at their approach, and Kai watched her go without comment.
They’d spoken, Adeline knew. She’d been slow to get on board with the idea, knowing how the Sealgair had nursed and cradled the blame they placed on Kai, but Ceri had convinced her to let it happen.
That Avette’s death had been enough, that they would now set aside their grudge in some way, and it seemed they had; Fionnula made no attempt to harm Kai in the days that had passed.
In fact, she’d made every effort to avoid him as best she could.
Her grudge, it seemed, could be set aside, but her distaste was another story.
More importantly, to Adeline at least, was that Kai had walked away from their conversation notably relieved, if perhaps a little more pensive.
He squeezed her hand now as he tore his eyes from the treeline, and they turned together to accept Imogen’s call one final time.
She knelt in the snow, her skirts moving like gentle seafoam in the breeze.
Adeline felt the now familiar rush and creak beneath her skin, but it swept through her for barely a moment before the thunderclap crack of the ice drowned all else.
The call faded, and Imogen stood, swaying back to be caught at once in Marry’s waiting arms.
At the catch of Adeline’s breath, Kai read her at once.
He released her hand, and she kissed his cheek before she stepped up to the lake’s edge.
Imogen stood with her head cradled in the crook of Marry’s neck, but she reached out one arm without looking around, drawing Adeline to her side until their curls tangled.
Together in their huddle of three, they shared their warmth and watched as cracks spiderwebbed throughout the Laune.
“You’re sure this is what you want?” asked Adeline.
Imogen nodded
“It’s too much,” she said, her voice small and distant. “Every moment is a battle. I’m fighting to be here, even now, when there’s so much else pulling at me from all sides. I don’t want to be an all-seeing entity, I just want to make my pretty dresses and live my little life with Marry.”
Adeline shot a glance at her sister. Mareda’s cheeks were kissed pink, but she rolled her eyes when she caught Adeline’s smirk.
“I think you’ve earned that,” said Adeline. “Both of you.”
Mareda’s expression softened, and she reached past Imogen’s tuft of skirts to grasp and squeeze her sister’s hand.
Just last night, they’d sat cross-legged together in Selma’s bed and spoke of what that life might look like; what it might mean for them both if Marry finally explored an existence outside the palace.
At breakfast, she’d taken the keys to Adeline’s apartment, and later today, she would ask Imogen to help her make it a home.
And considering the way Marry had been carefully turning over the rings in their mother’s favourite jewellery box as they spoke, Adeline suspected there was more than one question on her mind.
“I think we all have,” said Imogen.
She untangled herself from the embrace of both sisters and stepped up to the Laune’s edge.
It was slush now, wet and shining, shifting with the collapse of the larger shards of ice across the surface.
She was silent a moment, and though she faced away from them, Adeline knew her eyes had likely hazed once more; she could feel that inexplicable shift all around them.
“Avette was wrong,” said Imogen faintly. “Magic cannot be finite. Magic is the Mother’s gift to us all. And a Mother’s love is infinite.”
Adeline didn’t know what to say, or why those soft words thickened her throat.
She looked at Mareda, and with unspoken agreement, they each reached for one of Imogen’s cold hands.
The warmth of their touch seemed to jolt through her like a shock.
When she looked around, she was blinking hard, clearly fighting her way back to the mortal coil where they stood.
And then she squeezed.
“She loves you,” she said, with fierce urgency, looking from one to the other. “Your mother loves you all so much; her beautiful girls. She wants you to know that.”
Adeline stared at her friend until her vision blurred. Not loved, but loves. She met Marry’s eye and saw the same boundless swell of emotion. Her sister’s lip trembled.
A mother’s love is infinite.
Imogen blinked again, the pearly haze clearing entirely this time and her brow sagging. She gave a breathy half-laugh and rubbed at the faint crease between her brows.
“I’m so tired.”
Mareda sniffed and swiped at her eyes.
“You can let it go,” she said.
“We’ve got you,” Adeline agreed.
Together, they knelt at the lake and watched as Imogen sank her fingers into fresh slush and ancient silt. And with a sigh that resounded through the very banks beneath them, Imogen returned the Mother’s gift to its rightful place.
And finally set the rivers free.