19. Adelina
Adelina
Maralis is beautiful in a way that feels almost cruel.
After Dravaryn’s endless winter, this kingdom should feel like mercy.
It should feel like the world opening its hands.
Everything here is warm, green, and alive, even the air.
Rain falls in soft bursts that leave the leaves shining.
Flowers climb ruined walls and spill over stone paths in colors so bright they look painted.
Broad trees bend beneath vines, and birds flash between them like fragments of jewels.
The roads are wet, the ground soft beneath my boots, and the whole kingdom smells of salt, rain, fruit, and growing things.
But beauty does not make walking easier.
By the time I reach the temple city, my clothes are damp and sticking to me, my hair is trapped under my hood, and mud has dried along the hem of my cloak in layers.
The marsh paths from the cove nearly swallowed me twice.
I lost one boot in the sucking mud and had to dig it out with both hands while bugs swarmed my neck and arms. I crossed narrow plank bridges slick with rain, ducked beneath low branches, waded through water warm enough to feel strange against my northern skin, and followed guides who vanish at each checkpoint as quietly as they appear.
No one stays with me long.
That is part of the plan.
Each person took me a little farther, pointed me toward the next hidden path, pressed food or water into my hands, then disappeared back into the green like they never existed.
By the final morning, I was alone again, following an old pilgrim road into the city with Nara’s instructions fixed in my mind.
Stay with the pilgrims.
Keep your hood low.
Do not run unless you must.
Do not look back.
And now I am finally here.
The pull has been quieter since dawn. It’s a faint ache beneath my ribs, a thread I have learned to ignore by sheer force because thinking about it makes every step harder. But now, it has become more insistent.
Kaedryn is behind me somewhere. I know that as surely as I know the sea waits ahead. I don’t understand how he crossed so much distance or how he found the right trail after the light sealed behind me, but some part of me has stopped expecting him to fail.
Men like him do not fail.
The temple city climbs the coast in layers of pale stone, weathered wood, and flowering vines, all of it narrowing toward the sacred road leading me toward sanctuary.
I see the first white tower through a break in the rain just as the bells begin to ring.
The sound moves through the city and into my chest, low and resonant, deep enough that my bones seem to answer.
The Sea Temple.
It is real.
Not a line in a book. Not a sacred place whispered about by Freya in a locked room. Not a drawing hidden beneath maps and emergency instructions.
Real.
White towers rise beyond the rooftops, mist curling around them from the Celestial Sea.
The final road slopes toward them, marked by blue banners and bowls of floating flowers.
Pilgrims move in slow streams through the outer square, some barefoot, some weeping, some carrying offerings wrapped in cloth.
No one looks twice at me. Here, everyone is a little desperate.
Everyone has come wanting something. Healing. Forgiveness. Blessing. Release.
I clutch the strap of my pack and step into the flow of bodies.
The city is too loud after the marsh. Wheels clatter on wet stone.
Merchants call out prices for candles, shells, prayer ribbons, and little carved moons.
Temple attendants in white and blue weave through the crowd with baskets of flowers.
Children dart between cloaks. Warm rain drips from awnings and vines, and the humid air wraps around me until I feel hidden inside it.
I am close.
So close.
My heart beats those words with every step.
Close. Close. Close.
The temple steps appear at the far end of the road, broad and white beneath a veil of sea mist. Beyond them, I can see the first archway, open to the tide. People climb slowly, reverently, blue ribbons tied around their wrists, hands lifted to touch the carved stone.
I only have to reach those steps. I only have to speak the words. Renounce my crown. Claim sanctuary. Submit to the sea’s protection.
Freya’s work, Nara’s risk, Hedda’s hidden door, Oren’s horrible onions, every lie told by every stranger in gray, all of it has brought me to this road. My brother’s castle is behind me. The prince is behind me. Dravaryn is behind me.
Then the pull snaps tight. I stop so abruptly someone bumps into my shoulder.
“Move along,” a woman mutters.
I barely hear her. The thread beneath my ribs goes from ache to fire in one breath, pulling so hard I nearly stumble backward. My hand flies to my chest, pressing over the place it hurts.
It’s him.
My breath leaves me. No! Not here! Not now!
Slowly, I turn my head. Across the outer square, near an archway draped in white cloth and flowering vines, Prince Kaedryn stands with one of his men at his shoulder.
Even surrounded by pilgrims and dressed for travel instead of court, he looks impossible to mistake.
Tall. Dark. Still in a way that makes the whole moving crowd seem to bend around him.
His damp black hair falls across his forehead, and his cloak hangs open over dark leathers marked with muted green, blue, and silver.
He does not look winded or uncertain. He looks like the end of the road.
His eyes find mine.
The world goes silent.
For one heartbeat, neither of us moves.
His face changes first, recognition, then something hot and sharp beneath it. Anger. Relief. Something that feels too close to possession. I don’t know which one frightens me most.
I run.
A shout goes up behind me, but the crowd swallows it.
I shove between pilgrims, knocking shoulders, stumbling over the uneven stones as people cry out around me.
Someone grabs at my cloak, maybe to steady me, maybe to stop me, and I rip free.
The temple steps are straight ahead, bright through the rain, close enough that I can see water running down the carved edges.
Close.
Close.
So damn close.
“Adelina!” Kaedryn’s voice cuts through the square.
I keep going. Looking back wastes time.
I throw myself into the flow of pilgrims heading toward the steps, using their bodies as cover, ducking beneath a merchant’s awning and slipping around a cart stacked with prayer candles.
My boots skid on wet stone, but my healed foot holds.
Nara’s potions hold. For one breath, wild hope surges through me because I am faster than I should be.
Stronger than I was. The temple is almost there, and the crowd is thick enough to slow him.
Then shadow curls around my ankle.
I hit the ground hard. The impact knocks the air from my lungs. Pain bursts through my palms and knees as wet stone scrapes skin. People shout around me, scattering, their robes brushing my face and arms as I try to push up.
Black, glimmering strands wrap around my legs.
They coil like living ropes, slick and dark with flashes of blue-green light beneath the surface, winding over my boots, my calves, my wrists when I reach down to claw at them.
I gasp and yank hard, but the strands tighten, dragging my arms toward my sides.
“No!” I choke. The word tears out of me, raw and animal.
Pilgrims step back. They stare. No one helps.
He is the crown prince of Elyrion, and I’m a runaway princess bound by contract, muddy and wild-eyed on the stones. Whatever they think they see, they do not see a girl almost free. They see a problem unfolding in a sacred square. They see power, and power teaches people to lower their eyes.
“Help me!” I gasp.
A woman near me presses a hand over her mouth but does not move. The temple bells continue ringing.
I twist, fighting with everything left in me.
The shadow strands bite tighter, firm enough to turn struggle useless.
I feel Kaedryn in the magic now. His will, controlled, hard, implacable.
He does not need to shout. He does not need to touch me.
He can hold me from across a square and call it protection if he wants.
Something frantic shivers beneath my skin, and for one wild second, I think some hidden magic will help me escape like it did before. But there is no beam of light, only shadows and overcast sky.
“No, no, no,” I whisper, scraping my fingers against the wet stone.
The shadows pull my hands together.
Boots stop in front of me. I know they are his before I look up. Kaedryn stands over me, rain sliding down the dark leather of his coat, his wings not visible but somehow present in the tension of his body. His lips press into a thin line and his eyes blaze. But he’s calm.
“It’s over,” he says.
The words break something in me, and tears slip down my cheek. I shake my head, struggling against the binding even though it tightens with every movement. “No.”
His jaw flexes. “Yes.”
“No.” My voice cracks. “Please.”
Something flickers across his face, but it vanishes too quickly.
Behind him, his men form a loose barrier between us and the crowd. I only know Prince Sylas by name, but I recognize the other faces from the forest, from the moment before the moonlight took me. None of them look pleased. One of them, the younger one, looks almost sick.
But none of them help me either.
“Let me go!” I sob.
Kaedryn’s expression hardens again, my tears are another thing he refuses to acknowledge. “I gave you plenty of chances to stop.”
“I was almost there.”
“I know.”
The answer is worse than if he had not understood.
“Please! Please, I’m begging you! Let me go!”
His eyes flash. “Enough! Don’t beg me in the street after running from every chance to explain yourself.”
“I can’t go back!”
“You can, and you will.”
“No. No, you don’t understand!”
“Then you should have helped me understand before you tore through half the realm like your choices have no consequences. ”