7. Adelina
Adelina
Imake it three steps inside my room before my composure breaks.
It happens all at once. The door closes behind me, the guards’ footsteps fade into the corridor, and the breath I’ve been holding since the meeting chamber tears out of me in a sound I don’t recognize.
I reach blindly for the nearest chair, miss it, and catch the edge of the table instead, sending one of Freya’s little porcelain dishes skittering across the surface.
Freya is there before it can fall. “Adelina.”
Her voice is soft, but the sound of my name only makes the room tilt harder.
I shake my head, though I don’t know what I’m refusing.
The dress suddenly feels too tight, the jewels too heavy, the air too warm.
My skin is still aware of every place the prince’s gaze touched, where the queen’s fingers hovered, and how my brother’s hand gripped my arm as he handed me to a man I had just met.
Future wife.
The words come back so violently I press a hand against my mouth.
Freya catches my other hand. “Breathe, child.”
A breath saws in and out.
“I didn’t…know.” My voice breaks, and I hate that it does, but I can’t stop it now. “Freya, they promised me to him…I’m to wed the prince!”
“I know.”
The answer comes too quickly. I stare at her.
She looks smaller somehow beneath the lamplight, her face pale, her mouth drawn tight in a way that sends cold through the panic. She isn’t surprised. She’s frightened, but she isn’t surprised.
“You knew?”
“Not until a few moments ago.” She squeezes my hand once, hard enough to pull me back into the room. “One of the servant girls overheard enough after you were taken to the chamber. She ran to me before the dinner ended.”
My pulse stumbles. “So it’s true.”
“Oh, little love.” The pity in her voice nearly undoes me.
I pull away from her because if she touches me gently right now, I think I’ll collapse and never rise. The skirt tangles around my legs as I turn toward the hearth, then toward the window, then back again.
Terror courses through me as I recall how I paused. How I answered. How the prince seemed so angry when he discovered I knew nothing of the betrothal or treaty.
“The whole thing went wrong.” The words spill out, too fast, too uneven.
“I froze. When Varek said it, I froze in front of everyone. The prince saw. I know he saw. Then I tried to fix it, but I don’t know if I said the right thing.
I don’t know if I looked at my brother enough or too much.
I don’t know if the queen thought I seemed ungrateful.
I don’t know if the prince thought I was insulting him, or if the king thought I embarrassed him by not knowing, or if the queen will say I made them look cruel. ”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“You keep saying that like it matters.” A tear streaks down my cheek.
Freya goes still.
I stop near the foot of the bed, hands pressed against my stomach, trying to hold myself together by force alone. The moonstones at my throat are cold, and the chain feels like fingers wrapped around my neck.
“It doesn’t matter if I did anything wrong,” I whisper. “It only matters what they decide happened.”
Her expression shifts, and I know she can’t argue because we both know it’s true.
A tremor runs through me, followed by another. I turn toward the door so quickly the skirt snaps around my ankles. “Varek will come come.”
“Adelina.”
“He will.” My breath turns thin. “Or Selvara will. Maybe both. They’ll come tonight because the prince questioned them. I saw it. He was angry. He was trying not to show it, but he was angry, and if he said anything after I left, Varek will blame me.”
Freya’s silence confirms what she doesn’t want to say.
I start pacing again.
“He’ll say I made them look weak. Or foolish. Or unprepared. He’ll say I invited the prince’s disapproval. He’ll say I failed again.”
My voice catches, and suddenly I’m back at the bedpost, fingers locked around carved wood, counting through pain that leaves no wounds anyone else can see.
“He told me it would be worse. He said if I embarrassed them, if I cost them this alliance, he would make sure it was worse than anything I’ve experienced. ”
“Listen to me!” Freya steps in front of me.
“I’m supposed to marry him.” The words come out ragged now, impossible to soften. “The cold prince. The man they say doesn’t forgive weakness. The man they say has no mercy once he decides something.”
Freya’s brow tightens. “He did not look as though he hated you. I snuck a glance during the dinner before I came back here.”
“That’s supposed to comfort me?”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t.” I press my hand harder against my stomach, trying to settle the sickness rising there.
“You didn’t see him when Varek said it. You didn’t feel the room change.
The prince was angry, Freya. Truly angry.
The shadows gathered around him and the flames shrank low.
Everyone went still. Even Varek felt it. ”
“He was angry because they deceived you, and that could have destroyed the alliance.”
“That doesn’t make him safe.” My voice cracks around the words, but I force myself to keep speaking because the truth is too large to stay inside me. “It only means he’s powerful enough to be angry in a room with Varek and not care.”
Freya doesn’t answer.
I wish she would. I wish she could tell me I’m wrong.
“He saw too much,” I whisper. “He looked at me as if he knew I hadn’t been told. Like he knew I was afraid. And then he spoke for me. He stopped the queen from touching my wings. He made Varek let him explain the contract. I know that should feel kind. I know it should.”
My throat burns.
“But it didn’t feel safe. It felt like another man deciding what should happen to me because he thinks he knows best.”
Freya steps toward me, but I step back because my skin feels too tight, my body too full of everything I wasn’t allowed to show.
“What do I do?” I ask, and now the words aren’t panic. They’re emptier than that. Smaller. “Freya, what can I do? How can I marry him? You’ve heard what they say about him!”
She looks at me for one heartbeat. Then everything in her changes. Her expression remains composed, but something behind it hardens, settles, decides.
I realize with a sudden chill that the decision has already been made, maybe long before tonight, long before I knew there was any choice to make.
“Run,” she says.
I stop breathing. The word doesn’t belong in this room. It doesn’t belong in my life.
“What?”
“Run.” She’s already moving, crossing to the wardrobe with sudden purpose. “Tonight. Now.”
I stare at her back, certain I’ve misunderstood. “Freya, I can’t!”
“No time.” She yanks open the wardrobe doors and reaches behind the rows of gowns, pulling free a bundle wrapped in plain brown cloth. “Take off the dress.”
I don’t move.
She turns, sharper than I’ve ever seen her. “Adelina. Dress. Now.”
My arms lift because her voice leaves no room for anything else. My fingers catch in the knot in the lace, trembling too hard to work it free, and then Freya is there, brushing my hands aside. The dress falls and pools at my feet. The earrings follow. The circlet. The delicate chains from my hair.
Piece by piece, the princess they dressed for the prince disappears into Freya’s hands.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
“You will.”
Marra and Vera aren’t here. No servants. No guards. No one but Freya.
“You planned this,” I say.
“For years.” The answer is so steady it steals what little breath I have left.
Freya pulls a warm tunic over my head, her hands brisk despite the tremor in them. “I prayed we’d never need it. I prayed I was wrong every time I added another coin, another route, another name to that book. But I wasn’t going to wait until there was no door left to open.”
My mouth goes dry. “Freya.”
“Sit.” She points to the chair.
“I can’t run.”
“You can.”
“I’ve never been beyond the walls.”
“You have.”
“I was a child.”
“And now you aren’t. Now sit and let me help you.”
I sit because my knees have gone unsteady again.
Freya kneels and pulls fitted trousers up over my legs, darker than anything I’ve worn, made for movement instead of display.
Then thick socks, soft boots that lace close to my calves, a scarf, another layer, and a heavy cloak lined in deep gray fur.
None of it looks royal. All of it fits perfectly.
Freya reaches beneath the vanity and pulls loose a narrow drawer I never knew existed. From inside it, she takes a small leather book, a folded map, and a packet of documents sealed in wax.
She presses the book into my hands first. “Memorize this. Quickly.”
My fingers close around it automatically. “What is it?”
“Routes. Names. Safe places. The first checkpoint is marked in blue. The second in green. The third you won’t use unless the first two are compromised.”
“Compromised?”
“People change. Loyalties are bought. Fear makes cowards of good hearts.” Her finger taps the cover of the book once. “That’s why there are three. You only need to get to the Sea Temple.”
Freya unfolds the map and spreads it across my lap. Her finger traces a route that runs east before it ever turns south, cutting through forest and mountain passes before finally heading toward the western reaches.
“East first,” she says. “They’ll expect south the moment they realize you’re gone. So you give them south last.”
I stare at the lines, at the small symbols hidden among the names of rivers and ridges. My pulse beats too loudly in my ears. “I’ll get lost.”
“You won’t.”
“I might.”
“You won’t.”
“My wings may not be strong enough.”
Freya’s hands stop moving. For one terrible second, the room is too quiet. Then she meets my eyes and cups my face in her hands. “They’ve carried you every day in that garden. Tonight, they only have to carry you out of it. One stretch of sky at a time.”
“Freya.”
“You have to leave tonight.”
I shake my head, but her grip tightens.
“If the king comes to you tonight…”
Cold spreads through me faster than any winter wind. “He will punish me.”